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“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.
