Steen sniffs. We have a much superior game here. It’s like Scrabble. You win by putting the highest-value words down. But the words you put down also tell a story, and you have to take care, because that story will play out somehow in your day.
Seriously? The game changes your day? That sounds dangerous!
You’re interpreting it too extremely. No one has ever been seriously hurt.
Oh! Just minor injuries, then!
The story plays out metaphorically, usually in some harmless and amusing manner, he says soothingly. I can see it sounds strange. But I promise you, Janie, this world is no more dangerous than yours.
It’s so different here, she says. Do both Zorsted and Tu Reviens feel like home to you?
Yes. And no. In Tu Reviens, I’m mute, and no one understands me, or anyway, no one did before now. In Zorsted, I’m lonely, or, I was before now. He pauses. Don’t you think it’s the people that make a place feel like home?
This does make sense to Jane. It explains why nowhere has felt like home, ever since she got that phone call—fake phone call—from Antarctica.
On the distant horizon, a tall ship with brilliant white sails comes into view. It’s too far away to guess if it’s coming or going.
If I’m a seeker, Steen, I don’t know what I’m seeking, Jane says.
Steen hesitates again. Well, he says, I’ll keep you company while you figure it out.
The long, difficult morning is tugging at her limbs. Her unfamiliar body is asking for the sleep it missed in the night. Yes, please, Jane says.
She curls on her side in the sand with an arm around Steen, and allows her Zorsteddan self to rest.
*
She wakes to a night lit by two enormous yellow moons. Both are bigger than her moon. Together, they cast far more light. The sky is streaked with stars.
Steen is nowhere to be found.
“Steen?”
There’s no answer. She pushes to her feet groggily, turning in circles, then suddenly wakes with a violent shiver, thinking about Zorsteddan hunters, or predators, or stones that decide they don’t like you. “Steen!”
I’m coming, he says, the message faint in her mind. Turning, she sees his dark form trotting toward her, across wet sand that’s bright with reflected moonlight.
“I got scared!”
I wouldn’t leave you to find your way around alone.
“I mean I got scared for you!”
When he reaches her, she drops down and puts her arms around him. He smells like wet fur and tries to lick her hands. “Ick!” she says. “No licking!”
No hugging, he says. Strayhounds like to be petted, not hugged.
She lets him go. “If you don’t lick, I won’t hug.”
Deal. But you don’t need to be scared for me, Janie, he says. People here pretty much leave strayhounds alone.
“Okay,” Jane says thickly.
Are you cold?
“Yes, and hungry.”
You slept for a very long time. I did too, when I was first adjusting to your world. Crossing over is tiring. Let’s go someplace warm.
“How far are we from the hanging in the duchess’s mansion?”
Your aunt’s home is closer. She won’t mind if we wake her.
“No. Tu Reviens.”
All right, then, he says. The long, uphill climb will warm us.
An orchard on a steep hill is treacherous at night, even in the light of two moons. Jane keeps tripping, and whacking her head on low branches. She pulls her scarf tight around her ears and mutters to Steen that it’d be nice if the orchard would light itself for their convenience.
On the streets high above the water, the silence of the Zorsteddan night is striking. Zorsteddan buildings don’t hum or buzz. Zorsteddan streetlamps make the tiniest sizzling sounds as flames eat away at wicks.
Light and sound spill from the occasional building down the occasional street, but Steen leads her away from those streets. Drunken revelers are the plague of every harbor town, he says fastidiously.
Crumpled and cold from sleep, Jane is content enough to stay out of the way of drunken revelers. They climb quite a distance before the duchess’s mansion looms, and Steen is right. The long walk is warming.
I’ll have to get the attention of one of the few strayhounds in the castle who has a person, he tells her, to let us in.
“How will you do that?”
Strayhounds can communicate with each other mentally, remember?
“How will you explain why I deserve to be let in?”
Hopefully my brother will be awake.
“You have a brother?”
I have twelve brothers, seven sisters, and two hundred and forty-two cousins.
Jane speaks a Zorsteddan expletive. “Does your brother know about Tu Reviens?”
No. I told you, I haven’t told anyone. But he’s my brother. He trusts me, and his person trusts him. His person will open the door for us.
“It all sounds kind of complicated. Your brother trusts you, but you’re not actually telling him the truth.”
Well, it’s hard to know what to do sometimes, says Steen. If I tell my brother, should I tell my other eighteen siblings? What if I tell my brother and he tells his person? It’s not a small thing, a hanging that leads to another world. I have to be careful. You understand that, don’t you?
As she climbs into a garden on some obscure, high-walled side of the duchess’s mansion, Jane feels tired, and old. “I’m not a big fan of deception at the moment.”
Steen glances at her. I know. But you’ll see. It’s your secret now too. You’ll have to decide who to tell. Now, stop talking out loud. You’ll wake the entire ground-floor staff, and anyway, I’m trying to focus on communicating with my brother.
A minute later, a gruff man in a nightshirt opens a wooden door in the high wall, grunts, then steps back inside without even looking at them. A strayhound moves at his feet, shorter and stockier than Steen. He and Steen briefly stand in the doorway together, sniffing and snuggling each other.
Then Steen sets off with purpose. This path will take us through the kitchens, he tells Jane.
Jane follows. They climb all fifteen stories of the duchess’s mansion, gorging on bread, cheese, more Zorsteddan fruit with names Jane magically knows, and a long strip of what tastes like the most delicious beef jerky in any world, all pilfered from the kitchens. She has the sense that her Zorsteddan body finds fifteen stories of steps far less arduous than her real-world body would.
As she changes back into her Doctor Who pajamas, a faraway city clock tolls, and Jane understands the current time in Zorsted. It suddenly occurs to her to wonder what time it is at home. She speaks a Zorsteddan expletive. It’s gala day!
Not anymore, Steen responds. We missed the gala.
Another expletive. What if someone noticed my absence?
Just say you weren’t feeling well. If anyone gives you a hard time, I’ll bite them.
Steen! You can’t start biting people for no reason! My world does very mean things to dogs who bite! Just do something distracting that humans love. Put out your paw for them to shake.
Oh, that’s dignified, says Steen. Next you’ll tell me to roll over.
Jane laughs.
Don’t worry, says Steen. After all, if anything ever happens, I have a safe place I can disappear to.
Jane doesn’t answer, because she’s not ready to tell him that she doesn’t like the idea of him disappearing somewhere without her. When she moves into the room with the hanging, Steen follows. The view of Tu Reviens is dim and unpeopled, so Jane takes a moment to examine the umbrella on the floor. The ferrule and the handle are a bit different in shape and color from her own work and the workmanship is finer, but overall, the umbrella is gratifyingly like the one she’s just built. Picking it up, carrying it to the lantern in the far corner, scrutinizing it under the light, she’s pleased to think that she’s chosen appropriate shades of red and green for hers.
What do you think you’re doing! Steen says. That umbrella hasn’t been moved in over a hundred years!
The workmanship is gorgeous, really, Jane says, smoothing the dark, varnished shaft with her fingers. And someone dusts it regularly.
With the most delicate of feather dusters! Steen says. I wish you would put it down.