Moving stiffly, as though she were manipulating someone else’s limbs, Kelsea stood up and put her arms around her mother, her mother whom she knew so well . . . and yet not at all. As they hugged, she was inundated with a bright scent, something like lemons.
“Have a good day, love,” her mother told her, and then she dashed from the kitchen, leaving Kelsea staring at her full plate. A clock hanging over the sink chimed, telling her that it was nine o’clock. She had to be at work at nine thirty.
“But where do I work?” she asked the empty space.
She couldn’t remember, but she knew the way to go.
On the street outside, Kelsea had to pause.
The houses, for one thing. They were so . . . neat. Clean, new-painted wooden houses, set close together, a forest not of trees but of white cupolas and gables, climbing the hillside above. No fences bounded them; many of the yards boasted oak trees, and several had been laid with flowerbeds, but otherwise they shared space. And here, here was something Kelsea had only seen through Lily’s eyes, in the falsely cheerful neighborhoods of pre-Crossing New Canaan: mailboxes, one in front of each house.
Stunned, almost dazed, Kelsea wandered down their front path to the street. She noted their mailbox, bright yellow, with the number 413 painted on it in red. The street was busy; horse-drawn wagons passed every few seconds, and people hurried by, clearly on their way to work as well. Everything seemed tidy and prosperous, but that made Kelsea think, again, of New Canaan. She saw many good things here, but were they real?
Without thinking, she turned right and hurried up the street along with the rest of them, the same route she took to work every morning, but her eyes searched everywhere, looking for answers. She felt as though something had eluded her, something so elementary that her mind refused to acknowledge . . .
She had walked more than half a mile before it hit her. She had passed many people on this street: laborers, dressed in stained clothes and dragging their tools; well-dressed men and women who seemed to be heading for some sort of office; haulers, transporting all manner of goods covered with canvas in their wagons . . . but nowhere did she catch a glint of armor, not even the telltale bulkiness of a cloak that told of armor concealed beneath. And on the back of this realization came another: she had seen no steel. No swords, no knives . . . Kelsea peered at the people who passed her, looking for the hint of a hilt, of a scabbard. But there were none.
What did we do?
Obeying the habit of her feet, Kelsea followed the road to its end, then turned left onto a broad road that she recognized as the Great Boulevard. There were the same rows of shops with their cheerful awnings: milliners, chemists, shodders, grocers . . . but something was different, and again, the difference was so fundamental that at first Kelsea could not identify it, could only move forward, footsteps wandering, mind far away. She glanced to her right and came to a dead halt.
The window in front of her was full of books.
Someone ran into her, and for a moment Kelsea lost her balance, before a man grabbed her arm, holding her up.
“I’m sorry,” he called over his shoulder, hurrying away. “Late for work!”
Kelsea nodded numbly, then turned back to the window.
The books were arranged in an artful display, several risers ascending in a pyramid shape. Kelsea saw books she recognized—Filth, The Great Gatsby, We Have Always Lived in the Castle—but many more she had never heard of: In This Burning World, by Matthew Lynne; Legerdemain, by Marina Ellis; a host of other books that had never sat on Carlin’s shelves. The hand-lettered poster above the display simply read: “Classics.”
Kelsea backed up a few feet, being more careful now to avoid the oncoming rush of people heading to work, and was rewarded with another hand-painted sign, this one hanging beneath the awning that covered the shop.
“Copperfield’s Books,” the sign read.
The shop was closed; the room behind the display was still dark. Kelsea walked up to the door and tried to peer inside, but she could see very little; the door was made of some sort of tempered glass, designed to block light. She had seen such glass in Mortmesne, in the Red Queen’s chambers, but nothing like it had ever made its way into the Tearling before. Kelsea backed away and returned to staring at the display. It was a bookshop. Her favorite bookshop. Most of the books on her shelves at home had been purchased right here. It was her favorite place to come on a Saturday afternoon.
A clock chimed somewhere, several streets over, startling her. It was already nine thirty. She would be late for work, and despite her wonder, longtime instinct kicked in and got her moving again; she was never late for work. She hurried up the boulevard, keeping hold of her bag so that it would not bounce against her hip, just as she had done every day since she had graduated school at the age of seventeen . . . and yet something was different here, something so different that—