skin to bone, steel to rust, ash to ash, and dust to dust
I bob up from the depths, gasping for breath, and drag myself onto a sandbar where the water shallows out, unconcerned that my gloves stayed dry while the rest of me shivers wet and cold. It’s not the strangest thing to happen today. Not by a long shot.
My eyes burn from the brine, making everything blurred. A shadowy sanctuary loops around me, spacious and scented of fish and a pungent sort of mustiness … maybe rust combined with algae? Every sound bounces off the walls, rounded and swollen. The trickle of water underneath and beside me brings clarity: I’m in a sea cave.
“Clar-ey,” I call out, sputtering salt water between syllables.
“Here,” he responds at my right, his echo playing tag with mine.
“Your BAHA?” I ask.
“It’s working now. Maybe the impact of the water? I guess my mask protected it like an aqua sleeve. There’s some static in the background, but I can make out vibrations super clearly. Flannie’s panting feels like a whirlwind in my skull.” Rustling movements follow as Clarey inches toward the collie over the rocky terrain.
Strange that I hadn’t even heard her. “So, she’s okay then?” I ask, propped up on my elbows while I blot my eyes with woolen fingertips.
Flannie shakes her fur from somewhere between us, slapping us both with droplets of water.
“Yeah.” There’s relief in Clarey’s voice. “Good girl. Let’s check your harness. Wait, stop licking.” He half snorts. “If you let me get the mask off, I can kiss you properly.”
His comment is simultaneously adorable and surprising. I thought he already had the mask off; his voice isn’t as muffled as it was in the maze—possibly an effect of the cave’s acoustics.
Flannie whines, and Clarey makes a pained grunt. “Quiet, girl.”
She whimpers again, though softer this time—a confused, disoriented sound. I can’t blame her after what we just went through.
Clarey coos to soothe her. The sweet interaction bolsters my gratitude that the three of us made it out of the fun house alive. There’s still so much to figure out, but I’m thrilled they’re here with me.
Still, that leaves Uncle out there somewhere. Our deliveryman said he was inside, which I can only hope is this beach where we landed; he also said that I’ll have to “bend things to my will” to help him—whatever that means.
A worried frown stretches my lips and my eyebrows, tugging my piercings in familiar places, assurance that the rings in my skin remain intact. This, I expected, but I also notice a pull through my costume zippers. They didn’t wash off, which is almost as weird as the cloth around my hands being so warm and stiff it could have dried in the sun.
I sit up and lean my back against a large rock, blinking hard to clear my vision. The far end of the cave yawns wide, revealing a beach outside. Luminous moonlight glitters silver on the sands, a few strands reaching inside to glaze the cave’s dark, jagged walls. I’m instantly reminded of my spelunking excursion with Lark at Haystack Rock. In fact, this place looks so similar—minus the pink sunset—that I could be tripping down memory lane again.
As if triggered by the thought, I feel a flutter at the outer edge of my left collarbone where my lark tattoo sits; I must’ve strained the muscles while escaping the pendulum, causing them to spasm.
I press my hand across my T-shirt, willing the sensation to stop. The sounds of Clarey and Flannie provide proof that I’m not reliving a memory again. Neither one of them accompanied us on that day in the cave. It’s a relief. Not only do I not want to endure any more painful, shaming moments like the one in the maze, but I can’t have Clarey be an audience to them. I can’t have him know that I was the cause of Lark losing that first-place ribbon in seventh grade. I don’t want him to glimpse that flaw, to see me for the jealous and insecure girl I once was.
Then my logic kicks in: whatever happened to Clarey while we were apart threatened him personally. Jaspar mentioned mirrors setting the stage for our memories. Most likely, like me, Clarey faced something from his past. The loss of Breonna, or that incident in Chicago he won’t talk about.
I’m a jerk to be relieved by that. But he can never know how much I envied Lark—for her relationship to him, but even more, for her talents; otherwise, he might question, like I do, if I somehow subconsciously wanted to be the only sister. If that’s why I slept through Lark’s final, thrashing grasp at life.
My heart withers at the appalling possibility. It’s something I’ve struggled with for so long; something I didn’t even share with the psychiatrist or Uncle.
Uncle.
I’ve got to get my bearings so we can find him. My stomach clenches with a hollow growl, and chill bumps raze my skin. I’m such a mess, I don’t even know where to begin.
“Seriously, stop licking,” Clarey grumbles to Flannie in the darkness. “If you let me get off your wet vest, we’ll go exploring. Okay, Sherlock?”
Exploring. He’s right. We begin by going outside. I start crawling my way across slimy rocks toward them, wheezing when my bad knee rakes a pointed surface.
“You okay?” Clarey asks.
“Yeah.” I rub the sore spot, my focus shifting to the cave floor where the rocks break up to form small basins.
I inch closer, captivated by glimmers of ghostly white inside the inky puddles. It takes a minute to make sense of them, but I soon recognize the blurred shapes of starfish. There are other tiny sea creatures, too—spiky slugs, seahorses, shrimp, and even frogfish walking on their front fins in the shallows—all varying in size from cigars to fingernails to pinheads. The one thing each one has in common is a bleached-out bioluminescence: soft, hazy outlines of white beneath ripples of dark water.
Has my renewed guilt over Lark stolen my ability to see color again? Or is something even weirder going on?
Ignoring the sounds of Clarey and Flannie across the cave, I fixate on a starfish the size of my hand—leaning across a puddle to refine the details. Its spiny translucent skin encases a framework of wires and circuitry that lights it up from inside. As I’m watching, a slug, with luminous spikes that sway in the water like fiber-optic strands, gets too close. The starfish extends its stomach out of a metallic, beakish mouth to cover the digestible parts of its prey, regurgitating the spikes now coated in rust. While digesting, the starfish curls its five legs outward and inward in an inflating and deflating motion, similar to how pneumatic car suspension systems pump air in and out of rubber bellows. It’s like the SYFY and Animal Planet Channel came together for an under-the-sea special.
I exhale slowly, afraid to stir the water with my breath. The starfish looks almost engineered, yet it’s a living organism, needing nourishment to survive. At the same time, parts of it seem to be severely damaged, as it spews out rust after catching its prey. The colony of starfish surrounding it share the strange attributes. Even the tiniest creatures, the shrimp, appear to be galvanized, stimulated to move by the sparks inside their bodies that cast starry imprints along the cave’s ceiling and walls, while also leaving currents of rusty red to trail their movements in the water. Come to think of it, the rust is the only color I see in here.
The whole scene is bizarre, beautiful, and unsettling—all at once. This kind of marine life doesn’t belong in any conventional ocean, yet fits perfectly in the world I’ve been drawing for almost three years.
Mystiquiel.
My empty stomach flips at the name. I recall Jaspar’s implication that I should just draw my uncle where I want him. It was an obvious nod to my artistic ability … to my creations. He even mentioned me being a builder of worlds. So has Uncle slipped into my dreamscape somehow? Did the gear-and-mirror maze form some kind of bridge to my novels?
No. It makes more sense that I’m not really seeing or experiencing any of these things; that I hit my head harder than I thought last night and have an injury causing episodes of delirium.
I rub my nape, craving someone else’s eyes, someone else’s logic. “Hey, Clarey, can you come check this out?”
He groans. “Give me a sec. Flannie’s acting cuckoo. I thought she was just uncomfortable in her vest but— Hey!”
I glance up at his shout. Clarey’s silhouette shifts back and forth, he and Flannie engaged in a tug-of-war. He yelps in pain and moves into a pale beam of light refracted off one of the puddles.
“Flannie, release.” He wrestles against her teeth clamped over his latex nose. “Ouch! That … hurts. RELEASE!” She lets go then, her tail drooping. With an annoyed ruff, she spins around and shoots out of the cave onto the beach.
“Flannie!” Clarey grunts under his hands where they cradle his fake nose.
The moonlit sands illuminate her trek. It strikes me that I’ve never seen her run so smoothly. It’s a wonder her leg’s harness and snowshoe managed to stay in place, and that the salt water didn’t damage the inner workings. Another oddity I can’t reconcile.
“She’s found something,” Clarey says, about three beats before I hear the collie’s eager woof outside. His BAHA’s ability to pick up sounds has definitely risen to a new level.
I carefully pick my way over the slippery rocks to where Clarey’s still cradling his prosthetic.
“Did she ruin it?” I ask as I squat in front of him. He shrugs. I peel free of my gloves and drop them atop Flannie’s discarded vest, so I’ll have a better grip to help loosen his costume. I tug at the pumpkin’s ridges where they curve around his chin, but can’t find the edges. “It’s hard to see over here. Maybe we should get you into the moonlight.”
“No, wait.” He strains against my next attempt at pulling. “Something’s wrong. It feels stuck. Like, really stuck.” As if just noticing my own costume, he cups my face. “Your makeup didn’t even come off.” He taps a finger first across the black triangles around my eyes, then across my zippers. He studies me, thoughtful and intense. My stomach flutters with each line he traces, the warmth of his touch along the metal teeth almost painful somehow. “Whoa. Maybe the salt water strengthened the spirit gum … but that’s not supposed to happen. It’s not normal.”
“Huh. Seems to be a lot of ‘not normal’ going around tonight,” I say.
“Yeah, can’t argue that.” His palm still cradles my chin. I’d like to lean closer for comfort, to sit down next to him, face-to-face, and sort this all out. I’ve got to tell him about the grimalkins in the mirrors, my ability to see color, about Jaspar. About the marine life and the weird theory taking shape in my mind—but no time right now. We have to get outside and find Flannie before she wanders too far.
As if spurred by my thoughts, the border collie returns to the mouth of the cave and yips at us scoldingly, then trots off again, prompting an unusual jingly sound across the sand.
Clarey’s intense focus drops from me. He rubs his masked nose again absently. “Maybe she’s found your uncle’s scent again. We’ll take care of our costumes later. I’ve got adhesive solvent in your duffel.”
He and I both catch our breaths, coming to the realization simultaneously: in all the chaos of escaping the pendulum, we forgot that we lost the bag and everything in it. A pang of regret trails along my sternum. Not only have I lost Dad’s pocket watch, I’ve lost my mom’s book, too.
“Oh shiz. I’m so sorry, Nix.” Clarey tilts his head, and a strand of moonlight captures the apologetic gaze embedded in the eyeholes. His irises burn bright blue and gold against the black makeup.
I’m shocked that I can make out his eye color. In fact, his mask looks orange now, as it should’ve all along. Weird. And weirder yet, his makeup hasn’t smeared any more than mine.
“It’s all right,” I finally answer, because I’m pretty sure there was nothing in the duffel that could help us figure out what’s going on around us.
Together, we clamber toward the cave mouth. We step out onto an abandoned coast that looks so much like Cannon Beach it makes me do a double take. Even in the distance, through sweeps of moonlit fog, I can see the tops of circus tents, strips of black and white appearing intermittently. Their entrances are hidden on the other side. But judging by the moving silhouettes within, the carnival appears to still be going. We must’ve only been in the maze for a little bit, although it felt like an eternity. Which begs the question: How did it spit us out all the way over here?
Flannie prances in circles around us, stirring up that unfamiliar jingling sound, but I barely notice. I’m fully focused behind me, staring at the cave we just left. Somehow, the ocean’s waves have carried it off, impossibly far. Far enough that its full shape rises to the sky, monolithic and imposing, confirming my suspicions.
“That’s Haystack Rock, right?” I ask Clarey, unable to look anywhere but at our surroundings.
“Uh … yeah? It’s like we stepped back out where we first went in. Our walk to the carnival,” he says. “We’re on Cannon Beach.”
“Or a reasonable facsimile,” I amend.
“Yeah, a black-and-white facsimile. Those tents were red and orange striped earlier …”
“You mean, you don’t see any colors either?”
“Everything looks grayscale—silver sands, ashen mist, black water, and slate rocks. No color except for the three of us.”
“Clarey, I’m seeing exactly the same thing. It’s like I took a set of markers to you and Flannie and me, but haven’t filled in the setting yet.”
“What?” He turns to me. “So … your retinas?”
“I guess they’re fixed somehow? It happened when we stepped into the maze.”
“No way.” His stunned reaction is proof I don’t have a head injury. He’s seeing all the same deviations I am; I’m not sure whether to be comforted or terrified by that fact.
Flannie yips at us, bringing our full attention to how each paw jingles as it stirs up the terrain. Frowning, I burrow my boot’s tip into the filaments and kick up a spray. It flutters down in a tintinnabulation similar to coins drizzling into an aluminum bin—yet smaller, brighter, softer. Musical and stirring. We’re not standing on grains of sand; instead, it’s remnants of steel or iron, or maybe even silver, judging by the absence of warm color tones.
Clarey drops to his knees and scoops some in his palms, letting them slip through his fingers to release another tinny song. “Wait. Is this—?”
“Metal shavings,” I answer, sharing his awe as I take in the scope of the beach … how many millions there must be. It’s hard to be sure, with the swirling mist blocking our view in places.
“Yeah … I’ve seen this stuff. In sixth grade, Lark went through that phase where she crafted sculptures out of it.”
I nod on a private memory of my own. She once wove a bird’s nest from copper fibers, to cradle an egg I found under the porch swing. I wanted it to belong to a phoenix … she insisted it would be a lark. It never hatched, so we finally broke it open. Inside, there was nothing but pale gray powder. I said it was a phoenix turned to ash; Lark claimed it was dust from a lark’s bones. Both guesses were illogical. Uncle—ever the voice of reason—said it had been a rotten yolk that dried out due to a microscopic crack we hadn’t noticed in the shell. Lark shrugged it off, but I regretted being so irrational. What were the odds a mythological creature would’ve set up camp in our front yard, after all?
I glare at the circus tents in the distance. What were the odds, indeed. My throat burns on each inhalation as I’m bombarded with thoughts of grimalkins and doppleganglias.
I stare up at the moon, desperate for orientation. It’s a mistake. The orb appears glossy and iridescent—a glass ball hovering in the sky with light refracting through the center. Kind of like a giant, magical eye.
I shudder as the thought awakens the sense of someone watching us. I shake it off; it’s just my imagination filling in the blanks because of the thick gray fog that diffuses the moon’s light and blurs its outline. The scent of melting wax fills my nostrils, suggesting that instead of fog, it’s smoke or smog.
Closer to the ground where we stand, the haze clears in intervals, as if on a breeze, though the air is motionless and claustrophobic.
“Clarey … there’s no wind.”
“Um, yeah. I noticed that, too,” he answers upon standing, then clicks his tongue at Flannie when she appears a few feet away between clearings of smoke.
She bounds toward us through the gray murkiness, then races back to dig at something slumped in the shavings. Dread grips my heart tight.
“Uncle?” The word stumbles out on less than a whisper.
Clarey takes my hand, and we freeze in place, waiting for the smoke to thin so we can see the contours more clearly. As the object comes into view in intervals, a wrinkled army-green lump with straps is exposed.
“Is that your duffel?” Clarey says skeptically. We release hands and shuffle forward, stirring a symphony through the metal shavings. “It’s like someone dropped it here, knowing we’d end up on the beach. How’s that even possible?”
“How’s any of this possible?” I reply, and catch his arm so he’ll stop for a minute. “Okay.” I steel myself. “I’ve got to tell you what I’m thinking, but you won’t believe it. About … this place. Where we are …” I squeeze his elbow and turn him toward me so he’ll meet my gaze. “I saw Jaspar in the maze, and he told me—” My explanation breaks as I see his face fully illuminated.
Clarey crimps his brow. “Told you what?”
I gulp, studying the wrinkles as they move along his mask’s orange forehead … staring at the thick eyebrows matching his hair. His mask didn’t have eyebrows before, did it? The furrows in his forehead deepen, highlighting his scar—which shouldn’t even be a part of the orange latex. It’s like the indentation rose to the surface somehow.
“Nix, c’mon. What about Jaspar?” He shuffles his hand through his white curls, weaving them into the surrounding darker strands. His orange slitted nostrils pulse, drawing my attention to bite marks and dried red drizzles, as if Flannie’s tug-of-war from earlier drew blood. From a prosthetic …?
A dizzying nausea swarms my belly.
The movements on his mask … they respond like real muscles. The way his high cheekbones jut out above the pumpkin’s ridges and move when he talks and blows out a frustrated breath. Those weren’t there before. And how the bulges in the orange-colored rind taper and fade into the smooth brown skin of his chin. The only things still the same are the triangular eye openings with his thick lashes and beautiful eyes set deep inside, surrounded by bruise-tinged makeup. Otherwise, there are no seams … no gaps. No open edges.
“Nix, what’s with you?” His swollen latex lips turn down, and I notice minuscule lines in the fleshy rolls, the same as a real mouth.
“You’re … frowning,” I manage.
“Well, this is a lot to take in. I think a frown is warranted about now.” He pauses then. “Wait, how do you know I’m frowning?” He feels around the lower half of his face. “Did the bottom of my mask come off?”
Eddies of smoke snake around him. Upon each momentary clearing, I’m slammed with the inconceivable theory: No, it didn’t come off. It’s becoming part of your skin and bones. My stomach drops, skidding all the way into the ends of my toes. That’s why Flannie attacked his face. She was confused. Just like me.
No. I refuse to believe it. We just need to peel it off.
I jump into action, striding toward the duffel where Flannie has resumed digging her nose inside a half-opened pocket. “We have to get that adhesive solvent. Now.” I kick up metal shavings with my determined pace.
“Wait … I hear something, up there.” Clarey grabs my elbow to stop me and looks toward the sky, but I can’t see anything.
In a matter of seconds, a shadow appears, high overhead, silent and stealthy, emerging in intervals where the smoke clears, then disappearing again where it thickens. The BAHA really is working overtime for Clarey to notice it before Flannie. A second later, she starts barking in frenzied circles.
Clarey tugs me backward. My butt lands in his lap and he wraps his arms around me. Any other time, any other place, my nerves would have come alive at the intimacy of the action. Instead, every part of me shuts down with dread at the thing descending from the sky toward us.
“Don’t move.” Clarey’s command stirs the fine hairs behind my ear.
The silhouette slices through the fray—wings spread wide and reflecting the moonlight in shiny flashes. Now I hear it: the whir of gears, gusts of wind stirring through our hair.
With a triumphant hooting call, an owl swoops in and seizes the bag’s straps with metallic talons, lifting it away. Flannie leaps forward and snaps her teeth, missing its rusted tail feathers by only a breath.