Violet keeps staring at me. It’s getting annoying, to be honest. I know she just wants to make sure I’m okay, but so many people have been staring at me since the explosion, I might as well be back on Bluehaven. They’re not unkind stares. Nobody’s shaking their head or muttering prayers of salvation. I even catch the occasional nervous smile. But it still feels weird, like I’m some sort of rare gem.
I shouldn’t be surprised. They’ve been waiting for me out here a long time. Maybe I’m not the hero they were expecting, but I’m still the girl with amber eyes. Jane Doe, formerly Cursed One. Now something altogether different.
“Here.” Violet hands me her waterskin. I’ve already finished mine. “Keep drinking.”
I take a swig. “Thanks.” Despite the water, my voice is still raspy. I’ve barely spoken since we sat down. Can’t bring myself to look Violet in the eye, let alone tell her what’s on my mind.
“I’d grab you something to eat, but rations are low,” she says. “I think there was a cache of food, water, and supplies hidden in the shipwreck they were counting on, but—”
“I blew it up.”
“Yep.” Violet keeps gaping at the smoldering wreck. We’ve set up camp a short hike away. “I can’t believe you blew something up without me.” She flashes me a smile. “But it’s fine. You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”
“Not sure everyone agrees with you,” I say, nodding across the camp.
Elsa hasn’t stopped ranting: at the horses for munching too loudly on their hay, at her waterskin for being empty, at the poor chump who spilled a drop of booze when he refilled it, and the suns for taking too long to set. She didn’t say a word when the Arakaanians found me. She just looked me up and down with her watery eyes. Face weathered, unreadable. Skin like tough, tanned leather, cured by the suns. Then she leapt off her horse and started barking orders. Understandable, really—I’d just blown her secret place to pieces. All those etchings of her baby boy are lost now, buried under a mountain of metal.
“She hates me,” I say.
Violet screws up her face. “Actually, I think she hates everyone. Except maybe him.” She nods at Lazy Eye, the guy who grabbed me out by the gateway yesterday. Bald head. Dark skin. Permanent scowl. He’s sitting on a mat near Elsa, staring at us. “His name’s Yaku. Elsa’s right-hand man. Doesn’t say much, but he can understand us. I think she’s taught him our language.”
I nod at the rest of the Arakaanians in the group: twenty-odd men, women, and children. Some are black-skinned, some are brown-skinned, some have skin almost as white as the salt and wear long, hooded robes to shield themselves from the blazing suns. Some are bald, like Yaku. Some have shags of flyaway hair or fancy braids.
“And them?”
Violet shrugs. “Scavengers. Warriors. Survivors.”
Similar to the folk of Bluehaven, I guess. People from all corners of a ruined world.
A few of them are assembling makeshift tents of ragged cloth. Others are lounging back on the salt, using their saddles as pillows, enjoying this sweet spot between day and night, oblivious to Elsa’s ranting. They seem peaceful enough, but can we trust them?
“Reckon they’re telling the truth about Hickory? They didn’t . . . you know. Kill him?”
Violet hugs her knees to her chest. Frowns at Yaku. “He’s the one who tortured him. Nearly broke both his arms. And Elsa just sat there, asking questions about you and the key. It was terrible, but . . . well, I guess they couldn’t take any chances.” She shakes her head. “I may not like them, but we’re still on the same side, right? Elsa told me Hickory’s alive. Promised. She said they sent him ahead to some kind of outpost at the edge of the mountains, to get his wounds looked at by some healers. We’re stopping there tomorrow, on our way to the canyon city.”
I look to the west. In the Manor, I told Hickory I’d banish him from the group when we found Elsa, but now that we’re here? Now that we know she isn’t my mom? Now that we’ve seen what she’s become? At this rate, she’s gonna drink herself to death before we make it back to the Manor.
“I don’t think we can win this without him, Violet.”
“I know,” she says softly. “We’ll get him back.”
The salt pan glows a vibrant pink as the setting suns hover above the horizon, not to the west but to the south. Different world, different rules.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I say. “Last night, I mean. And I’m sorry I ran off.”
“Elsa said the storms can get so bad out here the sand can tear flesh from bone,” Violet says. “I wanted to head out and find you right away, but she wouldn’t let me. Had to tie me up again to make sure I stayed put.” She looks down at her knees. “I thought I’d lost you, Jane.”
I stare at her, heart hammering away in my chest.
She stares right back.
Then she punches me in the shoulder. Hard.
“Ouch!”
“Don’t ever do that again. This is a big, old world, and it’s just as dangerous as the Manor. Who knows what’s out there?”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“Not good enough.” She points at me. Pretty much jabs her finger into my nose. “No more running. Unless we’re being chased or something. Then you can run. But you have to make sure I’m with you. At all times. Deal?”
Even though my shoulder’s killing me, I smile. “Deal.”
“You should probably apologize to Elsa, too.”
“Yeah,” I say, “I know.” On the other side of camp, Elsa shouts a final insult at her horse and passes out. “Maybe once she sobers up a bit.”
I yawn. Desperately need some shut-eye, but my head’s pounding, and the gash in my palm’s packed with grit from my tumble down the dune. I scratch at the skin around it and wince.
“Here,” Violet says, “let me take a look.”
“It’s fine.”
Violet tuts at me, grabs my hand. “We should clean it at least.”
Her grip’s firm but soft. She’s concentrating so hard she chews on her tongue, and for the briefest of moments the desert disappears. We could be anywhere, sitting side by side in a perfect Otherworld of our own. No salt pan, no Arakaanians, no dangerous mission. It’s nice.
Violet blows gently on my hand and brushes a few specks of sand away. “Looks infected. Don’t worry, I bet there’s some sort of special cactus out here that can heal wounds. Desert folk are all over that stuff, from what I’ve read. We can ask Hickory’s healers tomorrow.”
Assuming they really exist.
Violet grabs her waterskin and douses my hand. When she wipes some of the dirt clear, her skin brushes mine. This time, an electric fuzzy-buzz darts up my arm, across my chest and deep down into my gut. It’s strange and thrilling, and it makes me feel safe—protected—for the first time since I don’t know when.
Before I can stop them, the words come spilling out. “How am I gonna do this, Violet? It’s all so . . . big.”
“You do it step by step,” Violet says. “Eat your elephant in small pieces.”
I look around the camp, horrified. “Wait, we’re having elephant for dinner? I didn’t know there were elephants here—”
“It’s a saying, doofus. Means don’t look at the big picture. Tackle things bit by bit, one problem at a time. First, we get to this outpost and find Hickory.”
“And then?”
“We head to the secret canyon city—whatever it’s called—and grab the second key.”
“And then?”
“We cross the dune sea to Roth’s gateway and get back inside the Manor—”
“Somehow bypassing an entire army standing in our way.”
“—and then,” Violet pushes on, “we find the Cradle, which should be much easier now that we have Elsa. After all, she’s the one who found it before.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “Then I just have to stand on the foundation stone in the center of the Cradle Sea, somehow heal the entire Manor before Roth destroys it completely, defeat Roth, and save my dad.” I shake my head. “What if we get inside the Cradle and I still don’t know what to do? Or what if we figure it out, but I mess it up and kill everyone?”
Violet dabs my hand dry with a corner of her robe. “You’re not going to kill everyone.”
“How do you know?”
“Because despite what people say, you’re smart, capable and definitely not evil.”
“I lost control yesterday, Violet. Back in the Manor . . .” I bite my lip. I still haven’t told her about the Specter. How it found me in the water and wrapped its tendrils of light over my hand. How I asked it to help me, and it did. At least, I think it did. It didn’t Grip me, anyway. But why? Because the Makers left the Specters behind to protect me? Because they’re bound to me, just as they’re bound to the Cradle? I suppose Violet figures I simply got away from the thing, and that’s fine by me. The Specters are monsters. If I’m connected to them, what does that make me?
“I tore that corridor apart,” I say. “If the gateway hadn’t been there, we would’ve drowned.”
“But it was there,” Violet says. “And you opened it. You saved us, Jane.”
I remember it all so clearly. Almost drowning after the Specter fled. Waking up to see Violet leaning over me. I grabbed her knife, sliced open my palm and slammed it onto the stone. That was when the power got away from me. When everything fell apart. I can still feel it: every crack, every tremor. It was terrifying, and it hurt, but—as odd as it sounds—for a second there it felt incredible. Part of me liked it, part of me wanted more, and that’s the scariest part of all.
I shake my head. “We got lucky. I’m telling you, I’m not ready for this.”
Violet tears a strip of material from her robe and wraps it around my palm. “Think about it this way. What do we know about the Makers? Who are they? How did they create the Manor?”
“I’m tired, Violet. I don’t feel like rehashing every little—”
“Trust me,” she says. “It’ll help, I promise. Go on. Tell me.”
“Well,” I rattle off the story as it comes to mind, “long, long ago, the Otherworlds were violent, chaotic places. Then Po, Aris, and Nabu-kai met. The Gatekeeper, the Builder, and the Scribe. The Makers. Po could travel between worlds, Aris could create and shape stone, and Nabu-kai could see into the future. He was sort of like the grand architect, I guess. He foresaw it all. The Manor’s halls and booby traps. The corridors and gateways, and the paths of everyone who’d walk through them. Together, they brought his vision to life—they created the Manor—and it bound and stabilized the Otherworlds.”
Violet nods, and ties the bandage off. “But in order for life to truly begin . . .”
“They had to clear the Otherworlds of the old Gods of Chaos. So they tricked them. Told them about the Manor, opened every gateway, and let them into the Cradle, the enormous chamber at the core of it all.”
“And once inside, their combined energies clashed and swirled and formed the Cradle Sea, a source of terrible, unmatched power that could raze entire worlds if unleashed!”
“Really not helping the nerves, Violet.”
“Sorry,” she says. “But it’s true. And what happened next?”
“Well, the Makers knew they’d have to join the Gods of Chaos, but instead of becoming part of the Sea, they poured their energy, their life force, into the foundation stone—the first stone laid down by Aris—sitting in the center of the Cradle, to bind and protect the Sea.”
Violet nods. “But before they did that?”
“Well, they left two keys in the Manor to open the Cradle—”
“And a third—you—inside the Cradle to protect it,” Violet says. She smiles, soft and reassuring. “See? As weird and daunting and scary as it sounds, you’re part of the Manor, Jane. You were literally made for this. Born for this. Trust that. Trust them.”
I huff out a breath. “Trust the Makers.”
“They gave you this connection to the Manor for a reason. You said it yourself. The Makers poured their life force into the foundation stone.” She nods at my wounded hand. “If you get to the stone and make the connection, maybe it’ll amplify your powers. Focus them. Open up a direct line between you and the Manor. Between you and the Makers themselves.”
I trace my thumb over the bandage. “You reckon I’ll be able to . . . talk to them?”
“Well, I doubt you’ll have a lengthy chat over a cup of tea, but maybe they’ll be there for you. In essence, spirit, whatever you want to call it. Maybe they’ll guide you.”
“That’s a lot of maybes.”
“I know everything seems overwhelming, Jane. I know it’s unfair. We’re outnumbered. Outgunned. Outside. The fate of all worlds shouldn’t rest on the shoulders of a fourteen-year-old girl, but it does.” Violet pauses. “Well, technically, you’re not fourteen.”
“Technically, I’m not a girl. I’m a key.”
“The point is, you’ll find a way. We will find a way. How do we find the Cradle? How do we save the Manor? How do we rescue your dad? Answers will come, and when they do?” She smiles at me. “You’ll be unstoppable.”
And there it is. The word that frightens me more than any other.
Unstoppable.