“They might,” she said again. “So you’d do best to come with me.”
There was something terrifying about her—glowing and beautiful and looming over them—but there was something else about her, too; something in her eyes. This woman had felt true pain before, and somehow Alice knew this was true.
Again, Alice thought of Ancilly.
Ancilly, whose song had saved their life.
I saw a lady reach for me
She told me not to fear
I saw a lady speak to me
She told me help was here
“Who are you?” Alice finally managed to ask.
“I am Isal,” she said. She did not blink. “Would you like to die?”
“No,” Oliver said quickly; Alice could hear his heart quicken. “Of course we wouldn’t.”
“Then come with me,” she said, and turned away.
As she walked, she left a trail of golden leaves behind, like a snail that could not help but make a map of its travels. But Isal was no snail; that much was obvious, and Alice envied her steady, quiet strength. She wanted to follow her.
And anyway, they had no other choices.
She and Oliver marched along behind her, sending each other sideways glances that did little more than remind them that they were not alone. They followed Isal deep, deep into the maze of the woods, but walking wasn’t without its challenges: The forest floor was zigzagged by giant trunks of gigantic trees, the tops of which made up the land of Left. The roots that covered the forest floor were monstrously large; they were among the widest and tallest Alice would ever see; these trunks were thicker than most homes. As she and Oliver did their best to scramble over the mountain-sized roots, Alice was suddenly grateful for Isal’s colorful cloak—without it, they’d have lost her long ago.
Finally, they reached a small clearing where a dilapidated cottage had been shoved unceremoniously against a tree trunk wider than the cottage itself. The home was simply made; the exterior whitewashed a dull shade. There were two windows cut into a wall not obscured by the tree, but the glass looked dingy and yellow, like the ancient windows had never seen a breeze.
Tall, wild grass grew up the sides of the house, and the roof looked like it’d collapsed a bit, right in the middle, and Alice could see why: Five forevergreen trees had planted themselves on top of the cottage, nearly suffocating the slanted brick chimney, while haphazardly grown tufts of grass and roots gripped the roof in a proprietary fist. This home seemed to have been planted here. It was as if it had grown in and within the forest itself.
Isal opened the front door and turned to face them. “You may come inside.”
But Alice and Oliver hesitated.
“Who are you?” Oliver said.
Isal stepped forward. “I am Isal,” she said.
“Yes, but that doesn’t help us at all, does it?” said Oliver.
Isal looked confused. “Your companion is wearing my designs,” she said to him. “And yet you do not know who I am?”
“The seamstress,” Alice whispered.
Isal nodded at Alice. “Yes,” she said, before looking away. There was a stroke of sadness in her eyes. “I was the seamstress. I am not anymore.”
Alice was too struck to speak. There was so much to be afraid of—so much to be concerned about in that moment—but Alice couldn’t help but be awed by the woman standing before her. Isal, even in her loneliness—even in her sadness—was entirely too elegant to be real. She was everything Alice had ever hoped to be: strong, brave, dignified. And yet, Isal was here. A gem, buried in the forest.
An outcast.
Alice felt a kind of kinship with this stranger and she couldn’t find the words to explain why.
Isal stepped forward and touched the feathers on Alice’s dress. “I remember this gown,” she said softly. “It took me two years to collect enough featherlilies to finish the collar.” She dropped her hand. “Ancilly sent word that you were coming.”
“She sent word?” Alice said. “But—”
“She was my apprentice many years ago,” Isal said. “Long before I was pushed off the branch.”
“So they really pushed you off the branch?” Oliver said, aghast. “Why?”
Isal finally blinked.
“Fifty-six years ago,” she said, “when we’d had our last visitor—a young girl, not much older than you,” she said to Alice, “I tried to warn her away. I knew that ultimately, she would be sacrificed for the queens.” Isal looked away. “I did not agree with the queens’ methods, and my actions were not appreciated. I was considered a traitor, and pushed off the branch.”
Alice’s eyes went impossibly wide.
“So they thought you would die,” Oliver said.
Isal nodded. “But there is great magic at the bottom of the trees, and it does not wish to do harm. I have been safe here.”
“Do they know?” Oliver asked, gesturing to the sky, to the land of Left. “Do they know it’s safe down here?”
“They suspect it might be,” she said. “But they do not know for certain. So we must hurry. We do not know if they will come looking for you. Please,” she said. “Come inside. I can help you.”
“But you say you’ve been here all this time,” Alice said nervously. “And yet you’ve never been discovered. How can we trust that your story is true? What if you’re working with everyone else? What if we step inside your house only to be stuffed in an oven?”
Isal smiled a strange, sad smile and pulled back her hood. Her golden hair, no longer framed by the yellow of her cloak, was dimmer now. Desaturated. She looked almost as white as Alice did, pale on pale; all color sapped from her skin. And when she spoke, she spoke only to Oliver. “Perhaps you should trust a friend who looks like one.”
Oliver couldn’t shake off his shock. “How did you know?” he said. “How did you know my Tibbin?”
Isal considered him carefully. “Furthermore is only occasionally as helpful as it pretends to be,” she said. “All Tibbins are created purposely—in conjunction with Furthermore citizens —and in accordance with the happenstance of your path through this land. The moment you arrived, your future was measured, hypotheses were made, and I was sent notification of my role in your journey. Now that you’re here, I’m tasked with providing you one piece of advice that will aid you in the rest of your excursion. Once the help is received, my bit is done.”
Alice and Oliver were stunned.
“We are never allowed to speak of our roles in all this,” Isal said, “but as I gave up on my loyalty to Furthermore long ago, I don’t see the harm in telling you. But to deny a Tibbin is a moral offense, not a legal one, and so I am honor bound to assist you.” She bowed her head forward an inch, and let her eyes rest on Alice’s and Oliver’s slack-jawed expressions. “No one has ever found me, you know.”
“Yes,” Oliver said, and looked around. “I can imagine.”
“No,” said Isal. “You don’t understand. A Tibbin pinned to me is most ungenerous. Left is a land long forgotten, and I, Isal, am the most unremembered of them all.” She paused, studying the two of them carefully. “Assigning a Tibbin to me means the Elders were never trying to help you. In fact, it’s likely they expected you to fail many moves ago. That you were clever enough to find me means that you are close to achieving what you desire. But tread carefully; the Elders cannot be happy about this.”
Alice and Oliver swallowed their fear and said nothing.
“Now,” said Isal, and clasped her hands. “I have more than answered all your questions. So I must insist, for the final time, that you come inside. If you stand here a moment longer I will not be responsible for your deaths.”
Alice and Oliver stumbled after Isal into her humble home, hearts racing in unison. Furthermore was meaner and twistier than even Oliver had imagined. They knew for certain now that their every move
had been mapped and choreographed; the odds had been deliberately stacked against them. Their combined talents had kept them alive just long enough to move from one village to another, but the longer they stayed in Furthermore, the faster their luck would run out, and they would have to be sharper than ever if they were to have any hope of surviving the rest of their journey. They were now fugitives, on the run.
And both Tibbins had been spent.
Alice was shaken back to the present as she walked into the organized chaos of Isal’s home. Her cottage was little more than a glorified storage box. Every inch of wall space was covered in ornately framed oil paintings—“All my things were saved and pushed off the branch by dear Ancilly,” she’d said—while the interior square footage was set aside for her sewing supplies. Pins and needles and spools of thread and endless bolts of luscious fabrics were stacked up to the ceiling. Dress forms, boxes of jewels and baskets of feathers were arranged in tidy rows. Her home was small, but it was colorful and clean, and once they’d stepped fully inside, Isal removed her cape.
Isal managed to be beautiful in entirely her own way. She wore soft blue silks that draped around and across her body, and they made her look like a barely remembered dream: blurred at the edges and impossible to grasp. It was the first time Alice had ever thought a pale person could be beautiful, and it gave her great hope. Isal was not like Alice, not entirely, for she had depths of gold, even in her paleness, but even so, she looked very different from everyone back home in Ferenwood.
“So,” Isal said abruptly, “you are looking for a painter.”
“Yes,” Oliver said, startled. “How did you know?”
Isal narrowed her eyes at Oliver like he might be a bit bent in the head. “Your friend is missing an arm.”
“Right,” he said quickly. “Right, of course.”
“And you are certain,” Isal said, “that this is the one piece of information you seek? There is no greater question you’d care to ask?”
Alice’s heart kicked into gear. She looked frantically at Oliver. Would this be their only chance to ask for help? Shouldn’t they use it to ask about Father?
“Oliver,” she said, “don’t you think—”
“This is not your decision,” Isal said swiftly. She gave Alice a look that was not exactly unkind, but a bit cold. “It’s not your Tibbin to interfere.”
“But—”
“I’m certain,” Oliver said firmly. “We need to get her arm fixed.”
“Oliver, please—”
“We can still do both,” he said to her, taking her only hand. “I promise, Alice. We’ll find a way. Even if we have to start all over again. But before we do anything else, you’re getting your arm back.”
Alice swallowed hard. She was nearly in tears.
“Very good,” Isal said. “Your solution is simple. Pick any painting”—she gestured to her walls—“and step inside.”
Oliver’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s all?”
Isal nodded.
Alice and Oliver looked at each other, faces breaking into smiles, relief flooding through their veins.
“Alright,” Oliver said, grinning up to his ears. He looked over the paintings. “How about—oh, I don’t know—how’s this one?” he said to Alice.
Isal stepped in front of him. “Choose wisely,” she said. “If the painter refuses to let you enter his home, you will remain here,” she said, touching the canvas, “in the painting of your choosing.”
“What?” said Oliver.
“For how long?” said Alice.
“Forever,” Isal said.
Sudden horror buckled Alice’s knees.
“What do you mean?” Oliver demanded. “What nonsense is this? Why didn’t you tell us there was a catch before you gave us our answer? You said the solution was simple,” he said, his neck going red with anger.
“It is not my job to protect you from the consequences of your own questions,” Isal said unkindly. “You wanted to know how to find a painter. I told you how to find one. My duty is done.”
“But—”
Suddenly the ground groaned and the walls shook; just outside the window a storm of yellow leaves had thrown itself against the glass. Alice knew instantly that it was a sign. Those were the leaves Isal had left behind, and now they’d come to find her.
“They’re here,” Isal said softly, staring at nothing as she spoke. And in the time it took Alice and Oliver to catch their breath, there were four knocks at the door: one for every set of knuckles, which meant four people were waiting outside.
Alice knew they wouldn’t be polite for very long.
Isal grabbed her cloak. “Choose wisely,” she whispered. “Choose wisely, and good luck.”
Oliver met Alice’s eyes in a sudden panic, and she knew there was no time to deliberate. She took Oliver’s hand, scanned the frames for a scene that reminded her most of home and love and Father, and pushed their clasped hands through the painting.
It really was that simple.
Their bodies were sucked through by a force Alice could not name, and soon they were pulled and pushed through a tightness that squeezed their chests until she was sure they would burst, and when Alice next opened her eyes, she and Oliver were standing in what looked like an ancient prison cell; it smelled like mold and rust, the ceiling so low Oliver was forced to stoop.
The two of them didn’t even have a chance to panic before a slim panel in the wall was forced open, letting a slice of light slip through. Alice squinted against the brightness.
“What’s your business?” a voice barked at them. It sounded distinctly male, but there was no way to be certain.
“I-I’ve come to fix my arm,” said Alice nervously. “I heard you were a p—”
“Which arm is it?” the stranger snapped.
“My right.”
The man grunted, but said no more.
“Please,” she said. “Please help us—”
The panel slammed shut.
Alice was nearly in tears with worry.
This was their last chance, and she didn’t know what they’d do if the painter didn’t allow them clearance to pass. And no sooner had she begun to wonder whether the painter wouldn’t simply leave them in that cell to die, when one of the cell walls swung open, and she and Oliver were ejected unceremoniously into a foot of fresh snow.
Once she shook the snow out of her eyes, Alice tried to take in their surroundings; but no matter how many times she blinked, she couldn’t get the colors to come into focus. The trouble was, there were no colors here at all.
It was like a scene clipped from a newspaper and made whole unto itself. They were in the middle of an eerily flat, snowy landscape, not a single tree in sight, and every shade and shadow was a variation on white and black. Compared to this world, Alice was practically neon, and her whiteness seemed suddenly nuanced, layered: its own kind of color. Where she and Oliver felt real and full of life, everything in this world looked drab and dim and, frankly, a little dead. It was as though all color had been snuffed out, sapped of life, and in its place were gray skies, gray wind, gray cold. Before them and beyond them was absolutely nothing, save one single, solitary structure:
A giant half globe, made entirely of gray glass.
Its contents were spare, but visually arresting: the pops of black that made up the furniture contrasted starkly against the very white snow, making for a stunning, simple presentation of beauty in contrasts.
More romantic still: It was snowing.
Confetti flakes fell from the sky, piling up all around them and frosting the top of the gray-glass globe. It looked like a lost ornament, fallen and frozen in the snow of a holiday season. The more Alice looked at this black-and-white scene, the more she began to appreciate the subtleties of light and shadow, and though Alice eventually found it quite lovely, it was also entir
ely foreign to her. They were not in the painting she’d chosen—the painting she’d chosen had been rich in autumnal colors—which had to mean that they’d not been refused access to the painter.
They’d not been refused.
Oh, the shock of it. Alice thought she might scream.
So she did just that. She fell back in the snow and she shouted for joy and she grabbed Oliver’s arm and said, “This isn’t the painting I picked—this isn’t the one! The one I picked was in a meadow, and it was autumn, and there were leaves on the ground, and there were little homes everywhere, and, oh, Oliver,” she said. “We made it!”
Oliver sat down beside her, looking solemn but kind, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Yes,” he said softly. “I daresay we have.”
They hugged, he and she, for a very long time, just clinging to each other, happy to be alive; grateful to have survived yet another stage of Furthermore. It was starting to wear on them now, nearly dying all the time. Alice promised herself that if they made it back to Ferenwood she would never again complain about a lack of adventure. She would be perfectly happy with a walk to the town square and a peek at the boats in Penelope’s garden. She tried to convince herself that it would be enough for her, that she could be happy with a simple, safe life tethered to Ferenwood, but even now, at the tail end of a crisis, she couldn’t quite manage it. Because she knew that wasn’t true. She wanted to go home, yes, and she wanted to spend more time with Father and she wanted to eat tulips and sit by the pond, but even after all the trials and tribulations of Furthermore—or perhaps because of them—she didn’t think she could ever go back to an ordinary life. She knew she’d never say no to adventure.
Alice broke away from Oliver and beamed at him.
“Don’t just park your hindquarters in the snow,” someone barked at them. “Good grief, girl, you’ll catch your death out there!”