Hal came over and plopped himself down in the window seat, yawning as he languorously stretched out his legs. “While it is true that Behrend composed for harpsichord, the piano had barely been invented when he was alive, and the quality of pianos built in those days was severely lacking. They hadn’t perfected the instrument yet. Many scholars believe that if Behrend were alive today, he would eschew the harpsichord immediately in favor of the piano.”
I gaped at him, fumbling for a scathing retort and coming up empty. All I knew about Behrend was what the wolf had told me, the brief biographies printed on the back of his sheet music, and that ridiculous book-mirror about the painter’s daughter. If I’d had an ordinary library at my disposal I could read up on my music history and refute him, but as it was …
I shrugged, attempting indifference. “I like how it sounds.”
He smiled. “Fair enough.”
I studied him, wondering how I could be so glad to see him and so irritated with him at the same time. “You haven’t been reading lately.” My words came out more accusatory than I actually meant them.
“Yes, I have. You’re just a hard person to find.”
I tapped my finger against my breastbone. “You’ve been looking for me?”
“Of course I have! Books are very dull without someone to share them with.”
Heat flooded up my neck.
He winked at me, unfolding himself from the window seat and standing in one smooth motion. He bowed with a flourish. “Fancy a walk, Echo?”
I glanced once more out the window. “As long as we avoid that awful Empress.”
He laughed. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
We left the music room by way of the rose garden, passing through the hedgerows and out onto a wide hill, where tall grass rustled in the wind. The air was alive with honeybees and the scent of wildflowers, and huge white clouds scudded through the sky; their shadows stretched long over us.
“Where are you from?” I asked Hal, trailing my hand over the tops of the grass. It was feather soft, but it itched.
“From?” He raised an eyebrow at me, as if that was a difficult question.
“Where are you when you’re not reading?” I clarified.
“Oh, I’m always reading.” He dashed ahead of me and I ran after him, half tripping the rest of the way down the hill.
Ahead of us, a wide lake sparkled in the sun, and beyond it was a wood.
It seemed there was always a wood.
“You can’t always be reading. You have to be from somewhere.”
Hal walked up to the edge of the lake and pulled his boots off. The water lapped over his toes.
I watched him for a moment, then followed suit. I yelped at the icy touch of the water and Hal waggled his eyebrows at me.
“Well, where are you from?” he said.
“The village. Although right now I live in the house under the mountain.”
“Sounds very pretentious.”
I gave him a little shove and he nearly toppled over. “You’re the pretentious one, with all your opinions about harpsichords.”
“They’re not opinions, they’re facts.”
I shoved him harder, laughing, and that time he lost his footing, grabbing my arm before I could leap out of the way and yanking me down with him. We tumbled into the lake with an enormous splash. I surfaced first, sputtering, and pulled Hal up after me. We couldn’t stop laughing.
“I’m not sure,” said Hal a while later. “Where I’m from, I mean.”
We were stretched out on our backs in the grass, still damp, but warm from the sun. Overhead the clouds knotted together and grew dark, the wind blowing colder than before. It smelled like rain.
“How long has it been since we met on the hunt?” he asked.
“A few months at least.”
He folded his hands behind his head and I found myself staring at his eyelashes, which were long and light. “For me, it seems like yesterday.”
“You haven’t … been anywhere since then?”
“I’ve just been reading. There was the book about the hunt, and then one about a boy and a glacier, and then something about sea monsters. Definitely a few wars. A handful of dragons. And—” His brow creased in concentration. “I think there was a woman made of clouds. Or cats. I don’t quite remember, it was very peculiar. And then this one.”
“So you just go from book to book.”
“It seems so.”
He rolled on his side, propping himself up on one elbow. There was a light dusting of freckles across his nose.
“You must have a family,” I said.
“There’s always just been … this.” He gestured at the sky. “For as long as I can remember.”
I studied him, thinking about the nature of the house under the mountain. Was Hal trapped in the book-mirrors somehow? Enchanted between their pages like a rose left to press and then forgotten? The library had been collected with the rest of the house. Maybe Hal had accidentally been collected with it. Although he could just as easily be stuck in Mokosh’s library, or another library entirely—there was no reason it had to be mine.
He sighed, so suddenly sad that my heart wrenched. “What about you, Echo? Tell me about your family.”
And I shut my eyes and told him about my father and Rodya and even Donia, while the wind whipped up wilder and wilder and the clouds blotted out the sun.
It was only when the rain broke, all at once, that we leapt up from the ground and bolted to the wood for shelter, slipping and sliding in the mud all around the lake.
Under the canopy of the trees, the rain barely reached us. We stood and watched it fall, turning the lake and the hillside all to mist.
A mirror shimmered into being behind me, the library alerting me, as I’d instructed, that it was time for dinner back in the house under the mountain. I didn’t want to leave Hal, but I stepped toward the mirror anyway.
From Hal’s long look, he didn’t want me to leave either.
“I’ll see you again,” I told him.
His smile was laced with sadness. “Goodbye, Echo.”
“Goodbye, Hal.”
I touched the mirror, and the library came into view around me. Stricken, I stepped into The Empress’s Musician again, but back in the dripping wood, Hal was already gone.
A FEW DAYS LATER, I went out into the corridor after breakfast and found it empty. It wasn’t the first time the wolf had left me on my own, of course, so I went about tending the house as usual. I’d checked the bindings on all the dangerous doors and was halfway through watering the plants in the conservatory when I spotted a woman’s hat abandoned on the window seat. I picked it up, smoothing my hands over the faded ribbons, and tried it on. It fit perfectly.
I still saw evidence of the wolf’s mysterious former mistress everywhere, though the wolf tried to distract me from noticing dropped fans and torn gowns, jewels and shoes and half-finished embroidery, scattered about in nearly every room.
Was the woman the same as the force in the wood? The powerful enchantress who had collected all the rooms of the house and bound them together? It seemed likely. But I couldn’t quite reconcile the idea of her with someone who loved music, and had caused the wolf to love it, too.
Still, the mystery of the wolf was clearly wrapped up in her, and if I were to help him—as I’d determined to, no matter what he said—perhaps she was somewhere to start.
I left the conservatory, still wearing the hat.
And there was the wolf in a corridor made of flashing rubies, waiting for me.
It was too late to hide the hat, so I just fiddled with one of the ribbons, studying the wolf. “Why are you bound to the house? Where did you come from? And … and who is she?” I pointed at the hat.
The wolf let out a long sigh. His whole body seemed to sag. “Come with me. I need to tell you a story.”
He brought me to the Temple of the Winds, which was empty and echoing, dust swirling up from the floor.
We paced together over to the back window, which looked out into wheeling starlight, and I sank down onto the wide sill, hugging my knees to my chest. The wolf sat opposite me, and the strange stars cast fragments of green and violet light over his white fur. “I am not of your kind, Echo Alkaev. I do not belong to your world, or your time. I am just another piece of … her … collection. But my life has been stretched past what it was ever meant to endure. At the end of the year, I will die—but I will be free. I have no wish to escape that.”