Eighteen

A section of the wall swung inward when they pushed. The room beyond was pitch-black; the light didn’t make it up the staircase. Eleanor felt for a light switch. Her fingers closed around a tiny knob on the wall. She tried twisting it, and there was a hum through the room.

The lights came on gradually. They hung in two lines along either wall of the room, with wires strung between them. They buzzed a bit, and they were more yellow than the modern lights she was used to, but they served to illuminate the room.

The color was off. Eleanor blinked, but the view didn’t change. Everything outside the room was gray. But inside the room, all the color had returned. Was it protected somehow? This had to be the room the cat-of-ashes wanted her to find.

The room that shouldn’t have been there was long and narrow. Deep wooden shelves lined the walls, and glass cases ran down the middle of the room like in a museum. Against the back wall was a long, heavy desk, and beside it was a single window—a circle divided into quarters.

There wasn’t a round window on that side of the house. Eleanor was sure of it. And yet, here it was.

They dumped their backpacks next to the door. Eleanor propped the key up next to them and they made their way slowly down the room. Many of the shelves and cases were empty, as if waiting to be filled, but the rest held an assortment of seemingly random objects. A deck of strange cards, a scarab carved out of black stone, a cracked hand mirror, a coin so old it had turned green. She picked up the coin, trying to make out the details on its surface, but it was lumpy and illegible. Without thinking, she slipped it into her pocket and moved on.

Eleanor stopped in front of a shelf that held just one item: a small brass box with eight sides. The lid was propped open. The interior had once been lined with green silk, but it was faded mostly to gray and rather tattered. A piece of crystal nestled in the ruined silk, clear as glass. It was just like the one in the illustration—the one the king’s sister used to look at the mysterious man’s footprints. Eleanor picked it up gingerly and held it to her eye.

The room looked the same—mostly. But a few of the objects in the room glowed with a faint golden shimmer that wavered around their edges.

“Whoa. Look at this,” Otto said. He was standing at the window. Eleanor tucked the crystal in her jeans pocket and walked over.

The view outside the window ought to have been the side of the house. The shed, the scrubby grass, the pines. Instead, an ocean rolled and pitched beyond the glass. It stretched in all directions; not even the smallest shadow of land interrupted the horizon. The moon hung full and heavy, reflecting off the water.

Eleanor reached up and touched the window wonderingly. The image rippled and changed. The ripples steadied into a lush, misty forest—not the one outside, but one far older and far wilder. Something huge and shadowy moved among the trees, a long way off. It stood as tall as the trees themselves, and on its head were huge, branching antlers. It turned toward them, and—

Pip swiped at the glass, and the image rippled away before it could see them. Eleanor cast her a frightened look. “That was probably smart,” she said.

“I’m not just good for hitting things,” Pip said.

Now the window showed a crossroads, two walking paths intersecting in the middle of a wide, grassy field. A woman walked down one of them, getting closer to them. The darkness made it hard to see, but there was something about the woman’s silhouette that seemed familiar.

She reached the crossroads and hesitated, looking to and fro. And then she glanced down the road that led toward them, and Eleanor saw her face. Her dark hair, up in a ponytail. Her sharp nose and big, dark eyes.

“Mom?”

Her mother didn’t hear her. She seemed to make a decision and turned toward the road that led away from the window.

“Mom!” Eleanor shouted. “Mom, it’s me! Mom!” She pounded on the glass without thinking—and the image rippled, and they were looking out over a mountain slope, tumbling down into darkness. Eleanor pressed a hand against her mouth, stifling a sob.

Pip and Otto looked at her with wide eyes. “That was your mom?”

Eleanor couldn’t speak. She could barely nod.

“Your mom that lit the fire,” Otto said slowly.

“I think maybe she didn’t,” Eleanor said. She believed that story less and less. Her mother hadn’t been hallucinating the things she saw. That didn’t mean she wasn’t sick—the way her fear had taken her over was an illness, but the things she saw were real. She’d tried, tried so hard, to warn Eleanor about Eden Eld and what was coming. She hadn’t wanted Eleanor taken. She couldn’t have wanted her dead. “I don’t think she meant to leave me at all.”

“Of course,” Pip said. “Why would your mom be bad, too? My parents are the only actually evil ones. Of course.” She turned away, arms crossed, and stomped her way across the room.

“Pip,” Eleanor said. Otto put a hand on her arm.

“Don’t,” he said. “She needs to be mad for a bit. She’ll come back.”

“You guys have known each other a long time, huh?” Eleanor asked.

“Since we were born. Literally. Our moms were in the same hospital room,” Otto said. He bit his lip. “I’ve been thinking about it all. I was mad at the town at first. I wanted to get away from it. But I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think we should want to run away. Our ancestors—some of them, anyway—made a mistake. No. It wasn’t a mistake. Mistake makes it sound like it was an accident. They made a decision, and it was an evil one. And that’s why the town is the way that it is. Dangerous in a way no one will talk about or even see. But we can see it. So maybe that means it’s on us to stop it.”

Eleanor didn’t answer. She was thinking about how hard her mother had worked to try to get her away from Eden Eld. Was that the wrong decision? And if it was, was it wrong only because it hadn’t worked? No matter how hard she tried to escape, she couldn’t get away from Eden Eld. Had it ever been a possibility? Did her mother’s fight matter at all, or was she always going to end up here?

“It shouldn’t be our job,” Eleanor said. “We’re just kids. And we didn’t agree to the curse.”

“It’s our job because we can do something about it, though. And because we’re willing to,” Otto said. “Otherwise, no one would do it at all.”

Pip had picked up a walking stick that had been leaning against the wall and was swinging it like a sword. She thumped it on the ground and turned to them.

“Walking stick,” she said. “Like Jack has in the stories. Right? So what have you guys found? Or were you just standing there talking the whole time?” She raised an eyebrow at them. It was the tone of voice she used when she argued with Otto in that “we’re friends” way, but it was directed at both of them.

“I found this,” Eleanor said, slipping the crystal out of her pocket. “It made some things in the room glow. But I don’t know why.” They looked expectantly at Otto.

“Um. Let’s see,” he said, turning slowly and looking a little bit overwhelmed.

“The cards are like the ones the fortune-teller used in ‘The Glass-Heart Girl,’” Eleanor said, pointing. She stepped to the next shelf. “Hm. This fur hat might be from ‘Tatterskin.’ Or . . .”

But Otto was looking down at one of the glass cases. “What about this?” he asked. He pointed at a fancy compass in a silver case. It was the size of a pocket watch, and hung on a chain like one, too. Instead of directions like north and south, the edges of it were painted with vines. At the top of the circle was a delicate blue flower. On the opposite side was a trio of spiky thorns.

“I don’t remember that from any of the stories,” Eleanor said.

“I like it,” Otto said. “Maybe not everything we need is in the stories.”

“Maybe,” Eleanor said doubtfully. “But I really think you should pick something else.”

Otto opened the case and took out the compass without responding. “I don’t think it’s pointing north,” he said. “North should be . . .” He turned around, tapping his forehead, until he faced the wall. “That way. And it’s pointing toward the window instead. But then, this room shouldn’t be here. And who knows where out there is.” He waved at the window. “We can’t expect this room to obey normal laws of magnetism and direction. I should check downstairs and see if it works normally outside the room.”

“I’m going to keep looking in here,” Eleanor said. She still wasn’t convinced that he should take something that wasn’t in one of the stories. She’d find him something else. Something better.

Pip was going through her sword-fighting motions again, so Otto shrugged and trotted down the stairs by himself. Eleanor peered through the crystal. The walking stick was definitely glowing. So was the deck of cards. She wanted to call Otto back and see if the compass was glowing, but he’d seemed a bit annoyed with her for not agreeing with him.

“I’m sorry about what I said,” Pip told her, stopping her swinging. She blew a strand of hair out of her face with a puff of breath. “I’m glad your mom’s not evil.”

“I’m sorry your parents are.”

“Yeah. But at least that means I was right,” Pip said. “And I do like being right.”

Eleanor laughed. “Me too,” she confessed.

Outside the room, Otto shouted in fear.