“I got scared!”
I wouldn’t leave you to find your way around alone.
“I mean I got scared for you!”
When he reaches her, she drops down and puts her arms around him. He smells like wet fur and tries to lick her hands. “Ick!” she says. “No licking!”
No hugging, he says. Strayhounds like to be petted, not hugged.
She lets him go. “If you don’t lick, I won’t hug.”
Deal. But you don’t need to be scared for me, Janie, he says. People here pretty much leave strayhounds alone.
“Okay,” Jane says thickly.
Are you cold?
“Yes, and hungry.”
You slept for a very long time. I did too, when I was first adjusting to your world. Crossing over is tiring. Let’s go someplace warm.
“How far are we from the hanging in the duchess’s mansion?”
Your aunt’s home is closer. She won’t mind if we wake her.
“No. Tu Reviens.”
All right, then, he says. The long, uphill climb will warm us.
An orchard on a steep hill is treacherous at night, even in the light of two moons. Jane keeps tripping, and whacking her head on low branches. She pulls her scarf tight around her ears and mutters to Steen that it’d be nice if the orchard would light itself for their convenience.
On the streets high above the water, the silence of the Zorsteddan night is striking. Zorsteddan buildings don’t hum or buzz. Zorsteddan streetlamps make the tiniest sizzling sounds as flames eat away at wicks.
Light and sound spill from the occasional building down the occasional street, but Steen leads her away from those streets. Drunken revelers are the plague of every harbor town, he says fastidiously.
Crumpled and cold from sleep, Jane is content enough to stay out of the way of drunken revelers. They climb quite a distance before the duchess’s mansion looms, and Steen is right. The long walk is warming.
I’ll have to get the attention of one of the few strayhounds in the castle who has a person, he tells her, to let us in.
“How will you do that?”
Strayhounds can communicate with each other mentally, remember?
“How will you explain why I deserve to be let in?”
Hopefully my brother will be awake.
“You have a brother?”
I have twelve brothers, seven sisters, and two hundred and forty-two cousins.
Jane speaks a Zorsteddan expletive. “Does your brother know about Tu Reviens?”
No. I told you, I haven’t told anyone. But he’s my brother. He trusts me, and his person trusts him. His person will open the door for us.
“It all sounds kind of complicated. Your brother trusts you, but you’re not actually telling him the truth.”
Well, it’s hard to know what to do sometimes, says Steen. If I tell my brother, should I tell my other eighteen siblings? What if I tell my brother and he tells his person? It’s not a small thing, a hanging that leads to another world. I have to be careful. You understand that, don’t you?
As she climbs into a garden on some obscure, high-walled side of the duchess’s mansion, Jane feels tired, and old. “I’m not a big fan of deception at the moment.”
Steen glances at her. I know. But you’ll see. It’s your secret now too. You’ll have to decide who to tell. Now, stop talking out loud. You’ll wake the entire ground-floor staff, and anyway, I’m trying to focus on communicating with my brother.
A minute later, a gruff man in a nightshirt opens a wooden door in the high wall, grunts, then steps back inside without even looking at them. A strayhound moves at his feet, shorter and stockier than Steen. He and Steen briefly stand in the doorway together, sniffing and snuggling each other.
Then Steen sets off with purpose. This path will take us through the kitchens, he tells Jane.
Jane follows. They climb all fifteen stories of the duchess’s mansion, gorging on bread, cheese, more Zorsteddan fruit with names Jane magically knows, and a long strip of what tastes like the most delicious beef jerky in any world, all pilfered from the kitchens. She has the sense that her Zorsteddan body finds fifteen stories of steps far less arduous than her real-world body would.
As she changes back into her Doctor Who pajamas, a faraway city clock tolls, and Jane understands the current time in Zorsted. It suddenly occurs to her to wonder what time it is at home. She speaks a Zorsteddan expletive. It’s gala day!
Not anymore, Steen responds. We missed the gala.
Another expletive. What if someone noticed my absence?
Just say you weren’t feeling well. If anyone gives you a hard time, I’ll bite them.
Steen! You can’t start biting people for no reason! My world does very mean things to dogs who bite! Just do something distracting that humans love. Put out your paw for them to shake.
Oh, that’s dignified, says Steen. Next you’ll tell me to roll over.
Jane laughs.
Don’t worry, says Steen. After all, if anything ever happens, I have a safe place I can disappear to.
Jane doesn’t answer, because she’s not ready to tell him that she doesn’t like the idea of him disappearing somewhere without her. When she moves into the room with the hanging, Steen follows. The view of Tu Reviens is dim and unpeopled, so Jane takes a moment to examine the umbrella on the floor. The ferrule and the handle are a bit different in shape and color from her own work and the workmanship is finer, but overall, the umbrella is gratifyingly like the one she’s just built. Picking it up, carrying it to the lantern in the far corner, scrutinizing it under the light, she’s pleased to think that she’s chosen appropriate shades of red and green for hers.
What do you think you’re doing! Steen says. That umbrella hasn’t been moved in over a hundred years!
The workmanship is gorgeous, really, Jane says, smoothing the dark, varnished shaft with her fingers. And someone dusts it regularly.
With the most delicate of feather dusters! Steen says. I wish you would put it down.
You’re one of those strayhounds who never got sent to the principal’s office, aren’t you? Jane says. All right, all right, she adds as he begins to stomp his feet again like bread kneading. Calm down.
But as she sets it down on the floor, the ancient material of one of the gores begins to tear along the seam. As Steen screams bloody horror in her mind, the gore falls out of the umbrella and collapses limply to the floor.
Look what you’ve done! Look what you’ve done!
Steen, Jane says calmly. I’ve got a nearly identical umbrella sitting in my morning room this very moment. It’s well-built enough. It’ll last another hundred-plus years.
Steen is breathing like a husky who’s just finished the Iditarod. Oh, thank goodness, he says. Thank goodness. Let’s go get it. This very instant. Right now!
Steen goes through first. Jane follows.
She needs a minute. It’s amazing, somehow, to be standing on the second-story landing of Tu Reviens; she almost feels as if she’s never been here before. There’s a slight scent to the receiving hall. Sweat, perfume, spilled alcohol, people: a post-party smell. Also, those lilacs, bringing Aunt Magnolia back to her. Hurting differently now, with a whole new confusion.
Someone in a faraway room is listening to the Beatles again. Jasper the basset hound maneuvers himself behind her and head-butts her ankles urgently.
“I’m going!” Jane whispers, obediently climbing to the third-story landing. “Calm down!”
Then Kiran and Ivy appear on the third-story bridge, crossing toward Jane from the west side of the house.
“Janie!” says Kiran. “Where on earth have you been? I looked for you at the party but I never saw you.”
Kiran’s wearing a lovely strapless gown in scarlet. Her mood, her expression are odd: both cheerful and har
d. Triumphantly brittle. Also, the bottom edge of her skirt is damp-looking and crusty. Something’s happened.
Jane wants to ask Kiran about it, but she’s afraid it’ll encourage Kiran to ask her questions too, questions Jane can’t answer. “What time is it?” she squeaks.
“Nearly four in the morning,” Kiran says. “Ivy and I have been talking.”
“Actually,” Ivy says to Jane, “I wanted to talk to you too.”
“Right,” Jane says, trying not to gawk at Ivy. Her dress is long and black and so elegant that Jane’s Doctor Who pajamas make her feel twelve years old.
“I’m going to bed,” Kiran says smartly, then sets off down the steps.
“You were magnificent tonight,” Ivy calls after Kiran. “We’re really grateful. We couldn’t have pulled it off without you.”
“I didn’t do it for Patrick’s sake,” Kiran says.
“Yeah, okay,” Ivy says, “whatever. I’m really grateful.”
Kiran turns and gives Ivy a broad, warm smile before walking away. Jane has never seen Kiran smile like that before.
Jane turns to Ivy. “I’m awfully tired. Can I talk to you tomorrow too?”
“Sure,” Ivy says.
“G’night, then,” Jane says. Then she stands there looking at Ivy for another moment, until Jasper head-butts her. “Damn demented dog!” She turns away toward her rooms.
But when Jane and Jasper return to the stairs a few minutes later, carrying the umbrella Jane has made, Ivy is still on the second-story landing, staring intently at the umbrella in the painting. Her nose is probably two inches from the paint, her glasses pushed to her forehead and her eyes focused on the gore that lies limply on the checkerboard floor.
It’s too late to turn back; Ivy hears them. She stands straight and raises her eyes to Jane. Loose wisps of dark hair swing around her face.
And so Jane continues bravely down the stairs, umbrella in hand.
Ivy’s steady blue gaze takes in Jane, Jasper, and, with interest, the red-and-green umbrella in Jane’s hand.
“Going for a walk?” Ivy says, glancing at Jane’s pajamas.
“Possibly,” Jane says.
“Do you want company?”
“Yes,” Jane says. “I mean, yes. I do, very much. But I should probably go alone.”
“Okay,” says Ivy. “I looked for you during the gala. Weren’t you feeling up to it?”
The excuse is on the tip of her tongue. She ate something that disagreed with her, she slept through the gala. She hates parties, she hid in the west attics. She spent the night in a bedroom with one of the guests. “I don’t want to lie to you,” Jane says. “I want to tell you the truth.”
In her long black dress, with her hair up, Ivy looks like a woman in a portrait by Renoir, or John Singer Sargent. She studies Jane. “I want to tell you the truth too,” she says.
Another silence fills the space between them. It’s not an awkward silence. It’s full of something like hope, and curiosity.
Jane knows, finally, what she wants.
She speaks in a whisper. “Ivy?”
“Yes?”
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Hell, yes.”
Jane thinks through her words before she says them. “Would you please touch that painting?”
“This one?” Ivy says, pointing to the painting, then wrinkling her nose in puzzlement. “Mrs. Vanders would crucify me.”
“Please?”
“Okay,” she says, and stretches her finger to the painting. When she touches it, her finger sinks in. Her entire hand falls through. With a cry of alarm, she snatches it back. She inspects her own recovered hand, carefully, closely. Satisfied that she still has all her fingers, she raises amazed eyes to Jane.
“I can’t wait to hear what you ask me to do next,” she says.
“I’d like to bring you to meet a woman who communes with sea bears,” says Jane.
Ivy blinks. “Sea bears?”
“I want to show you. Will you come?”
Ivy cocks her head at the painting. “Are the sea bears through there?”
“Yes.”
Ivy blinks again. “Will you be with me the whole time?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“I swear it.”
“Okay, then,” says Ivy.
“What do you think, Steen?” Jane says, looking down at him. “Can a strayhound and his human make a home in two different worlds, with an aunt and a friend?”
Jasper holds Jane’s eyes and cants his head to the side, as if considering. Then he walks into the painting.
Jane turns to Ivy, whose mouth has dropped open. “Do you trust me?” Jane says.
Ivy’s eyes on Jane are wide and deep. She nods.
Jane takes Ivy’s hand and leads her into another world.
Author’s Note
This book is an homage to a number of my best-loved books. A lot of my names, for example, come directly or indirectly from Daphne duMaurier’s Rebecca, one of the classic “orphan comes to a house of mystery” texts. DuMaurier’s strange, scary housekeeper is named Mrs. Danvers; my housekeeper and butler are Mr. and Mrs. Vanders. The dog in Rebecca is named Jasper; mine is too. An important boat in Rebecca is named Je Reviens, French for “I return"; my house is named Tu Reviens, French for “you return.” I also gave Ivy and Patrick the last name “Yellan,” which is the last name of the heroine of another wonderful duMaurier novel, Jamaica Inn.
In the first part of Jane, Unlimited, I describe a writing desk Jane finds in her morning room. This is essentially the writing desk from Rebecca’s morning room, right down to the labels Jane finds on the docketed drawers. There are other connections, deliberate and otherwise, but I’ll let you find them yourself. I’ve always considered Rebecca to be one of the most extraordinary books I’ve ever read. Writers breathe in books, mix them up with whatever else we’ve got going on in there, then breathe out.
I also had that other great “orphan comes to a house of mystery” text in mind, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë—the most obvious reference being Jane’s name, though Jane is really named after my childhood cat! I suppose Charlotte Thrash’s name is also a partial reference to Brontë, though I actually named my Charlotte after Charlotte Perkins Gilman, because of her creepy novella “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Also, my house has a “madwoman” in the attic, so to speak. As in Jane Eyre, my madwoman is the first wife of the man of the house. In my case, though, she’s not actually mad, she’s just a theoretical physicist.
Edith Wharton’s beautiful but depressing The House of Mirth also plays a part in this book. The House of Mirth stars a poor orphaned woman named Lily Bart who lives in turn-of-the-century New York, uses her looks to cling to her place in high society, and . . . well, as Jane remarks to Lucy St. George, there’s not much mirth. I suppose it was impossible for me to write about wealthy Kiran inviting her poor friend to her fancy house without thinking of Lily Bart and the age of lady companions.
I pulled the initial wording and dialogue of Jane’s expotition to the North Pole directly from “Chapter VIII: In Which Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition to the North Pole” in Winnie-the-Pooh. Sorry, Pooh-Bear. Despite appearances, I really do love you and you have always been my #1 go-to comfort read. I guess that’s why my mind reached for you when I asked myself, “What would be horrifying?”
Of course, it isn’t just books that inspire books. Constantin Brâncuşi’s sculpture Fish is real. Brâncuşi, a Romanian artist and one of the pioneers of modernism, created several fish sculptures. The version in my story actually lives at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. When I e-mailed the restoration department to ask them how the fish was attached to its pedestal and whether removing it would damage the sculpture, they e-mailed back that they weren’t going to answer that question. Probably a wise policy. W
riters ask a lot of weirdly specific questions. It’s because we are up to no good.
Johannes Vermeer’s Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid is also real. In 1974, this painting was stolen from a private house in Ireland by members of the IRA, then recovered soon after. In 1984 it was stolen again by a Dublin gangster, and this time it wasn’t recovered until 1993. After its recovery, a Danish conservator named Jørgen Wadum, anxiously examining it for damage, noticed a pinprick in the lady’s eye, which led to the discovery that Vermeer attached a string to the canvas to work out his perspective. The painting is now in the National Gallery of Ireland. I have two books to thank for my art theft knowledge: Museum of the Missing by Simon Houpt and The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art by Matthew Hart.
Speaking of art theft . . . I’ve essentially lifted Tu Reviens’s Venetian courtyard from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, especially the nasturtiums, which are famously displayed in the courtyard every spring. It’s not identical—the courtyard at the Gardner does not have interior steps that climb all the way to the top, for example. But it’s pretty similar, and Gardner visitors probably recognize it (especially if they’ve seen the nasturtiums). The Gardner has a greenhouse where all the courtyard flowers are cultivated; similarly, Tu Reviens has the winter garden where its flowers are cultivated. The Rembrandt self-portrait that lives in Tu Reviens actually lives at the Gardner (Self-portrait, Aged 23). And in 1990, the largest art heist in history took place at the Gardner; thieves stole thirteen works of art valued at $500 million, including Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee and Vermeer’s The Concert. The works have never been recovered and no arrests have ever been made. When you visit the museum today, the frames of the stolen pictures hang empty on the walls. It’s heartbreaking.
I used these two books to ensure that Aunt Magnolia was photographing realistic things in the correct locations: Ocean Soul by Brian Skerry and Oceanic Wilderness by Roger Steene. Both books are full of gorgeous underwater photography. Skerry has a photo of a southern right whale and a diver facing each other on the ocean floor that directly inspired Jane’s underwater photo of Aunt Magnolia touching the nose of a southern right whale. I’m embarrassed to admit that I can’t remember whether I ever saw a photo somewhere of a yellow goby peeking out of the mouth of a big gray fish, or made that up. I’ve been scrambling to find this image, so that I can credit it to the correct photographer, but so far I’ve got nothing. In Ocean Soul, Brian Skerry has a stunning photo of a yellow goby peeking out of the opening of a soda can, and a stunning photo of a bluefin tuna opening its mouth to capture a smaller fish. Maybe I combined the two in my imagination?