I pace a restless circle from bed to window to dresser. Wrench loose each cloth until they’re all strewn across the floor and the air is a haze of motes. With everything uncovered, the room looks more alive, more awake, than it did last night. But it still doesn’t feel like mine.
When I pictured where we might go, that day in the village when Arien said we should run away, it was never somewhere like this. Yet here we are, in this strange, haunted place. I turn the thought over as I move through the room. This is mine now. And Lakesedge will be my home.
There are folded sheets inside the dresser. They smell of camphor, and creases lattice the fabric. I make the bed, then take off my torn, stained dress. I shove it into the hearth of the unlit fire, because I want it as far from me as possible.
I put on my nightdress and lie down on the fresh sheets.
My mouth tastes bitter, and I’m so tired that everything looks blurred, like I’m underwater. I trace my fingers back and forth over the creases in the quilt. Think of Arien, in his own room, already asleep. Tomorrow he’ll begin to learn how to use his magic.
He’s in my dreams when I drift slowly into a scattered, restless sleep. We’re in the Vair Woods. Our family is dead, our village lost to fever, our cottage turned to flames. Trees rise around us like sentinels beneath the frost. My frightened breath makes clouds in the air. Arien is in my arms, and he’s so heavy I can barely keep hold of him. We go deeper into the forest. Into the cold, still night. Shadows start to lengthen across the icy ground.
A voice calls out to me through the darkness.
The shadows creep toward us, closer and closer.
Then everything fades and shifts.
I’m back in my new room. The candle is burned down; silver light from the full moon shines brightly through the window. Wind stirs the lace curtains. They flutter back and forth like pale ghosts. Strange sounds come from outside. The rustle of leaves, the far-off cry of a night bird. Shakily, I untangle myself from my quilts and sit up.
The air begins to shimmer, the way light reflects over the surface of water. A droplet lands on my cheek. Then another on the back of my hand. A damp splotch, dark as ink. I look up, my heartbeat quickening. The ceiling is a shadowed pool, blurred and rippled, and dripping.
The air is cold, cold as a midwinter forest, cold as the Vair Woods.
My room is filled with water. It spills down over the walls and pools in the corners. It starts to spread across the floor. It rises and rises, until the cold, black waves wash against my bed. My breath catches, and a horrified sound escapes my throat. It’s just like the water in the lake.
But this isn’t real. It’s just a dream. The same dream I had last night.
I close my eyes and fold myself down beneath the hem of my sodden quilt. Breathe in deep, until my lungs are filled with the scent of camphor and dust and rose petals. All I can hear is a hush hush hush, which might be the wind, might be the lake, might be my own erratic breathing.
Then another sound comes through the wall. It’s soft at first, like the wind as it hisses and stirs through sedge grass. Then it twists and sharpens, skittering around me, until the whisper becomes a voice.
Tell me your name.
I curl up tighter and try not to listen. None of this is real. Not the darkness, or the voice, or the water on the walls.
The sound comes again, closer now. From between my ribs, I feel a sharp wrench. As though there’s a thread knotted around my bones and it’s been pulled.
Tell me your name.
“Violeta.” It tumbles out, unbidden.
Open your eyes, Violeta.
I think of the maiden in the labyrinth. How she faced a monster with only a ball of twine held tight in her hands. I don’t want to look. But I don’t want to lie here cringing in the dark. So I open my eyes.
The room is empty. The corner is just a corner. Silver and shadowed. The floor is just a floor. Bare, dry boards covered with a patina of dust. I peel back the quilt, stretch out a hand, and touch the wall. There’s no water. Just faded paper, rough beneath my fingertips.
There are monsters in the woods, in the world. There’s a monster in the shadows, and now it knows my name.
I slump back down on the bed. I can’t stop shivering. Because the real horrors of Lakesedge aren’t in this room. They’re on the blackened shore of an endless lake, where a monster fed the ground with his blood. Where my brother will go, with magic and shadows, to try to mend it all.
* * *
I’m woken by a heavy knock on the door. I sit up to a room flooded bright. Golden daylight streams through the window. I scrub my wrist across my face and look around the room. Everything is as it was before I fell asleep, the room untouched by water, the floor strewn with the cloths I drew back from the furniture.