“You don’t like it?”
“The one with the beans?” I said. “It’s…not really my style. But why are you dodging my invitation? Do you just not want to go? Because you can tell me.”
“Fine,” she said. “I just don’t want to go.”
“Because you’re scared?” I pressed.
“Because I just don’t want to go,” she repeated. “And I don’t think you should go either.”
“Why not? Since when are you the voice of reason?” I said, picking up a wishbone charm adorned with feathers.
Anya’s face went taut, her lips parting as if she were about to snap at me, but instead she sank back into the couch. “Why don’t you take that?” She gestured at the charm. “You might need it.”
I stood up and tossed it on the couch. “Thanks, but I think I’ll manage on my own,” I said, and slammed the door.
Maybe she was right, I thought as I walked back to my room. Only an obsessed person would want to follow a dream to a strange farmhouse in Vermont. But what else could I do? Everything had already been set into motion; I couldn’t stop now.
Through the window, I could see the boys’ dormitory across the courtyard, its windows lit up. One of them belonged to Noah. He would understand that I had to go. He wouldn’t even need an explanation. And without thinking, I stood up and threw on my coat.
It was a frigid and still night, the trees white and motionless, as if the entire campus had been frozen over. I was halfway across the courtyard when I noticed a tall, huddled figure walking toward me. We crossed paths in front of the fountain, which was covered in a glossy layer of ice. I tightened my hood around my face.
“Renée,” a voice said.
I stopped walking and spun around. “Noah?” I pushed back my hood to get a better look, my hair prickling with static.
Noah was wearing a heavy fleece coat and leather boots. Snowflakes caught on his hair. “I saw the light in your window and wanted to say hi.”
“You know which window is mine?” I blurted out. The thought made me happy.
“But you’re going somewhere, I guess?”
“No,” I said, unable to stop the smile spreading across my face. “I was actually going to see you.”
“Do you know which window is mine?” he said, flattered.
I shook my head and stepped closer to him, hugging myself in the cold. “No. I guess I didn’t really have a plan.”
“Me neither,” he said. Unwrapping his scarf, he looped it around my neck.
“So how was your holiday?” he said, studying my face. His lips were pale red, the fog of his breath dissipating into the night just before it reached me.
“Can we go somewhere?” I said.
He motioned toward the back of campus. “This way.”
The lights in the gymnasium buzzed as he flipped them on. It was dark, empty, and the only sound was the trickling of water coming from somewhere in the locker room. Chlorine, I thought, trying to remember the way pools smelled, trying to will my senses to life. But it was no use. My shoes squeaked against the wooden floor as we ran through the basketball court and down the stairs, until we reached the pool. The water was blue and so still that I could see the ceiling’s reflection in it, making me feel like I had entered some backward, alternate world.
We took off our shoes and sat beneath the diving board, dipping our feet into the water as I told him about the farmhouse in Vermont, about the slip of paper with Cindy Bell’s name, and how I thought the last piece of the riddle could be there.
“Let’s go,” he said immediately. “Classes don’t start till Monday. It’s too late to go now, but could leave tomorrow. What should we bring?”
We sat there talking and laughing and planning our trip, our shadows melting together as he fell asleep by my side in a pile of towels. I watched him, his chest rising and falling, and wished that I could fall asleep in the crook of his arm; that a single word from his lips could remind me of how beautiful it was to be alive; that a touch from his fingers could inspire me to breathe deeper, to live slower, to be better; that I could fall in love with him.
On Saturday morning, Noah was waiting for me by the school gates, holding two coffees and a brown paper bag. It was a cold, yellow day, the sun partially obscured by clouds as we took a taxi to a boat station in lower Quebec, where we boarded a ferry.
The boat traveled slowly across Lake Champlain, the drone of the motor churning beneath us as we sat by a dingy snack bar near the window. Noah opened the paper bag and took out two dry brioches. “Chocolate or almond?”
I took the chocolate one and smiled. “Thanks.”
The boat was empty save for a few people loitering around deck, their parkas bloated with wind. Leaning over, Noah wiped a flake of pastry crust from my lips, his fingers lingering there for a moment too long.
The loudspeaker hummed and then amplified the captain’s voice. He spoke with a rural French-Canadian accent. “We are now leaving Canadian waters and entering the territory of the United States of America.”
“We’re in between worlds now,” Noah murmured, gazing out the window.
The water was a deep blue and extended as far as I could see, the sky reflecting off of it as if there were no beginning or end to the horizon, and we were suspended somewhere in the middle. Just like I was suspended somewhere between life and death, between my world and Dante’s.
It was late in the afternoon when we disembarked on a desolate dock on the northern tip of Vermont. The sky was streaked with red as the sun sank behind the mountains in the distance.
Three taxis were waiting in the parking lot. Noah and I approached the closest one. The driver was asleep, his head perched on his fist. A newspaper was spread open over the dashboard. Hesitantly, I knocked on the window. After jolting awake, he rolled down the glass.
“Where are you headed?” He was a gaunt man with gray stubble and wild, overgrown eyebrows.
Unfolding the scrap of paper from my pocket, I read him the address from my vision. With a grunt, he motioned to the backseat. As we climbed in, he pushed the newspaper to the passenger’s seat and drove off.
Unrolling the window, he lit a cigarette. A cherry air freshener swayed beneath the rearview mirror. “How far away is it?” I asked, leaning in between the seats, when a bump sent me toppling into Noah’s lap. His warmth caught me off guard, and I jumped, surprised at how outside of me he felt. Is that what it would feel like to touch Noah, to kiss Noah, to be with Noah—a shock of the unfamiliar? The driver mumbled something back that sounded like twenty minutes, and turned on the radio to easy listening.
The landscape was frozen and glassy, the trees coated in a delicate layer of ice as we drove past dimly lit farmhouses and snowy fields protected by wooden fences. Just before dusk fell over the treetops, we passed a familiar sign. breaker chasm welcomes you!
“We’re close,” I said, gazing at the streetlights, the closed shops, the gas station; each looking exactly as they had in my vision. With a finger, I wrote the phrase Fait Accompli in the fog of the window.
“Irreversible Action,” Noah translated. “Why did you write that?”
I stared at the phrase. “I don’t know,” I said, before wiping it away with my palm.
The road was potholed and slippery as we rolled past a crooked tin mailbox standing at the entrance of a long driveway. I turned around and watched it through the rear window, remembering the way it had looked in my vision, buried in snow.
“Wait, stop!” I said, pointing to it. “That’s it.”
Putting the car in reverse, the driver looked over his shoulder, his face impatient as he backed up over the ice. Before he stopped, I opened the door and jumped out to read the side of the mailbox. It was printed with the same address as the one in my vision. Beyond it was a yellow farmhouse and barn.
We paid the driver to wait for us for an hour. “Any longer, and I’m gone,” he said, and pulled over to a flat spot beneath a tree, where he turned off his headli
ghts. Just as they went out, a thin breeze blew through the trees, wrapping itself around my neck.
“Do you feel that?” I said, turning to Noah.
“Feel what?”
I held a finger to my lips, trying to feel it again, but when I closed my eyes, the air was still. “Never mind,” I said.
“Look,” Noah said, pointing to a patch of land on the side of the farmhouse, where dozens of little headstones poked out of the ground. “There’s a family plot here. That’s probably what you’re feeling.”
I let out a breath of relief. Setting down my bag in the snow, I bent down and pressed the hinges of the mailbox, just as I had done in my vision, so they wouldn’t squeak. Quietly, I opened it. But to my dismay, there was nothing inside.
“Empty,” Noah said, peering in. “I guess there’s only one other place to go.”
We gazed up at the farmhouse, which was surrounded by a sagging porch. Its darkened windows gave me solace. Picking up my bag, I followed Noah along the edge of the driveway, staring at the footprints embedded in the snow in front of us.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s been doing home improvements,” Noah whispered, testing the porch boards with his foot before approaching the front door. “I mean, look at this place. It’s falling apart.” Yellow paint was peeling off in huge strips, and most of the windows were either broken or boarded up.
A breeze made the shutters creak, and I pulled up the neck of my coat and crossed my arms. “Okay,” I said, glancing behind us at the sun setting behind the trees as we slipped through the door.
The foyer was cold and stale, with dust suspended in the air, thickening it. Work boots covered in cobwebs sat on the floor, and graying paper hung off the walls. Noah flipped the light switch, but nothing happened.
The hallway was dark, and as we made for the next room, I bumped into him while trying to avoid a side table.
“You go ahead,” he said.
“Thanks,” I murmured, hoping it was dark enough that he couldn’t see me blushing.
Although the farmhouse was covered in a film of dust, it seemed somehow lived in. The sofas and love seats were antique and dilapidated, but the pillows were all out of place, as if they had just been rearranged. And the imprints in the cushions looked almost like they were fresh. I bent down to touch one, half expecting the spot to still be warm. To my relief, it wasn’t.
On the wall hung a picture of three men. They were each holding a large block of ice up to the camera.
“This was an ice farm,” Noah said, skimming an article framed on the wall. There were dozens of them, all yellowed and faded, dating back to the 1800s. “It says they cut blocks of ice from the lake, insulated them with hay, and trucked them around to houses in local towns to use in ice boxes before the refrigerator was invented.”
“That must be it,” I whispered from behind him. He followed my gaze out the window. In the distance was a large frozen lake speckled with a flock of blackbirds gathered on the surface.
“An ice farm,” Noah said, deep in thought. “I wonder how this place fits in with the riddle.”
“I don’t know,” I said, though what I didn’t understand was what this place had to do with Dante.
“Should we explore?” Noah said. “Where do you think it would be hidden?”
We went through each of the downstairs rooms looking for the last piece of the riddle, under furniture, behind paintings, and beneath rugs, until we found ourselves on the second floor, in a large bedroom.
“Welcome to the master suite,” Noah said, holding the door for me with a grin. It was a puritanical old place, plain for the most part, with sturdy wooden furniture and a beamed ceiling, save for a canopied bed with yellowed lace fabric cascading down the sides.
There was a simple chandelier in the center of the room, but when Noah pulled the chain, nothing happened. “I don’t think anyone’s been here in years,” he said, opening the closet doors. He glanced around inside to check for anything inscribed in the wood, but the walls were bare.
We scoured the room, looking for a plaque or engraving. With the sky darkening outside, and the overhead light out in the room, it was difficult to see, so we used our hands instead, running our fingers beneath the dresser, the night-stand, the armchair, along the grainy wood of the floor and the uneven plaster of the walls. We knew it wouldn’t be on furniture, because the ninth sister would have been smarter than to leave the last clue to immortality on a disposable object. But after checking everywhere, we found nothing.
“There’s only one place left,” I said, brushing off my knees.
We stared at the bed. I had found the first part of the riddle beneath a hospital bed.
“After the lady of the house,” Noah said, giving me a little bow as he lifted the lace of the canopy to let me under the bed.
Ducking beneath it, I dropped to my hands and knees and reached beneath the bed skirt. But no matter how many times I ran my palms over the crevices in the wood, I couldn’t find anything.
“I don’t feel anything.” I inched closer, trying to reach deeper, but stopped when I felt something sharp jab my ankle.
“Ow!” I cried out, and squirmed out to see what it was.
Immediately, Noah was kneeling by my side. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking at the thick sliver of wood sticking out of my stocking. “I think it’s just a splinter.”
“A big one,” he said. “Here, let me. I get them all the time.” With a pinch, he pulled it out, leaving behind a hole in my stocking that quickly ran all the way up my leg.
Embarrassed, I shifted, trying to cover it with my skirt.
“Your legs,” he said, staring down at the thin line of flesh peeking through the black nylon like a seam. “I’ve ruined them.”
“Just the stockings,” I whispered. “Not the legs.”
We both moved to stand up at the same time, our fingers tangling together on the floor. Startled, I jumped back, only to knock the bedpost, sending a shower of dust onto our faces.
I gasped, and for a moment, everything went still as the dust coated our hair, our eyelashes, our shoulders. Blinking, I opened my eyes to see Noah, covered in gray powder as if he were the ghost of the farmer who’d owned the house. “I’m sorry,” I tried to say, but instead let out a cough, and we both collapsed onto the floor, laughing.
“It’s in my eyes!” I cried, tearing as I pressed them shut.
“Here, let me see,” Noah said. I could feel him bend over me. He touched my eyelashes and wiped away the dust. My breath grew shallow as he moved down to my cheek, his hand gentle. And then I felt something graze my lips. It was warm and wet and soft. I hadn’t been kissed in so long that I couldn’t tell if it was a kiss or just his fingers running across my mouth. Except it was different than just a touch. The time seemed to stretch, and I could almost imagine tasting him, smelling him, feeling his warmth against me.
As he pulled away, something trickled down my face. It might have been a tear; I couldn’t tell. And then Noah’s hand was on my cheek, wiping it away.
Neither of us said a word. The room was so silent I could hear my heart beating. When I opened my eyes, everything was just as before: Noah kneeling in front of me, his hair coated in dust.
But before either of us could speak, the temperature in the room seemed to drop, and I felt something descend on us, as if frost were creeping through the entire house. A cool stream of air coiled up through the heating vents. Noah had felt it too, and was staring at the doorway, his eyes suddenly alert.
I gazed out the window. The water that had been dripping off the edge of the gutter had now hardened into icicles. I‘d felt this before. The Undead. But this time, it wasn’t Dante.
Soundlessly, I stood up and watched, as Noah did the same. We didn’t need to speak; we were thinking the same thing. We crept along the side of the room. When Noah thought I wasn’t watching, he wet the edges of his lips. Had he kissed me? Had it been real? Averting my eyes, I
looked at my face in the mirror. It was dusty and hollow, as if it were an older me, an ancient me from a past life. If it had been a kiss, it must have happened in a different world, when we were both different people.
Once in the hallway, I could hear voices coming from downstairs. Closing my eyes, I tried to count how many there were. One by the window. One by the door. Another two at the kitchen table. Four more outside, by the barn. A handful more in the field. The only way to go was left, down the hallway.
Cautiously, I took a step, and then another, and another, until we reached a room on the other side of the house. Turning the knob, I pushed the door open and went inside, Noah at my heels.
We found ourselves in a narrow, dank room, with low ceilings and a narrow staircase going down the side. The maid’s room. Except, instead of being furnished like a proper room, it was filled with toys. Worn toys, chipped and broken, as if they were lifetimes old. Plastic trucks and Matchbox cars and marbles and jacks were scattered across the floor. I stepped around them carefully, gazing at the room. What was this place?
I was about to lead us down the narrow staircase and out the door, when we heard more voices. They seeped through the heating vent like frost. I crouched down and listened. There were dozens of them, talking and laughing and fighting, their voices high-pitched and playful, almost whiny. They were children; boys, no older than twelve, for their voices hadn’t dropped yet. I tried to make out what they were saying, but it was all chatter.
I was about to turn away when a deep voice cut through them, speaking in Latin. It sounded like a boy—or rather a man—around Dante’s age, maybe older. The room went silent. My lip trembled as I waited, but when he spoke, all I could make out were words here and there:
“The Nine Sisters.”
“Name in the mailbox.”
“Hold her and wait for us to come.”
“Serve the Liberum.”
Soundlessly, I stood up, willing my heart to beat softer. My eyes darted about the ceiling. The Liberum. Was the deep voice one of the Brothers? Were they employing Undead children to help them find the secret of the Nine Sisters?