Furthermore(76)

A giant half globe, made entirely of gray glass.

Its contents were spare, but visually arresting: the pops of black that made up the furniture contrasted starkly against the very white snow, making for a stunning, simple presentation of beauty in contrasts.

More romantic still: It was snowing.

Confetti flakes fell from the sky, piling up all around them and frosting the top of the gray-glass globe. It looked like a lost ornament, fallen and frozen in the snow of a holiday season. The more Alice looked at this black-and-white scene, the more she began to appreciate the subtleties of light and shadow, and though Alice eventually found it quite lovely, it was also entirely foreign to her. They were not in the painting she’d chosen—the painting she’d chosen had been rich in autumnal colors—which had to mean that they’d not been refused access to the painter.

They’d not been refused.

Oh, the shock of it. Alice thought she might scream.

So she did just that. She fell back in the snow and she shouted for joy and she grabbed Oliver’s arm and said, “This isn’t the painting I picked—this isn’t the one! The one I picked was in a meadow, and it was autumn, and there were leaves on the ground, and there were little homes everywhere, and, oh, Oliver,” she said. “We made it!”

Oliver sat down beside her, looking solemn but kind, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Yes,” he said softly. “I daresay we have.”

They hugged, he and she, for a very long time, just clinging to each other, happy to be alive; grateful to have survived yet another stage of Furthermore. It was starting to wear on them now, nearly dying all the time. Alice promised herself that if they made it back to Ferenwood she would never again complain about a lack of adventure. She would be perfectly happy with a walk to the town square and a peek at the boats in Penelope’s garden. She tried to convince herself that it would be enough for her, that she could be happy with a simple, safe life tethered to Ferenwood, but even now, at the tail end of a crisis, she couldn’t quite manage it. Because she knew that wasn’t true. She wanted to go home, yes, and she wanted to spend more time with Father and she wanted to eat tulips and sit by the pond, but even after all the trials and tribulations of Furthermore—or perhaps because of them—she didn’t think she could ever go back to an ordinary life. She knew she’d never say no to adventure.

Alice broke away from Oliver and beamed at him.

“Don’t just park your hindquarters in the snow,” someone barked at them. “Good grief, girl, you’ll catch your death out there!”

Alice and Oliver looked up to discover a man scowling at them. He looked human enough, but the distance between his world and theirs seemed infinite. She realized then that a man in black and white seems impossibly gray, and even more impossible to reach; it was almost as though he existed in a different dimension.

Something was nagging at the back of Alice’s mind.

A bit of conversation.

Something Tim had told her.

“Hey! I’m talking to you,” the man shouted again, and Alice sprang to attention. The man was brandishing a cane at the two of them. Alice noticed that he had a scruffy black beard and wore a wool cap that pushed down over his eyes, and between his lips was an unlit pipe, and as he talked, it bobbed around in his mouth.

“Sitting in the snow in a silk gown,” he grumbled. “Up, the lot of you,” he said, poking Oliver with his cane. “Get inside.”

She and Oliver stumbled to their feet and stared at the man.

“Are you—?” she started to say.

“Of course I am,” he said. “Do you see anyone else here? Now hurry up,” he said. “I’ve put the kettle on, and it’ll be whistling by now.”

They did as they were told and followed the old man toward the half-globe home. The man stopped short a few feet and then began to disappear from his ankles up; it was only as she got closer that Alice realized he was walking down a set of stairs.

They quickly followed his lead.

It was him, then her, then Oliver, disappearing into the ground only to then climb their way back up; except when they finally faced a door, it opened from overhead.

Alice stomped the snow off her feet as they climbed and, as they crossed the threshold up and into the glass home, she did her best not to trail any dirt or wet onto the old man’s floor.

Suddenly, she and Oliver were standing in the middle of a clear dome, and looking out at the snowy world from the comfort of a toasty, cozy sanctuary.

As promised, the kettle had already begun to whistle. The old man moved quickly and easily for someone who carried a cane, and she wondered for a moment why he carried it. She noticed then that there was no real kitchen, no living room or bedroom, but one big space where everything sat out in the open; there were no secrets here, no closed doors, no walls or windows.

All the furniture was minimal and spare: clean lines and simple frames, black seat cushions, gray pillows and a threadbare blanket that was neatly folded and placed atop a bed. Solid shades of gray dotted her vision; this home was a place where colors did not exist and patterns were not made. It was steady, sturdy, and extremely tidy. The rug underfoot was soft and gray and fluffy, and not bothered by a single spot.

Alice and Oliver weren’t sure what to do with themselves.

It was a strange home for a painter, stranger still that there was no sign of his paintings anywhere. Alice cleared her throat, rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, and waited for the old man to return.