Page 77 of Sleep No More

THE ACT OF OPENING a road out of Blind Michael’s lands was remarkably anticlimactic after everything we’d already been through. Acacia walked us through the hall until she found a yarrow-banded door, the hinges black with candle smoke and time, and pried it forcibly open, revealing the knowe at Shadowed Hills. After that, we simply . . . stepped through, passing into the Summerlands in the blinking of an eye.

The door swung shut behind us, and we were alone in the forest behind the manor, the sky overhead a pale, bruised shade of twilight that made it impossible to guess the actual time, the lights of the knowe glittering through the trees.

The Luidaeg squared her shoulders. “All right,” she said. “Sir Grianne, if you would let the household know we’re here?”

Grianne nodded, bowed, and did a backward somersault into air, vanishing, her Merry Dancers blinking out with her as she passed onto the Shadow Roads. The rest of us clustered around the Luidaeg, a motley bunch if I’d ever seen one, waiting for her to come back.

Seconds crawled by. A circle opened in the air and Sir Etienne stepped through, Grianne close behind him. “October, you’re all right,” he said, with visible relief, before sweeping me into an embrace.

I froze, going stiff. Nothing in my experience up to this point had prepared me to be embraced by Sir Etienne, who had always kept me at a more-than-polite distance.

Always, before he took me to meet his daughter.

Awkwardly, I relaxed enough to pat him on the shoulder. “I’m fine,” I said. “Is everything okay with you? Is Chelsea . . .” I wasn’t sure how to finish that question, and so I didn’t. I just trailed off, letting it hang in the air.

“She’s very sorry for what she did,” he said. “She was in pain, her thoughts were in a jumble, and she reacted instinctively. The spell shattered even as she pushed you away. We’ve been able to find no traces of enchantment.”

“You didn’t notice them before.”

He looked abashed. “True enough, but—she seems truly to have been released. Now she asks us about people we don’t know, and speaks of a world we’ve never seen, and I don’t . . .” He stopped, finally seeming to notice my strange companions, looking at each of them in turn without any sign of recognition. I heard Raysel’s sharp intake of breath. The Luidaeg put a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t know what to do?” asked Ginevra. “Yeah, we’ve all been experiencing that a lot since this all started.”

“Can you help us?” I asked, before the Luidaeg could jump in and say something terrible that would make him run away and sound the alarms. Oh, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t mean to. She was just so accustomed to everyone knowing who she was and why they needed to be afraid of her that she didn’t stop to think before she spoke.

And I would not be the one telling her that. People who criticize the Firstborn don’t tend to have long and healthy lives. People who criticize Maeve’s Firstborn, when the ones we remember at all tend to have been immortalized as monsters, well . . . I have to assume that would be even worse.

“After what you did for me, I owe you anything you care to ask for,” said Etienne fervently. “Chelsea is safe now, or will be, once she can stop speaking of a world that never was. Whatever you need.”

“See, that’s part of the problem,” I said. “The world you say never was—it existed. Up until four months ago, it existed. And these people are trying to bring it back, before this world becomes the only one there is.” I tensed, waiting for the explosion.

To my profound surprise, it didn’t come. Instead, Etienne seized my hands, holding them tightly. “Truly?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yeah. That’s what they want to do.”

“Do you think they can?” He gave them a more careful, measuring look.

“The skinny teen in the dress made of dead leaves is the sea witch, so yeah, I’m going to say they stand a chance,” I said. Behind me, the Luidaeg smirked and raised one hand in a short wave.

Etienne paled. “The . . . the sea witch?”

“It’s been a long night. We need to see Uncle Sylvester as soon as possible, because we’re sort of on a timetable. What day is it?”

Etienne blinked, looking even more confused than he had a moment before. “Moving Day, of course. The sun rose in the mortal world about two hours ago.”

So around nine o’clock in the morning on Halloween, then. We were almost out of time.

“Right,” I said. “Okay. We need to see Uncle Sylvester. You’re his seneschal. Can you get us an audience? Any sort of time with him?”

“Melly and Ormond have been handling the Moving Day duties,” said Etienne. “I believe he’s available now, but you can’t be seen moving through the knowe, especially with a band of strangers. Not everyone is as well inclined toward you as I am, and the Queen’s men have been here inquiring as to your whereabouts. Grianne, stay with them. I’ll be right back.”

He opened another circle in the air, stepped through, and was gone.

“That could have gone better,” said the Luidaeg.

“He really didn’t know me,” said Raysel, sounding bewildered. “And what happened to the knowe? There’s supposed to be a garden promenade right here! I helped Mother plant the roses!”

“That’s your answer, rosebud,” said the Luidaeg, with surprising kindness. “He didn’t know you. No one here knows you. The knowe doesn’t know you. You never existed in this world. Titania erased you because you were inconvenient, thus proving that she hasn’t changed in all the time she had playing happy families among the rabble.”