And as swiftly as it arrived, the pain vanishes.
I know where I stand before I even open my eyes. I breathe in the scent of freshly mown grass, hear the chatter of the birds and the soft thud of falling apples. The orchard. I’ve never been here in the midday sun before. It’s so vibrant – bursting with colour and perfume. The wind shakes the leaves and my skin becomes a collection of strobe-like shadows. I smile to myself.
Baba stands before me, her back straight and her eyes open. She surveys her surroundings. ‘So this is where the magic happened?’
‘Yes. But Willow didn’t fall for me. The magic didn’t work – I’m Neville Longbottom, in the early books, before he gets good.’
Baba laughs, and I notice she now owns a set of teeth. ‘I wasn’t talking about Willow. I was talking about the other one – the one with the baby blues.’
Just the mention of Ash and tears sting my eyes. ‘It’s all gone wrong, Baba. What am I going to do?’ I’m aware I sound like a small child, but I don’t care.
She ignores me and reaches into the boughs of a nearby tree, every strand of her grey hair alive in the sun.
‘How could I have been so stupid?’ My voice comes out high-pitched and whiny. ‘I knew Alice loved Willow. Did I really think she was just going to step aside?’
She plucks an apple from the branch and inhales its scent, her newly found nostrils sucking together from the force. ‘Alice gave you a poisoned apple, but that doesn’t make her a wicked hag. And just because you took it, doesn’t make you Snow White.’
‘She betrayed me.’
Baba shrugs. ‘You were willing to betray Willow, to seduce him for your own gain. The end justified the means. Alice just has a different end in mind.’ She sinks her teeth into the skin of the apple, juice dribbling down her chin. ‘Ash. That’s his name.’ The pulp moves across her tongue. ‘I like him.’
‘What am I going to do?’ I repeat, slightly annoyed by her lack of direction.
She swallows. ‘You still have those ruby slippers, maybe you walk a different path.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You find your own way, Violet. Stop trying to be Rose.’
‘But, I thought sticking to the script was the right thing to do. I thought the story needed to complete so we could go home.’
I must look really perplexed, because she offers me a sympathetic look and says, ‘But you took the odd risk, didn’t you, Violet. And what happened?’
I reply without thinking. ‘I fell in love with the wrong character.’
‘Or is that why you took those risks? Chicken and egg. Everything’s just a loop in the end.’
‘Baba, please, you’re making no sense.’
‘Look at it another way – if you were stuck here, here in our world, how would you live your life? What kind of an Imp would you become?’
I can feel the irritation building inside. ‘I can’t stay here, Baba. I have to go home – me, Nate and Katie, we don’t belong here.’
‘Belonging is just a state of mind, ask Alice.’
She sounds like one of those wall stickers in my auntie’s sitting room. Learn to dance in the rain. ‘Please, Baba. Stop talking in riddles, just tell me what to do.’
‘Now where would the fun be in that?’ The apple reappears in her hands, a bright, shiny orb. She hurls it into the air like she’s releasing a dove – it punches through the branches and sails into the infinite sky. Her laughter dissolves into birdsong. The colours of the orchard run together like paint, and the scent of apples gradually fades.
We’re back in the chamber, her hands still resting on my head. I look at her, almost surprised to see those waxy lids in place of the green.
She smiles, her teeth long gone. ‘Thorn’s here.’
Moments later, I hear the thud of his boots approaching.
He strides through the door. ‘Your minute’s up.’
It felt so much longer than a minute, and I suspect time passes more slowly during a mind blend.
‘Let her see the boy,’ Baba says.
‘No way.’
Baba pulls her hood over her head. ‘Will you ever learn to trust me?’
We enter the corridor, but instead of leading me back to the main body of the church, Thorn leads me deeper underground until we reach a blue, rusted door. I recognize it from the film – Thorn took Rose to see Willow in this very cell. I’m tracing Rose’s footsteps again, and it feels like the canon has started to mock me, constantly reminding me of what I should have been doing had I not cocked it all up at the manor.
Looking at that blue door, the skin on my scalp begins to crawl. That scene from canon scared the life out of me – Thorn nearly killed Willow, shoving him against the cell wall and wielding a knife right next to his cheek, Rose screaming in the background. Alice and I bawled at the telly, ‘No, no, don’t you dare damage his perfect face.’ I think Nate even threw Doritos. But Willow saved himself by telling Thorn top-secret Gem information about an underground, Gem-run brothel: the Meat House. Information Thorn used to raid the Meat House that very night. Alice and I high-fived at the point when Thorn lowered his blade. I thought it was romantic, the way Willow gave up Gem intel so he could be with Rose. Now I just think it was a bit pathetic, spilling the Gems’ secrets like that. Typical Willow.
But it isn’t Willow slumped behind that blue door, it’s Ash – my lovely, brave, honourable Ash. I think about Thorn’s knife, probably at this very moment stashed in his belt, and my heart begins to race.
Thorn opens the door. ‘One minute. That’s all.’
I step into the cell. The door clicks back into place and darkness surrounds me – darkness and the smell of wet moss. I hear the faint rhythm of someone’s breath syncopated with the drip of water.
‘Ash?’
‘Over here,’ he replies. I recognize the timbre of his voice, but not the tone – it sounds so flat. I follow the direction of his words and my eyes grow accustomed to the dimness. I begin to pick out his silhouette, hunched in the corner, knees pulled to his chest. I scoop his hands into mine. ‘Jesus, Ash. Are you OK?’ Even in the gloom, I can see how badly his face has started to swell.
‘You’re a rebel?’ he says. ‘Shit, you didn’t think to mention it?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That night, when you helped me put the rose on Willow’s windowsill . . . I thought you knew.’
‘You think I would have shown you the Dupes if I knew you were a rebel?’
‘I guess not.’ I couldn’t feel more guilty if I tried. ‘I’m so sorry, really I am. I didn’t want to put you in danger by telling you the truth.’ The truth. That unattainable thing we can never share. I brush the hair from his forehead and inspect a deep cut. In the dark – against the pallor of his skin – it looks like a black gorge. He sucks the air over his teeth as I gently nip the skin back together.
‘You need stitches,’ I say.
‘Oh well, drop me at the nearest Imp hospital.’