12

volte-face

Lark

We don’t even make it across the bedroom threshold before a crackling, snapping sound draws our attention back to the window.

Clarey and I trade alarmed glances as the glass fractures, tiny threaded lines intersecting like cobweb. Through the fissures, both the ink and white-blood residue seep in. The mixture dribbles down the glass until it comes together in a marbled blob of black and white.

Still as statues, Clarey and I look on in wonder when the shapeless form peels free and floats, acquiring a familiar outline—similar to Batman’s bat signal, yet instead of an imprint of light against a night sky, this is a shadow in midair.

Upon closer inspection, it’s not so much a bat as a bird in flight . . .

“Lark!” Clarey shouts beside me, his voice ringing in my ear.

I wince. “I’m right here, pinhead! You don’t have to scream.”

“No, that’s a lark. A lark tattoo.” The rest he leaves unspoken so it hangs in the air between us like a python waiting to coil around my neck and suffocate me: Nix’s tattoo, to be exact.

As if prompted by Clarey’s observation, the winged interloper shifts from abstract and fluid to corporeal and sylphlike in a blink. It flutters in place, its inky wings streaking the air in front of us like a butterfly moving in slow motion.

The living smudge dive-bombs me on its way toward my desk. I duck behind Clarey, then peer out as the tattoo flaps itself across one of Nix’s notebooks, opened to a blank page because I couldn’t bring myself to look at her work. The inkblot locks flatly into place, a dead ringer for a freshly drawn sketch. Alongside the image, atop the paper, a creamy white pool of goblin blood remains intact and alone. Weirdly, it doesn’t dampen or soak the page, or even blur the lark’s edges. It just sits there like a half-dollar puddle of melted pearls, shimmering in the dim light of my room.

For another minute or so, neither Clarey nor I move. My throat tightens, but I’m not exactly shocked by our uninvited guest; I doubt Clarey is, either. We’ve already seen every law of logic and nature challenged in Mystiquiel.

What I feel is fear for what this means . . . ​Perish’s blood is the key to unearthing Mystiquiel’s veil, along with everything I’ve been hiding.

“She found a way to do it,” Clarey whispers. “Nix is reaching out. She’s given us the way to her.”

I suppress a whimper in response.

Catching my breath, I flash a glance toward the Kleenex box that sits on my nightstand. Every muscle in my body tenses, and I leap forward to snag a tissue so I can wipe away the king’s blood before Clarey can show it to Uncle. I forget that my right hand’s fading and reach out with my faltering fingers. My thumb almost catches the tissue’s corner, but my forefinger’s tip flows right through it, causing it to tremble as if on a gust of wind.

My ridiculous performance gives Clarey just enough time to draw out a makeup swab from his bag and aim it at the white puddle. I growl, helplessly watching as he sops up the blood. For protection, he drops the sponge into a baggie and cinches his fingers around the zipper closure.

“You suck,” I say.

“Actually, sponges do.” He smirks, his dimples making an appearance, which has been happening far too rarely of late. “And then all they need is a little squeeze to release what they’re holding.”

He starts for the door but I step in front of him. “What are you planning?”

“Take it to the kitchen to show your uncle. We’ll squeeze it into a vial and finally have a way to cross the veil.”

I tell myself silently not to worry . . . ​that these guys won’t be able to find any workable entrance.

Clarey must read the look on my face because he continues, “I’m itching for a field trip to Cannon Beach. Haystack Rock is quiet this time of year, yeah? We’ll have all the privacy we’ll need to explore.”

I curse under my breath. Of course . . . ​Clarey and Nix wound up finding that portal by stepping into a house of mirrors that Perish bridged to the rock. A part of me revels in seeing the Goblin King’s mistake. If only I could point it out to him. Make him feel as inadequate as I felt with all my failings in his world.

I scold myself for that thought, because Perish actually never made me feel inadequate. He gave me every chance to prove myself, had faith in me until the bitter end. And now I’ve let him down again. But I don’t have to take full blame on this one. It was him who exposed the whereabouts of the entrance with his little trick.

Doesn’t matter anyway, because I still have a chance to stop this from going any further. I just have to get that sponge . . .

Clarey nudges me aside and opens the door before I can stop him, then makes his way down the hall.

I glare at the tattoo, dried and dormant on the paper.

“Thanks a lot, inkblot,” I growl, almost laughing at the unintentional alliteration. When I was strapped to Mystiquiel’s core and my mind began meshing with all the other creatures who inhabited my settings, lush, poetic language became the only way I could steer my thoughts to any semblance of individuality. Thinking in stanza and verse anchored me to sanity. But there’s nothing sane about a living tattoo, or about talking to a piece of paper.

I start to follow Clarey out, determined to snatch the baggie before he makes it as far as the living room, when an orange spark electrifies the page, releasing a slight scent of sulfur. The voltaic shimmer follows the lark’s outline then flashes from one wing to the other, ending at the beak tip. A sizzling pop follows, turning into something like a hissing squawk that carries the words “Go back . . .”

As it clears up, the static smoothing away, it transforms into a voice as familiar as my own. “Go back to where you came from.”

I gulp when the message repeats. It’s Nix’s command, being played over and over, like a recording.

So caught up in the phenomenon, I don’t hear Clarey’s footsteps pounding down the hall in my direction until he arrives at the doorway, fidgeting with the BAHA behind his ear with one hand and holding tight to the baggie with the other. His brown complexion pales, and his dual-toned eyes glimmer with hope.

“I heard . . .” he says, staring at me.

“Yeah, yeah,” I grouse.

“Where . . . is she?”

Shrugging, I point to the lark. “I’m guessing this is what you’ve been hearing all this time. Maybe because Nix had this etched on her skin, and you were with her when it came alive as you guys stepped across the veil, it shares a link with the part of you that started to come alive, too. It’s like a walkie-talkie effect. The tattoo transmits and your BAHA became the receiver.” I leave out that I think I also played a role, because that spark racing through the outline has my name all over it. Just my luck, I’m probably the one who recircuited its little brain and formed the voltaic connection, completely unintentionally, since I was still plugged into the world and juiced up with my Architect skills.

“Whoa.” Clarey steps to the desk for a closer look at the tattoo. “Nix, can you hear me? Is this thing on?” He taps the sparking outline.

Just as I hoped, he becomes so distracted by trying to converse with my twin, he rests his other hand next to the notebook with the baggie sagging beneath his palm.

Biting my lip, I reach around him and snap it up, then race out of the room.

“Dang it, Lark!” Clarey chases me, but I manage to get into Uncle’s bathroom and slam the door in his face, twisting the lock shut in the same movement.

Panting, I press my forehead to the wood, overcome by the scent of the bath bombs I’ve been using to smell more like my sister. Lavender and honey. Their sweet sultriness makes me physically sick. A clock ticks on the wall to my right. Uncle put it up because I took too much time with my makeup and Nix took too much time soaking in baths, so he had to assign limits. I almost want to laugh, wondering how Nix is handling the enchanted “waterless” baths she’s receiving in Mystiquiel.

“Hey!” Clarey’s shout from the other side shakes my skull, pounding harder than his frantic knocks.

Thud thud thud. My forehead throttles with each blow, but I press in closer; I deserve at the very least a healthy bruise for what I’m about to do. For all I’ve been doing since the day I came back.

“You don’t understand,” I say, loud enough for him to hear over his tirade. “I have to close the way. I made a promise.”

“To the Goblin King? Seriously? What did she do, Lark?” Clarey screams. “What could your sister have done that was so unforgivable that you’d bug out like this? That you’d just abandon her there?”

Thud thud THUD.

This time, I feel the knock all the way into my teeth. The jolt is enough to force me to step back.

“She stole my life,” I answer Clarey. “Twice.” Even though that’s not the foremost reason, it’s the only one he’ll believe.

“Twice?” he screeches at me. “What does that mean? Lark?” Thud thud thud. “Nix was broken when she thought you died. She was so wrecked she stopped seeing colors . . . ​she almost stopped living. She could never forgive herself for letting you die.” He growls. “I came onto her . . . ​okay?” The thudding silences momentarily, enough for Clarey’s voice to emanate loud and clear through the wooden barrier between us. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. After you and Mom died, I just felt adrift, alone. And then all that bad stuff happened in Chicago. I came back here and there was Nix, anchoring me. She could see into me, just like you did. She knew me through and through. It reminded me of how it felt when we were all together, the three of us. You two were always so alike, beyond being sisters. I told myself that maybe there’s more than one person in the world for everyone, and I got lucky. I wasn’t trying to replace you; she fell into all my empty slots so easy. The perfect fit. Do you get it?”

My lips tighten—a seam of muscle and stubbornness holding back any response.

“And your inventions . . . ​Nix used them to help my dog. She didn’t step into your shoes to steal your life. She only wanted to somehow honor you. To stay close to you! Why can’t you see that? Lark? Lark!”

THUD THUD THUD.

I clench my teeth against the pounding as it shuttles all the way through my vertebrae.

“What the heck is going on here?” Uncle’s shout sounds from outside the door and stalls the knocking.

Sighing, I drag the sponge out of the baggie and turn to the mirror above the sink to admire the reddish mark on my forehead. It’s not enough. No punishment will ever be.

Without Clarey’s loud knocking, I can finally hear the clock again. The metronomic snick makes it difficult to decipher Uncle and Clarey’s muffled conversation. So I shut them out. Before Nix’s likeness imprints itself on my retinas, I look away from the mirror and step up to the open toilet. The makeup sponge, held pinched between two fingers, reflects back at me from the water.

The clock ticks on and in the still, blue-tinged liquid, I can almost see the past yawning open, dragging me back to my final moments of sanity, before I rooted so deeply into Mystiquiel that I couldn’t escape my tungsten throne and the tortured thoughts of a thousand fey creatures.

I close my eyes, and I’m there again: Perish leading me through the tunnels to the Architect lair for my first day of creation. We didn’t ride in bubbles; instead, he chose to walk me there on foot, to show me the maze of passages and the inner workings of his world.

I studied the surroundings—the walls made of mirror-smooth stone like the castle itself, and the ground beneath crunching with dirt and pebbles. We stopped at a cave to see his cistern of rejuvenation, where the residue of each Architect’s emotions formed a pool the king would bathe in to restore himself each evening. This immersion was what gave him the ability to taste what humans were feeling.

As we arrived, the drip of water greeted us, along with a rush of the humid air. Soft bubbles sprang from the surface of the pool, each popping colorfully along the ceiling with the sound of a laugh or a sob, a snarl or a coo. Over time, the bursting filaments had formed stalactites, whose prismatic glistening shapes reminded me of inverted snow cones—just like the rainbow flavors Nix and I had always loved. My concentration wavered as the pool’s rippled surface caught my eye. I couldn’t help but picture Perish bathing some evening in the near future—with every one of my feelings rolling over his bared flesh. Then, on the tail of that thought, appeared an image of me bathing alongside him.

My face flushed. I told myself it was just my desire for a real bath, because since I’d been here, I hadn’t had a traditional one. Every night, when I lay down in my bed, a pink vanilla-and-lavender-scented enchantment settled atop me like a blanket of fog and magicked away the day’s grime and sweat. But the truth was, I adored the feeling of this fairyland erasing every aspect of my humanity.

While I stood gawping at the water, Perish raised an eyebrow. “Ready to move on?” he asked. If he tasted my longing, he was kind enough not to embarrass me.

“Sure.” We stepped out of the cave, and our breaths echoed off the mirrored walls. “So I have a question . . . ​about the castle,” I said, desperate to distract my thoughts as we ducked into another tunnel. “You told me I can’t re-create it . . . ​that it’s immune to my touch. How is it the only part of the world insusceptible to change?”

Perish glanced at me over his shoulder, his silvery eyebrows crimped in thought. My stomach fluttered, as it always did when he looked at me with those intense otherworldly eyes, though my flutters had become more pronounced since his crown had appeared and altered him. I was still trying to get used to him as a man, not the boy I’d befriended in the months after I arrived. When we first met, his build reminded me of Clarey . . . ​young and wiry, not utilitarian enough to be a man yet. But the blueprint was always there, waiting to be made real. Now he’d become both lithe and sturdy, the perfect prototype of monster and masculinity, every swell of muscle and cord of tendon wrapped in sleek silvery skin.

“It’s not the only part. The castle, the mother fruit tree, and the lair are all protected like my subjects.” His crown projected rivulets of light across the points of his ears and antlers then bounced off the stone walls. “Appearances can be slightly modified, but nothing more. In my subjects, that would be the simplest tweaks in their characteristics . . . ​color of skin or scales or fur, length of hair; in the castle, that means the tinge of the walls in the rooms and corridors, the curtains and carpets—only the exterior, aesthetic designs. Just as our internal workings can’t be changed, neither can the foundation and frameworks of my palace or the lair. The only way to offer access to the intrinsic, viscerous parts would be a pairing between the Architect and myself. A magnification of both our magics.”

His words made my heart pound, being so close to what I’d been hoping for but lacked the guts to voice aloud. “So, you’d have to marry them?”

He paused, then began walking again—that graceful, panther-like way he’d developed since growing five inches taller overnight. “Our rituals of matrimony are different from yours, but yes, it would be a union of the deepest sobriety. Slicing our palms, clasping hands, allowing me to fill their veins with strands of crown magic. Even a goblin’s queen doesn’t receive such a gift. So, a union between a king and an Architect would be more potent, consecrated, and enduring than even your human renditions of marriage.”

I caught a breath, the huskiness of his matured voice making the description feel both seductive and sinister.

“Think of my magic as a flower,” he continued. “Being spliced and planted in another garden, yet still connected, so the graft draws constant strength and nourishment from the source, allowing the magic to flow back and forth between them—an enhancement yielding unparalleled growth and fruition.”

“Has there ever been that kind of union here?”

“No.” Perish captured my wrist and gave a gentle tug as I almost missed a sharp turn into a dim passage at our right. His long fingers gently squeezed before releasing me, leaving phantom depressions in my skin that throbbed, as if missing his imprint.

“The limitations are a fail-safe,” he went on, “so the stairs, doorways, and inner workings can’t be tweaked to cause the palace to be felled or disordered; otherwise, it could imprison the royal family, giving a human the advantage. Just like my subjects are protected by the same shield. It’s our way of keeping the ultimate power out of human hands that might destroy us out of spite. The crown is the key to all of it.”

“So, such a thing has never even been attempted? This . . . ​ power share?”

He shook his head. “Not in all our history. We’ve never had enough trust between our kinds.”

I swallowed hard, blaming the dusty tunnels for the tickle in my throat. “But we have that. You and I. There’s trust between us.”

Perish stopped and turned; the tightness of the passage made me acutely aware of his magnetism . . . ​of his heat. He leaned down, his long, loose hair sweeping off his shoulders to fill the space separating us. His warm breath, scented with something spicy like amber and oak, gilded my face. And in that moment—as I breathed him in—he was my young goblin prince again. It was the one part of him on the outside that hadn’t changed. Then contentment surged through me, because I already knew that everything on the inside remained the same: him, unaffected.

“We do have trust,” he murmured. “And perhaps, in time, when we’ve both aged and are practiced—you in your artifice . . . ​ me in my ruling—then, we might embark on such a venture between us. Once I’m sure you’re strong enough.”

The butterflies in my stomach took wing and became leaves, branches, and detritus, captured in a whirlwind, clanging against my rib cage. I couldn’t wait to prove myself to him. “I would like that.”

He smiled gently in the soft flashing light, his sharp-edged teeth bright against dark, full lips. “But you’ve yet to even ignite your first dawn, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” His fingertip tapped my chin—reminding me again that he was now the king—then he turned around to lead me deeper into the darkness.

Following closely, I cleared my throat against that relentless tickle, angry at myself for not saying what I’d wanted to say. I’m ready now; I was born ready . . . ​born for this. For you.

Guilt blew through me, slight and tremulous as a breeze, tender enough to shrug off. I thought I’d loved Clarey, but the truth became clear the moment I stepped into Mystiquiel’s castle to be greeted by all the oddities of the goblin court. I was ashamed to admit it now, but my attraction to Clarey revolved around superficialities—more to the point, his peculiarities. The things in his appearance that made him different from most people. How he looked almost otherworldly. It’s why this fairyland felt immediately like home to me. A place where my strange curiosities could develop and reap rewards. As of today, I had only been in Mystiquiel for twelve weeks—yet already it felt like a wondrous lifetime.

I was beyond those juvenile infatuations and petty affections I’d entertained in the mortal world. I was beyond being just a girl, and I would never be just a woman. In the darkest corners of my soul, where the cobwebs of my discarded identity stirred unkempt, I was spinning myself into something other. And here was where I could evolve to my truest form.

“This way.” Perish directed me toward another opening, which seemed to wind around and ascend back toward the castle floors. The passage became tighter, and the loud ticking of a clock shook the pebbles under our feet. I knew without him telling me where we were, just underneath the swinging pendulum in his game room—the clock that kept time for all of Mystiquiel. My attention landed on a closed trapdoor that would open up into the alcove’s floor. But fascination overtook me upon seeing a scrim of glowing, silky webs—strung down at the trapdoor’s edges—home to creatures that Perish called windershins. They were spindly eight-legged things, with tiny heads that resembled snapping turtles’, yet they were incandescent and sylphlike, their legs as long and limp as a weeping willow’s fronds, making their movements fluid. Watching them spin their webs was like watching jellyfish floating in midair.

Perish reached up and opened the trapdoor carefully so as not to disturb the windershins. I followed him up the ladder and he motioned to the back of the clock far overhead. What one couldn’t see from the front was how the gears and sprockets sliced and whirred through casings of beautiful gossamer strands. The busy little windershins worked to repair any holes with their saliva, leaving behind beads that hardened and glittered. I watched, awed, as they layered sheet upon sheet of web, from the ceiling down to the base of the clock, until their designs looked like ruffles of chiffon, spangled with diamonds. Or maybe a misty night sky filled with sparkling stars.

“There.” Perish pointed to the corner, a few feet from the clock, where an ancient tree—responsible for all the enchanted goblin fruits Mystiquiel had ever harvested—twined up to the high ceiling, rooted deep. It was almost as huge as the giant clock, at least twenty feet tall with what appeared to be hundreds of branches. The tree stood as timeless and eternal as the eldritch themselves. The scent of fruit swelled around us. The bark along the trunk glimmered like the scales of a tropical fish. Shivery, snaky vines twined around the branches, and velvety purple leaves gathered thick as bushes around the base. Each branch yielded a different genus, from apples to wild oranges, from bilberries to winter-melons, from dates to pomegranates—every citrus, stone fruit, berry, melon, or pear a person could possibly imagine. It was a freakish harvest, where produce that in the mortal world grew on vines, bushes, or trees came together all in one place here. More windershins floated around the branches, draping the tree with a transparent webby film as thin as a bride’s veil.

“Their lacework controls the pendulum.” Perish’s explanation disrupted my meditative state as he gestured again to the back of the clock. “They spin counterclockwise . . . ​so that time moves slower here than in the mortal world. And in turn, the cessation of minutes and hours keeps the mother tree in stasis, so it will never wither away and will always bear fruit and yield seeds that you, as our Architect, will use to build the royal orchards.” Perish carefully sliced his nails through the web covering the tree, then knelt to gather a spattering of seeds off the ground. He placed them in his pocket, then smiled as he watched the windershins repair the hole he’d made.

The luminance of the webs and creatures caused his skin to shimmer—almost angelically. Seeing his pride for the inner workings of his world, sharing these private moments with him, I felt both grateful and covetous.

Without a doubt, this was the most strangely beautiful place in all the cosmos, and I never wanted to leave. I hoped time stopped altogether . . . ​so I could live here forever. And I would soon find out that’s exactly what Perish wanted to give me. Eternity. Until I botched it all.

Returning to the present, I look down at the ambulatory glove and the scar on my left palm that’s been lost to nothingness.

“Lark.” Uncle Thatch uses his most calming tone on the other side of the door, jarring me out of my musings. Clarey remains quiet, so I assume they’re finally done mumbling about me.

I focus again on the toilet water.

Just toss it in. Just drop it and let gravity do the rest. Then all it will take is one simple flush . . . ​

The weight of Perish’s blood in the sponge actually feels heavy and warm against my fingers. It’s as if he’s nudging me to finish this. So what’s stopping me? Why can’t I be strong for once, like I need to be? Like he needs me to be.

“Clarey told me what’s going on,” Uncle continues. “About the fire, about what you’ve been hiding.”

My stomach drops. “Of course he did,” I snarl. “Way to be a traitor, Clarey.”

“He’s no longer here,” my uncle answers. “I sent him to the attic for a box.”

A box? Oh, ornaments. I frown, remembering that we’d planned to decorate the tree in the living room this evening. With how busy Uncle and Juniper have been, getting everything ready for their grand opening, he didn’t have time to even purchase the tree until a few days ago.

I’d actually felt relieved, thinking we would skip it this year. How can I pretend to be a part of human festivities when I feel so alien? And now I wonder, how can Uncle pretend to be calm enough for us to act like a normal family after what he’s just learned?

“It’s only the two of us now,” he says, finishing his explanation.

My shoulders sag, and I prepare myself for his rage . . . ​his disappointment. It’s everything I deserve, and I wish I could find relief in finally getting my comeuppance, but I don’t know how I’ll survive in this empty world without his love and faith in me. He’s always been here; he’s all I have left of my family. Yet I betrayed him as heartlessly as I did Nix. Maybe that’s what’s keeping my fingers wrapped around the sponge.

“Kiddo.” Uncle’s utterance sounds gravelly, filled with pain. “I know you’re scared. And I’m so sorry.”

Eyes burning, I squint at the door. That’s the last thing I ever expected to hear him say. “Wh-what?”

“Clarey told me what’s happening to you. The flowers . . . ​your blood. And that your flesh is somehow changing. He tried to explain it, but I need to see to understand. Thing is, you shouldn’t have felt you had to face it alone. You should’ve known you could come to me. But I screwed up. I made you think you weren’t important enough. I should’ve taken the time to talk to you. From the very beginning—the instant I got you home. If only I’d celebrated your eighteenth birthday with you, made sure you knew how much I missed you, how I agonized over your being taken. How it broke my heart to have to pretend you’d died. I’ve been so caught up in trying to get your sister back, I didn’t once stop to think how you must’ve felt while you were there. Believing I abandoned you . . . ​that I didn’t care enou—” His voice cracks.

My jaw clenches, and I stare at the sponge still waiting to be dropped. It’s my one chance for redemption. Either I drop it and am redeemed in Perish’s eyes or I hold it safe and win back Uncle’s trust. A shredding sensation ripples through my throat and ends at my sternum, as if the dilemma is tearing me apart at the seams.

“When Perish explained the contract,” Uncle says, “I had to make a choice. He was going to take you no matter what. He said they’d already chosen you, and he was planning to make me forget the entire night, so I’d have no memory. So we’d all think you ran away, or were kidnapped. Instead, I begged him to let your sister have closure; to help me fake your death. He agreed, but only if I never told anyone else the truth. He bound my tongue in a curse, so I couldn’t even try to get help.”

His fingernails scritch the wood softly, as if attempting to scrape away the barrier between us. “Do you hear me, Lark? I didn’t give up on bringing you home . . . ​it wasn’t like that. I gave up forgetting you were taken, because the agony of remembering was the only way I could honor your mother, and still watch over my sister’s precious daughters, even if my guardianship of you was from afar. I love you both the same, sweetie. Please, know that. I would’ve fought for you if I could’ve. I know you bargained with Perish . . . ​but I also know you didn’t have a choice.”

I bite back a denial, because I did choose, and I’d do it again. All for the love of a fairyland I can’t inhabit.

“You must’ve been so terrified. Felt so alone. This time, I’m no longer under Perish’s thumb, and I have the chance to get you both back. Home, where you belong. But I can’t do it without you . . .”

My chest tightens as his confession rips down all the ugliness I’ve nurtured inside, the wall of thorns that grew to strangle my heart until I could no longer feel the light of family love or loyalty. “Thank you,” I mumble. “Thanks for loving me, even though I’m a monster.”

“I’ll always love you, Songbird. And I want to help you. Will you trust that enough to let me in?”

I know he means more than just into this room . . . ​and I think I’m ready. Ready to tell him everything—how I feel about Mystiquiel and the Goblin King, and why I chose to help him trap Nix, even though it meant leaving my heart behind.

The house grows quiet as he waits for my response, so quiet I can hear the sporadic drip of the sink’s faucet over the clock’s ticking. I start to turn toward the door to unlock it, but haven’t even taken a full step when my fingertips dissolve to the first joint and the sponge slips away. I try to grab it with my mechanical hand before it reaches the toilet bowl’s basin, but I’m not fast enough.

Thankfully, Nix’s tattoo is. I watch in astonishment as the living smudge, having slipped through the slit where the door meets the threshold, dives down to rescue the sponge the instant before it would’ve touched water.