A vigorous nod of the head.
Jane has an alarming thought. “Is someone in this house actually Zorsteddan?!”
Jasper shakes his head. This is a relief. She doesn’t like to imagine the people around her being so dramatically different from what they pretend.
Returning to her worktable, Jane slices fabric and sews gores together, breathing through the work of her hands. After a moment, she notices the carvings on the table: whales and sharks, peacefully swimming. Ivy made this table, then. She traces a shark baby with her finger, breathing. Then she gets back to work.
* * *
She’s just thinking it’s time to take a break when the shouting begins. It’s coming from some distant part of the house, far enough away that it takes a moment for her to be certain it’s a person noise rather than a house noise.
“What’s that about?” Jane asks Jasper as she examines her six-part canopy.
He looks back at her evenly. Jane susses that he knows but can’t tell her.
“Is it about us,” Jane asks, “or anything to do with Zorsted?”
He shakes his head.
“Okay,” Jane says. “Then I don’t really care. But how are you doing? Don’t dogs need to go outside now and then? Want to go stretch our legs?”
He jumps up and runs for the door.
As they walk down the corridor together, the volume of the yelling increases, sounding like it’s coming from the house’s center. It’s Ravi’s voice.
By the time Jane and Jasper reach the stairs, Ravi’s yelling has become sufficiently interesting that Jane can’t help her curiosity. She descends one level and walks onto the second-story bridge. Jasper follows.
In the receiving hall below, Ravi is having a temper tantrum while Mrs. Vanders tries to calm him down with words like proper authorities and in due time. Practically the entire household is standing in the room with them. The stairs and bridges are lined with gala staff. Lucy St. George hugs a small wooden pedestal with a mirrored top to her chest, looking ill. Jane gathers from the hullabaloo that the sculpture of a fish has been stolen. She remembers Ravi asking Octavian about it last night in the courtyard, some Brancusi sculpture that was missing.
Whatever. Jasper seems to be crossing the bridge to the west side of the house. “Jasper,” Jane whispers, skipping to catch up, “why aren’t we going downstairs? What do you do, pee off the balcony into the courtyard?”
The look Jasper shoots her could burn a hole into another dimension. When he leads her into the west wing, she’s puzzled enough that she steels herself, just in case he’s about to run at her again and topple her through some other piece of art into some other realm he hasn’t told her about. Instead, he continues down the hall. She follows until a photograph hanging about halfway down the corridor stuns her. She stops in her tracks.
It’s one of Aunt Magnolia’s most famous photographs, enlarged and framed. A tiny yellow fish, a goby, peeks out of the open mouth of a huge gray fish with a bulbous nose. Jane remembers when Aunt Magnolia came back from Japan with this photograph, and how amazed she’d been at her own serendipity. The little fish had darted into the mouth of the big fish, then out again, all in the space of a couple of seconds, yet somehow Aunt Magnolia had managed to immortalize it.
Jane can’t catch her breath. This is why Mrs. Vanders knew her aunt: Mrs. Vanders respects art. It makes her chest hurt that one of Aunt Magnolia’s photos should hang in a house containing Rembrandts and Vermeers. She moves closer to the photograph until her nose is almost touching it and she can see her reflection in the glass. Aunt Magnolia, Jane thinks. The things I could tell you about. Would you even believe it?
She’ll have to remember, next time she sees Mrs. Vanders, to tell her that the photograph needs to be reframed. Now that she’s looking super close, she can see a faint rectangular bulge behind the photo, as if it’s been badly matted. Aunt Magnolia’s work should not be carelessly framed.
Jasper is gazing up at Jane with a calm question in his face.
“Walk?” she says to him.
He continues along the corridor toward the door at the end. Jane follows.
* * *
He’s brought her to the freight elevator.
“Of course,” Jane says, pressing the call button. “Because steps are hard for a basset hound. I wonder why you turn into a basset, instead of a Lab or a husky or something.”
Jasper—unable to answer, of course—walks into the elevator, which has another set of doors at its back. When they reach the ground floor, both sets of doors open, one to a landing inside the house, the other to sunlight, shadow, and gusts of wind.
Jasper shoots out into the sun.
Jane holds a hand up against the brightness. The sound of the sea, crashing on rocks far below, startles her; she’d practically forgotten where this house is. She follows him around some scratchy, unkempt shrubberies, onto grassy ground.
Jasper seems shy about peeing. Every time she glances at him, he slams his leg down and runs off behind a shrubbery or hillock of grass to try again where she can’t see him. Finally, he sprints toward the northwest corner of the house, stops, glares at her, then disappears around the corner. Jane supposes she’d rather not do her business in his sight, either, given how the relationship has progressed. She stands in place, tactfully waiting, until he reappears, gives her another inexplicable look, then sets off again toward the yard in a high-stepping, carefree manner.
Mr. Vanders is on his knees in the gardens, applying a trowel to the dirt with graceful movements. The terrain nearest the house is riddled with holes so large, she’s surprised Jasper doesn’t disappear into one altogether. Jasper pushes toward a patch of scrub pines. She crosses the lawn with him.
Once in the trees, Jasper leads her down a steep incline. She follows, sliding on dirt and stones and dead leaves, swearing under her breath about the unfair advantages of four-legged creatures. When she finally lands on what appears to be solid ground, she finds he’s brought her to a tiny inlet, shaped like a crescent moon, with smooth, dark sand. A crooked wooden post juts out of the water. Jane wonders if small boats are sometimes moored here, like the one Ivy built with her brother.
The wind is strong, and chilly; Jane shivers. Seeing this, Jasper trots to an outcropping of stone and shrubbery that serves as a wind break. He drops down, whining for her to join him. Jane sits beside him.
Something about wind, water, sand, and Jasper’s kindness propels Jane to pull him closer so she can scritch his neck. His tongue hangs out in what seems like classic canine happiness. It’s very peculiar in someone she’s been having intelligent conversations with all day. It’s also extremely cute.
She speaks one more overwhelming question out loud.
“How do you know I’m from this world, Jasper? How do you know I’m not from yours?”
He tilts his head thoughtfully.
“You can’t say?” Jane says.
Jasper nods. Then he raises his quivering nose to the air and howls, quiet and melodious, at the sky.
They sit together, watching the water, for a long time.
* * *
Later, as they cross the lawn again to the house, Jane sees that Mrs. Vanders has joined her husband. She’s kneeling beside him, muttering grimly into his ear. He nods, frowning, then sneezes. The wind blows bits of her conversation across the grass to Jane. “Of all the days to [incomprehensible]” and “You know I can’t bring it to his attention now, with [incomprehensible]” and “I’d like to wring the neck of whoever dared [incomprehensible].”
Jane has no idea what this is about—the Brancusi sculpture? Philip and the gun? Grace Panzavecchia? But on the chance that she’s the one who dared, she approaches warily.
“You,” Mrs. Vanders says, breaking off her muttering and turning her eyes on Jane.
“Yes,” Jane says. “Hi there. How is
everything?”
“Ha,” says Mrs. Vanders. “Wonderful. Fabulous. Grand.”
“Okay,” Jane says doubtfully.
“My husband tells me you have a question for me,” says Mrs. Vanders.
“I do?” Jane says, confused. “Oh, right. Okay. That painting on the second-story landing, the tall one with an umbrella. Where did it come from?”
“Where did the umbrella painting come from?” says Mrs. Vanders, incredulous. “That’s your question? It was painted by a friend of the first Octavian Thrash, Horst Mallow, over a hundred years ago. An average talent and a very odd man. Octavian asked him for a painting of underwater creatures seeking solace in a forest of anemones, and instead, Mallow painted an umbrella in a room. Then Mallow disappeared. Vanished!” she says. “Vamoosed!”
“Eight letters,” Jane says wearily, “with a v.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Is that all you wanted to ask me?” says Mrs. Vanders. “I thought you were curious about your aunt!”
“Oh, right,” Jane says, remembering. “Of course. I am curious about my aunt. You knew her?”
Mrs. Vanders fixes Jane with those unreadable eyes. “Were you aware, before today, that I knew your aunt?”
“No, but I just saw her photo on your wall.”
“Were you aware,” says Mrs. Vanders, “that she came, on occasion, to the galas at this house?”
Jane blinks. “When did that happen? Who invited her? And why?”
“She would come to a gala,” Mrs. Vanders says, “then take off from here on one of her trips.”
“No,” Jane says. “That can’t be. She always told me her itineraries. She never said anything about island galas.”
“I’m sure she had her reasons,” says Mrs. Vanders.
“She would’ve told me,” Jane repeats, sure of it. The glamor of a fancy dress ball in a house like this, of imagining Aunt Magnolia taking part in such an event, would have enthralled and comforted Jane, especially in the times when her aunt was gone. And Jane is quite certain Aunt Magnolia would have told her about visiting a house as strange as Tu Reviens.
Though, she supposes Aunt Magnolia did, in fact, tell her about Tu Reviens. Aunt Magnolia made her promise never, ever to decline an invitation here.
“I’ll tell you more about your aunt after the gala,” says Mrs. Vanders gruffly, then picks up a trowel and begins whacking at the ground.
“I’d rather hear it now,” Jane says.
Mrs. Vanders ignores her, doesn’t even look at her. It’s a clear dismissal. In the meantime, Jasper moves on, high-stepping through the grass, looking back at Jane over his shoulder.
Fine, she thinks. She’ll return to her umbrella-making. It’s okay, really. Zorsted is enough to think about.
* * *
When, early that night, Jane gets ready for bed, Jasper seems a little droopier than usual. She tries to focus on buttoning her Doctor Who pajamas rather than on his disappointment. She wants to tell him, There’s no point in crossing through the painting now anyway, because it’s night in Zorsted, but she can’t even make herself ask him if that’s true.
Has she really spent the entire day discussing complex topics with a basset hound who understands English?
Which is more likely, a psychotic break with lingering hallucinations, or Zorsted inside a painting?
A person who’s hallucinating needs her sleep, Jane wants to say to Jasper, but doesn’t, because her very desire to make excuses to him is the proof that she’s hallucinating.
* * *
The house wakes her from a dream in which Mrs. Vanders is trying to shove children into the mouth of an enormous fish sculpture in order to keep them safe, but it’s not working, because she can’t figure out which end of the fish is the tail and which is the mouth.
The clock on her bedside table reads 5:08. The house is yelling something, except that houses don’t yell, so the yelling must be part of the dream too. Regardless, she’s awake now. She gets up and drags herself into the morning room, where she stares groggily out the window.
Jasper joins her, leaning against her leg. It’s not yet dawn and there are two figures crossing the lawn, heading to the forest. The moon is visible. A single moon. In Jane’s world, there is only one moon.
Aunt Magnolia made her promise to come here if invited. Fearless Aunt Magnolia, who always traveled to new places, who dropped herself into the water, and explored unknown worlds.
Aunt Magnolia? I’m scared.
But I don’t want to disappoint you.
“Jasper?” Jane says. “Steen?”
Tiny moons shine in the eager eyes he raises to her.
“Can a person wear Doctor Who pajamas into Zorsted?”
* * *
Someone in some distant part of the house is listening to Beatles music as Jasper and Jane step into the painting. If she focuses on it, Jane can hear the faraway, surreal strains of “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.”
She’s still in her Doctor Who pajamas because Jasper considers her other clothing no less conspicuous. Inside the duchess’s house, he leads her to a nearby room with a wardrobe that contains a large quantity of plain, dark clothing in many sizes.
Her Zorsteddan body is shaped differently from her real-world body. Her pajamas fit oddly, tighter in the shoulders and too long below. And her hands, the more she thinks about it, feel large and swollen, and her Zorsteddan legs and feet feel . . . bouncy. As if perhaps she’s likely to be able to jump higher in this body.
“Which clothes should I choose?” she whispers, trying not to think about it, then noticing that the timbre of her voice is slightly different too.
Whatever you like, he says. Though you’ll draw the least attention in a tunic, loose pants, and cloak. It’s early autumn, he says, and still dark out. Zorsted has a colder climate than the one you’re used to. The sun will rise in a few—he says a strange word—but we may be walking near the sea, where it’s windy. Choose sturdy boots and consider a scarf for your head. Steen is trying to contain his happiness, but he’s practically prancing around her, his toenails clapping on the tile floor as he zooms back and forth excitedly.
“Steen,” she says. “You’re making me dizzy.”
Sorry! he says, stopping in place, but still hopping. Sorry!
Once Jane has pulled them on, the pants are comfortable and warm. “I understand that word you said about when the sun’ll rise,” she says, repeating the strange word aloud. “It’s a unit of time, more like minutes than like hours. I’ve never heard the word before, though.”
We speak a different language in Zorsted, he says. And our days and nights are longer, and we measure our time in different units.
Her hands pause in their rapid perusal of tunics. “Steen! How will I ever pass as Zorsteddan if I can’t speak the language?”
You’re speaking it right now, he says.
“What?”
You’re speaking it perfectly, he says. You have been since the first moment you stepped through the painting.
This is a dizzying piece of information. Boots, Jane thinks, focusing on something concrete. I’ll try on boots instead. But as she does so, she repeats to herself, silently, the words she’s been speaking aloud. They are not English words. And the words she’s thinking in aren’t English words, either. These tall, sturdy foot-coverings are not boots. English is suddenly the only English word she can remember.
In time, Steen says to her gently, you’ll be able to access both languages in both places. Until then, you’ll always have the one you need. That’s how it was for me. I expect you’ll find you can even read our letters.
“But how can I know a language I’ve never learned?”
I don’t know, he says. It’s one of the mysteries.
Dressed in her Zorsteddan clothin
g, Jane crouches on the floor of a dimly lit Zorsteddan room, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs. Across the room is a wide, full-length mirror. There’s just enough light in this room for her to see the angular cheekbones, the pointy chin of the face that feels like a betrayal.
Steen props his paw on her knee and licks her strange face. It pulls Jane out of herself.
“Ick,” she says, wiping away his spit. “I’ll have you know that I’m not a fan of being licked by Zorsteddan strayhounds.”
Let’s go, he says. The sun is rising.
* * *
The duchess’s mansion is extensive and has a great many stairs. Steen’s strayhound legs are much longer than his basset legs and he scrambles down them easily.
As Jane approaches what must be the seventh staircase leading down, she hears herself speaking a Zorsteddan expletive. “How many stories does the duchess’s mansion have?”
Fifteen, says Steen. Zorsteddans build tall.
“Tall and elegant,” Jane says, for the stairways and occasional halls through which they move are simple and graceful, composed of a white stone that doesn’t shine like polished marble, but rather, seems to catch the light gently and hold it softly, like the inside of a shell. “Is there—magic in the walls?”
I guess it depends on what you mean by magic. The mansion responds to the sun, and partially lights itself. But so do all stone buildings in Zorsted.
Through glass windows in a stairway Jane catches glimpses of a pinkening sky, flashes of a silver sea. Distantly, that sweet bell starts ringing, the one that means the sun is rising.
“How do you know I’m not from here?” Jane asks again. “How do you know I’m not Zorsteddan?”
I just know, he says, trotting beside her. The same way I knew you were my person.
“But, how did you know that?”
I recognized your soul.
“Oh, please.”
I did! says Steen. I can see your soul! But you’re not from here. You are from the Other Land.
“Then why am I your person?”
I don’t know, he says. Many Zorsteddan strayhounds never find their person. Maybe it’s because their person is in the Other Land.