Tess kept the pulsing Star-spinner in her hand as she climbed, until finally she could lean out of the observatory window. She steadied her breathing and then she placed the Star-spinner’s void over her left eye.
And there it was—the North Star, as it looked in this world, surrounded by its spreading ring of fire. The ring had gone so far by now that Tess couldn’t see its highest point and it was like a strange thin rainbow with only one unnaturally radiant color. The tunnel of spinning, flickering stars within it was unnerving, and Tess tried not to look too closely as she began to turn the top half of the Star-spinner back the way it had come. She met with resistance, but she didn’t stop. It’s working, she told herself, hoping Mr. Cleat was watching in his own reality and that he was screaming at the sky in frustrated anger.
“Keep going,” Thomas said, though she barely heard him through the rush of her pulse in her ears. Vaguely, she was aware of Moose coming to sit on her shoulder, burying his flickering nose in her hair. She was comforted by the sensation, even if she felt like she was floating in midair and all this wasn’t really happening to her—just to her body, far below.
Then her eye began to water and she realized she desperately wanted to blink, but she was afraid of losing her hold on the rift if she did. A piercing pain started in her pupil, shooting back into her head like a whip. She gritted her teeth against it.
“The circle is shrinking!” Thomas called. “The stars are slowing, Tess. They’re stopping and the tunnel’s closing. You’ve got it!”
And then Tess blinked. She had to. A tear ran down her cheek and her eye stung with exertion. When she opened her eye again, all she could see through the window was the North Star, rotating slowly, bringing its own world back around it. The ring of blue fire grew smaller with every second, until it vanished into the heart of the North Star once more.
Finally the Star-spinner stopped moving and Tess closed her eyes, exhausted. The void’s blue light flickered and then faded to gray once again. A shiver of shattering cracks snaked their way across the glass and all the energy drained from Tess as though someone had switched her off. She would have fallen had Thomas not grabbed her by the arm. “Hey now,” he said, gently taking the Star-spinner from her limp fingers and stowing it safely in her pocket. “Let’s get you down from here.” He helped her numb feet to find the rungs as she descended and finally they both sprawled out on the floor of the observatory, just breathing. Moose skittered between them, never still for a moment.
“Do you hear sirens,” Tess asked hoarsely after a while, “or is it just my ears ringing?”
Thomas propped himself up on one elbow. “Definitely sirens,” he said, sitting up fully. “The fire service attending the damage from the bombs, maybe.” He paused, looking mournful. “I hope someone heard my warning.”
Tess looked at him. “Me too,” she whispered.
“So what do we do now?” Thomas said, pulling his knees up to his chest. “You did something incredible tonight, Tess. So incredible and we can’t even tell anyone.” He turned to her with a half grin. “Who’d believe us? Heck, who’d understand?”
She returned the grin briefly but the weight of grief and tiredness soon drained her. “My dad,” she finally said, realization settling on her shoulders. “My dad would’ve understood.”
Thomas’s grin faded and he blinked thoughtfully. “Mine too, I suppose.” He cleared his throat and looked at his feet, and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “Shame he’ll never know.”
Tess fought hard against the wave of sorrow that flooded through her, but her chin began to wobble. Soon, to her disgust, she felt her eyes fill with tears.
“Hey!” Thomas said, sliding across the floor to put an arm round her shoulders. “No need for that. What’s the matter?”
“My dad will never know either,” she said, yanking off her glasses and wiping furiously at her eyes. She swallowed a hiccup. “All I wanted was to find out what happened to him and now I never can. I’ll never be able to find him. And I’ll never be able to go home.” She closed her eyes, feeling them burn.
“Whyever not?” Thomas said, frowning.
Tess wiped her top lip dry and slipped her glasses back on and then peered at Thomas. “You saw the Star-spinner, didn’t you? And we have no way to fix it now. But even if it was working perfectly, I have no Violet. She’s gone and with her goes my anchor,” she said miserably. “I can’t go anywhere else, not without her. So I’m stuck here, for better or for worse.”
Thomas let out an incredulous snort. “But of course you’re not stuck here,” he said, staring at her. “You’re Tess de Sousa. You’re a legend. Look what you’ve just done!” He gestured to the sky with his free hand and squeezed Tess gently around the shoulders with the other. “And even if Violet’s dead, your memory of her isn’t. Right? The love you have for her is as bright as it ever was. That’s all you need, I’ll bet.”
“Well…,” Tess began, but stopped when she found she had nothing to add.
“Exactly my point,” Thomas said, getting to his feet. “Think beyond the possible, Tess. Tonight you literally did just that. And now you’re doubting yourself because of some half-garbled hearsay?” He reached down to drag Tess to her feet. “Get that machine out of your pocket. Come on.”
Tess stood beside him, her knees feeling watery. She sniffed, then dug around in her pocket for the Star-spinner. It sat in her palm like a stone. The cracks across the starglass void looked like eyelashes on a pallid gray cheek. “We can do this,” she murmured, staring at it. “This is going to work.”
“Yes, it is,” Thomas assured her, his tone confident. “After what I’ve just seen you do, there’s nothing standing in your way.” He clapped her on the shoulder, making her wince. “Right, then, get on with it. We haven’t got all night.”
Tess looked at him, her eyes brimming with new enthusiasm. “I can’t wait for everyone to meet you,” she said. “You’ll love Miss Ackerbee and Rebecca. And Wilf—”
“Hold your horses,” Thomas interrupted. “Everyone is going to meet me?”
Tess’s optimism popped like a pierced bubble. “Well, yes,” she said, her smile dying. “When you come with me. You are coming, aren’t you?” Moose scampered up Thomas’s sleeve, perching on his shoulder to peer at Tess. “You and Moose both, I mean?”
Thomas looked at the floor. “I— Well, is that a good idea?” He didn’t give Tess time to answer. “I mean, we don’t know if there’s power enough to bring you back, let alone me too. And this fella.” He lifted a hand to Moose, who clambered on, then looked up at Tess with sad eyes. “We don’t know whether the Star-spinner can bring more than one person even when it’s working at full capacity and it’s not worth the risk of trying. You should go alone, I think.”
Tess’s mouth fell open. “But I don’t want to leave you,” she finally managed to reply, her words swallowed by the sudden surge of sadness that swept up through her chest.
“Yes, well, I was pretty fond of you and all,” Thomas said, looking away. “But let’s not dwell on it, shall we? Needs must and all that.”
“But I came here to find my family,” Tess said, the ache inside growing more painful with every breath. She paused, chewing hard on the inside of her mouth. “I can’t leave you behind.”
Thomas looked back at her. The shine on his glasses from the starlight outside made it hard to see his eyes, but Tess recognized his forced grin. “It’s not really your choice to make, though, is it? It’s mine.” His smile flattened. “I won’t be going anywhere. And you’ll always know where I am. Come and visit when you can.”
“But you can’t stay here,” Tess said, looking around the observatory. “You don’t even have a house.”
Thomas’s reply was upbeat. “I’ve got everything I need,” he said. “I have Moose. And you’ve seen my cushy setup here. We’ll be fine.” The mouse sat on top of his head, sniffing contentedly at the air, and Thomas smiled, though his eyes stayed sad. “I want you to go, Tess. I—I mean, I don’t want you to go but you’d better. While you still can.”
“Well then, I’ll stay,” Tess said, her voice strained with desperation. “I’ll stay and we can figure things out together. We can find a way to get the Star-spinner working again and we can test it and find out what it can do, how many people it can take at once and—”
“Look, it’s just been me and Moose here for a long time,” Thomas said, his voice low. “It’s sort of how I want things, you know? We know what we’re about, Moose and me.” He cleared his throat and shot her an apologetic look. “I don’t want anyone else, Tess.”
Tess stared at him. She searched his face but he refused to look at her properly. “I—I can’t believe this,” she said after a painful minute, squeezing her fingers hard around the Star-spinner. She suddenly found it difficult to breathe, like something was sitting on her chest. “Well, if that’s how it is, then that’s how it is. I’ll miss you, even if you won’t miss me. It’s harder to live without your family once you know you’ve got one.” She stared down into the Star-spinner’s heart and let her mind fill up with thoughts of Violet, picturing her sitting on the rim of the void, ready for her next adventure. Tess felt something in her heart lifting, like a tether being released.
Then she looked up at Thomas, their dark brown eyes mirror copies of one another, and just as the last anchor to his reality lifted away and the Star-spinner sucked her back to her own world, Tess made a decision. She reached out and grabbed his hand.
The sky above Roedeer Lodge righted itself so suddenly that for a moment it felt like the stars were going to rain down from it like hail. Some people greeted the closure of the rift with joy; others cried out in terror or disappointment. Mr. Cleat watched from the ground, his hand clutched to his wound and his eyes burning with rage, as all around him the members of his Society started to shout questions and accusations and call for his arrest.
Wilf wasn’t looking at the sky but instead at the place where her friend had vanished. “Where’s Tess?” she said, but nobody knew how to answer her, not even the spider on her shoulder, who was trembling with shock and fear. Wilf held up a finger and Violet clung to it. If you survived, Wilf thought, glancing at her, so can she.
Prossy chanced a look up, and the second her eyes left Mrs. Thistleton’s face, the woman pounced. She knocked Hortense to one side, bashing Prossy on the kneecap with the stick, and ran straight for Eunice, who’d happened to take the dagger from Prissy a few moments before. Eunice squeaked in fright and brandished the dagger, but Mrs. Thistleton soon disarmed her. The girl fell to the ground with a gash across her palm as Mrs. Thistleton took to her heels, tucking the dagger back into her coat as she ran.
“Stop her!” Prissy yelled, but in a moment she was gone, vanished into the darkness of the park.
“Dratted woman!” Prossy shouted, nursing her injured leg. Prissy ran to her side and helped her friend to her feet and Millie grabbed some napkins from a nearby table to come to Eunice’s aid.
Wilf strode across the grass to Mr. Cleat and dropped to her knees beside him. “Where is she?” Wilf asked, her voice quivering with rage and grief. “Tell me!”
Mr. Cleat laughed quietly, staring at Wilf with bloodshot eyes. “You’ll never see her again. That’s all I can tell you.” He grimaced, trying to move. Wilf offered no help, boring through him with a glare instead. “At least you’ve got her vermin to keep you company,” he said. “I should think you’ll hardly be able to tell the difference.”
Wilf drew breath to shout a retort, but the words were stolen out of her mouth by the sound of something that all the Ackerbee’s girls recognized instantly—a sharp whistle, louder than a foghorn and clearer than a bell. Prossy and Prissy turned toward it, their faces twin pictures of hope, and Eunice started to laugh. Mr. Cleat simply frowned.
Wilf looked down at him, a satisfied look on her face. “If you think I’m angry, just wait until Miss Ackerbee gets here.”