The Night Country (The Hazel Wood #2)(62)

The moonless child will die

And the starless child will fall

And the sunless child rise higher than them all



The startled bartender made a gesture at the two of them—that world’s way of warding off the evil eye, Finch guessed—and turned their cups over to show them they were no longer welcome.

“A dead world’s prophecy,” Io said, standing. “Were more useless words ever spoken?”

She took out her watch to consult it, as she always did, and her face changed. She held it up.

Numbers blazed off its face in solid black.

The silence between them swelled, then was shattered by the bartender, inviting them in her own language to kindly get their asses out of her bar. Finch laughed a little, looking into Io’s anxious eyes.

“Here we go.”



* * *



Back in the library her face was grayer than the walls. She didn’t let him fetch the book, even though she looked two steps from keeling over. On shaking legs she found it, with shaking hands she took it down. They’d been shocked sober by the pocket watch, but she was four-thirds of the way back to drunk by now, taking continual nips off her bottomless red bottle.

Before she opened the book, she gave him a look. A hard, bright-burning look too packed full of feeling for him to master. It made him put a hand on her arm.

“We’re good,” he said, peering into her eyes and trying to make her believe it. Oddly, her fear made him less afraid. He felt like a man lifting a sail, shouldering a pack. Walking on down the road. “This is good. It’s the very last secret, right?” He squeezed her arm. “We’re ready.”

One more inscrutable look, and she opened her mouth. Her eyes searched his. He thought she was going to say something, something important.

But her head dropped, and she opened the book. Holding it so he couldn’t see its pages, she read the first words. “Once upon a time.”

He startled. “Really?” None of the books had been in English before, or in any language he could identify.

She ignored him. “Once upon a time, there was a man and a woman and a vast green land, with cracked places where the land rose and became rippling stone, and broken places where blue water came in. And the man made stories of the earth and the woman told stories with the stars, and with the children she bore the stories multiplied.”

“Wait,” Finch said. His voice was distant from him, it seemed to come from a place outside his body. “Where are we going?” But the magic was already lifting them, taking them.

“Shh,” said Iolanthe, and began again. “Once upon a time…”





33


Cities go wrong in the summertime. That’s what the cops would tell themselves, the EMTs, all the bodies gathered together to tend to the girl at the bottom of the stairs, as good as pushed by the Hinterland.

The wrongness is in the atmosphere: strange skies, the wheedling nature of the breeze. Heat putting the screws on till the city feels like something set to blow, a place where everyone waits like frogs in a pot with the fire on low. The police would chalk this up as one more of the city’s human horrors. There were enough of them that the Hinterland could blend in. That the mass hallucination would be written off as a drug in the drinks, an airborne attack. But I knew the truth. I knew we were poison.

Once I got free of the stairwell I kept my head down and slipped away to the river. The lucid fairy waters of the Hinterland felt very far from this mess of dead leaves and trash, freckled by the lights of passing boats.

I looked around—at the grimy water, the garbage on the ground, the man asleep on a bench behind me, aging and filthy in a world without pity. The city’s beauty receded, until all I could see was the grime on top. The way everything and everyone here existed in their own lonely sphere, untouchable.

I called Ella, but she didn’t answer. I texted her one more time.

I’m coming home soon. I promise. I’m almost done.

I didn’t know why, but it felt true. Whatever I was waiting for, it was coming soon. For better or worse.

Back at the hotel, I opened my windows as high as they’d go, let my room fill up like a dish with night air. It felt like a dare coming back here. It was too dangerous to stay; I had nowhere to go. I should’ve been packing my stuff, but instead I looked out the window, over an insomniac stretch of city.

Here’s what I’d say, if I could write Finch a letter.

Stay. Stay where you are. Let me find you.

My mother wants to run away. She wants to rewrite our life in a place with more empty spaces than people, where the air smells like hyssop and dust.

But not me. I want to find you. I want to walk between worlds with you. I wouldn’t mess it up this time, I wouldn’t hide inside my own head. I wouldn’t let you hide inside yours.

How is it that I don’t even know you anymore? How is it that you’re so far away?

A sound startled me, making my head snap up. Something slid under the door, skidding a foot over the carpet.

A letter. I half ran across the room, my heart flooding with heat. The letter was scribbled in blue ink on old hotel stationery, folded into fours. But it wasn’t from him.

Alice I lied to you when I said you’re not special just because someone loves you. I lied to you a lot I guess but can you blame me when you always believed every damn word I couldn’t resist it. I’m sorry I didn’t stay with you tonight but I’ll see you again soon. It won’t be me exactly but you’ll know I’m there. I’ll be the wind maybe or the trees or the water or the sky even. I don’t really know how it works. Alice I’m tired and I haven’t been good in a very long time and that’s another thing I lied about that I didn’t ever want to be good. I think this is the right choice for me. I think this world is the wrong one.