I thought finding this first, truest story would feel like snapping the last piece into a jigsaw. I thought I would feel satisfied, triumphant, maybe a little proud of myself. But now there’s a vicious, lonely little girl sitting in front of me, her eyes hard and accusatory, and all I feel is sorry.
So I say, inadequately, “I’m sorry.”
Eleanor’s gaze doesn’t falter. “They were, too.”
“Who?”
“Everyone!” The sudden vehemence sends me a half step backward. “The neighbors’ maid, the woman who brought eggs and milk every Tuesday, the preacher who married us and the judge who signed the papers. They looked at the tin ring on my finger and they were all so sorry,but what good did that do me?”
“You’re sure they knew?” I shouldn’t have asked, but some part of me is still in desperate, nauseous denial. “They knew that he was your—that you were—”
Eleanor’s lip curls in an expression of chill disdain no natural child has ever worn before. “Of course they knew. My father greeted me by name on the riverboat. Half the county called me ‘the Gravely girl’ rather than learn my name. But when my uncle John asked them to look aside—when they weighed my life against his coal company, his generous donations to charity and his big white house on the hill—they did not hesitate.”
I open my mouth, close it, and say again, “I’m sorry.”
Eleanor gives me an up-and-down look, her eyes picking out each torn seam, each stain. “You grew up here, didn’t you? You should know.”
And I do know. I know what it is for your own people to turn their backs on you as easily as turning a page. I know all about cold shoulders and sideways looks, about being the only girl in sixth grade who didn’t get a birthday invitation. I know the way people talk loud and slow to my brother, as if he might not speak English, the way they watch him in grocery stores even though everybody knows I’m the thief. Now I know about my mother, who was cast out for the ordinary sin of sex, and the far greater sin of refusing to be sorry about it.
The circle of sky I can see through the attic windows is boiling black now. In the world above, you could see the power plant from here, an unwavering light, but not here.
I press my forehead to the glass of the round window and look down. The Beasts are larger and brighter than they were before, their limbs long and thin as femurs. They seethe and twist, a writhing mass of beautiful, monstrous flesh. They’re gathered around something, but I can’t see it clearly, and I can’t seem to remember what it is.
I picture them running loose in the world above. Perhaps chasing down the county road after Constable Mayhew. Perhaps plucking Don Gravely from his big house like the soft meat of an oyster from its shell. They would deserve it, God knows.
“You could stay here with me, you know.” Eleanor’s voice slinks over my shoulder like a warm hand. “A few others have found their way down here—lost children who went too deep in the mines, treasure hunters who followed strange stories—but they didn’t last long.”
“What do you mean?”
“Their dreams were weak, unformed things, too soft to survive in my Underland.” I can hear the shrug in her voice. “But you—you’re hungry, and you like the dark. You’re like me.”
“I’m not like you.” It sounds good—a vehement denial, each word hard and certain as a gavel striking—but of course it does. I’ve always been a good liar.
I’d felt the truth every time I read The Underland as a kid, every time I traced the sharp white angles of Nora Lee’s face on the page. Her eyes were drawn in uneven black ink, like a pair of holes torn in the paper, but I pretended she was looking straight out at me, smiling that sly little smile.
At night I’d dreamed of rivers and doors and houses that weren’t mine, a dark and quiet place where I could sleep, safe at last, finally sated. In the morning I had wept from the certainty I could never really run away, never follow any Beast down to Underland, because who would microwave Jasper’s instant oatmeal then? Who would zip his sleeping bag all the way up on cold nights, and steal him hot chocolate packets from Bev’s continental breakfast?
And then there was Bev herself, and Charlotte, and the hellcat, a whole string of things that needed me, or things that I needed, each one tied tight around my wrist. Then came Starling House, grand and broken and beautiful, and then came—
Arthur.
His name rings in my ears like a church bell, high and clear. I remember, suddenly, that he’s here with me in Underland, that I left him battling the Beasts. I look down at them again and this time I catch the thrust of a sword, a glimpse of dark hair. Arthur looks like a toy soldier from up here, far too small and fragile for the task, but unable to run away.