I rounded a few corners and it was there: the carved red door, the lantern growing a tail and floating away.
I didn’t hear the wolf’s step behind me, just his voice: “It suits you.”
I turned to find him watching me, his head cocked to one side, and I fingered the skirt of the gown self-consciously.
“Did you have a lovely evening?”
Guilt bit sharp—I’d forgotten him again, in all the excitement. I stepped through the door and the wolf came after me, nudging it shut with his nose.
“Are you going to forgive me for pulling you into that book-mirror?” I said quietly.
“You think I have not forgiven you?”
“You don’t even want to look at me.”
His amber eyes peered up into mine. “The year slips away. Already I find I cannot bear it.”
“Bear what, Wolf?”
“The thought of being parted from you.”
“Why? I’ve done nothing to help you.”
“You tend the house as deftly as I have ever seen. And you—and you have been a good friend.”
I swallowed, thinking of his angry words in the dark. “We’re friends?”
“Yes, Echo. Of course we are.”
The dress weighed suddenly heavy on me, and I didn’t know how to look at him. “In the books, I don’t have any scars.” I don’t know why I said it.
The wolf watched me, his tail flicking back and forth. “Do you hate them?”
I went and knelt beside him; the gown’s metal embroidery snagged on the carpet. Hesitantly, I brushed my fingertips along the top of his head. He pressed his muzzle into my hand. “I don’t mind them as much, here. I’m glad … I’m glad they brought me to you.” I realized that I meant it.
“So am I,” said the wolf. “I should not be. But I am.”
Impulsively, I hugged him.
I got ready for bed behind a screen in a hurry, the gold dress a puddle of silk around my ankles. I was sorry to hang it in the wardrobe, sad to bid the evening farewell.
I fell asleep with the wolf beside me, and dreamed Hal and I were still dancing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING, THE WOLF WAS waiting for me in the corridor outside the bedroom.
I was surprised to see him and he ducked his head, clearly embarrassed. “It is no use mourning the end of the year, when it has yet to happen. I do not want to waste any more time.”
So we paced round the house and tended it together like we had at the beginning. I was glad of his company—some of the more unruly rooms were hard to manage on my own. We checked bindings, spun the spiders’ golden thread onto spools, collected water from the rain room and light from the sunroom.
We spent over an hour in the room with the venomous garden—it was getting out of hand. We hacked away at the vine growing out of the well, and poured water from the rain room over the poisonous plants, which made them wither.
We were almost finished, when the floor began to shake and a resounding boom splintered through the air. I slipped and skidded into the well, where the black vine we’d just finished cutting back was already growing again. The wolf snatched my sleeve and dragged me away before the vine could grab me and sink its sharp tendrils in.
I scrambled to my feet. The room continued to shake, and a large crack appeared in the floor, stone grinding and dust swirling. The black vine began to scream.
“Echo!” barked the wolf. “We have to leave. Now.”
The shaking grew worse, the crack in the floor spread wider. We leapt across, and ran for the door.
The black vine shrieked and wailed. Just as we passed the threshold out into the hall, the room fell away into darkness.
I turned, heart thundering. There was no room anymore. Just coiling, echoing, blankness. Ragged threads hung from the door frame, like a piece of cloth had been ripped away. Think of the house as a quilt, the rooms as patches.
“Shut the door!” cried the wolf.
I yanked it closed.
It shuddered and began to melt into the wall. In the space of a few heartbeats, the door vanished entirely, not even a thread remaining.
“What was that?” I gasped.
The wolf’s ears were pinned back, a growl low in his throat. “It’s started. The unbinding of the house.”
“What do you mean, the unbinding? It isn’t even remotely close to midnight.”
The wolf shook his head. “I do not mean that. This is more serious. The house is connected to me, and I am running out of time. I fear rooms will continue to be unbound, more and more as the days pass. I hope the entire house will not have unraveled by the time the year is ended.”
I stared at the wall where the door had been, my pulse dull and heavy. “The entire house?”
He dipped his white head. “I hope not.”
“What would have happened if we were still behind the door when the room became unbound?”
“We would have been unbound with it. Our lives. Our souls. We would have become nothing.”
Horror shuddered through me. “I don’t mind that room being gone … but what about the others?”
The wolf answered my unspoken question: “It could be any of the rooms. We will have to take care.”
I was more shaken than I wanted to admit. Any of the rooms meant the library could be unbound next. I could lose access to Mokosh.
I could lose Hal entirely. What would happen to him if he was truly trapped in the worlds of the books, as I suspected? What happened to a pressed flower if the book it was in was thrown into the fire?
“Is there anything we can do?” I asked the wolf.
“Be vigilant,” he said. “Do not stray too far from the door.” His ears flicked sideways. His eyes met mine. “And hope that the bedroom is the very last room to be unbound.”
THERE HAD TO BE SOMETHING else I could do. Some kind of old magic I could invoke to save the house and the library, and the wolf and Hal, too, while I was at it. I still didn’t want to set foot in the bauble room, so when the wolf excused himself for the afternoon, I went straight to the library, determined to finally find some answers.
I stepped into a book-mirror about a real historical king who was famous for his vast book collection. His library was huge, shelves stretching up to the ceiling, tall windows looking out over a shining moat. I glimpsed siege towers being erected just beyond the water, but decided to ignore them.
An ancient librarian came round one of the shelves, mumbling to himself. He had wisps of white hair and a quill pen tucked behind one ear, ink dripping down his neck. He held a crackly sheet of parchment and was peering at it with a violent frown.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said politely, “Do you have any books about the old magic?”
He looked up at me and somehow managed to frown even deeper than before. “Up there.” He pointed to a balcony accessed by a winding staircase. “Though I don’t know why you couldn’t read the signs.” He waved at a blue metal plate attached to one of the shelves, inscribed with swirly shapes that were maybe supposed to be letters but were wholly undecipherable to me.
I just thanked him and climbed the stairs.
The books were beautiful, with cracked purple or silver or indigo spines, embossed with gold and studded with gems. They smelled like roses and cinnamon. I opened one and tried to read it, but the words swam in front of my eyes and I had to put it back. A second book was the same, and a third. Disappointment squirmed inside of me.
“You know, you really ought to be better prepared.”
I jumped and wheeled about to see Hal leaning nonchalantly on the railing at the top of the staircase. He exuded a kind of amused boredom, but the faint sadness in his eyes belied him. “Don’t tell me you stepped into a living, breathing book to read the boring ordinary kind.” He stepped past me and plucked the volume I was attempting to decipher out of my hands. He gave it a careless perusal and stuffed it back onto the shelf.
“Why can’t I read these?”