Chapter 94: Chapter 39: Silver glass

“I have decided to remain behind. A duchess is not meant for such travel. I will have to wait until the western lands are tamed in my next lifetime before seeing them with my own eyes. I eagerly await the first missives from our expedition leader and hope that the journey will be a fruitful one for the Guild.”

The golden thread uncoiled and uncoiled until it became taut at the gate. I stared at Beatrice and she returned a matching bewildered look.

“She is certifiable.”

“I would say so,” I said. “But you didn’t really give her another option.”

Beatrice’s face broke into an uncontrolled grin, like Lucifer finally revealing himself to the naive mortal he was pretending to help.

“Exactly,” she said, pulling out the Medoblad from the sleeve of her shirt.

“What … you can’t cut that! You heard what she said!”

“I most certainly did,” said Beatrice. “And that’s why once I cut her loose, I’m going to destroy both knobs and that will be the end of Ms. Dalia de Wyck. Simple as that.”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “And what about the deal you struck? That was all a ruse, too?”

“Yes, one of my own making. I only realized it after I put the memory back. That this was my plan all along. It was quite brilliant, if I do say so myself. Thank you for playing your part.”

Before I could do anything, Beatrice brought the Medoblad down onto the golden thread in one fell swoop. But rather than the blade slicing right through it, that portion of the rope instead became gray and brittle, and we both considered this unexpected turn of events.

“Huh,” said Beatrice. “Guess it’s made of sterner stuff. Well, another swing should do-”

The thread suddenly cracked apart, sending the loose end tumbling toward the void. Without thinking, I sprinted and dove to catch it, my stomach hitting the stone floor with a hard thud.

“What are you doing?” asked Beatrice indignantly. “This isn’t just my chance to be rid of her. It’s your chance too!”

“I can’t,” I said. “I need to-”

“-see things through? So sorry, Jen, but Dalia isn’t going to be able to tell you why your dead mom hung that locket around your neck.”

“Don’t you talk about-”

“What about what you said before?” she said. “I thought you were done letting others make your choices.”

“I am. It would be so easy to let go of the rope. But as hard as it is for you to imagine, there are worse things out there than Dalia. And so that’s why I am choosing to do this.”

I grabbed the remaining thread and tried to attach it to the knob, but Beatrice pointed the dagger at me. As much as I didn’t want to believe that she would turn me to stone, I couldn’t take that chance.

“You think I’m going to let you pull her out?” said Beatrice with a laugh, as I inched toward to the doorway, my hands fumbling behind my back.

“No,” I said, as I quickly pulled the rope through my belt loops before attaching the new snare I had tied to one of the knobs. “But I think you’ll pull me out.”

I turned and faced the doorway, ignoring Beatrice’s screaming in the background, and walked through.

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I opened my eyes and was surrounded by pure white all around me, including under my feet, which were firmly planted on the “ground.” Where was the dark void of the vervorium portal I was so used to? Where was the empty expanse? I looked down and saw that the rope was still slotted through my belt loops, except that the end that led back to Fort Totten was shorn. But the other was somehow still tense.

I followed it forward and as I did, I saw the brightness fracture as if there were a thousand crystal facets surrounding me. I reached my hand out to touch one, but felt nothing but air. The gold thread continued onward and so did I; however, as long and as far as I think I walked, I had no idea if had really traveled anywhere.

“Dalia!” I screamed, expecting my voice to echo outward like a whale calling out to its pod. But instead, the sound reverberated off of the crystals that weren’t there, stinging my eardrums. I pulled the rope, hoping that she would stumble forward, as if she had been a few paces in front of me this whole time, but all that did was burn my hands. Finally, I gave up and turned around to walk back to where I entered this hellhole.

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And there she was, sitting a few feet ahead, the Compendium nestled in her lap and the other end of the rope tied to her waist.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, as she slowly pushed herself up.

“The rope,” I said. “It broke. I think it couldn’t withstand being caught between both sides of the portal. So I grabbed it before it disappeared through the door and came in to find you.”

“I see,” said Dalia. “Well, that’s nice, but all you’ve done is trap yourself in here with me. Maybe your friend will grow tired of waiting for us to return and remove the doorknobs so we can end our misery.”

“She won’t,” I said. “She’ll stay until we get back out.”

“And how do you suppose we will manage that?” asked Dalia, who began walking in a circle for no apparent reason. “Do you think I was sitting here because it was fun?”

“No. I just assumed that you were waiting for us to come get you, maybe. This place makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense,” she said. “How did you find me?”

“Umm,” I said. “I tried walking toward the end of the rope. But then I only found you after I-”

“-turned around,” said Dalia. “It’s the same way I found the Compendium.” She flipped open the book, and I saw that some of its pages now contained writing.

“You put back the rings?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I hoped that something within these pages would help me get out of here. But alas, I chose poorly which ones to bring.”

She shut the book again, sending a rustling gust of wind that went nowhere.

“Can I … can I look at it?”

“Sure,” said Dalia. “Maybe you, who barely knows anything about alchemy, will be able to find something in there that I haven’t.”

I took the book without reply and began flipping through it to find the page about the dodo bird, only to remember that we had ripped it out in our foolish attempt to convince Dalia that we hadn’t found the entire Compendium. But to make up for that missing piece, there were now 30 others. Most appeared to be written in another languages and in other alphabets. Some had diagrams, some had drawings, a few had full-color paintings, and some even had musical compositions.

“This … wasn’t what I thought it would be,” I said, reaching the end of the restored pages. I handed the book back to Dalia, who placed it on the ground between us.

“It’s magnificent,” she said without a hint of irony. “You were expecting more dry encyclopedic entries like the one you gave me before? That knowledge we already have. These and the rest, they’re the foundations of the work that we had been doing over the centuries. Until it was stolen from us.”

“You lied to me,” I said, before realizing what I’d let out of the bag.

“How so?” asked Dalia.

“You told me that Frankie was the Guild’s keeper,” I said, putting my cards on the table. “But she wasn’t, was she?”

Dalia sighed.

“No, she was not. She and her family were the ones who stole the Compendium from us in the first place. As I’m sure she told you, before the poor girl was forced to cough up the key.”

“She died because of that!” I said. “She died because … because of me.”

It was the last stain on my ledger and it was one that I would never be able to remove. And with that realization, I broke down fully and began sobbing into the white abyss.

“Get up,” said Dalia finally. “This is not becoming of a Guild member.”

She extended her hand, and I took it, pulling myself up and nearly tripping over the Compendium and almost falling face first into the open page. I looked down Which happened to be one of the paintings, of a dragon eating its tail.

I carefully picked up the book and handed it to Dalia.

“Look,” I said.

“How grotesque,” she said.

“That’s not the point. Does it not remind you of our current situation?”

“The ouroboros,” said Dalia, her eyes betraying just for a second that she knew more than she let on. “One of the oldest symbols in alchemy. Its meanings are many, but what it stands for above all else is the eternal cycle.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Hic est Draco caudam suam devorans,” she said, reading the Latin caption under the painting. “This is the Dragon which devours his tail.”

“An endless loop?”

“No,” said Dalia. “Rebirth. Rejuvenation. The defeat of death. The Dragon’s blood that you stole from the museum, that we need to get back from Emma, it was the only ingredient of the Philosopher’s Stone that we still knew about. Now that the Compendium will be restored, we can find the others.”

“To what end?” I asked. “We fashion ourselves as gods? Unchanging and unyielding? You know that’s why J.P. is moving against you, right? He thinks the Guild has stagnated for too long. And if you are really trying to get the Stone, to preserve yourself, I’m beginning to think he’s right. Maybe we are better off siding with VAC.”

Dalia laughed.

“That’s his big plan? To join with those red-headed stepchildren of one of the greatest leaders our Guild has ever known? Ha! I didn’t even need you to get the Compendium back, if that was all he is proposing.”

“From how he was talking, it sounded like he thought he had everything already locked up.” I said.

“All this has happened before and all this will happen again,” said Dalia, closing the Compendium. “I am more than confident that things will go my way once the votes are cast. Once we figure out how to get out of here.”

“I think I have a solution,” I said. “You talk of cycles, but I see a loop. A portal only connected to itself. And we only found what we were looking for by going in circles. How does one break free from such a thing? Not by anchoring yourself to the past, not by being pushed by the tide of history, but by letting it go.”

I held up the rope that joined us and that presumably still led back to the knob at the fort.

“I’m sorry if I don’t have utter faith in your junior college philosophy bullshit,” said Dalia. “But if you break that, we’ll never be able to find the entrance.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “We’re stuck in a circle. But the thing about circles is that they have no end. You’ll never get out unless you choose to.”

I extended my hand to her, and she reluctantly began untying the loop around her waist.

“If this doesn’t work…” said Dalia, handing me the golden thread.

“…then I hope you won’t waste any time killing me.” I said.

I pulled out the portion tied through my belt loops until I was holding the uncoiled rope that led back to nowhere.

“Take my hand,” I said, and she intertwined her ringless fingers with mine.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now,” I said, dropping the rope, “we go home.”

I closed my eyes as the floor dissolved under my feet and smiled as I felt my body fall into the abyss.