“Ksenia?” Lexi says, and I force myself to let go of her and step away. It’s not the moment for me to go weak and clingy, even if she’ll tolerate it. “I really tried to hold on to him. To Josh. But the way we came here was just so strange and violent, and we lost each other. I’m sorry.”
“Through my hat. I heard. I just did that too.”
That makes her start and stare at me, though I’m unclear on why. Travel by hat is an established thing, now. “Ksenia!”
“Yeah?”
“Doesn’t that mean you were free? You actually succeeded in escaping from this nowhere? Then … that means, you must have solved the problem of how to climb those stairs?” I see her scanning the grave dirt all over my limbs. She’s putting it together.
Right. There’s too much to explain, at least while we’re still trapped and Josh is lost. “I had to figure it out. Since Josh was leading a freaking army against you. I was trying to stop him, but by the time I made it—you were both already gone.”
“You knew all along what the key was, didn’t you? But only worrying about someone else was enough to make you say that name out loud. Ksenia, am I right about that?”
I’m trying to be more open with Lexi. Be a good enough friend to be worthy of her. But the searching way she’s gazing at me now is still enough to make me want to spin on my heel and storm off.
I reject the impulse, though. It feels almost physical, as if my muscles are contracting to shove it out between my shoulder blades.
“Sure. I mean, I suspected. But Lexi, knowing that you were in danger—I couldn’t just dick around anymore.” That’s going to have to be enough of a confession for right now. “Look, I really don’t see the point of talking about this. We’ve got to find Josh, and we’ve got to—I have no idea what it’s going to take to get out of here again. I don’t even know if it’s possible.”
I turn to start searching, but the fact is that my face is blazing and sparks swim in my eyes. I don’t know why Lexi’s questions feel like needles stitching their way through my skin. And—it’s only now I realize it, but I’ve misplaced Kay. She isn’t clinging to my arm anymore. The vapor down here seems to be thinning, but it still feels like walking into oblivion. I stomp forward, feeling Lexi’s stare hammering at my back. Looking for Josh is a ridiculous pretense. I’m swinging my head at random, hoping for an oblique glimpse of him, but really—it’s that I can’t handle looking at Lexi right now.
“Ksenia?”
I just finished crying. I can’t break down again, and I can’t be that person who knots herself up to keep from lashing out, either. I feel my hands drawing into fists, tightening against my will. No matter how much I love Lexi, I need her to see that it’s time to back off.
“Ksenia, we’ll find Josh. We’re not going anywhere without him, I promise. But first I want to tell you something, and I’d really appreciate it if you had the courage to look in my face while I do it.”
A spasm flickers down my arm: the urge to raise my hand, to strike out, to scream at her to just leave me alone, already.
And then—I don’t know how, but I let the spasm keep going. I let it shoot down my arm and leak out at my fingertips. My hands go limp and my shoulders fall and I’m able, though barely, to turn back to her. The purple mist has lifted enough that the distance between us isn’t much help, and I have to see how dark and acute her stare is.
“Get it over with, Lexi.”
“It’s just that—don’t underestimate how happy I am that you did that for me, Ksenia. I know how it must have killed you to have to call yourself Sennie.” I cringe, hearing that name on her lips, but she ignores it. “I want you to be very aware of how much it means to me, that you fought your way out for my sake. Because then you can keep the next thing I’m going to say in perspective.”
I owe Lexi so much, and I know it. But I can’t help feeling like she’s claiming her debt in blood, making me listen to these things. “What’s that, Lex?”
“That it would mean even more to me if you had done it for yourself.” Her lips bend up, but I wouldn’t call that a smile, exactly. “Do you understand why I’m saying this to you?”
I understand more than I want to.
“I don’t expect anything from you, Lexi.” Her not-smile wrenches into something fiercer; really, I knew she didn’t mean it like that. She probably feels insulted, that I would even imply she’s looking for an excuse not to owe me anything. “And I never could have abandoned Josh, anyway. So why would I put myself through that?”
Lexi sighs; not wistfully, more of an aggravated huff. “You just made my point for me, Ksenia. Okay, let’s figure out where they’ve hidden Josh. I was feeling pretty done with him, honestly, but he came through at the last possible instant. He actually put up some serious resistance. I’m not saying I forgive him, because he did too much harm for that. But I can at least consider forgiveness as a possibility.”
“I know he fought back,” I say. I’m not sure I want to know what she means by the rest of it. “Kay told me.”
We’re walking side by side now, through a stony landscape blotted by the violet air. It takes the edge off, not having to confront her gaze, not seeing the things she’s seeing in me. We go slowly, which makes sense even if it’s maddening. I have to stifle the speed and wildness in my limbs at every step. But we’re more likely to stumble across Josh’s prison by ambling along, searching every inch of the gorge, than we would be if we went charging off like lunatics.
“You met Kay,” she says. “So that’s what you meant, when you said you heard about the hat. Kay knew where to look for you; she could probably even sense that you were on your way, just as soon as you set foot on the staircase.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Lexi, we need to concentrate. I barely saw you back there. It’s amazing that I found you at all. Josh—you came here together, so he’s probably in the same kind of trap they stuck you in. And it looked like a knife’s edge in the air, kind of. That thin and hard to catch. Except with your face blurring past.”
Lexi stops. “To me, it was just a hole. I couldn’t see anything at all before you started talking to me. Ksenia, the bizarre thing? I didn’t actually hear your voice, not at the beginning. But I saw images; I can’t begin to describe them. They were like colored shadows cast by your emotions, and I recognized you instantly. I couldn’t hear the actual words you were saying, but I could read the colors like they were a new kind of script. And it was entirely obvious that you were very close, and that you’d come for me.”
“That actually sounds beautiful.” It does; I wish Lexi would stop saying things that hurt so much. “But Lexi, we have to keep going.”
I turn to move on, but she catches my hand. “Wait.” Her head tilts; she’s close enough that I feel the soft disturbance of her breath. “I bet Josh can sense us the same way. Ksenia, we should go back.”
“Back where?”
“Exactly where I was. As nearly as we can identify the spot.”
I almost snap at her; something stupid, mean; something to buy myself a little distance from everything I’m feeling. But then I don’t. “You—what? You have an intuition about it?”
Lexi shakes her head. One thing she never is, is at a loss for words, but for once in her life Lexi is thinking something she can’t instantly smack down in a perfect sentence.
“I think Josh was there. I think he was listening to you along with me. They somehow arranged it so that he and I were in the same space, but without being able to perceive each other.”
It’s no crazier than anything else that’s happened. And it should be the best news possible. So why do I find myself not wanting to believe her?
“Okay,” I say, because anything else would be too screwed up, even for me. “Okay, we’ll go look.”
I know why I’d prefer it if Lexi was wrong, actually. Because what must Josh have felt, if he heard me spilling my guts to Lexi like that? He was already getting jealous. And the way she glances at me now, as she starts heading back: I could swear she knows exactly what I’m thinking. She throws her mind out like a net, and it falls through me as if I were water. How did Lexi and I come to know each other so much more deeply, by spending so long apart?
She tosses her head again. Shaking off a thought. “I know I shouldn’t tell you what to feel, Ksenia. But seriously, Josh kidnapped you. He tore you right out of the world. And I can almost understand why you would keep loving him anyway. Or even if I don’t understand, I can respect it. Love like yours is worth honoring.”
“I’ve never asked anyone to understand me,” I tell her; it sounds harsher than I intended. One thing for sure, no one ever thought of honoring anything I felt before, and I know I should be thankful. “It would be a complete waste of time if I did.”
It’s a lie, though, and Lexi probably knows it. What’s grating on me is that she does understand me, just in ways I can’t handle.
Retracing our steps looks exactly the same as forging ahead did. The futility is getting to me again. Futility is violet and hazy and slurs on and on like a horizon. Wherever Josh is, we’ll miss him. We’ll wander back and forth for an eternity, until Prince comes for us, or until we die from thirst.
“The part I’m struggling with, is that you still seem to feel like you have an obligation to him. You don’t. Not after the way he violated your right to make your own choices.” Now Lexi’s the one who’s having trouble looking at me. Her head hangs, like the dust at our feet requires her full attention. “You owe Josh nothing.”
That’s not true, I think, but I don’t say it. Memory sweeps over me, grasping me inside my twelve-year-old self; how rigid I stood in that drab living room, my social worker fussing at my back. How I deliberately fixed my gaze on an electric outlet in the corner, so I wouldn’t have to see my new foster parents shooting each other concerned looks. How my breathing was labored, and the garbage bag containing all my possessions was still slung over my back.
And then how Josh came up beside me and took my free hand in perfect silence. I hadn’t said so much as hello to him at that point. He had no reason to expect anything from me but cruelty. In spite of myself, I felt the bravery of what he was doing. I still refused to turn in his direction, but I didn’t yank my hand away either. Instead I watched him out of the corner of my eye. A slim band of sunlight swayed, very softly, across his wavy dark hair.
After five minutes of his warm presence I dropped the bag, even though it sickened me to hear the adults murmuring their approval. Isn’t that precious? Josh is working his magic. No, no, don’t say anything.
Owe him nothing? That band of sunlight. The unspeaking tenderness of his ten-year-old hand. How can everything become nothing, just because someone did something wrong?
“So why are you looking for Josh?” I say. “If you think he’s so not worth it?”
“I didn’t say that. And I think there are extenuating circumstances. But Ksenia, you don’t know everything he did.” Lexi gives me a quick, sidelong look. Evaluating me. Maybe trying to suss out how much I can stand to hear without freaking out. “I don’t know where to draw the line: what he’s responsible for, and what he isn’t, if that makes sense. But I do think he deserves a chance at redemption.”
“Josh hasn’t been right since he met them,” I say. Defensively, even though I’m shaking inside at the thought of everything Josh might have done. What happened after he rode up the tiled wall at that vile party, and out through the ceiling? “They got in his head.”
“And by not right,” Lexi says, scuffing at the dirt, her eyes studiously averted, “I assume you mean enchanted.”
I do mean that. My vision smears from the shock of hearing Lexi say it, because I didn’t know I meant it. I can’t help but notice the strangeness of it, too. The most obvious explanation is the exact one my mind repelled, persistently, stubbornly. The wind swells, pecking our cheeks with grit, and in it I hear a kind of humming, or chattering, or the wordless rags of a voice with all the meaning shredded out.
Lexi is right, but I can’t shake the impression that she shouldn’t have come out and said it.
And then the wind’s cries break through their senseless moaning, and resolve into two definite sounds.
Josh’s voice, sliced razor fine. Where he is, it’s too thin to let a word through, but wide enough to let a stuttering, intermittent note escape. A howl, divided and divided again, broken up by gaps of silence.
The other sound? It’s the beat of hooves.