The pack rat faeries, Perish, and his mounted infantry turn sharply behind us the moment our feet land within the tent. In their place remains only wind, a blast of sand and grit that shoves us several feet forward.
I allow myself one cautious glance over my shoulder, only to find that the tent flaps have folded closed, leaving the cloth wall solid and seamless as if the opening itself had been a mirage. We’re stuck inside with no way out.
Flannie whimpers, and the altered faerie in Clarey’s pocket peers out, screeches, then ducks back into its hidey-hole.
“You’re right, Toto One and Toto Two,” Clarey says. “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
In keeping with all the weirdness we’ve encountered so far, there’s no tent roof up above, just a low-hanging firmament—cloaked in spumes that rise from each building and house to smudge the sky. The surroundings are lit to a grayish, dreary “daylight” by the glassy globe slipping in and out of sight overhead.
Flocks of finch-size sprites soar on tin-feathered wings through the smoky clouds. Their computerized tweeps and chirps take the place of birdsong. I inhale the waxy scent weighing down on us, oddly reminiscent of the candles always burning at Uncle’s bakery.
We’re in Astoria, but not really; our hometown on a grayscale cybernetic mind trip: hills, shops, and streets identical to those at home, though devoid of trees, grass, or foliage of any kind. The atmosphere, arid and dry, almost crackling with static … doesn’t seem capable of bringing rain. And the denizens are a far cry from the humans we know.
Shimmery-gilded fey creatures with iron hooves, aluminum-wire horns, or electric neck coils, with chain-link tails and circuit-sparked eyes, fill the streets and skies; their chatter, bleats, growls, and hisses fill our ears. It’s the same magic, metal, and galvanized dreamscape I’ve been visiting in my sleep since Uncle cured my insomnia. Except the only vivid colors I see are red slashes of powdery rust and patina streaks of corrosion.
Clarey hasn’t budged from ogling all the biomechanically engineered creatures soaring above and sauntering around us. He lists every eldritch species under his breath, knowing them as intimately as I do from my novels: dryads, elves, trolls, gnomes, piskies, sprites, hobblegobs, wights, sprigs, and more. There are no goblins, boggles, or grimalkins in sight, but that could change just by turning a corner. Like in my stories, the anthropomorphized classes wear clothes, whereas the more feral castes are naked. Yet unlike my stories, they’re wandering aimlessly en masse, as though they’re lost, or have been brainwashed.
My mind immediately goes to Clarey’s enochlophobia. “You okay? I mean …” I gesture to the crowded streets and skies.
“Yeah. Maybe because they’re not exactly people? And they’re not strangers, either. Thanks to your novels.” He meets my gaze and flashes his white-toothed smile almost shyly. It doesn’t even matter that his face is tangled up with a grisly mask; he’s still Clarey, through and through, and the adorable gesture makes my heart flutter, like a feather trapped beneath my sternum.
I smile back, thrilled he’s okay, although I can’t shake the sense that so much about this feels different from my drawings. Mystiquiel is an ethereal realm of sneaky creatures and eerie mystique—yet the denizens here seem to be keeping their distance instead of attacking us or pulling pranks.
“They seem so aimless,” I say absently.
“Right?” Clarey responds. “It’s like they’re so preoccupied with wandering, they don’t even care that we’re here.”
Exactly my point. Some move to our left and others to our right on a whir of gears or a grind of motors, parting like the Red Sea along the sidewalks and streets. Each time a weathered metallic tail or tattered scaly wing wends a bit too close for comfort, Flannie growls, yet stays by her master’s side.
I lock gazes with every one of them in passing—some with one eye, some with two, others with multiple sets. Whether towering over us, matching our height, or even smaller, they return my stare, yet move on. Don’t they realize I’m their creator? If so, shouldn’t they be as astonished by our meeting as I am? Yet even more baffling than their odd behavior is how this can even be happening.
“The fun house.” The term tumbles out of me. “It led to the beach. The tent … led here. And now both passages are inaccessible. It’s like we just dropped in, out of nowhere. But how?”
“I have a theory,” Clarey answers. “Perish mentioned the somatic realm.”
I crinkle my nose. “Yeah, pretty sure I missed that word on our last vocab test.”
“It’s a synonym for reality.”
“Okay … go on.”
“The old-school version of Halloween … didn’t you once tell me that people used to think a portal appeared or something, just for a few hours?”
“On All Hallows’ Eve.” My throat dries as I recall the Google searches I did over the past couple of years to help me stay one step ahead of my family curse. I could never have predicted I’d be using the knowledge to piece together a moment like this. “It’s why people started wearing costumes. They were convinced the veil between the spirit world and ours thinned, so they hid from the spirits by looking like them. It’s the entire basis of the pagan holiday.”
“So could it work the other way around? Letting things into their world, like a doorway?”
“You think these”—I gesture everywhere—“are spirits?”
He shakes his head. “No. I think we somehow stepped through a loophole leading from our everyday life to—”
“My imagination,” I interrupt.
“Or imagination in general,” he corrects. “What if it wasn’t spirits the olden-day folks saw, but figments of their imaginations coming to life? What if that was the veil wearing thin—the one between fantasy and reality?”
“So,” I reason aloud, “we walked through the veil and entered their side.”
“Exactly. And we’ll have to find some way back out there”—Clarey motions toward the tent wall we came through—“to find the portal again. Haystack Rock.”
“After we rescue Uncle,” I add, tamping down the image of the bloody stain on his chef’s hat before panic can get the better of me.
I recall what fun house–Jaspar said: You’ll figure it out once you get inside. Inside. He was referring to this place … a world of fantasy. The doppleganglia must’ve stepped into reality when the veil first thinned this morning, in search of me—then stole our deliveryman’s persona. But why?
Needing Clarey’s input, I admit to seeing “Jaspar” in the maze and everything about our interaction—all but the details of my virtual memory.
“So you’re saying one of your off-scene characters glamoured themselves to look like you guys’ deliveryman?”
“Yeah, and after hearing Perish say my name, I think doppleganglia-Jaspar is helping the Goblin King lead us around.”
“That’s heavy.” Clarey shakes his head.
“Agreed. Why bring me here at all?” I ask. “And using my uncle as bait? There were lots of other ways to lure me in.”
“Not sure. But I’m guessing Jaspar knows. Probably even knows how to get us out again.” Clarey rakes his free hand through his hair, blending the white and black curls for an instant before they spring apart in coils across his orange forehead.
I frown. His portal-to-imagination-in-general theory isn’t completely watertight. Still, even with a few dribbly holes, I’m eager to accept it because that would mean I’m not responsible for his mask. Clarey created the prosthetic. It’s part of his imagination.
I nudge the zippers he earlier dabbed across my face, inciting a sting just like when he tapped them in the cave and when the pack rat faeries tried to tug them. As if they’re connected to nerves and tissue. I glance at Flannie’s leg, and that feathery twitch around my tattoo starts up again.
Maybe the wings and tail feathers are actually moving under my T-shirt, and the lark is trapped inside my skin. I’m not the one who guided the ink-filled needle, but I did sketch the stencil that Ebon used as the outline.
The only explanation I can think of is anything Clarey or I made has become real upon our entry through the sea—as long as it was attached to us somehow, physically.
My entire body tingles with reverence; what artist doesn’t long for a chance to walk among their fantasies, to breathe the same air as their creations? But then logic overtakes and slams me with a disturbing thought.
“Clarey,” I mumble.
“Yeah?”
“If we did slip through the All Hallows’ Eve veil, it only stays passable for a while. According to all the lore I’ve read, it closes at midnight, when Halloween ends. I’m not sure how long we have left. And even if we had our phones, there’d be no way to get a signal here to keep tabs on the time.”
“Time,” Clarey says, thoughtful, his finger touching the mask above where the BAHA hides. “I’ve been feeling ticking vibes ever since we stepped into the tent. It’s like a clock. Somewhere. Do you hear anything?”
I shake my head. The only sounds I’m getting are mechanical hums, shuffling hooves, and fluttering wings. It’s impressive that what helps Clarey hear better in the real world has now become his superpower.
Grabbing Flannie’s collar, he looks around; his jack-o’-lantern mask creases as he strains to pinpoint the direction. I’m curious if it’s starting to dawn on him yet … the irrational rationale to why his prosthetic feels so snug.
“There’s one more reason to hurry,” I continue, reluctant for him to open that particular can of pumpkin guts. “We both know my characters and creatures. What they’re capable of when they decide to misbehave. Just because they’re too distracted to notice us doesn’t mean they reacted the same to Uncle.”
“On it,” Clarey says, and points toward a gaggle of trolls and some sky-high dryads. “There. On the other side of that crowd. The ticking.”
We both hear a familiar ding then, the sound of a trolley crossing a stop, and push between the trolls to get through. Though they only come to our knees, they’re intimidating with crinkly aluminum faces and vicious glassy teeth that glint like shards of mirror in their mouths. Luckily, like all the others, they don’t seem interested in us at all.
Clarey and I arrive a few yards from the stop, both of us cautiously eager as we wait to see Perish’s half-serpentine, half-train mobile dungeon I’ve been drawing for years.
The heat hits us first: lines of flame—reds, oranges, yellows, and blues, dominated by fingers of blackened soot and steam—racing along the electrified rails. Before we can react, the ambling eldritch crowd around us barks, cries, squawks, and screeches, diving out of the way.
Through the resultant opening, the trolley slithers off its rails. A giant, scaly serpentine head whips left to right, intent on capturing two gnomes wearing prison garb. Two metallic fanged jaws open wide, then clamp down on the unlucky escapees—mere inches from where we stand.
The faerie hiding in Clarey’s pocket screams as oil- and copper-scented gusts rip through our hair. I suppress a gag, watching the gnomes’ bodies erode, the snake’s deadly acidic venom disintegrating them from the inside out within seconds, leaving nothing organic or metal behind, just a powdery pile of ruin.
I grab Clarey, who’s still holding tight to Flannie, and we leap out of the way as the trolley shifts course and returns to its flaming rails, charging past us as if nothing out of the ordinary took place.
Clarey and I gawk, speechless, at the progression of the long and winding black-scaled body. Gaping holes reveal sinew and cartilage strung around a rusted metal skeleton, with all the king’s prisoners peering out from between the ribs. I study each passenger to ensure Uncle isn’t onboard, feeling almost frantic until there’s no one resembling him. Close to the end, the two tourists from yesterday appear—their lemon and rose petal hair suddenly clear and vivid to my awakened sight. Both girls grip a curved bone on either side of their faces and watch us while they pass. Only a flicker of light in their eyes, an electric blink, saves me from a cold sweat. They’re no more from the “real” world than anything else. It must be that the moment I drew them on the trolley, their likenesses became part of Mystiquiel. I’m more grateful than ever that I erased Lark from that scene. Seeing another false representation of her like the one in the maze would’ve destroyed me.
As the trolley’s tail slithers away, the flames on the rails snuff out, opening the rest of the cityscape to our view. We’re already on Eleventh Street, without even having walked that far. Exchanging a confused glance, we pass over the tracks and instead of a railroad crossing warning, come face-to-face with the metal sign that I’ve seen in my sleep so many times.
Rows of tiny Edison bulbs line the edges, flickering and popping to spotlight the word “Mystiquiel” in neat script. Black glitter makes the letters sparkle and draws the eye. And then I see it: there—close to the l—hangs my duffel, its straps slung loosely around the upper right corner.
Clarey reaches up to flick the pocket watch dangling at the side. “Of course this was the ticking. Our one link to the outside is a busted timepiece. So much for keeping up with how long we’ve been here.”
Maybe he’s disappointed, but I don’t share the feeling. Releasing a jubilant yelp, I grab the bag. It’s impossible not to hug it, to bury my nose in the canvas like I used to do as a little girl … to pretend that residual scent of brine and fish is somehow tied to oceanside excursions Lark and I took with our mom and dad. I turn the pocket watch around and the ticking hands read 8:15 p.m.
I suck in a stunned breath.
“What is it?” Clarey nudges me.
Unable to believe what I’m seeing, that for the first time in my entire life, the hands are moving clockwise, I flip its face to show him.
“No way.” He leans closer.
He knows the story, how Lark’s obsession with tinkering started with trying to repair this watch when no one else could; but no matter how many times she took it apart and put it back together, it couldn’t be fixed. Those failures led her to practice tirelessly until she had a knack for rebuilding almost any machine, and for designing her own from scratch.
“Do you think it’s accurate?” Clarey asks. “We arrived at the carnival close to seven. It feels like we’ve been at this longer than an hour. But things happened so fast inside the maze, you know?”
“The maze.” I nibble on my lip piercing. “Jaspar. He mentioned something in there, about the clock ‘beginning to tick.’ And that time passes differently here. Maybe my dad’s watch activated the second the duffel came through the portal. It could’ve come alive because it’s technically Lark’s design.”
It surprises me that I actually want this to be true, considering how hard I’ve always worked to keep my sister separate from this world.
“Why wouldn’t all those painstaking hours she took it apart and reassembled it finally pay off in a land of imagination?” I finish the unexpected thought.
“That’s an incredible sentiment, Nix,” Clarey says, bumping me with his shoulder. “But like you said, Jaspar mentioned time. It’s more likely this is Perish, laying out the precepts of a game through his henchman. You wrote your king to be manipulative and wily, but he also sticks by his rules and offers clues so he can ‘appear’ to help along the way.”
“Volume ten,” I interject. “When his first knight, Automata, betrayed him and begged for a second chance to prove himself.”
“Perfect example. Instead of killing the boggle outright, Perish gave him that candle where he’d trapped his last breath, then invoked a hurricane and laughed as the boggle tried to keep the flame from snuffing out. That’s his idea of fair … the fae’s idea.”
“Like fixing a watch my sister and I always wished would work, just to taunt me that there’s only a little over three hours left to escape being trapped in our make-believe world.” Anxiety knots my stomach. Anxiety and disappointment as any possibility for a postmortem connection to Lark shatters. I groan and shove my fingers through my hair. “Why did I have to make him so cunning and ruthless?”
“Name one goblin who isn’t. So we both agree, Perish was herding us here, to land us in this exact spot.”
I nod. Clarey’s hypothesis makes perfect sense; otherwise we’d still be in the chase. The Goblin King doesn’t give up on a Wild Hunt unless he’s caught his quarry.
Clarey holds Flannie back with his leg as a lizard-size wight skitters by her paws before creeping up the sign’s pole and disappearing within a hole at the top. “And the duffel was dropped strategically by Filigree, right where we’d find it—”
“Because he’s leaving us crumbs.” I slide the chef’s hat from inside my jacket. “Leading us to the bakery.”
Clarey drags some dog biscuits from his pocket and scatters them on the ground for Flannie. “Well, at least we’re going somewhere where they serve food. I’m starving.”
“You know better. There are rules about faerie food.”
“So, what then? You want to share some of Flannie’s biscuits?”
Flannie looks up at us and wags her tail, merrily crunching away.
I sigh, realizing how hollow my own stomach is. “We’ll just have to ration.”
Unzipping the duffel, I dig out the baggie containing Juniper’s three remaining gingerbread scones and take a bite of one while handing another off to Clarey. Someone has definitely rifled through the bag’s contents, because the vial of squid ink is now in the main compartment along with everything else. I search for more “clues,” but find only the things we packed ourselves—our phones that won’t turn on, Clarey’s cloak, Mom’s picture book. Another surge of relief swells through me upon seeing those pages intact.
I shove the chef’s hat inside next to Uncle’s broken glasses then fish out the pair of twiggy gloves Clarey brought to complete his costume. Holding one corner of the scone in my mouth, I slide them on. Once the bag is arranged over my shoulder, I resume eating.
“What do you say?” I pause to loosen a doughy bit from the grooves of a molar with my tongue. “Are you ready to follow some crumbs?”
“I’m game if you are.”
I force a laugh in hopes of tamping down my reservations. My maternal-artist instinct kicks in, and I pat Clarey’s vest pocket, coaxing our tiny refugee to shove its rat muzzle out. It blinks large, pink eyes hungrily at my scone. I offer it a pea-size crumb. With the twigs, flowers, and vines that make up its arms and fingers, it takes the treat and nibbles at the edges, then gobbles it down.
Chewing his scone, Clarey snaps his fingers for Flannie, then tugs me forward like we’re starting our usual stroll along Eleventh. As if there’s anything usual about this night.
I cast a glance inside each shop window on our route: a haircutting place, a coffee shop, a bike store, a winery, and a bookstore. From inside, humanoid facsimiles of the store owners in Astoria—part metal, part motor, and part flesh—look back at me. Although I’ve never sketched them onto the page, they’re here. It’s as if just seeing them on a daily basis imprinted them upon my mind’s eye, which in turn conjured them to life in Mystiquiel. However, some of the owners, newer ones who I don’t really know, have been replaced by eldritch creatures, as if their faces haven’t been in my mind long enough to make an impression.
Like everything else, each of them is rusting; some have lost noses, ears, or fingers. Their shops are also falling into disrepair: missing shingles, unhinged doors, crumbling bricks, and masticated siding that makes me think of the chewed-up page in my Goblin Market book.
I’m so focused on the decay, I nearly trip where the sidewalk buckles steeply, revealing more corrosion underneath the cement. In place of dirt clods, tufts of grass, or sprouting weeds, there’s black mold and brownish-red flakes, moistened to a wet, burbling paste. I’ve no idea how it could form without rain, but it’s like a compost heap gone to mud. Maybe water has seeped in from the ocean somehow.
There’s an underlying stench of loam and minerals that I recognize with sobering intensity. As I inhale, a familiar prickle of nostalgia pierces me through; if I were staring at my reflection, I’d be seized by Lark’s accusatory glare. Yet the predominant odor, the salt-sour tinge of rust, is just different enough to keep me grounded.
It appears the sludge has been absorbed by the sidewalk, obvious only by the veins inside the jagged surface of the open crack, and barely noticeable when looking at the top. However, now that I know what to search for, I can see it: faint reddish threads running through the cement in every direction, winding toward the shops and making contact with everything that walks across it. The rust appears to be contagious, spreading with only a touch, a pandemic in the heart of this land, sucking the color and luster out of every creature and character I’ve ever drawn or conjured.
It’s almost like they’re being eradicated …
Maybe this is why some of the denizens are no longer playing the roles I wrote for them, why they seem so absentminded.
Studying the muddy offshoots in the walkways, I’m reminded of the creeping vines sold at Juniper’s boutique—innocuous plants like wisteria and honeysuckle—that come with a warning to sow them in an isolated patch of ground due to their tendency to overtake a garden.
Jaspar said imagination was like a garden. Is this rust and corrosion the weeds he was referring to?
“Maybe they’re in on it, too.” Clarey gestures to all the wandering fey that step out of our path, as if trying to shake me out of my quiet reticence. “I mean, why else are they clearing the way?”
I frown. “Perish wouldn’t petition the common populace for help. Maybe they think we’re from here.”
As we walk on, a couple of human-size fey with metallic torsos connected to organic legs and arms—long and hinged like those of a cricket—move aside.
“We have metal bits.” In demonstration, I tip my chin at the creatures, and they tip theirs in passing. “Flannie’s leg, my zippered and pierced face, your BAHA. Even your shoes. The pack rats saw the toe tips and called you ‘tinker.’ ”
Clarey nods. “Oh yeah, I didn’t make the connection. The blacksmith gnomes, they’re called tinkers in your stories.”
“Exactly. So everyone here thinks we belong. But this little critter”—I gesture to the pack-rat-faerie-size lump moving around under the cover of his pocket—“no longer does.”
Clarey snaps his fingers. “Right. Because it’s bona fide.”
“Bonbon?” The eensy fae’s voice slips out from the other side of the fabric. The tip of its wings appear, trembling. “Me, Bonbon!”
Clarey and I exchange tentative smiles. “So it has a name now,” he says.
I drop my final piece of scone into his pocket, and the faerie jabbers contentedly. “I couldn’t have thought of a better one myself.”
“As for us looking like them,” Clarey continues while polishing off the rest of his scone, “I’m guessing my mask helps, too. Makes me appear piecemeal like they are. But once your zipper glue wears off or I use the solvent on my prosthetic, the jig is up. So do we have to keep our costumes on the whole time we’re here?” He raises his dark eyebrows, furrowing the latex skin around them.
My stomach crimps. Enough is enough. I have to tell him—though the shock might make him completely unravel.
Our quartet arrives at Eveningside Street. There are only two shops along the sidewalk, unlike in the real Astoria. Both Enchanted Delights and Wisteria Rising stand three times wider and taller than our hometown stores, and both are depreciating at the hand of dribbles that ooze out from the wood panels and bricks like reddish-brown sap. The same sludge that’s beneath the sidewalk and streets.
Clarey starts toward the bakery door.
“Wait.” I drag him into the shadows of the dead-end alley at the side of the building and push him against the brick wall so we’re face-to-face. Placing my gloves on his shoulders, I lean in to look him in the eye. “There’s something I have to do now, because I don’t know when I’ll get another chance.”
One side of his prosthetic lip quirks upward in surprise, and his eyes fill with the daring mischief that always makes my pulse pound. “Seriously? Now?” He shrugs. “I guess we don’t have time to waste, huh?” He grips my elbows and pulls me so close I smell the ginger from his scone on his breath. “Like I told Flannie. Let me take my mask off first so we can do this properly.”
“Oh, Clarey.” I groan, putting space between us so I can fish the glue solvent from the duffel. “That’s exactly what I’m hoping this will do.” I squeeze the tube, aligning the nozzle with what were once the mask’s edges along his chin and jawline.
Nothing changes. Just by looking I know. It’s still a part of him. Defeated, I step back, leaving Clarey to tug at the mask.
“Ow!” he screeches when it won’t release. “What’s going on with this thing?” His hands pause, then in an awful light bulb moment, he trails his fingertips along his features—a blind person feeling their way to illumination. “No. Oh god, no!”
We watch. We wait. And we wonder. We turn our ears to listen, lapping up the boy’s cries, gorging on her pain. We gobble their emotions, fill our bellies to brimming … supping on the flavor of life. Uncertainty reigns the closer they gain: no rust rots his toe tips, no sparks light his eyes. He seems familiar, like one of our own, yet we do not know this face. It is a deception, and he belongs because of it. To us, and to her. He has a role to play. Test his mettle; force her hand. She bathed our world in soft summer sands, now let her baptize us in autumn storms. Let the skies cry, and seal the fates of the soulless. For should the clock strike midnight and the world still stand, our battle will be lost.