Stars and planet, all spinning in the same direction.
The twins stand close together, their clubs now aimed past the ladder, perhaps at the planet, perhaps at space, perhaps at the stars.
“We should be falling,” Boy El-Saffani says. “Why aren’t we falling?”
Girl El-Saffani stamps her foot, testing the firmness of the metal grid below us. The metal rings, vibrates.
“Solid,” she says. “Does the floor keep us from falling down?”
Boy El-Saffani shakes his head. “It’s in front of our faces.” He points his bone-club at the planet. “We wouldn’t fall down, we should tumble forward.” He turns and looks at me. “Shouldn’t we, Em?”
He thinks I have any idea what’s going on?
Gaston pushes past them, slides around the ladder. He reaches out with both hands. I start after him, scared he is going to fall off the edge, but stop when his hands press against the barely visible curved wall. He leans forward, fearless.
“The stars aren’t spinning, we are,” he says. He turns, his smile wide, his face alive with joyous amazement. “Hey, Aramovsky, remember how Spingate said we were walking on the ceiling and you argued with her?”
Gaston points a finger straight up.
I look. The ladder is still visible, but the tube around it is not. The ladder rises up into another impossibility: Spingate’s cylinder. It is smaller than the planet, I think, but still so big my brain can’t make sense of it. A coppery color, huge, sprawling, sides curving up and away, the length of it stretching out and out and out for I don’t know how far. The surface is dented, scratched and pitted, like the hallways where the battles occurred. The cylinder doesn’t spin at all: it is fixed in place above us.
Only now do I truly understand what Spingate meant. We walked along the inside of that cylinder, as small as insects. We walked straight, but in a circle at the same time, until we looped up and around to wind up where we started.
This ball-shaped room we’re in is outside that cylinder, connected by the tube that contains the ladder. The metal-grate floor of this ball is parallel to the cylinder’s surface.
At the top of the ladder, I see two confused, gray faces peering down: Bawden and Visca, probably wondering why they can suddenly see us. To them, it must look like we’re standing in space.
Gaston snaps his fingers and laughs.
“It’s because the cylinder rotates,” he says. “That’s what makes us stick to the inside. I can’t quite remember how it works, but if it spun faster, we would feel heavier, and if it spun slower, we would feel lighter. That’s why it’s heavier here, in the ball, because we’re actually spinning faster than the cylinder below us. The farther out we are, the heavier we feel. I bet at the center of the cylinder, we wouldn’t weigh anything at all. We would float.”
Float? Gaston sounds even more insane than Brewer. What he says is impossible. But the room of dead babies taught me that when he talks, I should listen. I need to listen to him now.
Aramovsky raises his hands, tilts his head back.
“Miracles,” he says. “We float above a planet, we float in space, but we do not die. The gods protect us. Brewer protects us—he truly is one of the gods.”
I turn back to the hideous head hovering above the pedestal.
The stars spin behind him, too, but in the opposite direction. On my left, the stars seem to move from up to down; on my right, from down to up.
“We’re in a ship,” I say to Brewer. I know it’s obvious. The words just come out. “A ship, all this time?”
“It’s called the Xolotl,” he says. “I find it hard to believe Theresa didn’t figure it out. Perhaps she is not as smart as she thinks she is. A shame to blame the game, but a tame dame never came to fame.”
He’s babbling again, talking to himself more than to us.
I point behind me, toward the spinning brown, blue and green planet. “What is that?”
“That was supposed to be our home, our new beginning. Well, for me and Bishop and Aramovsky, anyway. For you, my little Savage bird, I doubt it would have been paradise, at any price, with or without sparkly ice.”
Gnarled, black fingers come up to scratch his head. Fingertips dig between the wrinkles. He stops, puts his hands down and stares at my symbol.
“Em,” he says, speaking the word like it is the answer to all questions. “I can’t believe I missed it, but of course. Of course you survived. Of course you are the leader. Would you like to know your first name?”
My heart bangs so hard I feel it in my throat, in my ears.
I need to know who I am.
I nod.
“Very well,” Brewer says. “Your name is Matilda.”
Matilda…Matilda…Matilda. The word echoes through my head, discovers itself hidden deep in the blanked-out areas. I know he speaks the truth.
My name is Matilda Savage.
The feeling of relief overwhelms me. Despite the horrors we’ve been through, the problems we still face, I can’t help but smile.