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Little Fox. Sam’s mother, in their heads. I will free you from the iron’s constraints. I have been working against it for some time, figuring out a way. But they are too stupid to know.
Sam smiled. “Thanks, Ma.”
Don’t talk out loud, Miriam scolded.
“Thanks, Ma,” Sam said, a little sarcastically.
Marlowe flipped his switches. Cones of striped white light shot down over the Diviners. Evie’s breathing came faster. She was quite scared. This was a voyage into the unknown. It felt like an execution.
“Ling!” Henry’s voice, somewhere behind her, on the other side of the machine.
“I-I can’t fall asleep!” Ling answered in a high-pitched voice.
Blue lightning struck the ground of the crater. The Eye whirred louder, faster. Whatever was going to happen would happen soon.
“Listen to the hum of the machine,” Henry shouted back. “Hold on to that feather.”
“You c-can d-do it,” Evie said through chattering teeth. The pressure had increased. Above them, the ominous clouds were tearing each other apart like a pack of wild gray dogs.
“Sleep, sleep, sleep,” Ling intoned. “Dream.”
“Dream,” Evie echoed.
“Dream,” Theta said.
They were all thinking it now, with purpose.
Spears of light shot through the dark clouds. With a mighty groan, the sky opened its huge dark mouth, ready to devour them. A jolt passed through Evie. It was as if the electric hand of god had reached in and thrown apart her atoms like marbles.
“S-Sam,” Evie managed.
Sam writhed in his seat. “Don’t. See. Us. Don’t…”
Beside her, Evie heard Ling crying out in pain—or maybe it was her own voice she heard. They were joined now; all their pain was shared. It was a tight squeezing, like a birth.
“…See… US—aaahhhh!” Sam cried out.
Evie felt herself being sucked up into that giant tear in the sky and the unknowable dark beyond, into the wicked soul of the Eye. Into the land of the dead.
Evie looked at her hands. They were her hands, she knew, but they were not quite the same. They belonged to a slightly altered Evie. She was existing in two places at once, in Death Valley and the land of the dead, connected via the Eye.
Memphis was beside her, examining his own hands.
“Memphis,” Evie said. “Do you feel…?”
“Yes,” Memphis answered, intuiting her thought. “I’m me, but a different me.” He raised his head. “Where are the others?”
“I don’t know,” Evie said, taking in their surroundings.
The land of the dead was a desolate, miserable place. Cadaverous vultures settled their bony forms in the blighted branches of monstrous yew trees. The ground was hard and cracked, punctuated here and there by foul, oily ponds thick with flies and sulfurous fumes. Everywhere, an ashy snow fell. It smelled of grave dirt and the sickly sweetness of rotting flowers, of old blood, and tainted meat. The discordant whine of the Eye hung in the stultifying air, like the thin, high scream of the factory whistle. As with Gideon and the other towns devoured by the King of Crows, everything here was dead, diseased, or dying. And Evie wondered what Jake Marlowe possibly thought he could claim in this world. What here was worth owning?
“Sam?” Evie called. “Theta? Ling!”
“Here,” Theta said. “Memphis?”
“H-here, Princess,” Memphis said, throwing his arms around Theta.
Evie let out a sigh of relief. Everyone had made it. She did not see Sam’s mother, and she hoped Miriam was all right.
