Thomas sat in the darkness of the old chapel, curled up on the pew he’d come to think of as Tess’s, hoping that tonight she’d come. He’d been eaten up with worry since she’d missed their last meeting—had something happened? He felt as though Tess was a friend—probably his only friend besides Moose—but he thought about how strange it was that he’d never heard her voice. He didn’t even know her full name. And if she never returns, Thomas thought, the small grin fading from his lips, I never will.
He shuddered away the thought and turned back to his book, an old one he’d retrieved from his bedroom on a previous raid. It wasn’t one of his favorites but he could remember his mother reading it to him when he was younger and sometimes he could still hear her voice in certain words.
Just as he’d reached the bit where the family opens an unexpected delivery to find a fully grown penguin inside, the silver-blue circle of the Star-spinner appeared beside him like a light being switched on. He smiled when he saw Tess’s face inside it, her dark eyes apologetic. She pushed her glasses up her nose and blinked at him.
“I’m so glad to see you,” he said, speaking slowly.
Through the circle, Tess’s face relaxed into a relieved grin. “Me too.”
“Are you all right?” Thomas mouthed.
Tess nodded. “I was asleep,” she said, leaning on her free hand and miming lying on a pillow. He laughed, and when Tess met his eye again, she held up a message.
YESTERDAY I CROSSED INTO YOUR WORLD BY ACCIDENT. I WANT TO TRY AN EXPERIMENT TONIGHT TO SEE IF I CAN DO IT AGAIN.
Thomas felt his jaw drop as he read. He read it again and stared at Tess through the window between worlds.
“That’s impossible!” he said.
Tess said something in reply with a laugh. Thomas thought it might have been “I did it anyway.” Her eyes danced with nervous joy and he felt his own heart begin to race.
“How?” he said, and Tess shrugged.
“I’ll show you,” she said, her eyes opening wide, as though she could hardly believe her own words.
Thomas blinked at this. Then he picked up his pen and paper, shaking his head slowly as he wrote. IF YOU END UP SOMEWHERE HORRID, AMONG DINOSAURS OR SUCHLIKE, DON’T EXPECT ME TO COME AND SAVE YOU. ALL RIGHT? Tess met his eye once she’d finished reading and they shared a grin.
“Good luck,” he mouthed, and Tess nodded.
“See you soon,” she told him. Then the silver circle went dark.
Tess set the Star-spinner down on the pew and took Violet from her head-top perch as gently as possible, despite the spider’s reluctance. She placed her beside the lantern Millie had stolen for her.
“I won’t be long, girl,” she whispered to the spider. “You’ll hold the fort until I get back, won’t you?” Violet looked uncertain, her shining eyes like liquid night in the flickering shadows. “I love you,” Tess said, her voice tight.
Tess picked up the Star-spinner. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears and her throat felt too tight to swallow, but she forced her fingers to remember what they had done the previous day. This time it’ll work properly, she told herself. I have the window open. She went through each step as though she were reading from her experiments notebook, and like it had been waiting for this moment, the Star-spinner moved. As soon as Tess held it and began to adjust the “face,” the device’s upper half started to pivot. The first marker clicked into place and Tess steadied her grip.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened at all.
Then the bright blue circle at the center of the Star-spinner seemed to suck her in, growing large enough for Tess to tumble in headfirst. As she was swallowed by the void, an overwhelming sense of light and air swept through her, as though every fragment of her body were separating. She felt herself expanding outward in all directions like a gigantic net, spreading across an unfathomable darkness in which she could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, and a light exploded across her eyes and gradually formed itself into a distant sun, slowly burning.
Tess turned her head to see the immensity of herself. She was a constellation, a starspun web, a lacework of light strung with pearls, stretching to infinity. She laughed and it rang forever. She had never known such lightness and joy and had never felt such freedom. She never wanted to go back.
The sun she’d seen was, she now realized, one of a network of similar suns laid out before her. Each one was surrounded by a swirl of stars so that the suns appeared as pupils in eyes as immense as galaxies. As Tess drew near, something flickered across her nebula mind like a tongue of lightning. My father, she thought. My father. Somewhere out there is my father. She faltered, just for a moment, in her flight.
Then a sun sucked her in and down, and she began to whirl, tighter and tighter and tighter until she exploded into herself in a collision of light and energy she could feel right down to her atoms—and when she opened her fully human eyes again, all she could see was a dark-haired boy looking down at her with concern.
“Are you—are you all right?” he said, but Tess couldn’t answer for a long confusing moment. She couldn’t find her mouth, couldn’t feel her tongue, didn’t know how to breathe. She coughed, spluttering like a landed fish, until she gradually got her wind back. Her heart slowed to a normal pace. Her brain refocused, and she could finally see where she was.
The tiles on the floor. The wooden pew a few feet from her nose. The ceiling above her head a delicate shade of blue, dotted here and there with bright golden stars. She blinked and sat up and Thomas backed away, watching her with wide, careful eyes.
“I did it,” Tess said, looking at him. She felt heavy, like every molecule of her body had gained a core of stone. A crushing sense of loss filled her mind, but with every passing second she found it harder and harder to remember…What had she seen?
“You most certainly did,” Thomas replied, shaking his head in admiration and disbelief.
Tess looked at the Star-spinner, still in her hands. It glowed happily, the viewfinder clear. She glanced through it, but all she could see was night. She turned back to Thomas and saw herself reflected in the lenses of his glasses.
Then she lurched forward, reaching out for him, and they met in a tight, fierce hug on the tiled floor of the chapel, holding one another for a long moment.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. Moose scampered onto his owner’s head and Tess caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye. It made her laugh and finally the children let one another go.
“Thank you,” Tess said as she and Thomas sat back on the floor, close enough that their knees were touching. She looked around the chapel again. The windows were shuttered and candles burned in several wall sconces. The door was locked and tightly barred against the night. She let her gaze linger on the painted golden stars and how the wooden boards met in the middle, dovetailing perfectly into the shape of an eight-pointed star. Another one, she thought. That’s one too many coincidences for my liking.
“Who built this place?” she asked, still staring at the ceiling.
“My father,” Thomas answered, looking up. “I remember him painting this ceiling when I was knee-high.”
“It’s wonderful.” She dropped her gaze from it and after a second Thomas did the same. “It’s almost exactly like the pattern at the heart of my Star-spinner. And it looks—well, it looks a little bit like what I saw on my way here.”
Thomas blinked at her. “Really?”
Tess nodded. “Your dad was a clever one.”
Thomas shrugged. “Not just him. My mum was the one with the real training—she studied astrophysics, only they wouldn’t give her full credit for her work because she was a woman.” He grimaced. “So Dad became interested too and it was something they loved to work on together. Until the accident.”
Tess blinked hard. “I’m so sorry,” she said. Thomas just nodded, not looking at her.
“What about your parents?” he asked.
Tess frowned. “I’m a foundling,” she said. “Nobody knows where they are, or who they are, or if they’re alive.”
Thomas’s eyes were sympathetic as he turned to her. “That’s awful,” he said.
Tess sucked her lips tight. “So, your mum and dad. They worked on Interdimensional Harmonics then?” she asked after a moment, hoping to change the subject.
Thomas frowned. “No. Well, they didn’t call it that. What does it mean?”
Tess tried her best to explain. “Trying to send messages between the worlds, basically. With radiogram waves, Mr. Cleat said.”
Thomas nodded, his eyebrows shooting up. “Yes! Well, my parents called it Oscillation Theory. They built a machine, the Oscillometer, to listen for interference from other worlds.” Tess listened to this dumbfounded, yet also somehow unsurprised, and let her gaze drift back to the ceiling.
“The same house,” she breathed. “The same place. The same work being done, the same research, but in two different worlds. It’s all very strange.”
“Well, my parents were de Sousas,” Thomas said. “It stands to reason.”
Tess sat rooted to the spot. She looked away from the ceiling and stared at him. “What did you say?”
“My parents,” Thomas repeated, looking uncomfortable. “They were de Sousas.” He licked his lips nervously. “Have—have I said something wrong?”
“I thought your name was Molyneaux,” Tess said, and then she remembered the notebook she’d seen when she’d made her not-quite trip to Thomas’s world. Helena Molyneaux de Sousa. “So that was your mother’s notebook I saw. Helena Molyneaux de Sousa!”
“Mum’s married name,” Thomas said with a half grin. “She didn’t always use it.”
In the midst of Tess’s excited confusion, she remembered something else Thomas had said. “What do you mean, it stands to reason? What does—that your parents would be scientists, researchers, interested in this sort of thing?”
“Because de Sousas always are,” Thomas said with a nod. “At least as far as Mum and Dad knew. They’d made contact with, I think, two or three other realities, and that name kept coming up. The family has some connection with Tunguska—probably, Mum and Dad thought, with the original blast site, the biggest one.” He gave her a nervous frown. “But I suppose you put a bit of a spanner in the works with that theory, eh?” He laughed, but there was nothing in it except anxiety. “Unless you’re going to tell me you’re a de Sousa too?”
Tess took a deep breath and stuck out her hand. “Teresita Mariana de Sousa,” she told him. “But everyone calls me Tess.”