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Isaiah knew where to find the King of Crows, because he’d seen it before, with Sarah Beth. The King sat sprawled across his throne of skulls with one long, skinny leg hitched over the bony arm the way Isaiah’s mother would’ve fussed at him for doing, along with an admonishment to Sit up straight and act right. The King of Crows watched a patch of gray sky above his throne, where events of the nation’s past played out like at a picture show. They were scary pictures of people doing terrible things to one another. Blood seeped into the land. Isaiah could feel it dripping down, being sucked up into the crops that the people ate, over and over. There has to be another way, Isaiah thought. He wanted to see his friends and his brother. He wanted that future he saw in his vision. The one that showed another way.
The King closed his hand into a fist, sat up straight at last, and faced Isaiah. “Ah. The little visionary come to visit. Our own Diviner Cassandra. Tell me. Have you come to make a bargain?”
Isaiah didn’t know what the King of Crows meant by that, but he knew that the man in the hat wasn’t to be trusted, so he said only, “I’m going back.”
The King of Crows clapped his hands together and laughed as if Isaiah had told a good joke. He laughed the way his aunt Octavia used to do when she said she was “delighted.” But Isaiah didn’t think the King of Crows was delighted. Just a liar.
“I see,” the King of Crows said in a tone of voice that made Isaiah mad. “And why should I let you live?”
“Because my story’s not finished yet,” Isaiah said.
“Is that so? Very well, then. But first, we’ll need to play a game. Do you like games, Isaiah?”
“Some games.”
“If you want to leave, you’ll need to play a game with me. You’ll need to make a bargain.”
Isaiah was uncomfortable. He didn’t know what the King of Crows was up to, but he also knew there was no chance of leaving without agreeing to his game. He was going to have to be brave. He was going to have to be smart. “Okay,” Isaiah said. “I accept.”
The King of Crows smiled and rose from his throne. His shadow fell across Isaiah as he strode toward him. The moon was yellow and leaking drips of sickly light. The diseased trees bore no fruit. Isaiah was afraid.
The King of Crows opened one side of his coat, and Isaiah saw that it was a blank gray slate of the sort they had in school. With his other hand, he gave Isaiah a piece of chalk. “Go on, then. Write yourself a new ending, and I’ll let you go.”
Isaiah bit his lip and stared at the slate. He did not trust the man in the hat.
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sp; “Wait! I want a condition of my own,” Isaiah said.
“My. Making conditions now, are we? We are feeling our oats.”
“You don’t get to make all the rules,” Isaiah shot back.
The King of Crows put his face right up to Isaiah’s so that Isaiah could see the hatred swirling in those enormous dark pupils. And for a moment, Isaiah forgot everything except his fear. Because those were eyes that said, Struggle, but you will never win, and it made Isaiah feel so tired. “I made myself king. Never forget.”
The King stepped back. From behind his throne he produced an hourglass. In one swift motion, he turned it over. Isaiah watched the sand pour down. It was going fast.
“Your time is now,” the King of Crows said and opened his coat once more.
Isaiah tried to write on the slate, but no sooner would he get a few words down than the slate would erase them. New words would appear in their place. Words he had not written.
“That’s no fair. You’re cheating!” Isaiah yelled. He kept trying. Again and again, his words were erased and replaced. The sand rushed through. He was running out of time, and that made him panicky. But then he saw the look on the King of Crows’s mottled face. Smug. Angry. He expected to win. It pricked at Isaiah. He couldn’t beat him by these rules.
There’s always another way.
Isaiah stared at the moving lining of the King’s coat. Always moving. It was all happening inside the coat. That’s what the man did; he would rewrite it until you couldn’t find a way out. Until you were trapped in the story he wanted to tell. How did you unravel such a story? The same way you did a coat. You picked it apart, thread by thread.
Look inside. See what’s really there.
“That’s it. Look inside. What do you see? Do you see yourself in there, Little Man?”
Sarah Beth had said that the King of Crows’s story was in there, too. And if you knew it, you could reveal the truth of him. But you had to be able to see through it all to what was really there. Isaiah frowned and touched his head. Sarah Beth had been a big liar. She’d stolen his magic.
Look beyond it. See what’s really there. But the inside of the coat was so bright and blinding. And the sound! Like a million voices talking at once, with no space to think. It made him weak. He wanted to lie down and go to sleep for a long, long time. Fierce blue electricity sparked in an arc around the King of Crows, and Isaiah knew that Jake Marlowe’s machine was working to join the worlds. They were connected, each side thinking it was winning. The King of Crows grew taller. Wider. He opened the other side of his coat, and it took on the appearance of a demon’s wings, spreading out like a night that would never end. Isaiah had to think! What was it that Theta told them Miss Addie had said? The King of Crows could only take. He could not create. See beyond to what’s really there. A memory fought against Isaiah’s fear. He had plucked a feather from the King’s fantastical coat once. Yes, he remembered that now! He’d given it to Evie to read. But she’d found nothing. No memories. No history. No family or friends. Just emptiness. Isaiah’s heart sank at another dead end.
“Isaiah. My patience is growing short.” The King of Crows’s voice had deepened. It was everywhere. How could you fight against something that was everywhere? The coat was whispering to him, wrapping its lies around his neck like a heavy weight. It would not let him in. Isaiah’s knees buckled. He wanted to lie down. Just lie down. Mama had said she would keep him safe. But that was as much of a lie as the song on the Victrola the soldiers had been listening to. No mama could keep you safe from this.
The sand was down to a thin coating of grains. He was losing. He would be trapped here forever, and the King of Crows would continue to bring misery and strife to the world.
