Furthermore(74)

“She sent word?” Alice said. “But—”

“She was my apprentice many years ago,” Isal said. “Long before I was pushed off the branch.”

“So they really pushed you off the branch?” Oliver said, aghast. “Why?”

Isal finally blinked.

“Fifty-six years ago,” she said, “when we’d had our last visitor—a young girl, not much older than you,” she said to Alice, “I tried to warn her away. I knew that ultimately, she would be sacrificed for the queens.” Isal looked away. “I did not agree with the queens’ methods, and my actions were not appreciated. I was considered a traitor, and pushed off the branch.”

Alice’s eyes went impossibly wide.

“So they thought you would die,” Oliver said.

Isal nodded. “But there is great magic at the bottom of the trees, and it does not wish to do harm. I have been safe here.”

“Do they know?” Oliver asked, gesturing to the sky, to the land of Left. “Do they know it’s safe down here?”

“They suspect it might be,” she said. “But they do not know for certain. So we must hurry. We do not know if they will come looking for you. Please,” she said. “Come inside. I can help you.”

“But you say you’ve been here all this time,” Alice said nervously. “And yet you’ve never been discovered. How can we trust that your story is true? What if you’re working with everyone else? What if we step inside your house only to be stuffed in an oven?”

Isal smiled a strange, sad smile and pulled back her hood. Her golden hair, no longer framed by the yellow of her cloak, was dimmer now. Desaturated. She looked almost as white as Alice did, pale on pale; all color sapped from her skin. And when she spoke, she spoke only to Oliver. “Perhaps you should trust a friend who looks like one.”





Oliver couldn’t shake off his shock. “How did you know?” he said. “How did you know my Tibbin?”

Isal considered him carefully. “Furthermore is only occasionally as helpful as it pretends to be,” she said. “All Tibbins are created purposely—in conjunction with Furthermore citizens —and in accordance with the happenstance of your path through this land. The moment you arrived, your future was measured, hypotheses were made, and I was sent notification of my role in your journey. Now that you’re here, I’m tasked with providing you one piece of advice that will aid you in the rest of your excursion. Once the help is received, my bit is done.”

Alice and Oliver were stunned.

“We are never allowed to speak of our roles in all this,” Isal said, “but as I gave up on my loyalty to Furthermore long ago, I don’t see the harm in telling you. But to deny a Tibbin is a moral offense, not a legal one, and so I am honor bound to assist you.” She bowed her head forward an inch, and let her eyes rest on Alice’s and Oliver’s slack-jawed expressions. “No one has ever found me, you know.”

“Yes,” Oliver said, and looked around. “I can imagine.”

“No,” said Isal. “You don’t understand. A Tibbin pinned to me is most ungenerous. Left is a land long forgotten, and I, Isal, am the most unremembered of them all.” She paused, studying the two of them carefully. “Assigning a Tibbin to me means the Elders were never trying to help you. In fact, it’s likely they expected you to fail many moves ago. That you were clever enough to find me means that you are close to achieving what you desire. But tread carefully; the Elders cannot be happy about this.”

Alice and Oliver swallowed their fear and said nothing.

“Now,” said Isal, and clasped her hands. “I have more than answered all your questions. So I must insist, for the final time, that you come inside. If you stand here a moment longer I will not be responsible for your deaths.”

Alice and Oliver stumbled after Isal into her humble home, hearts racing in unison. Furthermore was meaner and twistier than even Oliver had imagined. They knew for certain now that their every move had been mapped and choreographed; the odds had been deliberately stacked against them. Their combined talents had kept them alive just long enough to move from one village to another, but the longer they stayed in Furthermore, the faster their luck would run out, and they would have to be sharper than ever if they were to have any hope of surviving the rest of their journey. They were now fugitives, on the run.

And both Tibbins had been spent.

Alice was shaken back to the present as she walked into the organized chaos of Isal’s home. Her cottage was little more than a glorified storage box. Every inch of wall space was covered in ornately framed oil paintings—“All my things were saved and pushed off the branch by dear Ancilly,” she’d said—while the interior square footage was set aside for her sewing supplies. Pins and needles and spools of thread and endless bolts of luscious fabrics were stacked up to the ceiling. Dress forms, boxes of jewels and baskets of feathers were arranged in tidy rows. Her home was small, but it was colorful and clean, and once they’d stepped fully inside, Isal removed her cape.

Isal managed to be beautiful in entirely her own way. She wore soft blue silks that draped around and across her body, and they made her look like a barely remembered dream: blurred at the edges and impossible to grasp. It was the first time Alice had ever thought a pale person could be beautiful, and it gave her great hope. Isal was not like Alice, not entirely, for she had depths of gold, even in her paleness, but even so, she looked very different from everyone back home in Ferenwood.