I think of the warning in my Variant handbook. Of illegal and dangerous Variants.
I hurry to keep up with him again. “You can feel the tension already,” Will says, loosening the knot of his tie. “Growing. Everyone will keep getting more skittish until we find out what disappears next.” He turns to look at me. His eyes are the exact color of the sky. “Unfortunately, you came just in time to see the whole town at its worst.”
“Some of this still doesn’t seem quite real,” I confess.
“And for me it’s the opposite,” he says. “It’s sort of fascinating, to see Sterling through the eyes of someone from the outside.” I notice that he’s leading us in a way that threads between the trees instead of walking in a straight line, as if to avoid cutting a path someone could follow.
“Only a few people have dared to try leaving the Sisters,” he says. “Eliza Patton’s older sister is at an opera company in New York. She just fakes the missing senses as best she can. But with each new Disappearance, it’s becoming harder to do that.”
Ahead of us is a tall stone wall covered with moss and ivy. The wall seems higher as we near until it rises above my head, and I suddenly hope that Will doesn’t expect me to climb it. I could do it. But I would prefer not to in my school skirt.
Instead Will steps forward and parts the ivy on the wall. There is gray graffiti scrawled next to the rusted hinges of a door, and I can hear the low murmur of voices beyond it. Will turns the handle, and we step over the threshold.
“William!” A large man is standing just inside, apparently acting as some sort of guard. He takes Will’s hand and shakes it heartily. Then, seeing me behind him, he gives Will a strange, questioning look.
“She’s with me” is all Will has to say, and the man steps back to let us pass.
We enter the courtyard of an open-air market. The boughs of the trees overhead form a sort of thatched roof. Wooden booths line a path leading up to what must have once been a stately house.
“It’s big,” I whisper to Will.
“There’s just one Market for all three Sister Cities, and it’s only open a few days a week. Now stay close with me,” he says.
I hurry behind him on the path, resisting the urge to reach forward and catch his hand.
The Market is in perpetual twilight under the tree branches, but the booths and pathway are lit by stakes in the ground, glittering with something bright that isn’t quite fire. “Glimmer Variants,” Will explains when he sees me looking at them.
There are pouches and glass bottles shimmering in rows along the booths. The Variant names are spelled out in signs made from a mosaic of tiles. We pass a table of Variant-infused bars of soap, and I catch the faintest scent of lilac. A woman bends to smell one of the bars, a crisp slice of white tied with a lavender ribbon, and I want to reach out and touch it. Bring it up to my nose to breathe in deeply. Instead I keep walking to stay close by Will.
A handful of Variants are dashed out on the next table in samples. When a breeze parts the branches, the Variants catch the sunlight. They glitter like diamonds against the rough grain of the wood.
We climb the stairs into the ruins of the house. Part of the back wall has crumbled in on itself, and the second floor looks particularly unstable. But the floors are swept, and the rows of booths and vendors bring a certain a sense of order. I have the strangest sense of being both inside and outdoors, with vines and weeds curling in to knit along the walls in patterns of lace, and Glimmer Variants lighting the room from rusted sconces. Will leads me through a narrow hallway to a large room with tattered wallpaper covered in lichen. I can feel the pricks of notice, of subtle gazes and more blatant interest that is not altogether friendly. I am the outsider who doesn’t belong here. The ghost of my mother, returning to Sterling after all these years.
I stay as close to Will as I dare, noticing that he seems to set people at ease. Some people ignore us entirely, but many smile at him. Dip their heads at the sight of his handsome, familiar face.
“We’ll come back when you’re Of Age,” Will says under his breath, as if that’s all it is. “Technically, you shouldn’t be here until then.”
Light is filtering in through the tree needles and the glassless windows. The room has three polished wooden tables, one of them with a large crack along its center. The sign on the first table reads NIGHT VISION, the second MIND’S EYE, and the last VEIL.
The Night Vision Variants are dark and look cool to the touch, like black sand. They are displayed in thick velvet pouches lined with jet-black stones, while the Mind’s Eye Variants are a mix of silver and pinkish gray, the same shifting color as the inside of a shell. The thick, pearly liquid is packaged in glass vials shaped like miniature globes.
Will picks up a brown suede pouch of Veil Variants, shows the merchant his Of Age card, and hands over three gold coins that are not a currency I’ve ever seen before. I’m still thinking of what he said. About people feeling trapped. About the walls closing in on them, a little bit closer, every seven years.
“But the Variants,” I say hopefully, reaching out to nudge one of the pouches. “Those help.”
“The Variants do help,” Will agrees. The merchant pockets Will’s coins, and we move on. “But they only work within the Sister Cities. Once we leave the borders, they become about as useful as throwing a handful of sand. As far as I know, in all three towns, there’s only been one person who was ever able to really escape the Disappearances . . .” He trails off. Clears his throat.
And I understand.
Mother. She was the only exception.
Why?
I remember her standing in her garden with her eyes closed, inhaling the air perfumed by flowers long after the rest of us grew bored and went on to other things. She’d often be out there when I woke, bent over the flowers in her galoshes, one of Father’s sweaters pulled over her nightgown, her hair wild and unkempt. She cut the flowers in bunches for the chipped vase on the kitchen table, for the end table next to her bed. She dried petals between the pages of heavy books to make potpourri for little china bowls and sachets for our drawers. Why hadn’t I stayed there with her, gathering bouquets of wildflowers as long as she wanted? Maybe then she would have opened up, let me glimpse this part of her life.
We move into the next room, and Will stops at a booth organized with small wooden boxes. He slides one open to reveal a rainbow array of pencils.
“For Miles,” he says. He leaves two silver coins on the table in exchange for the pencil box.
