Chapter 6 - Solid Nothing

After Igor announced that the landline was dead, Mrs. Park looked around, her eyes lingering on each of our faces—or where Iset’s face would’ve been. When that yielded nothing, she broke the silence by saying in an even more brash and nonchalant version of her everyday voice, “Well, that’s certainly something to think about. Excuse me. I have work to do.”

She grabbed the squirt bottle and rags and disappeared up the backstairs.

Conrad turned to me. “Something happened upstairs. With the mirror.”

That was a bad moment for me. He was right, of course. But the weight of everyone’s stares made my stomach ball up into a nauseous knot. There was a lot of swallowing and licking my lips. I had to pry them apart before I could speak.

“It’s my fault,” I admitted.

“What happened?” Iset asked.

I told them about what I’d seen in the mirror right before I’d dropped it. They listened without interruption.

I finished by stuttering out, “I-I’m not…sure… if what I saw—”

Conrad cut me off: “You saw it.”

“How do you know?” I said.

It wasn’t a challenge. The question almost came out as a whimper. I was begging for mercy from the man who was about to slaughter my last hope.

He put his hand on my head. “You need to learn to trust your eyes, Mera.”

Igor said, “Iset?”

Iset was motionless for another moment, then she said, “I think there’s magic in all this, but I don’t know what kind.” She raised her head. “Conrad, go outside. See if you can figure out what happened.”

As he turned toward the door, she called his name. He stopped.

“Don’t go too far,” she added.

Conrad nodded and left.

Iset turned back to me. “You didn’t see any magic when the mirror broke?”

“No,” I said.

“And the figures in the mirror? Were they there after it broke?”

I balled my hands into fists and pressed them against my closed eyes. My nervousness and guilt were thick enough to make me feel like I was drowning in tar, but I needed to remember.

I had pushed the heavy frame off my legs as I stepped back with my soon-to-be-bleeding foot. Most of the broken pieces were face down, but some of them were shining up at me with second-hand sunlight.

“No.” I moved my fists and opened my eyes. “I was looking down at the shards. All they showed was the ceiling.”

Iset put one arm across her emaciated chest to brace up the elbow of her other arm. Her hand went to her bandaged jaw. Seconds passed.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “It was my fault.”

“You already said that,” Igor drawled. “Several times. Are you looking for agreement or absolution?”

My cheeks flushed and I stared down at the pinkish-red water in the tub.

I have to empty that. And put away the first-aid kit. I should do something to help.

It was no use. Tar pits of emotion beat good intentions every time. I was still trying to talk myself into moving when Conrad came back in.

“Something’s happened,” he said. “I don’t know what. Everything looks normal, but the smell is off.”

“What smell?” Iset asked.

Conrad hesitated. “I couldn’t pick it out. Everything. The world smells wrong.”

“The world has a smell?” Igor said.

Conrad scowled and threw up his hand in a shrug.

We all looked at Iset. Our unwitting queen.

She said, “Emerra, I want you to go into Quicholt with Mrs. Park. When you get there, try to call Big Jacky and Darius, and I’ll give you the number of several torrmen. If you can’t get a hold of Jacky or Darius, call them. Tell them what happened. They’ll know what to do.”

I nodded eagerly. “Yeah. Sure. No problem. Do you want me to buy more food and water before I come back? Is there anything else? Batteries?” I looked at Igor. “This place has flashlights or something, right?”

Iset said, “You don’t have to come back.”

All my eagerness drained away like someone had ripped the bottom out of a bathtub.

I turned to Iset. “What?”

She went on as if she hadn’t just left me a dripping hunk of useless porcelain, “You can pack a bag and take your wallet. Buy whatever you need to take care of yourself. We’ll call you when everything’s clear.”

I shook my head. The motion started out weak but grew more vigorous. I found my voice hiding behind the lump in my throat. “No.”

“Emerra—”

“No!”

Iset walked over and lowered herself to one knee so our heads would be level. She moved with the grace that comes from having to be constantly careful. A delicate body wrapped in bandages. A delicate voice.

“We don’t know what’s going on, Emerra. It might be dangerous.”

“Then you need my eyes,” I insisted.

“Yes, your eyes would be helpful, but I want to keep anyone safe that I can keep safe. You can stay in town.”

When she said that line, there was a slight, out-of-place emphasis on “you.”

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My eyes went from her, to Conrad. I thought about Kappa. They couldn’t leave. No matter what was happening, no matter how dangerous it was, they had to stay.

There was no way I was going to ditch them—especially when it was my fault that all of this was happening.

I pressed my lips together and glared.

Iset looked up at Conrad for help. He frowned and shook his head. I could’ve warned her. The wolfman had first-hand experience with how pigheaded I could be.

“Let her come back,” Igor said. “She may be a stubborn brat, but she’s old enough to know her mind. If she wants to risk her neck, that’s her prerogative.”

A swell of joy burst through me. I would’ve run over and kissed Igor on the cheek, but he would’ve swatted me away with a spoon. Ask me how I know.

Iset sighed. “All right. Emerra, get ready to go. Tell Mrs. Park what’s happening. I’ll collect the numbers for you.”

I was out of the chair in under a second, and Mrs. Park and I were in the car, driving toward the front gate less than ten minutes later. I stared out the front-passenger window, looking at the scene and thinking about what Conrad had said.

“The smell is off.”

I didn’t have Conrad’s nose, but I thought I knew what he meant. The further we drove from the mansion, the more convinced I became that something was wrong, but whatever was causing me to feel that way was too subtle to pick out. When I tried to force my brain to understand what my eyes were telling it, all I got was a headache.

Because the electricity was off, I had to get out of the car to open the gate manually.

When I got back in, Mrs. Park said, “Am I allowed to ask what’s going on?”

I put on my seatbelt and scowled at the dashboard. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Park.”

“I’ll take that as a no.” When I didn’t say anything, she reached out and patted me on the leg. “Cheer up, sweetheart. Things will turn out okay.”

My laugh came out part scoff. “You don’t even know what’s going on.”

Mrs. Park drove on. “That’s true, but things usually do turn out okay.” She added in a loud, firm voice, “The world rights itself.”

“What is it with old women and cool statements? Do they hand you a book on your sixtieth birthday or something?”

“Oh, I think we pick them up as we go along. That’s why old people have more of them. We’ve been around longer.”

“The world rights itself,” I repeated. I loved the idea of the earth as a toy top, spinning to stay upright and fling off the bad vibes. “Do you really believe that?”

“Actually, I think the world has very little to do with it. I think the main reason that things turn out okay is because there are a lot of humans and the majority of us don’t like death and disaster. Every day, there are thousands of people working to avoid them—very smart people too. Take our small-time disaster. I may not know what happened, but I do know that Iset—who is the smartest person I know—is working hard to make things right, and everyone in the house is helping her. And once Mr. Noctis learns about it—” Mrs. Park let out a quiet whew noise. It sounded like the hoot of a tiny owl. “He’ll move heaven and earth, Emerra. You’ll see.”

I smiled. That was a comforting thought. But as the appointed pessimist for the drive, I had a duty to fulfill.

“We have to make sure he learns about it first,” I pointed out.

“Yes, that’s true. Leave a message. I’ve found he listens to those.” She added in a grumble, “Eventually.”

I looked back out the window. The sun was setting. Golden light was streaming through the trees, making the leaves and edges of the pine needles glow and casting exaggerated shadows across the ground.

In one of the shadows, I thought I saw a colored glow. It flashed in and out of my vision—a blink caught only by the corner of my eye. I whipped my head around, craning to get a better view, searching for any hint of blue.

Was it magic? It had the right…tone…to be magic—if that was the correct word for it—but it was dimmer than any I’d seen before. Could you muffle magic?

“Emerra?” Mrs. Park said. “What is it?”

I sat back in my seat. “Nothing,” I muttered.

I wanted to dismiss it. It was probably some reflection glimpsed by a nervous seer who was caught between needing to trust her eyes and wishing her magical eyes were more trustworthy.

And my eyes—Mrs. Park didn’t know about them.

If I asked her to stop the car, she’d want to know why. Considering how she’d excused herself from the kitchen so the rest of us could talk, I didn’t think that she’d press the issue if I told her I couldn’t explain. On the other hand, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that something was going on if I stood there, staring at the ground. I knew my eyes were supposed to be a secret, but I didn’t know how important that secret was.

I sat there, frowning, body tight and brain churning, trying to decide what to do.

Being on edge did have a few advantages. One of them was that my agitated brain picked up on details much faster than normal, and my restless eyes were looking hard for anything out of the ordinary.

“Stop!” I slammed my hand against the dashboard to brace myself. “Stop the car!”

“Emer—”

“Stop!”

Mrs. Park stomped on the brake pedal. The tires screamed, and the car lurched. The seatbelt pressed hard into my chest and hips. We were slammed back into our seats, and the car was filled with the sound of heavy breathing.

It took several tries for my shaking hands to undo my seatbelt buckle. I opened the door and got out. Behind me, I heard Mrs. Park call my name, but I didn’t stop until I was standing in the middle of the road, two feet in front of the car, staring in the direction we’d been traveling.

Mrs. Park got out of the car and came up to my side. “What is going on?”

“What do you see?” I asked.

Mrs. Park’s head turned as she scanned the area.

“Nothing,” she said. She sounded upset. I couldn’t blame her.

“The road,” I said. “Look at the road. Do you see anything?”

She looked. “No. Which begs the question, why were you so—”

She stopped and looked at the road again.

Near the edge of the road was a yellow leaf leftover from last autumn. It had been plastered to the asphalt by the snow. It would’ve been unremarkable, except the top part of it had moved or slid sideways by half an inch. It must have been cut by something, but whatever had cut it had been so fine that there was no sign of a line—only two mismatched edges and the displaced veins.

My eyes followed the invisible shearing line to the edge of the road—that also happened to be displaced, in the same direction, by exactly half an inch.

Mrs. Park reached for the severed leaf. I lunged and grabbed her hand.

“Emerra!” she cried.

“Don’t touch it.”

She looked up at my face, saw exactly how serious I was, and nodded. I let her go.

Like every other serious-minded scholar throughout history, I looked around for something I could poke with. Living at the edge of a forest meant that I didn’t have to search hard to find a stick. I walked to the side of the road, picked one up, and walked back to Mrs. Park.

I stood up straight, pulled my shoulders back, and poked the stick toward the invisible line. It struck nothing and stopped, midair. I pressed harder. The tip of the stick broke.

Mrs. Park took a sharp breath in.

I dropped the stick and reached out with my left hand. My fingers met an invisible barrier. There was no shock or burning, and it wasn’t any hotter or colder than the air around me—but it was solid.

I put my palm against it and pushed as hard as I could. Mrs. Park reached out and did the same.

“My god,” she whispered. “If we had hit that…”

I nodded. It would have been like hitting a rock wall without slowing down.

“How did you know it was here?” Mrs. Park asked.

At that point, trying to keep my eyes secret would be like trying to hide an elephant in a bathroom.

“I saw it.” I turned to her. “You say that everything looks normal to you?”

“Mostly, yes. Everything except the leaf and the edge of the road.”

I gazed at the wall of nothing and let my hand fall to my side.

Everything looked wrong to me. The subtleness of it was still there, but now that I was standing as far away from the mansion as I could, I understood. I was plagued by that niggling feeling I got whenever I saw a painting that was slightly crooked. Only the feeling was a billion times worse because the whole world was crooked.

“Come on,” I said as I walked toward the car. “I thought I saw a light a few yards back. We need to check it out before we return to the mansion.”

Mrs. Park turned to talk to me but otherwise stayed where she was. “We have to get to town, Emerra. What about the phone calls?”

My stomach went sour. Being a pessimist was no fun at all.

“It’s no use,” I told her.

“My car’s not much for off-roading, but maybe we can get the truck—”

She stopped when she saw me shaking my head.

“You don’t think we can go around it?” she asked.

“No.” My chest tightened as I said it.

No, I was pretty sure that we couldn’t go around it.

Iset would probably send Conrad and I out to double-check, and I would go without complaint because there was always the hope that I was wrong—

But I could see the skewed world, sitting a half-inch off where it should have been. The line of it stretched out in both directions, taking in huge amounts of land, but it was gently curving back toward the mansion. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I could see it in the sky. It was above us. In the far distance, it was behind us.

We were trapped.