I haven’t done it since the accident, of course. I’ve cuffed my jeans and gone wading once or twice, but never for very long, and only ankle-deep. The water is always too cold, even in summer, and I have this stupid conviction that I’m going to trip and go under and not come up. Classic PTSD,I guess.
But every now and then I come sit on the bridge. It’s a good time for it: the glazed hour right before sunset, when the heat fades and the shadows stretch like tired dogs across the ground. The first fireflies are pulsing above the river, visible only by their reflections in the dark water, and the steam from the smokestacks is ribboning into the sky. I don’t look at the power plant, because I don’t want to think about who it belongs to.
I look at the old mines instead, almost invisible beneath the kudzu, boards black with rot, before it occurs to me that they’re owned by the same family: mine.
A wave of something like nausea moves through me. I wonder if Nathaniel Boone dug that very mine, and if he really found a way into Hell to escape my great-great-whoevers. I wonder if Eleanor Starling hated her husband or mourned him. I wonder why she put stones in her pockets, or if that’s just what happens when you run out of dreams and have nothing left but nightmares.
That’s how I knew Mom didn’t drive into the river on purpose, no matter what Constable Mayhew thought: she had enough dreams for a dozen people. She was an appetite on two legs, always running from one scheme to the next. Instead of bedtime stories she told our fortunes, with the starry-eyed conviction of a kid with a cootie catcher. She’d marry a pharmacist and we’d live in a big brick house with two bathtubs. She’d win the scratch-off and we’d buy a cottage on the seashore. She’d become a big-time music star and they’d play her songs on 94.3 (The Wolf: Country That’ll Make You Howl) and the three of us would move to one of those fancy suburbs where you have to enter a code to get past the gates.
I guess that’s what she was doing the day she died. Rolling the dice, taking a chance, chasing a dream. She told us she was finally going to turn our lives around, and I guess she meant it—I guess she was going to talk her way back into her daddy’s good graces and give us a last name and a family fortune, make us somebodies after years of being nobodies—but at the time I didn’t believe her. The last thing she said to me, before the wheels screamed sideways across the asphalt, was: You’ll see.
I saw plenty. I saw the mist cleave. I saw the river rise. I saw that dreams were dangerous, so I folded mine up and shoved them under the bed along with the rest of my childhood.
I barely even remember what they were, now. I close my eyes and let the sound of the river fill my skull, trying to imagine what I wanted before I made myself stop wanting. At first all I can think of are little-kid dreams: cakes with thick frosting, matching sheets, that one baby doll that ate plastic cherries off a plastic spoon.
And then: a house that feels like a home. A boy, kneeling among the flowers.
A boy who grew up in a hurry, just like me, who spent his life doing what was necessary instead of what was nice. A boy who wanted me—look, I know he did—but not as much as he wanted to keep me safe.
I remind myself firmly that Arthur Starling is also a liar and a coward, responsible for my mother’s untimely death, et cetera, et cetera, but my own voice sounds unconvinced in my head. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen when it happened. All alone except for the awful weight of his choices, the endless halls of his labyrinth.
It was an accident, plain and ugly, and he blamed himself so thoroughly that even I believed him. And now—while I sit here wishing and wallowing—he’s going to follow the Beasts back into Underland. He’s going to be the last Warden and the newest grave.
Unless I do something.
I slide my phone out of my pocket and run my thumb across the cracked screen. I text Jasper first, because a person should have their affairs in order before they do something really stupid, and I don’t want the last words between us to be lies and accusations. hey, we have to talk.
All this time I told myself I was saving him, shielding him from the messy shadow of Starling House, but apparently he’s already in it neck-deep, and the only person I was saving was myself. I didn’t want to tell him he was actually a Gravely, or even a student of Stonewood Academy. I didn’t want him to belong to anybody but me.
I guess I understand, a little, why Bev never told me the truth.
I wait, listening to the green hum of the trees and the throttled song of the river. The sun disappears behind the western bank and the air follows it in a rush, lifting the hair from my neck, cooling my swollen knuckles.
Jasper doesn’t write back, even though I’m pretty sure he’s hanging out with Logan doing exactly fuck all, because school lets out next week and he finished all his finals early.
I call him instead, feeling a little cruel because we generally only call each other when there are legitimate medical emergencies, but it’s his fault for ignoring me. He doesn’t pick up. I wait some more.
The dusk deepens. The stars quicken. The power plant glows hot orange. There’s a gathering weight in the air, like rain. Like a consequence, coming straight for me.
I call Jasper again, counting each ring before a cool voice tells me the owner of this number has not set up a mailbox. I’m telling myself firmly that there’s no reason to panic, nothing to worry about, when I see it: a wisp of mist rising up off the river.
My feet go numb, like I’m walking into cold water. I watch another milky curl spiral upward, reaching toward my ankles.
I call again. The water reaches my belly, a sick chill.
Again, and again, and I feel myself going under.
TWENTY-TWO
When Arthur’s phone rings, he assumes he is dreaming. It’s happened once or twice (or maybe three times, or four) recently. It’s a stupid dream, because only one person has this number and she has no reason ever to speak to him again. Still: he keeps the phone in his breast pocket, and never lets the battery dip below twenty percent. He lingers by the socket while it charges, just in case.
But now he can feel the buzz of the phone against his chest and Baast is staring at his pocket with a disgruntled expression. He fumbles it out of his pocket and answers without pausing to look at the screen.
“Yes?” He hopes she can’t hear the foolish gallop of his pulse.
“Arthur Starling?”
There is a pause while Arthur’s heart sinks and he berates it for rising in the first place. “Who is this?”
“My name is Elizabeth Baine. I’m with the Innovative Solutions Consulting Group, calling on behalf of Gravely Power. We’ve been trying to contact you for some time.”
Arthur supposes he should have expected this. They no longer have a spy, so they must resort to less-elegant strategies—bribery, blackmail, various unlikely legal threats designed to frighten people into compliance. But you can only be frightened if you have a future to lose, and Arthur doesn’t.
The morning after Jasper’s visit, Arthur called Eleanor’s publisher. The first person told him chirpily that she didn’t know who to ask about the source of a nineteenth-century dedication, but she’d get back to him! (She did not get back to him.) The next person asked him if he knew there was a recession on and that everyone was stressed and overworked and did not have time to pursue the eccentric requests of a dead author’s not-quite-descendant. The next person hung up on him.
But Arthur persisted, and eventually he spoke to the great-nephew of Eleanor’s first editor, who consulted the family archives and confirmed that the dedication was added in the seventh edition, in accordance with the will Eleanor Starling wrote just before she disappeared.
Arthur had thanked him and hung up knowing that Opal was right, and that Eleanor had left instructions for finding Underland.
Since then he’s been readying himself, waiting only for the mist to rise.
“So, Mr. Starling—”