The White Forest (36 page)

Pascal was suddenly outside the box, calling to me and fumbling for the latch. A vortex of energy churned about the hall. And I soon was not
in
the vortex—I was the vortex. I could feel it pushing its way out of my chest. I could not respond to Pascal or even look at him any longer because I was wholly other than him. We were not the same kind of creature. I was blooming in the darkness. Maddy had long ago put a surface on me, a facade of normality. And now she’d helped to tear it away. I could feel that surface sloughing off into the aether, and I tried my best to hold the doorway closed. I didn’t know what would happen if it opened. Who would I hurt? The buzzing electric lights were too much. I felt the fullness of my power burst forth from my chest. The box exploded around me, and I was falling up toward the ceiling and the field of glass flowers.

The sky became the ground. I was going to strike it. No time to brace my body. I was going to hit.

I
felt that I was everywhere at once; my essence had moved beyond the boundaries of my own flesh into stillness and silence. Without opening my eyes, I listened for the murmur of objects, and impossibly, I heard nothing. I extended tendrils of myself into the far distance, attempting to experience even the presence of one soul. But there was nothing. In the open air of Hampstead Heath, I could at least hear my own clothing or the dull hum of faraway London bricks. But it was as if every object in the world, every clamoring soul that I’d perceived since the death of my mother, had simply ceased to exist.

I opened my eyes and was greeted by stark white light. The Crystal Palace was gone, and it appeared I was floating in some eternally bright and empty space, a world washed clean. Then slowly, trees materialized—sturdy oaks with white bark and pale toothy leaves. Flowers appeared soon after, burning like lanterns in the underbrush. I lay on a bed of white grass, mere inches from one of the oversize blossoms, and it seemed as though the light inside the petals fluctuated,
growing brighter and then dimmer. There were fine veins in the petals too, like those that can be seen beneath the surface of a fair woman’s skin. I felt the glow of light in my own body, growing brighter and dimmer, responding to the light of the alien flowers. I was part of them, and they were part of me.

Finally, I was here in the forest of my dreams—Nathan’s Empyrean and Ariston Day’s Paradise. Being swallowed wasn’t the end. This was a beautiful new beginning in a place with no sorrow or pain. I lay on my back and ran my fingers through the white grass, finding it cool. There was no breeze or movement in the forest, and stranger still, no
smell
. It was as if nothing here had ever lived. This was the aether. Such lack of life made the forest magnificent, just as the gods themselves who’d never lived were magnificent.

I heard a woman moaning some distance away. The moan was confusing—a dark stain upon this place. And then I remembered Maddy firing Nathan’s pistol and forcing me into the glass sarcophagus surrounded by electric light. I remembered feeling agony when she betrayed me. Such emotion should not have tainted the Empyrean, and yet it was here.

The woman was still moaning, and I recognized her voice. Maddy, who’d put everyone in danger, was close at hand.

I rose from my place in the white grass, checking myself for injury. My dress was torn around the neck and shoulders and I’d suffered cuts from broken glass. Blood leaked onto the fabric of my dress, making red flowers on the silk. I caught a glimpse of a purple gown beyond a patch of bright flowers. It was Maddy, trying to stand, and looking at her, I felt a rage rise up in me unlike any I’d ever know.

“Madeline,” I called in a voice that was loud and hard. The sound of it seemed to echo off the white sky.

She looked startled and before I could speak another word, she was moving toward the cover of the white trees.

“Don’t you dare,” I called to her.

She did not stop. If anything, she ran faster.

I stood and followed her into the woods, watching as her purple dress flickered among the white trunks. I found I could move more easily in the Empyrean, as if I
owned
the space. I called Maddy’s name again, but still she did not slow. I wove among the trees that
were not trees at all. They were like bones. The Empyrean was some vast body.

I caught Maddy by a ribbon trailing from her purple gown, and she fell, face-first, into one of the white trees. She screamed, clutching at the bark and then turning to claw at me. I took both her wrists and held them. There was no transference in the white forest, for there was nothing to transfer. But I drew strength from the trees themselves and held her down.

“This was so foolish,” I said. “I worked so hard to protect you.”

“Where is Nathan?” she spat.

“Nathan?” I said, outraged at the ridiculousness of her question. This had all gone well beyond Nathan. “Let me look, Maddy. Let me see if I can find him.” I turned my head from side to side and called out his name. “It looks as though Nathan’s not here,” I said caustically. “Is it possible that Ariston Day
misguided
you?”

“Let me go, Jane,” she screamed.

With all my force, I shook her against the white tree, knocking the back of her skull against the bark. “Do you know what I am?” I said.

“I do,” she said. “He told me.”

“Then you should be bowing your head.”

She did not bow. She looked at me defiantly. “Where is the Crystal Palace? Where is London? What have you done with everything?”

“
I
did this?” I asked, incredulous. “Maddy, are you going to listen to me or do I have to thrash you against this tree again?”

She grew quiet, ceasing her struggle. “Just tell me where everyone has gone,” she said. “Is London no more?”

“You assume I know more than I actually do,” I said. “I’ve been trying to tell you that.” I gazed into the white forest. The space among the trees was eerie, as if pregnant with some unseen force. “London exists. But I certainly don’t know how to get back there. What did Ariston Day tell you would happen?”

She drew a breath. “He said the electricity from the Great Illumination would augment your talent. He said it would keep the
door open long enough so all of us could pass through and look for Nathan.”

“And how did he know such a thing?”

“He’s had meetings with William Crookes of the queen’s Society for Psychical Research. Mr. Crookes used electricity with his mediums to great effect. One woman was said to be able to produce a full-bodied apparition when she was augmented with electricity.”

“More human experiments,” I said. “That’s charming, Maddy.”

“What are we going to do, Jane?”

“We’re going to clean up the mess that you and Ariston Day have made,” I said. “But I’m in charge here. You’ll do everything I say. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “Will we find Nathan?”

“If you ask me that again, I will strangle you.”

“Yes, Jane.”

“We’re going to walk,” I said. “Go quietly. I believe I know what things live in these woods, and you wouldn’t want to meet them.”

•   •   •

We made our way through the white trees; Maddy went first because I no longer trusted her to walk behind me. My rage had subsided, but I felt the connection between us was torn. She was no longer a sister. I had no sisters. Nathan was right. I was the kind of thing that walked alone.

Maddy glanced back nervously, perhaps checking whether I was about to transform into a blazing goddess and take my rightful seat in this weird atmosphere. But I remained myself, still tattered and bleeding. Unlike walking on the Heath, there were no paths by which to travel, and edging through the trees made our traversing slow. Though there was a great deal of flora in the Empyrean, we saw literally no fauna. No insects or birds. Everything was terribly pristine. Untouched and impossible.

“What pollinates the flowers?” Maddy asked. “There must be some sort of insect here at least. It can’t all just be plants.”

“They only look like plants,” I said.

She bent over to smell one of the glowing oversize flowers. “You’re right. There is no scent,” she said. “And it’s as though I’m not seeing any of them clearly. I can’t quite focus my eyes.”

I could see the Empyrean clearly enough. In fact, the more time I spent there, the more its images resolved in front of me. Every piece of foliage was becoming articulated.

“You shouldn’t have brought us here, Maddy,” I said, calmly now. “I don’t really know what any of it means. And we’re no closer to finding Nathan now than we were in London. In fact, we may be further away.” I turned to look at her. “Why didn’t you simply tell me you were carrying Nathan’s child?”

She paused for a moment and then said, “Because this was
my
problem, Jane. For once, something was my very own, and it had nothing to do with your godforsaken talent. Finally, there was something between just Nathan and me—something normal. A child.”

“Yes,” I said agreeing. “And I am so far from normal.”

“You’re like a tidal wave,” she said, “that picks up everything in its path and drags it along. We’re all at the mercy of your currents. Ariston Day says that no part of you is even
human.
”

This pierced me. “Do you believe him, Maddy? You, of all people.”

She turned to look at me, remorseful yet determined. “You said it yourself. These plants, which look so very much like plants, are in fact not. You look so much like a girl, but—”

“Yes,” I said grimly. “I am not.”

“I’m sorry, Jane.”

“Don’t say that when you don’t mean it. I’m tired of talking in circles with you.”

“But you must understand why I used the gun,” she said. “For once, I wanted to be in control of my own fate.”

“And look where that’s gotten you,” I said. “You’re in the false forest—perhaps for eternity.”

“No,” she said, hastening her step.

“It’s not going to help you to run away,” I called. “Haven’t you learned that yet?”

When she stopped short, I knew she’d discovered something—even before I saw the red coat spread beneath the tree.

The Fetch was bleeding from an ugly wound in his neck, turning the red of his coat an even darker shade. The skin around the wound looked as though it had been torn by a dull blade, splaying the flesh. Maddy recognized him before I did—his rough American face was badly bruised. “Alexander,” she said, kneeling at his side. “What’s happened to you?”

His lips were chapped and white, and his eyes searched the sunless sky. “Ariston Day,” he whispered.

“Where is he?” I asked.

Alexander made a gurgling cough. “Things weren’t going according to plan and he became—violent.”

“Did he do this to you, Alexander?”

“Jane,” he said, as if seeing me for the first time. There was blood on his teeth when he smiled. “The Great Doorway. Bringer of the Paradise.”

“You can see well enough Day was wrong about all that,” I said. “He didn’t understand what it meant to open the door.”

“He still doesn’t,” Alexander said, “and now it seems the door wasn’t enough. He needs to bring the wall down.”

“The wall?” I asked.

Alexander took a wheezing breath. “The wall . . . the membrane . . . the skin. I don’t know what to call it. It’s what encloses this place, holds it away from earth. Day is making sacrifices in the woods. He says we’ve displeased the gods of the Empyrean and the only thing that’s left is blood sacrifice. That’s what these coats were meant to represent all along. We Fetches wear our blood on the outside, and he’s bleeding every one of us he finds.”

“Can you stand?” Maddy asked. “Can you come with us?”

“I think I’d better lie here,” Alexander said. He coughed again. “Pascal isn’t with you?”

“He isn’t,” I said. “We’ve found only you.”

“I was terrible to him,” Alexander said. “I treated him so badly, and for what? Feeble transcendence?”

“Pascal wants to talk to you,” I said, “He believes you aren’t lost, and I hope he’s right.”

Alexander grimaced. “If you see him, tell him I cared for him. Tell him I forgot myself when I pushed him away. I’m Sleep and he’s Death. He knew his purpose all along.”

I bent down and squeezed his hand. “You’ll tell him, Alexander, when you see him again. Now, can you explain to us exactly what Ariston Day is attempting?”

“There’s a wall,” Alexander said. “The wall that separates the Empyrean from our world. Day believes he can bring the wall down now that he’s inside. Believes he can unite the two halves and bring about the unmaking. He doesn’t want a doorway anymore, you see. He wants it all to be of one piece. He intends to let this Paradise spill out into London like a disease. We thought we might live in something beautiful. But now that I’ve seen it, I know the Empyrean will bring blight. It will undo everything I love.”

“How will he bring down the wall?” I asked.

Alexander shifted in the white grass. “He thinks the gods will do his bidding if they’re sated. And there’s something inside the wall—a mechanism that will help him bring it down, a machine.”

“Where is it?” Maddy asked. “Where is the wall, Alexander?”