So Nora Lee followed the river to the place where it disappeared into the earth, and then she followed it further. And somewhere far below everything, south of the southernmost cellar, deeper than the deepest worm, she found Underland waiting for her.
For a moment she thought she had fallen asleep, because all around her she saw the terrible creatures from her nightmares, monstrous and wrong-shaped. But the beasts in her dreams were not real; the Beasts of Underland were as real as bones or dirt or foxes.
A good girl ought to be frightened of them. She ought to run away.
But Nora Lee, who was not a good girl and never would be, did not run away. She whispered her story to the Beasts of Underland, and they rushed past her into the night, baying for blood.
When Nora Lee climbed out of Underland the next morning she found there was nothing left of the wicked fox but a clean white skull, still smiling that wide smile. For the first time, she smiled back.
Nora Lee supposed this was the part of the story where she lived happily ever after, but she didn’t seem to have a knack for it. She tried, truly she did. She kept quiet and minded her manners. She built a big stone house and a big stone door. She locked the way to Underland and then she buried the key by the sycamore tree.
But still, she slept poorly. She was waiting always for the next fox to find her.
When that day came, she knew what she would do. She would unbury the key and unlock the door and return, finally, to Underland.
The Beasts would greet her as one of their own, a thing with teeth, and curl tight around her. She would sleep then, and dream her bad dreams, and live happily ever after.
SIXTEEN
I dream again of Starling House that night.
It’s been a while. I’ve been dreaming of that house since I was twelve, but this spring the dreams have receded like a long, slow tide. Instead I get memories, hazy and worn as old Polaroids—me and Jasper jumping off the old railroad bridge into the river, back when I could still stand the feeling of water closing over my head. The two of us taking turns pressing a can of coke against our foreheads until the chill of the mini-fridge fades. Mom driving too fast with the windows down, laughing.
I thought maybe I’d outgrown the house dreams, or made some private, inscrutable pact with Starling House.
But tonight I’m walking through the halls of Starling House again, and something is badly wrong. The doors are rattling in their frames and the pipes are howling in the walls. White fog is leaking up from the floorboards, rising fast, obscuring the windows.
A calico shadow slips around my ankles and the hellcat fixes me with urgent amber eyes before darting back into the mist. I run after her, twisting from room to room, faster and faster. I slip in puddles of something that leaves the soles of my shoes tacky and gummed. I can’t see the floor through the thickening mist, but I have a terrible suspicion that I’m leaving a line of red footprints behind me.
I find myself descending stone steps. The mist parts, and I see a single figure standing in the room. The figure sags and staggers, terribly wearied. The tip of his sword hovers a bare inch above the floor.
I shout his name, running hard, and his head lifts. I get close enough to see the starless dark of his eyes, the desperate twist of his lips around my name, before the mist takes him. It drags him back with white claws, through an open door. The door slams in my face.
My own scream wakes me up.
There is a little pause here. A series of seconds or maybe minutes when I lie panting against the mattress, waiting for the nightmare to fade, for reality to reassert itself, for the motherly voice in my head to assure me that it was a dream, just a dream, go back to sleep. It doesn’t come.
And then the truck keys are cold against my palm and the gas pedal is rough and alien against my bare foot. I’m pulling out of the parking lot, passing the Mexican place, rolling heedlessly through the ghostly reds and greens of stoplights.
The mist has risen like dough while I slept, creeping up to swallow streetlamps, trees, even the stars themselves. I drive with my knuckles hard and pale around the steering wheel, trying hard not to think about Jasper’s stupid video, or the thing that ran across the road the night Mom died—ghostly in my memory, an apparition rather than an animal—or the second after the tires left the pavement but before we hit the river, when I felt my whole life splitting neatly into before and after.
I pull over at the front gates and fall out of the cab before the truck stops rolling, skinning my palms on the gravel. I fumble for the key but I don’t need it: the gates of Starling House swing wide at the touch of my bloodied hands, hinges screaming.
“Thanks,” I tell them, and from the corner of my eye I see the ironwork writhe, as if the beasts want to pull themselves free and run beside me.
The driveway is shorter than it’s ever been, no more than a few pounding steps. I can almost feel the earth sliding beneath my feet, the wind rushing at my back, shoving me forward.
The house comes into view all at once, like it stepped out from behind a black curtain. It’s more mysterious at night, more alive, maybe just more, full stop. There’s a tension to the shape of it against the sky, as if it has to work hard to remember to be a house and not anything else. The vines rustle and tremble against the stone. Mist coils around every sill and eave. Every window is dark.
So it’s only by the sallow sickle moon that I see him: Arthur, standing alone before the stone steps with his head bowed and his sword braced crosswise before him.
He should look like a fool—a boy standing in his own yard long after midnight, his shirt misbuttoned, one sock missing, wielding a sword against nothing at all—and he does, but the kind of fool that breaks your heart. I don’t know what he’s fighting or why, but I know he’s losing.
“Arthur?” I say his name softly, carefully, remembering the chill of his blade passing inches away from my face.
His spine goes rigid. His head lifts, turns very slowly toward me. I expect him to be angry—I have, after all, trespassed on his property twice in one night, this time while wearing gym shorts and an undershirt—but he looks closer to despairing.
“No.” He says it very firmly, like he thinks I’m an apparition he might banish with sufficient effort.
“Look, I know I shouldn’t have come, but I had this dream and I thought—is that blood?” One of his sleeves is blotted black, the fabric clinging to his flesh. There’s more of it shining down one temple, matting his hair, slicking his hands around the hilt.
“Opal, you have to go now—” His sword tip wavers as he says it, sagging slightly.
That’s when it happens. A sudden, invisible strike, an attack from nowhere that sends him staggering to one knee. A fresh wound appears in its wake, four deep scores dug across his throat. Blood floods down his neck, a black sheet that soaks his shirt and pools in the hollow between his collarbones.
The sword makes a dull clatter as it hits the gravel. Arthur follows it, his body folding gently, his eyes on mine.
I think I must be screaming, but I can’t hear it over the wild moaning of Starling House. It’s as if every loose floorboard has creaked at once, as if every joist and rafter warped themselves against the grain. Shingles hit the ground like fists beating uselessly against the earth.
I am abruptly aware that my knees are studded with stones. That my hands are snarled in cotton, wet and warm. That I’m saying silly, useless things like “no, no” and “hey, come on” and his name, over and over.