They were the exact same waves as before, since unseen by any other human eyes. The wind was stiff but unscented by salt, strangely dead to the senses.
After a few minutes’ climb (although it might have been hours or even days, considering the banal timelessness that gripped the terrible place) the stone stairs curved up onto a broad plateau, carpeted with hushing yellow grass. At the very end of the plateau jutted the black castle, its spires and turrets scratching at the sky, its hollow windows tall and staring like a hundred shocked eyes.
James took Petra’s hand with his left, holding his wand at the ready in his right. In spite of everything, he exulted in her touch. It was fleeting, and soon she would be gone from him forever, but for now he soaked in the unspeakable comfort of their laced fingers, committing the feeling to memory.
The three walked in silence for some time, approaching the castle. Despite its looming turrets and dark stone walls, he felt no sense of foreboding this time. Unlike their last approach, the castle was now completely empty. Also, he now knew its story. The castle had been built as an escape route by friends of a certain dimensional traveler and his companion unicorn, both of whom had fallen prey to evil witches and wizards in the world of men. It was that unicorn’s horseshoe, long parted from its bones, that had made this journey possible. The castle was a sort of way-station, filled with portals magically powered to take any travelers back to their native dimension. This, the builders wordlessly implied, was preferable to the risk of interaction with those that had killed the Rider and his Mount.
“That sky,” Zane finally said, keeping his voice low in the endless, half-daylight. “Looks like a giant bowl beaten out of lead, turned upside down over the world.”
“There are no stars in that sky,” Petra agreed with a shudder. “It never gets dark. There’s never a dusk or a dawn. It just never ends.”
She squeezed James’ hand. “Let’s hurry and get this over with.”
The castle drew closer with teasing slowness. Wind whispered in the grass, and the sound almost teased at meaning. James found himself straining to hear words among the shushing hiss. He shivered and shook his head.
“Are you certain about all of this?” he asked Petra, half to distract himself, half because he really wanted to know. “I mean, are you absolutely positive there’s no other way?”
Petra drew a long, silent breath. Letting it out, she said, “There’s no other way. I wish there was. Donofrio and I have discussed it over and over. I’m the Crimson Thread. I’ll need his expertise to assume the role of Morgan, that other dimension’s version of myself. But once we’re done, everything will finally return to normal. As long as I am in our own world, I tear it further away from its original destiny. Chaos takes more of a foothold. Who knows how many things are different now already than they should be?”
James shrugged and shook his head. “So there’s a few Muggles stumbling into the courtyard of Hogwarts, is that such a big thing?” He knew he was oversimplifying things, but went on anyway. “Maybe the world really would be better off if the Muggles found out about us.
Have you thought about that?”
She glanced aside at him, gave him a wry smile. “I’ve thought about it. And you have, too. You know how that ends. Conflict and war are inevitable in a combined world. But I’m talking about more than that. Maybe, in an untouched and untainted world, you won the Clutchcudgel tournament for the Bigfoots just because it was the right thing to do for the team, for pure fun, and sport, and honor, not because you had to for my sake.”
Zane scoffed. “And maybe Professor Newt teaches cheesecakes to fly and it rains chocolate syrup on Thursdays.”
Petra laughed a little. “And maybe James’ Aunt Hermione is the new Minister of Magic.”
James tried to laugh along, but another thought struck him, and he couldn’t stop himself from saying it aloud. “Maybe my cousin Lucy never died here in this stupid, dead place.”
Petra and Zane fell silent as they walked. Next to James, he sensed Petra nod slowly.
They spoke no more as they finally walked into the dull shadow of the castle. As before, it stood perched over the very edge of the far precipice, either because the cliff had eroded disastrously away beneath it, or because the structure did not rely on anything so prosaic as gravity for its foundation. Looking up at it, James saw the building now for what it really was: merely a totem, a monument meant to funnel wanderers into the main chamber, a cavernous hall surrounded by pillars and lined with empty archways. Each archway was hung with wafting curtains, and James knew that each formed its own dimensional portal.
As the three stepped into the space, their footsteps echoing up into shadowy, vaulted heights, they encountered the same scene that they had left years (or seemingly only moments) before. A broad stone floor was drifted here and there with dead grass, occupied in its very centre by an unmistakable, if surreal, arrangement of bedroom furniture.
There was a low dresser and mirror, a bed, a chair, a woven Oriental rug.
A floor lamp with a pink tulip-shaped shade lay broken on the floor.
James remembered it falling as Petra had stalked through the arrangement, pushing the furniture aside without touching it, fueled by rage in pursuit of Judith and Morgan.
The symbolic crimson thread, plucked from the Loom of the Vault of Destinies, had accompanied Morgan here, waiting with her, twined around an opal brooch.
James remembered Petra’s version of that same brooch. She had worn it on her cloak during their ocean voyage, apparently a gift from her dead father, purchased while she had still been in her mother’s womb. Petra had lost her version of the brooch when she’d fallen from the back of the ship—and been so heartsick about it that she had nearly followed it to her own watery tomb.
Morgan, the Petra from another reality, had never gone on that ocean voyage, however. Her dimension’s version of the brooch had never been lost at sea. Instead, it rested on this very dresser, glinting with the red of the strand wrapped around it.
James could tell even before they reached the disarray of the furniture, however, that the top of the dresser was now empty. Not even dust had collected on its flat surface.
Petra stopped in her tracks.
“Where is it?” she whispered urgently.
“I remember it,” Zane said, stepping forward, and then glancing back. “The thread was here, wrapped around a piece of jewelry. It must have fallen.”
James mused darkly, “Maybe Judith came back for it.”
But Petra was shaking her head. “No one can touch the thread except she who it represents. Remember?”
James remembered. He had tried to collect the brooch and thread himself, only to have his hand frozen solid all the way to the elbow.