She smirks demurely at me, quite aware of her pathetic appearance.
“Oh, Pen,” I say. “Where have you hidden that strong girl I so adore?”
“I killed her,” she says, and smirks into her tea.
I take the cup away and set it on the nightstand. “I worry you’ll catch a fever from that icy water,” I say, and fit the blanket that’s wrapped around her shoulders.
She raises her arm so that I can climb in with her.
“Be careful,” she says. “I keep a knife in that pillowcase.”
“Why?”
“Because I would be a fool not to.”
I peel back the edge of the pillowcase, and sure enough I see the hilt of a kitchen knife under the pillow. She’s taken every precaution against this world, but none against her greatest threat—herself.
She can sense my frown and she fixes her eyes on me.
“You scared me half to death, I’ll have you know,” I say. “I can’t have you swallowed up by the sea.”
“Or a shark,” she says, resting her head on my shoulder.
“Not without warning the shark you’re coming for it first,” I say, and she gives a small laugh.
“Every time I blink, I see water,” she says. “Can you stay with me? I feel I’ll drift away if I have nothing to hold on to.”
“Of course,” I say. She wriggles her fingers between mine. “But I am furious with you. You’ll never make it up to me.”
“You won’t hold me to it. Your heart’s too good for that.”
“I’m not the one you should worry about,” I say. “You ought to console your betrothed.”
She drapes her arm over her eyes. “He was a fool to follow me,” she says. “And I have no ring to show I was ever his. He could leave me anytime it strikes his fancy.”
“I won’t hear this kind of talk tonight,” I say. “I can still smell the tonic on you.”
“They don’t call it tonic here,” she says, adding a flourish when she says, “It’s alcohol. Or absinthe, or gin.”
“Whatever you call it. We agreed, Pen. And you could have drowned.”
“You’re starting to bore me,” she says.
“Fine.” I untangle myself from the blanket. “Sleep alone, then.”
She grabs my wrist. “Don’t be that way,” she says. “Come on. If you leave, Thomas will come in, and I feel just awful about my ring.”
“He doesn’t care about the ring.” I let her tug me back down to her side. “You didn’t see that look in his eyes when you were pulled from the water.”
I don’t know if the magnitude of my words reaches her, but for the first time all evening, she looks truly sorry. “I can’t face him. Not tonight. You’re the only one I can stand to be around. Please just stay.”
I ease her back against the mattress and I tuck the blanket around her.
She closes her eyes. “It was an accident,” she says. “I know that I’m forever giving him a hard time about things, but I’ve never once removed that ring. I wouldn’t.”
“He knows that,” I say. “We’ll find it, Pen.”
She yawns. “Turn out the light, would you?”
I do as she asks, and I lie beside her.
The moon burns through the curtains. Waxing gibbous. An unblinking eye.
“The day that my mother told me your whole family was dead, I ran upstairs to your apartment,” Pen says. “The door was open. She might have tried to stop me—I scarcely remember—but she couldn’t. I went to your bedroom and I saw all of your things just as you’d placed them, and I couldn’t breathe. My parents had to drag me away, and I remember I was screaming all the while.”
“Pen, let’s not—”
“I know you feel guilty that I was brought along. But I want to tell you that it’s for the best that I was. Internment or Havalais, or the dark spaces between the stars, I couldn’t face any world without you.”
I close my eyes, but I can still see that moon in my eyelids. This world nearly killed Pen tonight, and here she’s trying to console me.
“We’ve both scared each other, then, and now we’re even,” I say. “That’s why we must both be more careful.”
“So we can live to be a hundred,” she says.
“And see men walk on the moon.”
“Morgan?” she says. Her voice is hoarse and tired. “Have you asked anything at all of the god in the sky since we left Internment?”
“Only that we wouldn’t die as we were spiraling away from it,” I say. “Do you think the god of the sky would hear us from down here?”
“Lately I wonder if the god of the sky even heard us when we were in the sky,” she says.
The words are so unlike her. Our belief systems no longer aligned after Lex’s incident, and I would often find myself wishing she could at least be curious about the world beyond our own, to question the things I questioned, but now it breaks my heart to see her losing the faith she’s always been able to hold on to.
“I was reading the tourism book in the lobby,” I say. “There’s something called a church, where people down here go when they need to feel close to their god. Supposedly there’s one nearby that’s historical. We could go, if you’d like.”
“I read about it, too,” she says. “I just don’t know, Morgan. I think I’d like to sleep now. I’m quite tired.”
We say nothing more. After a while, her breaths come rhythmically. I stare at the ceiling and I hope the god in the sky can hear me asking for her safety. In this whole great world, and in all the space between here and Internment, I can think of no one who needs him more. Not even the princess, who has descended forever from her kingdom.
What feels like hours later, the door creaks. A sliver of light widens; it stretches just far enough to reach Pen’s pale hair.
Thomas whispers her name.
“She’s asleep,” I say.
“In that case, Morgan, a word. If you don’t mind.”
This doesn’t bode well. Thomas rarely has cause to speak to me unless Pen is between us. But she’s in a sleep so heavy, she may as well be gone; she doesn’t stir as I climb away and move out to the hall.
Thomas closes the bedroom door, taking care to hold the knob so it doesn’t make much noise.
The low light exaggerates the shadows under his eyes. His hair is still damp, and it hangs heavy on his face. Heavy like his shoulders and the breath he draws before he speaks. “Don’t you think these games have gone on long enough?”
“Games?” I say.
“The sneaking out until all hours. The drinking. Did you think my silence meant I was unaware? I know Pen like I know the back of my hand.”
I’ve barely had anything to drink this evening, but my stomach is churning as though I’ve downed a bottle of gin. “It isn’t a game.” It isn’t much of an argument, and my voice falters. “We’ve only needed to cope—”
“What you need,” he interrupts, “is to stop behaving like children. What Pen needs is to be away from this wretched place. It’s slowly draining the life out of her. Surely you can see that.”
I open my mouth, but I have no words. He’s right; I’ve been denying it for some time. He isn’t the only one who knows Pen well; he’s always been betrothed to her, but she and I were born the same week, in the same ward of the hospital, and the longest distance between us has only ever been a flight of stairs.
And to really know Pen, to understand her fears, all one has to do is meet her mother when she’s inebriated, which is always.
“What happened to her this evening is on you,” Thomas says. “You dragged us all down here.” He presses his finger between his brows, closes his eyes. “She could have died, and it would have been your fault. And we wouldn’t have even been able to send her off properly to the tributary. She would have been gone forever, just gone.”
It’s a bomb to the chest, the truth. Her blue, parted mouth. My fault. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“You’ve lost your parents, and I’m sorry
for that. I know you don’t mean anyone harm. But my betrothed’s life is not a price I’m willing to pay for this pilgrimage you’re on. If you care about her at all, you will find a way to get her home.”
This is a strikingly intimate side of him. He has always doted on Pen, endured her jabs, flicked her hair and prattled on and on to her about his favorite novels while she rolled her eyes. But tonight he pulled her lifeless body from an ocean of mermaids and sharks, and it ignited the love he’s had for her all his life—a love that is brutal in its sincerity.
“Thomas, I didn’t want her dragged into this world with me.”
“Yes, but she was,” he says. He’s looking at me, and in his eyes I see some mix of anger and sympathy. “Wherever you go, she follows you, one way or another. Even if it isn’t what she wants.”
I have also followed Pen to places I didn’t want to go, but I don’t say that.
He leaves me alone, fist to my chest, heart hammering beneath it. He’s said aloud my darkest fear, that I have made the wrong decision to keep what I know about the glasslands a secret.
My parents died to get away from King Furlow’s domain. That was their choice. They understood the risks and they took them.
But Pen asked for none of this. She is still alive. I can still bring her home.
I wake several times in the night to be sure Pen hasn’t drifted away in the sea.
Safe, I tell myself. She’s safe.
Unconsciously she rolls her head toward mine. We have always looked after each other, Pen and me.
Thomas is right. There’s no fighting it. Away from Internment, she’s like one of the flowers in the lobby. Snipped from its roots, it can only die.
13
When I awaken, the princess’s bed is empty and still neatly made. In an act of mercy, she found someplace else to sleep and granted Pen a much needed night free of aggravation. Though it could be that she needed a break from Pen as well. I’m more mediator than roommate to those two.
The hotel is silent as I make my way down the stairs. Everyone is asleep.
I open the front door, letting in a draft and the chirping of insects. Hopping songstresses. Down here they call them crickets. And paces are miles, and lengths are feet, and pages are dollars, and colors are paints.
But wind is still wind, and the moon is still the moon, bright in the sky even as morning adds bits of gold under the clouds.
I step outside, and though this world isn’t mine, it greets me just the same. I shall miss it if I’m forced to go. I’m not a fugitive here, or a fugitive’s daughter. If I were to return to the sky, I wonder what the king would do to me. The princess likes me, so that’s something, and once I tell her about the phosane, she’ll be so happy to go home that she’ll tell her father to show mercy. I like to think we’re becoming friends.
But then there are the others to consider. Judas can never go back. Lex would be furious if he knew what I’m planning. But Pen would be livid, not for her own sake, but for the sake of the city. She would hate me. She will hate me.
A rustle overhead makes me look up. A bird flutters away from its branch. I hear a little giggle in the leaves.
“You’ve picked a good one,” I call up. “I’ve never seen a tree this high on Internment.”
“Quite limitless down here, isn’t it?” Amy peeks forward, revealing her face.
“Do you think Daphne would have liked it here, then?” I ask.
She retreats back into the leaves, only to reemerge in another spot moments later. “Yes,” she says. “Thank you for asking. No one ever asks about my sister anymore.”
I watch a rodent scurry across the grass. Birdie says they all start coming out once the snow is gone. The warmth has done a world of good for Amy, too. She hasn’t had a fit in days.
“How’s your friend?” she asks.
“Pen? She’s better now.”
“I like her,” Amy says. “She says things most people aren’t brave enough to say, doesn’t she?”
Light is beginning to touch the water. From here it’s an endless trove of clear gems, as though the mermaids have released their treasures and they’re all floating on the surface. Though, I have learned that beautiful things can be dangerous in this place.
“The sea to the people down here is like the sky to us,” I say. “Every world must have something that seems infinite.”
“Every world has its own gods.” Amy is scaling the branches on her way down. “That’s what Daphne would say. She’d find that part fascinating.” She hops to the ground. “But you didn’t come here to talk to me about the sea or my sister, did you?”
“I didn’t know you’d be out here at all,” I say. “I only came to think.”
“Think about what?” She sits beside me and leans against the tree. “I’m a great listener. I’m nothing at all like Judas.”
She’s right about that. If Judas knew what I was planning, he would have my head.
“I’m about to do something that can’t be undone,” I say. “I was always going to make this decision. I see that now. I was only waiting for the proper moment, when it became a matter of life and death.”
“Life and death?” she says.
I hesitate. “What do you think would happen if we were to return to the sky?” I say.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t think it would be as though we never left it. The king has surely covered for our disappearances now. Told everyone we were killed, made an example of us to keep people afraid of the ground.”
I roll the back of my head against the tree so that I’m looking at her. “It would really shake things up if we returned, wouldn’t it?”
“Very much.” I can’t tell if that’s a smile on her face. She looks concerned. “You know a way back, don’t you?”
“King Ingram says that they’ll develop the right sort of plane that can reach Internment eventually. Perhaps years from now, assuming it ever becomes a priority. But I might know a way to speed things along.”
I’ve begun to twist my betrothal band around my finger. Sunstone. Phosane. In one world, it’s as mundane as glass. In another world, it’s precious enough to start a war.
Amy hugs her knees. “You can’t tell Judas. He’d try to stop you.”
“So would just about everyone else,” I say. “Basil would say it’s too dangerous. Lex would say there’s nothing left for us there. Pen would say that this world would destroy Internment. The professor would, too. With the exception of the princess and Thomas, everyone would try to stop me.”
“I wouldn’t,” Amy says.
“Do you miss home?” I say.
“Oh yes. I hadn’t expected to. I miss my parents, even if they aren’t the affectionate sort, really. And I miss Wesley. Quite much, actually. We were to be together for the rest of our lives.” She tugs at the betrothal band still hanging from a chain around her neck. She slides her finger through it, and it doesn’t fit, not yet, but soon it will. “I’m beginning to understand what that means now. I didn’t before.”
I cant my head to the sky. I can see Internment as a shadow behind a cloud. “I fear what’s to become of us all,” I say. “We may be doomed whether we stay here or return.”
“We were cursed, remember,” Amy says. “We were meant to stay interned in the sky, and we broke the deal.”
Cursed, yes. Even if I mean well, like Thomas said, there is the promise that we’ll all be doomed somehow. It’s in our history book.
I lean against Amy, and she puts her arm around my shoulder and pats my head, like I’m a child.
“What would Daphne have me do?” I say.
“The boldest thing imaginable,” she says. “Always.”
Bold. Yes.
So strange, the way a dead girl’s voice is carried on the breeze of a world she has never seen.
Pen sleeps through breakfast. I keep my head down to avoid Thomas’s glances from across the table. Basil frets. Annette asks if I saw any whales and Riles tells her not to
be so dense.
The plates are collected and everyone scatters off in different directions. Birdie and Nimble invite me to go fishing with them, but I’ve had enough sea for a lifetime. Basil asks if I’d like to go for a walk into the city, but I’m afraid I’ll end up telling him about the phosane and he’ll try to stop me, so I tell him I’m going to read in bed, which of course makes him worry even more. “Or maybe I’ll take my book outside,” I say. “I haven’t decided.”
We’re standing in the hallway outside his room, and for the moment we’re alone. “Are you certain you’re all right?” he says. “Nothing you’d like to tell me?”
My mouth is dry. “Like what?”
“You’ve got that look about you,” he says. “You had it for days after your brother jumped.”
“Pen scared me about as much as my brother did,” I say. It isn’t the whole truth, but at least it is the truth.
“She’s all right now,” Basil says. “Isn’t she?”
It isn’t true, and I sense that he knows it. The water isn’t the only thing that threatens to pull Pen below the surface.
“She’s not the only one I’m worried about,” I say. “This place is doing something to all of us. I’ll never understand why you followed me here. You don’t even seem angry about it.”
“I am angry,” he says. “I’m angry about a lot of things.”
“But not with me?”
“Never with you.”
He’s staring at my open mouth and I know he’s waiting for me to tell my secrets. I think he’s the loveliest creature to have ever been born, the way he cares for me.
“Do you suppose there’s anything I could do that would make you change your mind?” I say. “About not being mad at me.”
“I’m certain there isn’t.”
“There’s something I have to do now.” I take a deep breath and exhale the words, “Trust me?”