The Night Country (The Hazel Wood #2)(38)

20


Janet wanted to meet Iolanthe first. Ingrid didn’t want to go at all. She wasn’t like Janet—a transplant, a born wanderer. Her roots here went all the way down to the world’s bedrock, even if that bedrock was turning to smoke.

“We don’t know where the door in the tavern goes,” Finch said tightly. “But the fact that it smells like everything you want to get home to is a pretty big tip-off it’s dangerous, right?”

“Yes, thank you, I’ve read my share of fairy tales,” Janet snapped. “And while we’re on the subject of devil’s deals, who exactly is this person that popped in out of nowhere, ready to save our lives?”

“A traveler,” Finch said, though he knew that was over simplifying things. “She wants money, and she thinks I can help her with that.”

“A traveler, listen to him. Do you know what you’re talking about? Do you think we’re playing a game?” Janet’s chill had frayed along with the Hinterland. For the first time Finch feared he wouldn’t be able to convince her, that she wouldn’t come at all.

“The door in the tavern feels wrong,” he half shouted. He hadn’t fully admitted it before, but it did. It had a furtive feeling, an oiliness. Even the round hobbity cuteness of it felt like a vicious joke.

“So our options are these,” he said, speaking low again, calmly. “We stay. Hope the Spinner fixes things. Or we take our chances tomorrow morning and go. Because none of us is walking through that door.”



* * *



Finch didn’t sleep much that night. None of them did. He heard the burr of Janet and Ingrid’s voices through the wall hours past dark. They would decide without him whether to stay or go, all he could do was wait and see. His tiny store of belongings was packed, and all the inscrutable treasures of the Hinterland. There wasn’t anything more he could do. Finally, restlessness sent him outside.

Night was tipping softly into day when the front door creaked open behind him. Janet was always after Ingrid to fix that creak. She settled beside him, already dressed in her jeans and open-necked shirt, her trim-cut coat, relics of the Earthly life she’d abandoned decades ago.

Traveling clothes. The fearful grip on his heart eased away. They sat together while the light went blue, then violet, then the powdered silver of pine needles. The Hinterland and its relentless beauty stopped for no one.

Just before sunrise the three of them walked together across the women’s land. Ingrid unlatched the gate on the goat pen and bent over to pick a teacup-shaped flower. She tucked it into Janet’s hair. Their path to the tavern was circuitous now, winding around great starry gaps in the land. Iolanthe was standing out front of it in her black on black, including a cloak with copper stitching at the neck, running a thumb over the empty face of her pocket watch.

First she made Finch show her all the things he’d taken from the broken tales.

“Good Christ,” Janet murmured as he did it. “That’s quite the arsenal.”

Iolanthe’s eyes were alight as she ran her hands over all the little treasures he’d plucked from the Hinterland’s wounds. It filled him with pride to see her lift one, then another, holding a walnut to her ear and shaking it, weighing the balance of a speckled yellow egg. Then she picked up the dagger.

“Hello,” she said. “You’re going to make this a whole lot easier.”

It was an age-stained thing of yellowing bone Finch had taken from a pretty three-story manor house in the town where Hansa had lived. Words ran over its hilt, carved in a language he couldn’t read. Iolanthe shrugged an arm free of her cloak, then paused.

“Almost forgot: I made you a promise.” From an inside pocket she brought out two small booklets. They were bound in the same shade of green leather as Tales from the Hinterland, the print across them embossed in the same gold. PASSPORT, their covers read, above the unmistakable shape of a Hinterland flower.

Alice, Finch thought. She’d had that flower tattooed on her arm. The memory was sharp as an embroidery needle.

Janet practically snatched the passports. Finch could see her hungry mind clicking away. “How do they work?”

“The door.” Iolanthe pointed toward the tavern. “Keep them against your skin as you walk through it, and you’ll get to where you’re going. I’d hold hands if I were you. Tightly.”

“And if you walk through the door without a passport?” Ingrid asked grimly. “What happens to you then?”

“Hard to say,” Iolanthe said. “But I wouldn’t trust it, would you?”

“What about Ellery?” Janet put an arm around him. “Can you guarantee he’ll be safe?”

“No.” Iolanthe smiled to soften it. “But I can guarantee he’ll be interested. Good enough?”

Janet looked at her coolly, then turned to him. She touched a new cut under his eye and a healing one below his lip. Gently, she cupped his chin, looking at the scarred-over line on his throat.

“This is what you want.” She said it without inflection, not a question.

Finch had gotten used to not looking at what he wanted head-on. He’d learned the dreadful lesson of being care ful what you wish for, and had taken pains since then not to wish for too much. Nothing more ambitious than to save one girl.