“Because the High Court would bury him immediately. They’re not looking for the Netherworld or the chest; their only goal is to find dangerous Undead and bury them. And to them, Dante qualifies as that. But the Liberum could use Dante. He could help them find the Netherworld. He’s like them, after all. They all want to find the same thing.”
The cold made my throat burn. “Dante is nothing like them. The Liberum are lifeless, sallow, inhuman....”
But Theo only laughed. “Dante’s life is already long past. He’s decaying. He knows it. He told you to let him go just before the Undead swept him out the window. Remember? I was just trying to save your life.”
My muscles tightened.
“Decaying?”
I threw my bag to the ground and lunged at Theo. I heard the punch before I felt it. A loud crunch, followed by a shout. Theo stumbled back, clutching his nose. Blood trickled through his fingers. My hand stung. I held it to my chest and inched away from him. Theo looked up at me with surprise, though his face quickly hardened with anger. He wiped the blood from his nose, smearing it across his face, and ran at me.
He grabbed hold of my hair and wrestled me to the ground, our bodies sinking in the snow.
“Stop it!” Anya shouted. “Stop it!”
But neither of us listened. Theo was stronger than his skinny frame suggested. I swung at him, but he ducked out of the way, then caught my arm and twisted it behind my back. A twinge of pain ran up my shoulder. I lashed back at him, trying to free myself from his grip, but he held on tight.
“You’re a criminal!” I shouted at him. “Your Spade doesn’t even need to be dyed red for me to see who you really are.”
“Shut up,” he cried.
But I didn’t stop. “You’re worse than the Undead. You talk about them like you’re better but you’re nothing. You have no friends, you barely have any family. All you have are enemies—”
Before I could finish my sentence, Theo threw me forward and, grasping my neck, buried my face in the snow. The ice burned my cheeks.
“You don’t know anything about me,” he said. “You don’t!”
I wriggled free and jumped back, wiping the dirt and water from my eyes. I felt something trickle down the top of my lip. I licked it, tasting the metallic tang of blood. Theo stood up, a plume of red dripping from his nose. But all I could see when I looked at it was the fleck of red on Theo’s Spade. The classified file Anya had found on him in Paris. The smug look that spread over his face when I had confronted him about it. I charged him, bowling him over and pinning him to the ground.
He covered his face with his arms while I threw my fists at him. “What did you do?” I shouted, my hair wild in front of my face. “Why are you even here? What do you want from us?”
“I want the same thing as you,” he said through his arms. “I want a fresh start.”
I collapsed into the snow beside him, breathless. My cheeks stung from the ice; my hand throbbed from punching Theo in the nose. The rest of my body ached with exhaustion. I licked the edge of my lip where it was bleeding.
Theo sat up, brushing himself off as he turned to me. He pressed his nose to stop the bleeding. “Is that so much to ask?”
I was too tired to respond. I hoisted myself up, brushing the dirt from my pants, and then I saw a bit of brown cloth by the riverbank, half-covered by fresh snowfall. I ran to it, recognizing its weave the moment I touched it. A scrap of cotton ripped from Dante’s shirt.
“You were right,” I said to Anya. “He’s showing us the way.”
We followed the river through the valley until the hills cleared and the sight before us made us go still. Cutting through the snow in the distance were three rivers, their blue waters winding together like ropes, just like the engravings on the inside of the chest. I clutched the cloth in my hand, imagining that Dante was standing beside me.
“The braid of rivers,” Anya said. “We found it.”
“The second point should be just beyond the point where they meet,” Theo said.
“But where?” I said. I tried to remember the rest of the lines etched into the chest, but couldn’t recall all of the details. I had a vague recollection of a set of straight lines etched around the second point in the chest, like a naked forest, but there were no trees in front of us. Perhaps I was mistaken; perhaps that etching was around the third point, or perhaps it didn’t refer to trees at all.
We made our way toward the point where the three rivers intersected, walking tentatively over the icy rocks that provided the only crossing over the water. When we reached the other side, what looked like a vast snowy valley was actually a white forest, the land studded with naked birch trees, their wood so ashen that I could barely distinguish them from the snow.
“Trees,” I whispered. Maybe I had been right about the lines etched into the chest.
“I remember those,” Anya said beside me. “They look just like the lines in the chest. The next point is somewhere in the middle.”
At the foot of the woods, another scrap of brown cloth dangled in the branches of a tree. I ran to it and delicately untangled its threads. It was another shred of Dante’s shirt, ice and mud caked onto it as though it had been dragged through the snow. I pressed it between my fingers, its coldness reminding me of Dante’s palms, and peered through the birches. The woods were so white they blended into the ground, as though they were a mirage. A dry wind swept through them, so stale that it wicked the moisture from my lips, leaving them strangely parched. A voice within me warned me not to go inside, but I ignored it. “Come on,” I said. “We’re almost there.”
As we crept inside, a terrible stillness filled the woods. The air grew dry and thin. There was a sour taste to it—or perhaps it wasn’t a taste at all, but a lack thereof, like the starchy aftertaste of waking up after a long sleep. The deeper we ventured, the more it enveloped me, seeping through my lips until my mouth grew parched and cottony, and my tongue grew as dry as sandpaper.
Theo licked his lips and glanced around the pale trees, looking for some clue as to what we should do next. “This is taste, right?” he said. “So what are we looking for exactly?”
The nethers, they first call from their hollows by dark
, I thought to myself. “A hollow,” I said, remembering the next piece of Descartes’s riddle.
Then taste, until food is but
dirt on the tongue.
“Like another well?” Theo said, a few paces behind me. He broke off the branches from the trees as he pushed through them.
I saw a glimmer of water in the distance, the same deep black as the water from the well at the first point. “No,” I said, pushing through the brush. “But I think I found it.” My mouth was so parched, my tongue so thick that it was hard to force out the words.
A dark pool of water cut through the trees, its surface so still it looked like an abyss. I licked my lips, expecting to taste the salt of my sweat, but it was flavorless. I knelt on the bank and bent over the water until my reflection appeared below me.
The water rippled. My double licked her lips. Startled, I touched my mouth. Had I done that without realizing, or was I seeing things?
The Renée in the water parted her lips. As she did, my throat tightened. I faltered, feeling her coax my lips open, too. A thin thread of air twisted up from within me as though she were unwinding something inside of me. Slowly, the dryness on my tongue melted into something soft and moist, into the faintest memory of something I had been longing to taste. It almost wasn’t a taste, but a feeling imprinted on my soul. Dante.
The warm taste of his lips filled me. I had only tasted them once, on that distant night at Gottfried, when we had first exchanged souls, and yet I could feel them against mine as though we were still lying in the grass, his touch making my eyes grow heavy and body go limp. I could taste the sweetness of his breath, the salt clinging to his skin, when the memory began to unravel. I realized it too late; the taste had faded from my lips. My reflection rippled in the water beneath me, her mouth parted, her face whitening as though something were being drained from her. I tried to bring the memories back, when a sweetness tickled my tongue.
Noah. His memory tasted of honey and jam spread over a crusty baguette, of soft cheese and late nights stained with wine. I remembered his breath, hot and muggy, the taste of coffee and sugar lingering on his lips when he’d leaned forward and kissed me. That faded, too, the memory folding into another until the taste of my grandfather’s estate coated my lips with salted meats and roasted vegetables slick with butter. Then California. The greasy bite of a burger, a squirt of ketchup, a handful of fries, so salty they made my lips chap. A lick of ice cream; a thick malt sliding up the inside of a straw; the fizz of a Coke tickling my nose; the first sip of lemonade, its glass sweating in the California sun.
I swallowed, trying to keep the memories in, but it was no use. They unwound too quickly, each taste rolling into the next, each one wrenched from me by the hollow beneath me, its gravity prying my lips wider, wider, until they finally fell shut.
My reflection rippled, scrambling my face as I stumbled back from the water. My tongue felt dull. I was overwhelmed with thirst. I longed to savor the tastes I had just relived. Anya stood a few paces away, licking her lips as she stepped back from the pool. Theo blinked beside her, blocking the sun with his hand as he shifted his jaw.
I was still clutching the bits of cloth Dante had left behind. I slipped them into my pocket and turned to the horizon, trying to recall the etchings that led from the second point to the third. A set of triangles, the third point nestled in the space between? I scanned the distance, searching for anything that would jog my memory, when I spotted a familiar pattern: a rugged outcrop of mountains, framing the horizon like jaws. Beyond them stood twin peaks, their tips leaning toward each other, forming a valley.
“The mountains,” Theo said, excitedly. “I remember them from the map.”
“So do I,” Anya said. “The third point should lie between them, right?”
I turned to them, about to agree, when I noticed a cabin, just a stone’s throw away from Theo. It was made of birch, so white that it blended in with the scenery. The weathervane on top was shaped like a canary. “There’s a house back there—” I began to say, when a deep voice cut me off.
“It’s empty.”
A pair of leather boots sank into the dirt beside me. I recognized those shoes, the way they creased at the toe in two places from walking up a set of snowy steps every winter in Massachusetts.
My grandfather, Brownell Winters, loomed over me, his face taut like stretched leather. He was dressed in a pressed gray suit and overcoat. He took off his wool hat. Beneath it, his white hair was combed cleanly to one side. Even out in the country, he kept himself groomed, ever a gentleman.
My grandfather walked to the edge of the pool and leaned over it. It happened in a flash. He blinked, his mouth opening suddenly before pressing shut once again. He winced at the light, as if he had been standing there for hours. When he turned to me, he was unable to hide the astonishment on his face. He gave me a questioning look, but said nothing. Then he removed a handkerchief from his coat pocket and patted his lips.
A dozen elders from the High Court swept in behind him as if carried by an old, dark force that they had wielded to do their bidding. They wore red scarves to mark their distinction. Behind them stood two dozen others—Lower Court Monitors, who could be distinguished by their lack of scarves, many of whom were training for the High Court. They stopped a few feet short and waited like stone pillars, their gray overcoats barely flapping in the wind. Their faces were firm and unwavering as they watched us; they showed no sign of sympathy.
My grandfather was about to speak, when one of them broke the silence by sneezing.
Clementine LaGuerre. She was standing on the far side of the group, her father, John LaGuerre, towering over her. He had always liked me at St. Clément, and I remembered him as a jocular, even-tempered headmaster, though now his expression was rigid. He pulled a handkerchief from his coat and handed it to Clementine, shaking his head once in a quiet reprimand.
The sight of her among the Monitors of the High Court put me at ease. She met my eye, her face embarrassed. She didn’t look as wild and defiant as she used to; in fact, she almost seemed relieved to see me.
“Ms. Pinsky,” my grandfather said to Anya. “And—Theodore?”
My grandfather stiffened with surprise. He hadn’t known Theo was here with me, nor did he seem pleased to see him.
Theo saw it, too. His eyes betrayed a hint of amusement, as if he enjoyed seeing my grandfather caught off guard. “Mr. Winters,” he said softly. “I haven’t seen you since—”
“Since your trial,” my grandfather said quickly, before Theo could finish his sentence.
Theo looked like he was about to correct him, but then changed his mind. “Yes.”
I had never seen my grandfather look so uneasy. He was about to turn back to the Monitors behind him when my grandfather spied Theo’s Spade.
He tried to hide it behind his back, but wasn’t quick enough.
“What have you got there?” my grandfather said. “Give it to me.”
When Theo made no sign of movement, my grandfather reached behind his back and grabbed the Spade from him.
“Just like new,” my grandfather said, running his hands down the handle and along the edge of the metal tip, where Theo’s initials were still engraved. He tilted his head at Theo and gave him a curious look. “Imagine that.”
My grandfather planted the tip of the Spade in the ground and scanned the white birches, his eyes narrowing as he turned to me. “Where is he?”
“Who?” I asked.
My grandfather shot me a threatening look, as if to say:
Don’t test me
. “You know of whom I speak.”
Dante. Of course I knew. My grandfather was a fool if he thought I was going to tell him anything. I gazed back at him defiantly. “It’s just us three.”
My grandfather sighed. “Fine,” he said. “Give me your things. I want your weapons, your shovels, your luggage. Everything.”