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“Are you sure you’re okay?” Ivy says in her ear.
“Yes,” Jane says, meaning it, for she is okay in Ivy’s arms.
But then, before too long, Ivy disentangles herself apologetically, explaining that Mrs. Vanders is calling her name, but that she’s worried about Janie, she’s going to come check on her later, as soon as she can, okay?
“Okay.”
As Jane watches Ivy disappear into the throngs of gala workers, she’s touched by a sense of having lost her chance at something. She lost it when Ivy left. Ivy is a sorceress, a good witch, a priest, Jane thinks. But Ivy is gone.
Jane seeks out the room with the indoor pool and sits in a deck chair across from the shark tank, inhaling the smell of chlorine.
Eventually, Kiran joins her, then, shortly thereafter, Phoebe. Jane, Kiran, and Phoebe sit together, for hours. It’s warm and moist. There’s little to say. They all understand, on some level, that they’re having a different experience of gala day than the others in the house, but part of that experience is a lack of curiosity. The bull shark swims steadily back and forth, back and forth. It’s mesmerizing. Bull sharks will eat anything they see, so Jane wonders at the other, colorful fish darting about. Is that their purpose? To be eaten? The eel, lime-green and horrible, leers at Jane, stretched along the tank’s bottom, barely moving. Jane understands that Charlotte can embody any part of her house, she can look through that eel’s eyes. The eel grins, slightly flicking its tail.
Jane’s book rests on her knee, unopened, but humming to her pleasantly.
“I’m worried about Octavian,” says Kiran.
“Why?” asks Jane.
“He’s being so weird and mopey,” Kiran says. “I told him he needs to go see his doctor. Maybe he should also see a psychologist.”
“He could talk to Mr. Vanders,” says Phoebe. “Mr. Vanders could give him therapy.”
“Mr. Vanders?” Kiran says.
Phoebe sits up straight in her deck chair, a confused sort of expression on her face. “Wait,” she says. “Holy crap. I have to go.” She slides her legs onto the gold tiles and pushes herself to her feet, then runs out of the pool room.
Jane and Kiran remain together, silent and sitting.
Sometime later, Ravi sticks his head into the room.
“There you are!” he says. “Sweetheart, are you paying any attention to the time?”
Kiran turns her face numbly to him. “Huh?”
“The gala’s started,” Ravi says. “You need to get ready! Twin,” he says, standing before Kiran’s deck chair and peering at her, then crouching, scrunching his eyes in concern. He’s dressed all in black. As usual, he sweeps and moves like a storm of light. The streaks in his hair shine. Interested, Jane stirs.
“Are you okay?” Ravi says. “People are asking after you.”
“I’m worried about Octavian,” says Kiran.
“Yeah,” says Ravi. “Tell me about it. Come on, I’ll walk with you up to your rooms. Do you know what you’re going to wear? Wait till you meet the hot FBI agents.”
“FBI agents?” says Kiran vaguely as her brother practically lifts her to her feet.
“FBI special agents,” says Ravi. “Special means they’re armed, apparently. I invited all kinds of cops to the party, to investigate the Brancusi theft. Vanny is furious with me and you have to help me keep everyone else entertained so it doesn’t feel like a party full of cops.”
“Okay,” says Kiran doubtfully.
Ravi chatters as he pulls Kiran out of the room. “You’re being weird,” he says. “Like you’re half-asleep. Come on, let’s go outside and look at the water first.”
“Outside?” says Kiran in puzzlement.
“It’s cold, and spitting rain,” Ravi says. “The waves are high. You won’t like it, but it’ll wake you up.” He’s always trying to get his depressed people outside, isn’t he? Jane senses that Ravi doesn’t have the first idea about Charlotte; he merely has the instincts of a person who’s more alive than everyone else. Maybe Jane just missed another chance there, with Ravi. Unfortunately, Ravi has chosen his twin.
Jane is left alone, staring into the eyes of the lime-green eel. She wants her underwater world, where she feels close to Aunt Magnolia. Eventually, she gets up, walks to the west end of the room, and enters the changing room that leads to the library.
* * *
Someone, presumably Octavian, has set more rope barriers and private signs up at every library entrance. Sounds filter from the other parts of the house, musical, tinkling, joy-and-laughter sounds, party sounds. The library is empty, dimly lit, glowing softly with color. Humming with energy. Jane steps over a rope.
The library has a few plush armchairs, a few hard-backed chairs around the card table, but the most comfortable-looking seat, and the one from which Jane can best observe the ceiling, is Octavian’s divan. The blankets are rumpled and smell like pipe smoke. Jane smoothes them out and lies down. The ceiling feels closer than it did before and she can better make out the designs running across its “pages.” They are—bird cages? Some of them look like bird cages. Jane can see Hansel, trapped in a cage while the witch fattens him up. Nana, the dog from Peter Pan, in her kennel. A rat in a cage that’s attached to a man’s face: 1984, by Orwell. Juliet, waking on a stone bed, behind the bars of a tomb. A man walling up another man alive: That’s an Edgar Allan Poe story. A wild woman behind a barred window, in an attic: Jane Eyre.
There are also scenes of freedom. In fact, there’s Christopher Robin, Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, and all the others walking together alongside a stream.
Jane opens her book.
It’s the story “In Which Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition to the North Pole.” Jane remembers reading this one with Aunt Magnolia. It was one of Aunt Magnolia’s personal favorites, fond as she was of expotitions of her own. In it, the group sets out to discover the North Pole, but then little Roo falls into the stream. Pooh finds a long pole, drapes it across the stream, and rescues Roo. Afterward, Christopher Robin considers Pooh’s pole thoughtfully. “The Expedition is over,” he tells Pooh solemnly. “You have found the North Pole!”
By now Jane knows to expect, of course, that Charlotte is telling the story.
The group sets out, walking in a line. First comes Christopher Robin and Rabbit, then Piglet and Pooh; then Kanga, with Roo in her pocket, and Owl; then Eeyore; and, at the end, in a long line, Rabbit’s friends-and-relations. Behind them, someone else.
“I didn’t want to come on this Expotition,” says Eeyore. “I only came to oblige. My tail’s getting cold. I don’t want to complain but there it is. My tail’s cold.”
Rabbit’s ears are
cold. Pooh’s belly is cold. Piglet begins to squeak because the cold is burning his feet and his nose.
“Cold can burn,” says the person at the end of the line. “But don’t worry.”
“Why shouldn’t we worry?” asks Piglet.
“After you burn,” says the person at the end of the line, “you’ll shake. After you shake, you’ll stop shaking, and then you’ll start to feel warm and sleepy and wonderful.”
“How do you know that?” chatters Piglet, who is beginning to shake.
“It happened to my aunt Magnolia,” says the person at the end of the line.
“Did Aunt Magnolia come back and tell you about it?” chatters Piglet, who’s shaking harder now.
“Not exactly,” says Jane.
“How did you learn about it, then?” asks Piglet, who yawns.
“It’s called hypothermia,” says Jane. “It happens to people who set out for the North Pole without the appropriate supplies.”
“Did Aunt Magnolia do that?” asks Piglet.
“No,” says Jane. “She set out for the South Pole, with the appropriate supplies. Isn’t it nice to be doing the parallel and opposite thing? Just like Aunt Magnolia, but different.”
“But, why did she get hypothermia if she had the appropriate supplies?” asks Piglet.
“She got caught in a blizzard.”
It begins to snow, steadily. The wind picks up and the snow blows harder. The snow looks an awful lot like cherry blossoms, soft and delicate and sweet-smelling, but when it hits Jane’s skin, it’s like being poked with pins.
“Ow!” cries Piglet. “Ow! Ow! It stings!”
“Hold on, Piglet,” says Jane as the stinging snow piles around Jane’s feet, her ankles, her shins. Her jellyfish tattoo begins to burn, a jellyfish-shaped fire stinging her arm. “This is how it’s supposed to happen,” says Jane, beginning to be alarmed. “Soon you’ll feel warm and sleepy and wonderful.”
The cherry-blossom snow has a way of finding the crevices in Jane’s clothing, and sticking to her skin. There, it’s like acid; it eats her top layer away. It lays her bare. It happens very fast. Christopher Robin is screaming. How strange, Jane thinks, watching him as he screams. He’s skinless. The cherry-blossom snow has eaten the skin of his face and arms and of the legs above his expedition boots. He’s red and oozing, his outside is visceral, he is the scene in the movie we turn away from because it’s horrible. But it’s how our bodies look, under our skin. Pooh is screaming. Piglet is screaming. Rabbit is screaming.
