“That doesn’t make me feel especially comfortable about our poking about here,” I said. “Or about my sleeping arrangements, for that matter.”
“I—I can feel it!” We all looked up. Finstern was nearly at the top of the mound when he flew back as though slapped by a giant invisible hand. He tumbled gracelessly, head over heels, until he landed, half-dazed, at the bottom of the hill.
“Mr. Finstern?” I rushed to his side.
“Observable phenomenon. Measurable reaction. Quantifiable.” The inventor sat up, swaying slightly. He was smiling madly. “It’s real.”
My employer clambered up the mound. It was not overly large—ten, perhaps fifteen, feet from its base to its highest point. He stood where Finstern had been and felt the air all around him.
Nothing happened.
“I can’t feel it. I still don’t see anything.” He looked down at the inventor with a critical eye. “Your father,” he said. “What did your mother call him again?”
“Her magic man.” Finstern sneered. “You can’t feel it? It’s in the air. I can feel it from here. It’s humming like a generator.”
Jackaby slid back down the mound. “No,” he said. “I don’t feel it. This mound is both a door and a lock, but neither one is meant for me. You, on the other hand . . . Whoever your father was, Mr. Finstern, I do believe the barrier exists to thwart his kith and kin.”
Finstern pushed himself to his feet. “You’re saying my father was part of your Unseelie Court?”
“I’m sorry,” Jackaby said. “He may have been your mother’s magic man after all; just not necessarily a good one.”
“Good. Bad. Subjective,” said Finstern coldly. “He made a bastard of me and left my mother ruined. You don’t need to apologize to me for calling him a monster. How do we get inside?”
Jackaby nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder,” he said. “Charlie, do you feel anything?”
Charlie stepped forward. “I don’t know what I should be feeling, sir.”
“Why don’t you give it a try? Just there.”
Charlie pulled himself up the grassy slope, reaching out in front of him as he climbed. Finstern’s eyes narrowed as he watched. “I don’t feel anything,” Charlie said. “The Om Caini have always been neutral, sir. I’m sorry, but I don’t think—” Charlie’s outstretched hand suddenly vanished up to the elbow. He pulled it back abruptly. “Mr. Jackaby?”
We climbed up the mound behind him. Charlie reached forward again, and the air rippled like a mirage around his hand, swallowing it up to the wrist.
“There.” Jackaby said. “Try to open it.”
“Are we sure that’s advisable?” asked Charlie.
“Nothing about my line of work is advisable,” said Jackaby. “There are questions I need answered, and the people to answer them cannot be reached through standard channels.”
“I don’t know how,” Charlie said. “I have no idea what I’m doing, sir.”
“Please, Mr. Barker. Try.”
Charlie took a deep breath and closed his eyes. For several seconds nothing happened, and then the hole in midair grew larger. It pulsed, stretching wider inch by inch. A wave of warm air washed over the mound, dancing through the tall grasses. It smelled sweet, like burnt sugar. Charlie’s hand was suddenly lit from behind with sparkling sapphire and emerald light, and for a moment I feared we had opened a hole under some great magical lake, but then my eyes adjusted and I realized I was looking into a thick, vibrant wood.
“I really don’t think I can—” Charlie opened his eyes and staggered back. Jackaby caught him before he tumbled down the hill. The portal was an archway now, rounded smoothly at the top and as tall as a church door. I stepped around it. From behind it was nothing at all. I saw only the dumbfounded faces of my companions gazing into thin air. I came back around to the front.
Finstern, in spite of the jolt it had given him earlier, was the first to step through the door. “Wait!” Jackaby called after him, but the inventor went on ahead, peering to the left and right.
“Charlie,” Jackaby said, “I need you to stay here.”
“Not a chance,” Charlie replied. “You have no idea what you’re walking into.”
“What I know is that I’d like to walk out of it again. Do you know what heroes who enter the Annwyn are most known for?”
Charlie shook his head.
“Staying there,” said Jackaby. “Whether they wanted to or not. Neither Miss Rook nor I can open this portal, Mr. Barker, and there’s no telling if even you will be able to reopen it from the other side after it closes. I need you to maintain the doorway for all of us. You’re the only one who can.”
Charlie’s eyes hunted for any alternative, but they found none. He turned to me, instead. “You know it isn’t safe,” he said. “You don’t have to go.”
I leaned forward on my toes and kissed his cheek. “We’ll be back before you know it. I promise.”
Jackaby stepped through the opening. “One more thing, Mr. Barker,” he called back. “Try not to let anything out.”
Chapter Twenty-Six The Annwyn was vivid. I don’t mean my experience of it—but the actual colors of the realm. The woods were strangely deep and intense, as though the whole forest had been painted by artists who refused to temper their vibrant hues. I spun around, taking it in. The leaves might as well have been cut from actual emeralds. Purple buds on the nearby bushes were so brilliant they almost seemed to glow, and even the sky above us was less of a robin’s egg blue and closer to that of a ripe blueberry, although I could see only a few glimpses of it through the foliage.
The light filtering through the branches danced across my skin in patches of turquoise, flickering suddenly with the flap of wings high above us. All around, the chirps and squawks and constant rustle of wildlife layered into a steady, droning hum. If we had come looking for the land of the dead, it seemed as though we had taken a wrong turn. I had never been anywhere that felt so alive.
Finstern had already wound out of sight, and I hastened to keep up with Jackaby as we hurried after him. The forest was dense with ferns and ivy and all manner of brush, but there was a trail of sorts, where the plant life had been beaten back over time. I read a book once about an explorer in the islands who followed just such a path right into a den of angry wild boars. The only defense at my disposal was my employer’s slim, ivory-handled silver knife, which was tucked in the pocket of my skirt, its sheath slapping lightly against my leg as I ran. The weight of it was a faint comfort, although it began to feel more and more like a letter opener and less and less like a real weapon the longer I thought about the sharp tusks and gnashing teeth that might lie ahead.