“Is there electricity in Zorsted?”
Not the way you understand it, but there’s something else, which you might perceive to be . . . legerdemain. Conjury. Wizardry.
“Wizardry?”
Magic, says Steen. Those candles won’t go out for a very long time.
“Are we going to meet wizards? Like, with wands? Like in Harry Potter?”
It’s not like that, he says soothingly, and anyway, we’re not going far.
“Okay,” says Jane, flustered. “Is it night right now?”
Yes, says Steen, the sun has just set. That’s why that bell rang, did you hear it?
“Bell?”
When we were in Tu Reviens and you were deciding whether to go with Kiran or not. Remember? A bell rang?
“I thought it was wind chimes.”
Yes, that’s what Tu Reviens people tend to think, because there are wind chimes in the east spire. They ring bells here in Zorsted, at sunrise and sunset. But these rooms are often dark. The duchess’s spy network operates from the servants’ quarters, which is where we are. These particular rooms are unknown to most people. They’re used for secret meetings.
“Spy network! What if someone sees me?”
I’ll bite them while you make a run for it, he says.
“Seriously? That’s your plan?”
Well, you don’t need to be making all that noise, he says. Stop talking. I’ll understand you even if you think your thoughts at me.
This is too much. “Are you telling me that you can read my mind?”
Only the things you mean to tell me.
“How can I know that’s true?”
Steen doesn’t answer. Then he says in a small, dejected voice, Because I told you so. You’re my person. I’m not going to lie to you, especially not on the same day I finally get to commune with you. He starts making wet, slurpy noises.
“Are you crying?” she asks.
I’m extremely sensitive, he says. It’s just how I am. And this has been an overwhelming day.
“I’m—sorry,” Jane says in utter confusion. “Jasper, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you upset. There’s just a lot to take in, you know?”
You’re the only person in Zorsted for me. You’re the only person in either land, Steen says. We were meant for each other, don’t you see?
“But Jasper, don’t you see? It’s like I discovered my long-lost twin, except I never even knew I was missing a twin, plus he’s clairvoyant and always wants to sit in my lap! I’m sorry, Jasper—Steen,” Jane says hurriedly, worried she’s making things worse. “It’s just—” She stops when Steen starts to make a snorting noise. “Are you laughing?”
It is a little funny, he says.
Jane gives up. There’s a window in this room, hidden behind heavy curtains. She pushes the fabric aside. What she sees stuns her into silence.
It’s a dark city lit with pinpricks of flame, set against the backdrop of a vast purple sky. She’s high above the landscape; she looks across roofs and through windows into rooms lit with candles. She looks down thoroughfares, lit by street lanterns, that end abruptly at a darkness that puzzles her, until she sees water moving with the flashes of stars. This is a city on the shore of a great sea.
Reflected on the water are two enormous round moons.
“Two moons,” Jane says. “Two moons! Reflected like that, it’s four moons!”
Yes, says Steen. What’s the Other Land expression?
“For what? Multiple moons?”
We’re not in Kansas anymore, says Steen.
A strange instrument is playing wisps of music, somewhere so distant that Jane can barely hear it. It sounds like a piccolo, but even higher. Then laughter rings out, faint and far away.
“Jasper?” Jane says, overwhelmed by the moons, but comforted by the way he’s pressing himself against her feet. “I mean, Steen? Should I pick you up? Do you want to see the view?”
No, he says. I just want to look at you.
“Oh, don’t be such a dip,” Jane says. “You’ve seen plenty of me.”
Ahem-hem, he says. You know how when I stepped through the hanging into Zorsted, I became a different dog?
“Yes.”
Well, he says. You know what, never mind, it’s a lot to absorb, we’ll talk later, yes, please, pick me up so I can see out the window.
Jane has been standing with her face pressed to the glass. Now, looking down at Steen, puzzled by his sudden evasion, an impossible thought touches her. Backing away from the window so that she can see the reflection, she looks into her own face. Someone else’s face looks back at her.
* * *
Jane can’t get herself through the hanging into Tu Reviens fast enough. She’s so desperate that she’s careless about it and bursts onto the landing without checking to see if anyone’s there who might witness her appearance. There is, in fact, a man on one of the bridges, the cleaner who interrupted breakfast because he was lost. He’s washing the banisters, wringing a cloth out repeatedly into a bucket of water. Luckily, he’s mostly turned away from her.
Steen—Jasper?—is more circumspect. He waits until the man has completely turned his back, then steps out of the painting, a basset hound again.
Jane has collapsed onto the landing. She sits next to the painting with her back to the wall and legs spread out before her in a V. Jasper—Steen?—takes the long route around her legs, then nudges her thigh with his nose, gently, in a gesture clearly meant to encourage her to get up and step back into the painting.
“No,” she whispers. “Forget it. Never again.”
He burrows his head under her arm and rests his chin on her lap. A moment later, apparently deciding that’s not good enough, he climbs over her leg and rests his chin on the other side of her lap, then, when perhaps that strikes him as no improvement, he tries to perch himself lengthwise on top of one of her legs. Basset hounds are ridiculous. She crisscrosses her legs to give him more room and he manages to nestle awkwardly on top of her lap. Laying his head on her arm, he stares up at her fondly. He weighs a ton.
With tears rising to her eyes, she pets the short hair on the back of his head, gently. Then she strokes his long ears. His basset hound ears are much longer than his strayhound ears.
She both wants his comfort and doesn’t want it. She wants his dog comfort; she doesn’t want his strayhound comfort. “Can we communicate with our minds on this side of the painting?” she whispers to him.
Jasper shakes his head.
That, at least, is relieving. Closing her eyes again, Jane sits there for a long time.
Soothing noises surround her: the man wringing his cloth out into his bucket. The voices of Lucy and Phoebe below, moving across the receiving hall. The sucking of air when gala people open and close the doors. Sometime later, the voice of Colin, speaking to someone who’s not answering—probably Kiran. Jane breathes slowly and pretends her lungs are a jellyfish. She is as vast and deep and heavy as the sea.
Then a new sound: the distinctive shutter slide and clap of Ivy’s digital camera. Opening her eyes, Jane finds Ivy on the opposite landing, seeming to take a picture of the cleaner with the bucket. She remembers, not much caring, that Ivy’s been lying to her about something, or at any rate, been evasive; that Patrick and Philip and Phoebe were up to something sneaky last night. That Grace Panzavecchia might be in the house.
Across the landing, Ivy watches Jane curiously. “Hi again,” she says.
When Jane is unable to stretch her face into anything pleasant or friendly, Ivy’s own face goes guarded, almost a little hurt. Then, as she continues to watch Jane, she begins to look concerned.
“Hey, are you all right?” she asks, walking across the bridge toward Jane.
No, Jane thinks. I stepped into a painting and turned into someone else. “Take a picture of me?”
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Ivy pauses, surprised by this, then brings her camera to her face and clicks. Then she comes to Jane’s landing and crouches beside her, pressing a few buttons and handing Jane the camera so she can see her own image on the screen. It’s nicely framed. Jasper is adorable in her lap. And the person in the picture looks just exactly like Jane: Jane’s facial features, her hair, her clothing, her body, and an expression of distress on her face that mirrors exactly how Jane feels. That’s me. That’s me. Right, Aunt Magnolia? Jane resists the urge to touch her own face for further confirmation.
“Thanks,” Jane says.
“You’re welcome,” Ivy says. “You seem . . . upset. Did something happen?”
Did something happen? Laughter rises into Jane’s throat, bursts out of her mouth. Ivy tilts her head, puzzled. There’s nothing Jane would rather do than tell Ivy all about it. She’d like to send Ivy through the painting to show her, as long as she doesn’t have to go in again herself. “Yes,” Jane says, then swallows. “Something happened. I want to tell you what it is, but I don’t think I can just now. I’m sorry.”
Ivy seems unfazed by this. She’s comfortable, crouched beside Jane, her arms resting on her knees and her camera perched in one hand. “It’s funny you say that,” she says, “because there are things I’d like to tell you too.”
Footsteps sound very close. Coming from the direction of the east wing, Mrs. Vanders appears on the landing, then stops short.
“This is not a convenient assembly point,” she says. “Especially on the day before a gala.”
“I’m just leaving,” Jane says, despite not having any intention of ever going anywhere again.
Mrs. Vanders grunts. “Have neither of you located Ravi?”
Right. Jane remembers that once, long ago, in a time before Zorsted, Mrs. Vanders was looking for Ravi, because of something somehow related to a Vermeer painting. It doesn’t matter now, at all. “I saw him,” Jane says. “With fruit and toast. He went up to the third floor to visit someone.”
Mrs. Vanders grunts again. She’s begun to peer at Jane suspiciously. “What’s wrong with you, girl?”
Jane remembers she’s got some questions for Mrs. Vanders about Aunt Magnolia. She was shocked to learn that Mrs. Vanders knew Aunt Magnolia. Since then, Jane’s threshold for what qualifies as shocking has risen. Opening her mouth to form some sort of Aunt Magnolia–ish question, Jane discovers that Mrs. Vanders, who’s apparently not a woman blessed with patience, has grunted yet again and marched on down the stairs. “Ivy,” the housekeeper calls sharply over her shoulder, “I expect Cook could use an extra hand or two today, if you’re quite done with your camera.”
Ivy doesn’t move. “Maybe we can talk later,” she says to Jane.
“I’d like that,” Jane says, “very much.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
One of her legs is falling asleep under Jasper’s weight. “Yeah,” she lies, shifting him incrementally.
“It’s good you’ve got the basset for company,” Ivy says. “Jasper’s never been so obsessed with anyone.” She makes a move to stand up.
“Take my hand?” Jane says.
For the merest, surprised second, Ivy hesitates. Then she reaches out and takes Jane’s hand. Her hand is warm, strong. She holds Jane’s tightly.
“Thanks,” Jane says.
“You’re welcome.”
Somewhere in the house, Mrs. Vanders shouts Ivy’s name.
“Sorry,” says Ivy with a sigh.
“It’s okay. Go ahead,” says Jane.
So Ivy lets Jane go and turns away, leaving behind a faint whiff of chlorine. Closing her eyes again, Jane can’t stop seeing that wrong face that looked back at her in the window reflection.
Suddenly Jane is clambering to her feet while Jasper yelps and trips and fights for his footing. He fixes Jane with an indignant expression.
“Sorry!” she says, already on her way up the stairs. “Sorry, Jasper! But I need a mirror.”
* * *
The thing that upset Jane about the face in the Zorsted window reflection wasn’t that it was a terrible, ugly face, because it wasn’t. If someone walked through the door of Tu Reviens wearing that face, Jane would think, Wow, that person has an interesting face. I can’t begin to guess what part of our Earth that person gets her genes from. But she wouldn’t be bothered.
The thing was, Jane could feel herself underneath that unfamiliar face. She had looked out of her own eyes, into those unfamiliar eyes. This is more disturbing than she ever would have anticipated. It’s as if a total stranger broke in and stole her insides.
In her gold-tiled bathroom, Jane stands before the mirror above the sink, Jasper at her feet.
When it comes down to it, there’s little to see: just the old, familiar Jane. I take my face for granted, she thinks, noticing, remembering, that she shares Aunt Magnolia’s cheekbones, her nose. She runs a gentle finger along them. If Aunt Magnolia saw Jane wearing that other face, would she even recognize her? If the people who love you can’t recognize you, are you you?
Jasper follows her into the morning room. The brown-and-gold self-defense umbrella she’s been working on holds no interest for her now. How can she defend herself against herself?
Jasper is quiet beside Jane as she stands in the middle of the room, surrounded by her creations. He seems determined not to desert her today. She wonders if maybe it’s making her claustrophobic. Would it hurt his feelings if she asked him for some time to herself?
“Jasper,” she says, then realizes, when he twists his neck up to look at her with an eager expression, that she doesn’t want him to go. He’s the only one who gets what she’s going through.
Jane makes a frustrated noise. “You recognized me as your person the day I arrived at Tu Reviens, looking like this,” she says. “Right?”
Solemnly, he nods.
“Did you recognize me as your person in the other form too?” Jane asks. “Once we were inside the painting? Did I look . . . right to you?”
Again, he nods.
Jasper, at least, knows who she is.
A bubble of laughter rises into her throat. Once she starts laughing, a growing hysteria propels her to continue laughing, finally so hard that tears stream down her face. Jasper watches her with his front paws held primly together and his head cocked quizzically. She doesn’t speak it aloud for fear of hurting his feelings, and she hopes he can’t read her thoughts: that she will allow her shaky sense of self to be held together by the faith of a dog.
“Except,” Jane says, wiping tears from her face, “you’re not a dog, are you, Jasper? You’re a Zorsteddan strayhound.”
She drops to her knees. Jasper rests his head on her thigh.
“You’re my Zorsteddan strayhound,” Jane says with wonderment, “whatever that means. And I’m your person.”
Jasper sighs happily.
After a few minutes of scratching him behind the ears, Jane rises and begins to search her fabrics for reds and greens that match the umbrella that sits on the floor inside the painting. She wants to work. And this is the only umbrella design she feels capable of focusing on.
* * *
Work helps.
The umbrella inside the painting, Jane recalls, has six ribs, rather than the standard eight, and the ribs are straight, rather than curved. She’s never built an umbrella like that; she’ll have to figure out how. Color is also a challenge. She wishes she could reach for the umbrella in the painting, pull it out, bring it up here, and see how the colors look in this light, but she expects there would be an outcry in the house if someone noticed that the painting had lost its umbrella. They would assume—quite rationally—that it was an art heist; that someone had stolen the original painting and replaced it with a sloppy, unconvincing forgery. People would start poking at the painting and falling through, the FBI would
come, it would be like a real-life version of The X-Files, and Zorsted would be swarming with confused, disoriented, gun-toting invaders.
“Where did the painting come from?” Jane asks Jasper.
He’s lying on the floor. At the question, he lowers his chin to his crossed paws. It doesn’t feel like a yes or a no. Jane gets the sense that this is his way of saying he doesn’t know.
“Does anyone else in the house know it’s possible to enter the painting?”
He shakes his head.
“Why not? How has no one ever discovered it?”
Jasper’s head pops up at this, then he labors to his feet and runs into her bedroom. Jane hears him whimpering. When she pokes her head in after him, he’s at her bedroom door, looking at her over his shoulder and whining.
“You know the answer,” Jane says, “but you can’t tell me unless we’re inside the painting, where you can talk?”
He nods.
“No way,” she says firmly.
Jasper stomps his two front feet, as if he’s kneading bread dough, but madder. With a grim shake of the head, Jane returns to her work, because it’s not happening. After a moment, he rejoins her in the morning room.
“Something else,” Jane says. “You’re from Zorsted, right? You were born there? It’s home? And I was born here?”
He nods. He’s plopped himself on the floor again, this time with his chin propped on one paw.
“How can I be your person if we’re not even from the same side of the painting? How can you be my strayhound if people where I’m from don’t have strayhounds?”
He whines again, looking at the doorway. That question will have to wait.
“Does anyone else in this house know that you understand human speech?” Jane asks.
He shakes his head.
“Does anyone else in Zorsted know it’s possible to step through the hanging into Tu Reviens?”
He pauses, then thumps his tail on the floor once.
“One other person in Zorsted knows?”