Later the nurses told me it was shock, and I believed them. For eleven years I thought that memory—that moment when I was held close, cared for, kept warm against the cold—was a childish fantasy. Until I fell asleep in the familiar shape of Arthur’s arms, and learned better.
A shattering boom wakes me up. At first I think I must have dreamed it, but I can feel the noise reverberating in my bones, ringing in my ears. The floor itself is trembling with it.
I reach for him thoughtlessly, instantly, choosing not reflect on what that might mean—but he isn’t there. His half of the bed is still faintly warm, indented by the shape of his body, but Arthur is gone.
In his place there’s nothing but cold silver: the Starling sword, laid carefully beside me.
I recoil from it, half falling out of bed. The hellcat hisses and I see her arched in the window, glaring down at the grounds with her ears pressed flat to her skull. I stumble over to her, trailing sheets, and for a dreamlike second I think Starling House has taken flight, and I’m looking down at the quilted cotton tops of clouds. But it’s not clouds, of course; it’s mist. For the second time in a single night.
My first reaction is shameful relief, because if the mist is rising then Arthur didn’t run from me. He ran to do his duty as Warden, and send the Beasts back to whatever hell they come from. But why would he leave his sword behind?
I reel away from the window. My own name catches my eye, written neatly on the back of a buff-colored folder. Inside I find a stack of double-spaced documents that I can’t make any sense of. The words seem to lift from the page and swim in menacing circles: codicils, encumbrances thereon, executor, sole beneficiary. My name recurs again and again, and so does the word Starling. It takes me too long to realize they exist in conjunction, a pair of disparate nouns yoked together: I leave my residuary estate, Starling House, and all assets, to Miss Opal Starling.
It’s a will, signed and notarized, with a deed attached.
From somewhere outside of myself, the thought comes that I am not homeless any longer. Starling House—every nail and shingle, every gold mote that hangs in the afternoon light—belongs to me. I test it out, lips moving silently: home.
But it’s not the house I’m thinking of.
It’s the boy who kept me warm when I was cold, who gave me a coat and a truck. It’s the man who left me a will I don’t want and a sword he doesn’t need anymore, because he isn’t going to battle the Beasts. He’s going to befriend them, and follow them down to Underland. Just like I told him.
He must have planned this long before he let me in the door, maybe even before he cut his deal with Baine and Gravely. He was never planning on sticking around. A small, mewling part of me wants to know if what happened between us mattered to him at all, if he wanted to stay or if he was just running out the clock until the mist rose—but most of me is too busy cussing him out and digging through his dresser.
It occurs to me, as I roll the overlong sleeves of his shirt up my arms, that I could run. I could take the deed and walk out the front gates. I could catch a bus to Louisville and maybe in a few months I’d see a headline about a man missing in Muhlenberg County. I could sell the land to the power company and get an apartment so new it still smells like sawdust and fresh paint. That’s who I am, isn’t it? A survivor, a cut-and-runner, a pragmatist.
Except if that’s really who I was, I would have bought a second Greyhound ticket and left with Jasper hours ago. I would have walked right past that amber window last February and kept working at Tractor Supply. I would have let go of my mother’s hand and saved myself. But I hadn’t saved myself, that night; Arthur had.
And now he’s gone into Underland, and it’s my turn to save him.
I can feel the attention of Starling House like a weight in the air around me, a gaze facing inward. The windows rattle in their frames and the pipes howl in the walls. There’s a tremor in the floor, like the house has suffered some secret wound and is holding itself upright through sheer stubbornness.
“Tell me what I have to do,” I say.
The house doesn’t answer, but a stray shaft of moonlight falls through the window and finds the silver edge of the sword. It flashes at me, a vicious wink, and I remember Jasper’s voice, oozing disgust: some kind of blood oath.
The hilt is cold and heavy, already familiar. I cup the blade with my left hand, laying the edge along the first scar Starling House ever gave me. I should have known, then, what it wanted from me. I should have known I would wind up here, with the house leaning hungrily around me and my pulse beating loud in my ears, no matter how hard Arthur tried to drive me away.