Page 29

“Out?”

“Of the cover? I saw you on the cover.” I realized I wasn’t making much sense and felt my face coloring. Idiot, I told myself, then immediately resolved to stop beating myself up, since this was clearly some sort of dream and it didn’t matter if I made a fool of myself. The realization proved quite liberating. “We should start again. I’m Red.”

“Rose,” the girl said with a slight curtsy, as if she’d been born at least a century before me. “You saw me on a cover? A book cover?”

“Yes.”

“In a bookshop?”

“Yes.” I nodded. The girl—Rose—really was very pretty. Not Olivia’s self-assured beauty but something fresher, which seemed to have happened by accident, rather like the flower she was named for.

“Clearly, I made an impression.” Rose grinned with what seemed a mix of genuine delight and gentle mockery. “Weren’t there girls on any of the other covers?”

I opened my mouth to say no, but that was a lie. There’d been plenty of women on other covers. Even the book I’d taken home had one—albeit just a head, and that growing out of a flower and on fire…I realized that I’d been standing for far too long with my mouth open and saying nothing. I was definitely dreaming, but it didn’t feel like a dream, and I did feel like an idiot.

Rose took pity on me and ended the stretching silence. “I saw you there. In the bookshop. I was standing behind you when you touched that book and then we were here.”

“In Wonderland,” I said.

“You’ve been here before?” Rose stepped closer to me, bent down, and stood, holding up the tiny key.

“I’ve watched a—” For some reason I wasn’t sure she’d even know what a movie was. Maybe because of the curtsy and the way she was dressed, as if she’d walked out of a Dickens novel, albeit one she’d escaped from by racing through an army assault course. “I know about this place. A bit. Not visited it myself. Until now.”

“You dropped this.” She offered me the key. “What’s it for?”

“I don’t know. It’s too small for anything here.” I studied it, frowning. There had definitely been something about getting bigger and smaller in Alice in Wonderland. Some sort of potion? My gaze wandered back to the girl and her wild black hair, dark eyes, and pale skin. “You were on the cover of The Wind in the Willows. And you didn’t belong there.” I wanted to add “and that’s why I remember you,” but that wasn’t the whole truth. I would have remembered her if I’d seen her across the street. I didn’t believe in fate or magic—at least this morning I hadn’t…still didn’t…This was a dream, definitely a dream.

I might read a lot of books, lots of fantasy, but I didn’t believe in that stuff. I knew reality from fiction…I made sure I did. But there were moments…places…faces…where it definitely felt as if the universe was trying to tell me something: This is a chance—take it, this street or corner or house is special. Come back, this person…this person is someone you need, don’t just walk on by.

I’d always tried not to listen, because the universe shouldn’t talk to you. That’s how insanity gets its teeth into you, through the smallest of cracks, and before you know it your mother is falling into pieces. But I couldn’t lie to the girl, to myself maybe, but not to the girl, not to her face. There had been something that had happened when I saw her on that cover. I wasn’t sure now if that hadn’t been when the earthquake struck—when the earth had moved.

Some hook had been set, and I’d been reeled slowly in, like a fish thinking it’s making its own choices about which way to swim but all the time it’s being brought closer and closer in, until at last I’d turned around and there she was, too real, too clean despite the dirt, too wholesome, like a light shining on me, exposing every flaw, all the baggage I had to carry with me, all my failings.

We stood, looking at each other for far too long while all these thoughts flowed through my head. Again, she saved me by speaking first.

“I’m not sure I belong anywhere.” I had said she didn’t belong on that cover.

And now that I could breathe again, I could speak too. “Me either. I mean, I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t be there, it was just that I didn’t think you were part of that story. But it’s not like I know anything about it. There’s a rat, right? And a mole? And Mr….”

“Toad.”

“Mr. Toad! Right. With the cars.”

“The cars…” Rose’s sigh came tinged with exasperation.

“So.” I looked around the room. “I guess we could play the game while I’m waiting to wake up.”

“Wake up?” Rose’s brow furrowed. “You think we might be asleep?”

“Well, I know I am.” I nodded to lend myself some conviction. It didn’t feel like a dream…except for all the dreamlike stuff…OK, she didn’t feel like a dream. “I know I’m dreaming.”

“Oh.” Rose looked suddenly dismayed. “I could be lying in the poppies, do you mean? I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Poppies?” I knew things rarely made sense in dreams, but it was normally afterward that you noted the nonsense, not during. What had poppies got to do with anything?

“Poppies. Lots of them. They put you to sleep and then you lie there…until you…die.”

“OK.” I drew the word out. “I mean…opium comes from poppies, and that can put you into a sleep that you’re not getting up from. But opium’s a bit old-school, isn’t it? I think they turn all the poppies into heroin these days. More bang for your bucks.”