I shake my head, the room spinning in a swirl of lights and sparks.
Numbly, I shove the watch into my pocket; I’m no longer its bond servant. This time, I sit on the step when Uncle guides me over. Flannie comes to my side and lays her muzzle atop my lap. I curl woolen fingers into her neck scruff, seeking comfort … stability.
“Those things the Motherboard threw at you in the tunnel,” Uncle continues, sitting on the other side of me. “They weren’t lies. They were the truth … at least to the extent she could tell you. She can’t speak, so she had to help you visualize things, and hope that you could somehow believe it.”
“But if she can’t speak, then how do you know what she showed me?”
Uncle points behind him. Clarey, having climbed to the second-story platform, drags a burlap sheet off a huge screen—one that is eerily similar to Perish’s vintage television. The image flips back and forth between the two final scenes I saw in the petal puzzle: Mom being carried away, and the explosion that swallowed up my dad’s unconscious form. A snow of static curdles the clarity, but there’s no denying it’s exactly what I witnessed in the tunnels.
So Clarey and Uncle Thatch were watching alongside me—from here.
I feel the urge to be sick again, but my stomach has nothing more to give. “The Goblin Market poem, it’s real? And it’s about my … our … ancestors?”
“That book your mother left for you was as close as she, or I, could ever come to telling you the truth. It’s why I didn’t change the date of your parents’ ‘accident’ on the death certificate, and why I dedicated the bakery’s theme to Christina Rossetti’s masterpiece. All of it was in honor of my sister and our family’s sacrifices. Because although it was vague, there was still a trace of the truth in that poem … of how the eldritch world tore the limbs off our family tree.”
Clarey descends the stairs, glancing behind at that shadowy corner of the platform where the sputters and crackles originate from under another burlap tarp. He wears an expression I can only describe as devastation.
He trembles when he sits on the opposite side of Flannie, and I wonder how he can be buying any of this. Maybe, after all we’ve seen here, it’s no huge leap.
So why, then, is it so hard for me to accept?
I hear the words Uncle says, his curse of silence finally broken now that we’ve all crossed the borders to this world; I soon feel as if I’m drowning in details I only thought I wanted to know.
He tells me Perish gave me a partial truth: that human emotions rejuvenate his kind—much like food can restore and rebuild a mortal body. However, eldritch beings also rely on human artistry and vision, as these provide the building blocks of their terrain, homes, and architecture. Only humans have the ability to “glamour” the infrastructure and keep the foundation of the fey world thriving; thereby its appearance changes according to who “builds” it with their imagination.
This is why both Clarey and I had the ability to affect things slightly upon our arrival. But an actual Architect must be connected to the world’s “heart” in order to make global changes. Since the beginning of time, the fey have been luring young girls and boys into their kingdom with their addictive fruits when the veil between worlds thinned, forcing them into servitude so Mystiquiel could flourish.
“But that was the biggest problem,” Uncle points out. “Since each Architect grew up in a human world, they felt no loyalty or love for this one. They often ached for home, and it drained them of the will to create. Which meant the Goblin Market had to return every year at All Hallows’ Eve to attract fresh batches of Architects—enough to last them until the next season.”
I gasp as the true significance of Halloween falls squarely into its logical slot, giving Perish’s hallowed wall of masks a new grisly meaning: they were the costumes worn by each victim who became an Architect to be used up and thrown away.
I pivot a glance to Clarey, who stares down at his twiggy hands folded across his lap. The leaves sprouting from his fingertips are as green as I feel.
Uncle continues his telling, that when Lizzie’s sister was taken, Lizzie made a deal with Blaze, Perish’s ancestor. She vowed her family would serve the goblin hierarchy if they would stop abducting innocent human souls. She proposed her future offspring be born in Mystiquiel, and their descendants after. The children would be raised among the eldritch creatures, thus cementing their loyalty to the faerie-kind, the one characteristic other humans lacked. And in so doing, they would be able to service the Goblin Court their full lifetimes.
Blaze bound his bloodline to the veil as part of the contract, ensuring no human could stumble in, nor could anyone from his kingdom cross the borders ever again to steal away mortals, putting a stop to the annual Goblin Market event.
The new ritual began with Lizzie. Once she came of childbearing age, she was escorted out of the faerie world on All Hallows’ Eve—blending in with all the other costumed humans milling about so her loved ones wouldn’t recognize her. She had one night to find a suitable mate to bring back into Mystiquiel, who would help her produce the succeeding creative anchor; when she didn’t find him, she was taken out the following year and the next until she finally met her match. Once she conceived, the father of her child lost all memory of the event, his brain scrubbed with piskie dust before he was deposited outside the veil and left to awaken alone and confused.
Lizzie’s baby—a girl—was then born and raised inside the faerie realm. This continued for almost two centuries. Over time, only girl offspring were kept—encouraging a maternal attachment toward the fey—and only one daughter from each generation. That was the rule. Girls who were extras, along with every boy born, were left on the doorsteps of assorted orphanages and churches in the human realm, everywhere around the world.
Uncle was one such baby. He never knew he had a twin sister until he found her on his doorstep one late Halloween afternoon, begging him to hide her two babies as her life was in danger. She told him all she could of their family history, and that’s all he needed to hear. Uncle stepped up and took responsibility for two tiny infants he’d had no inkling existed, driving them in one direction while Imogen and Owen drove the other in hopes of leading their hunter—Perish’s father—off track. Uncle Thatch also fixed both babies’ birth certificates to make them appear to be born in August, so if any of the fey searched for babies born at Halloween they would overlook them.
And it worked … for a while.
“When Imogen’s life began waning,” Uncle says, “Perish was being groomed to take the throne. Every firstborn goblin prince remains young, little more than an adolescent, until his coronation. That’s when he inherits his power, and the magic ages him, transforms him to adulthood. To earn his crown and become a ‘man,’ Perish’s assignment was to find Imogen’s replacement. Here he was, barely a teen himself, seeking a missing girl bound to his realm—born into a bargain that was unbreakable so long as his lineage reigned.”
“That’s why the Motherboard was trying to dethrone him,” I whisper, seeking sense in the senseless. “She’s the Architect, and she wanted to stop his reign to end the bargain.”
Uncle nods.
A torturous epiphany threatens to choke me: Imogen must be the Motherboard. It explains the metallic head’s features, and the intimate details in that final illusion. I brace myself against the unthinkable realization that I was tearing my own mother apart—snip by snip.
Oblivious to my torturous introspections, Uncle continues. “Yes, the Architect had concocted a plan to destroy Perish’s monarchy. Using her knack for biomechanics, she introduced metal into the infrastructure of Mystiquiel … into the very genetic makeup of its denizens, full knowing it had a poisoning effect on the fey. Iron, tin, copper, brass—all of it acts like an infectious plague. Her goal was to taint Perish’s dynasty so he’d either step off the throne to save his subjects or die with them, ending his reign that way. Either result would’ve freed our family of the contract. Instead, Perish chose to fight back, hoping to find something more valuable to his nemesis than her taste for vengeance, and placing it in her path to derail her.”
The conjectures in my head turn too fast, spitting out thousands of questions and thousands of possibilities. How did Mom manage to give birth outside the faerie world? How did my father still remember her? But one takes precedence over them all: Uncle mentioned the Architect’s knowledge of biomechanics. Did Mom share Lark’s interest?
And then the logic comes rushing in: Uncle said Perish wouldn’t receive his crown and become full grown until he had Imogen’s replacement. There’s no denying he’s king, and that he’s no longer an adolescent.
I moan, my mind snagging on that one detail, as the night we lost Lark revisits. This time, I don’t fight it; this time, I dissect it, moment by moment, to strip it down to its horrifying truth.
I let the darkness fold over and spit me into my moonlit bedroom. I jerk out of sleep, but instead of popping out of my top bunk to check on Lark, I peer from under my sheets, my muscles too heavy to move. It’s as if I’m paralyzed. I’m silent, trying to decipher the sounds that startled me awake—raspy unfamiliar voices and fluttering wings; I look past the colored pencil sketches on the wall and see the dark silhouette, hunched down, blinking two sets of eyes that spark bright with electricity.
But now, I see them clearly: it’s only one set of eyes, a glow behind the burgundy depth, with dual pupils of white. Not electric, merely luminous.
A younger Perish—devoid of metal parts, smaller, lither, and still lean, barely at the cusp of manhood—sits on the floor next to Lark’s bed, riffling through the pages of the Goblin Market book. A creature that’s half squirrel and half frog and the size of a sparrow with wings to match clambers along my sister’s sleeping form. Lark’s forehead glows with a pink hue. As I watch, I realize a matching pink fuzziness floats around me, that same pink vanilla-and-lavender-scented cloud that coaxed me to sleep in the castle, although mine has begun to evaporate.
“This one is the artist. She must be.” Perish lifts Lark’s right hand, holding it up to the moonlight to showcase the sparkling hints of glitter glue dried upon her palm and between her fingers. “See, there’s her pictures strung up. My Royal Father says you always know an artist by their medium. They wear it like a second skin.”
My Frankenstein and mummy monster sketches flap on the wall, curling in the wind, each spotted with sparkles that match Lark’s hands. What these otherworldly intruders can’t see, what they miss, is Lark’s glittery-legged mechanical doll, tucked underneath her bed. And I can’t correct them or even scream for help, because my tongue won’t move.
“Take her away, Frets,” Perish commands.
The froggish faerie shakes a furry tail in agreement. He hiccups, and his bulbous chin grows until a bubble escapes his jaws. It’s iridescent—beautiful and mesmerizing as flashes of moonlight reflect off its surface and vibrate along the walls like a strobe light. It stretches across Lark’s prone form, swallows her, then shrinks down, adjusting her size to fit it. The frog faerie uses his suction-cup fingers to capture and hold the small bubble, fluttering his wings toward the window where the screen has already been cut and waits for their escape.
The moment they leave, Perish changes—eyes hollowing, mouth gaping, skin withering and shrinking along with his limbs—as his form converts to a glamour that mirrors my sister. I whimper under the sheets, outing myself.
Perish, looking like Lark now, climbs the mattress and waves a hand, enveloping me in a fresh cloud of gauzy pink mist. “You woke a mite too soon, dear sister,” he whispers in a voice exactly like hers.
I snap myself out of the memory … the harrowing revelation creeping up under my skin. Uncle’s words last night to Jaspar in the alley: “This is the consequence of his choice, so you’ll all just have to suck it up.”
The goblin monarchy got one chance, one daughter per generation. And Perish chose wrong. He meant to get the artist, not the mechanic.
The goblins came for me that night. To carry me to the land of Faerie.
This land.
All the time I blamed myself, now I know why. It was too horrible to believe, too ghastly to be real. So I blocked it out, weaving together only a few threadbare details when I woke up from my enchanted sleep, making it something tolerable enough to accept.
Lark never had a seizure, never took a last breath. Just like it was never me inventing Mystiquiel. The name, the motifs, they originated from Lark … drawn from her memories of Astoria—while seeing it anew in my life each day through our twin lens. This became her source to create the alter-world while adding her own unique, destructive touches. In turn, I saw everything she created in dreams that I then sketched out—some of which she pooled into her own creative well and recycled for the world’s foundation.
An endless loop of shared ideas and imagery. That must mean that as Mystiquiel’s stage was being set by her conceptualizations, her likeness imprinted itself on the Motherboard’s head, easy for me to mistake as Imogen, because my twin and I look so much like our mom.
Didn’t Perish’s own words at the castle warn me? He said the Motherboard had stolen my rightful place, which made us worthy adversaries.
I sob, realizing what’s on the upper platform, crackling and hacking beneath that tarp. I know now why my heart has been breaking with each cord I snapped, the attachment I felt being severed with each cut. I’ve been killing my sister—my other half.
I lunge for the stairs, but Uncle clasps my elbow and Clarey blocks me from the step above.
“Sweetie, wait. It’s better you don’t see—”
Before Uncle can finish speaking, a gush of prismatic bubbles floats into the chamber. I use the distraction to my advantage, jerking free of Uncle and pushing Clarey aside. The enchanted spheres surround them while opening a path for me. I can’t make out the passengers inside the bubbles, but I know at least one of them is Perish … that this entire night has been an elaborate and calculated hoax to bring me here to this very moment—to fix his mistake from three years ago.
I plunge up the stairs with more brute force than I thought I had left in me. Flannie nips at the bubbles in an effort to herd them as Uncle and Clarey swat at the onslaught. Before they can make a dent, the bubbles expand, each one spitting out beefy-boned boggles in chain mail and metal helmets. The royal guard forms a barrier between the upper and lower levels, enabling me to arrive at the tarp alone. I rip the blanket away, and my soul shatters as Lark’s glassy, empty gaze meets mine. All this time, I thought my world was being drained of color, when in reality it was my sister being drained of life.