Ensnared (Splintered, #3)(23)
I huff. “Yeah, that sounds . . . anything but simple.” I don’t stop to consider how we’re supposed to land on top of carousel horses without damaging important body parts. The laws of nature are different on the other side, and that has to play a role somehow. Still, I’m taunted by the memory of the mirror I crashed into on prom night. How the glass shattered and sliced my skin. “If you misjudge, that could be painful.”
“Painful, but tolerable.” Uncle Bernie closes the ride’s door. Orangey sparkles seep through spaces in the panels from outside the ride. “That’s how one acquires wisdom. By getting a bonk on the noggin, or a bloody nose. We learn through our mistakes, don’t we?”
I tap the diary at my neck. Unless, like Red, you choose to forget your mistakes, in which case you never learn.
“There’s a trick to it,” Dad adds. “If you look closely, some of the horses have shadows cast by the carousel’s lights. Others don’t. The ones with shadows are real.”
I focus on the carousel, shocked by how quickly I pick out the real ones. The thought of being thrust toward a plane of glass at high speed makes my pulse kick so fast, I can feel my blood shuttling through my veins. I might’ve leapt off a butterfly into a stormy sky earlier, but this isn’t like flying. I’ll have no wind to coast on. I’ll have no control at all.
Now I know how Morpheus felt when he was afraid of riding in a car, and it’s not so funny from this side.
The Gravitron’s motor hums under my feet.
Dad tightens his fingers through mine. “This is the only way to get in and save your mom and Jeb. Just hold on to me and leap when I leap. It’s my turn to sprout wings.”
A nervous smile lifts one corner of my mouth.
“Speaking of wings.” Uncle Bernie gestures to my back. “You should lose yours for now. The portal is small. We don’t want you getting stuck.”
I frown. I’ve grown used to my wings being out—to their promise of power. Reabsorbing them is second nature after all my practice at the asylum, although I miss their weight the instant they’re gone.
I clench Dad’s hand and don’t let go as we press ourselves into position against the mirrored wall. Uncle Bernie holds the duffel bag since Dad and I are the newbies. Or, rather, Dad’s adult body is new to it all.
The whir of the motor grows as we spin, around and around until our backs plaster to the mirror behind us, pinning us in place like the bugs I used to collect. My lungs squeeze, as if they’re shrinking. I’m so disoriented I can’t make out anything but a blur in the reflections. I gulp against the bile climbing into my esophagus.
Just when I think I’m going to lose my eggs Benedict, Dad yells, “Now!”
There’s the sound of a lever being thrown. The floor drops and we’re thrust forward, Dad and I linked by a chain of hands and fingers, just like that moment in Wonderland when Jeb and I sailed across the chasm on tea-cart trays.
The glass races toward us. I scream as the mirror bends like a bubble, stretches around us, then bursts so we break through and soar into the other realm.
Dad lets go of my hand. For an instant I’m floating, then I drift into place atop a carousel horse moving in sync with the Gravitron on the other side.
A warm, humid stench surrounds us like a stagnant swamp. Dad wasn’t exaggerating when he said everything was barren here. The only lights come from the carousel. Up close, they’re actually bioluminescent bugs in small glass globes. A fuzzy gray firmament shimmers overhead—a haze of nothing.
Black mist cloaks our surroundings, so thick I can’t make out the ground beyond the ride’s platform. There’s no sound anywhere; even the gears of the carousel trundle along in silence.
Dad and Uncle Bernie fall onto their mounts in front of me. Dad’s cousin Phillip, dressed in a Red knight’s uniform, is already seated on a bench next to Uncle Bernie’s horse. I grab the brass rod that holds my mount secure. Tiny triangular mirrors cover the center pole. Through them I can see the inside of the Gravitron. That’s where we came out and where the knights must somehow go back in. It looks physically impossible, considering our size in contrast to the narrow bits of shimmering glass.
The adrenaline pumping inside me starts to slow as the ride comes to a stop. Dad takes the duffel from Uncle Bernie and helps me down. My legs waver as if trying to remember how to walk.
Together, the four of us step away from the light and into the nothing. My boots glide as if on air. I’d half expected to feel a sludgy mud sticking to my soles. The strange fog bubbles up around our knees, then falls to our ankles like a boiling, steamy stew, although nothing is wet. The mist has a sound-absorbing quality, eating up every whisper, breath, or shuffle of clothing and feet.
A glowing white gate looms in the distance. The iron dome rises behind it, dark and threatening, like a gargantuan, overturned witch’s cauldron.
I pause. The plan my uncle and his cousin came up with—to distract the gate’s eye as Dad and I creep through—is too dangerous. With the simulacrum suits, we’re all assured safe passage. But we need to get them on before we’re close enough for the gate to spot the four of us.
I tug at the duffel bag on Dad’s shoulder, making him stop.
“I have to show you something,” I attempt to say, but the sound is sucked away before it even leaves my tongue. Uncle Bernie said communication would be tricky here. I had no idea that meant our words would actually be swallowed by emptiness.