Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore (6)

Jasper is now sprawled on his stomach in front of the tall painting, his chin on the floor, his expression bleak, like a basset hound who’s finally given in.

Jane decides.

“Kiran,” she says, “I’ll catch up with you soon, but first I’m going to try to help this dog, okay?”

“Yeah,” says Kiran, wrinkling her nose at Jasper, “what’s his problem?”

“I don’t know,” says Jane, “but I’ll see if I can find out.”

“It’s not your job,” says Kiran. “The staff feeds him.”

“I know,” says Jane. “I don’t mind.”

“Okay,” Kiran says, moving away. “I’ll be in the winter garden.”

Jane turns to face the dog. “Jasper,” she says, “dear Jasper.”

He jumps up eagerly, wagging his tail.

When she reaches the landing, there’s something of a face-off. She tries to move toward him, but he dodges her, circles her, then runs straight at her from behind.

“Jasper!” she says, trying an evasive maneuver. “How am I supposed to pet you if you’re running at me?” He shifts himself and slams into her calves.

It’s no use; her balance lost, Jane begins an inexorable topple into the tall umbrella painting. Literally into the umbrella painting: She doesn’t come up against its surface, it doesn’t stop her. She falls on through. Crashing onto a hard horizontal surface, she scrabbles around in bewilderment. She’s flat on a checkerboard floor, in a lantern-lit room, in what looks like a fancy house. An unusual umbrella of greens and reds is drying on the floor beside her.

Certain she’s just fallen through a crack in her own sanity, Jane scrambles to her feet and spins around to face the way she’s come. There’s a wall, on which hangs an enormous woven hanging. It shows the landing of a staircase in a big, grand house. A suit of armor, holding daffodils, stands on the landing, as does a basset hound. Across a great hall, another staircase is visible, rising from the ground to the third floor.

As Jane watches, the basset hound in the hanging moves toward her. Suddenly he comes stepping into the room with her, through the hanging, a real dog, but—no longer Jasper. He pants excitedly just like Jasper. But his ears are small and pointy, his snout pert, and his body more proportional to his legs. His markings are similar to Jasper’s, but the whites are whiter, the blacks blacker, the browns softer.

“Jasper,” Jane says, scaring herself when her voice comes out in a shriek.

“My real name is Steen,” the dog says to Jane, somehow conveying even the spelling to her, S-T-E-E-N, and causing her to fall backward onto the floor in utter confusion.

“I’m losing my mind!” Jane says to the ceiling, shaking her head from side to side.

“Not your mind,” he says, trotting around to her head. “Your narrow and fragile conception of the world. Oh, I’m so happy to have found you!” he says, hopping and jumping like a puppy experiencing snow for the first time.

“Dogs don’t talk,” Jane says to the ceiling.

“I’m not actually talking!” he says. “Pay more attention. You’re understanding me with your mind, not your ears.”

“What?” Jane says. “Do it again.”

I’m communing with your mind, he says. His mouth doesn’t move. No sounds come out of him.

“I guess that makes sense,” Jane says, then hears herself, and despairs of her reason.

We need to move out of this room, Jasper says, before someone in Tu Reviens notices a difference in the painting.

“What?” Jane says in her shrieky voice.

We need to move, Jasper says. Look. There’s someone coming.

And indeed, the hanging on the wall has changed again; not only has the basset hound disappeared, but there’s now a dark-haired person in a blue sweater, standing on the landing across the receiving hall, holding a small black box. It looks an awful lot like Ivy, with her camera.

“Ivy!” cries Jane.

Shh! She’ll hear you! Jasper says.

“Good! She can rescue me!”

Shhhhhh! She’ll see us in the painting if she bothers to look. Move. And stop thinking of me as Jasper! My name is Steen.

“Help!”

I’m going to bite you if you don’t move.

“Go ahead! None of this is real!”

Jasper takes her earlobe between his teeth, chomps down hard, and tugs in the direction of the doorway. The pain is real, and excruciating.

“Ow! Jasper!” Jane cries out, pushing him away and scrambling to her feet. She runs—past the umbrella, through the doorway, into another room, a dark room, where she crouches against a wall, shaking and weeping. Her ear is bleeding and hurts terribly. Would her ear be bleeding if this weren’t real?

Jasper comes beside her and leans against her. He’s warm and steady. Her arm goes around him. I know you’re inconsolable right now, he tells her. But I want you to know that I do know how you feel. The first time I went through the hanging from my world into your world, I felt the same way. And I was very young, and there was no one I could talk to. I had no idea where I was. I’m sorry about your ear. Are you okay?

She pulls him into her lap and grips the silky fur at his neck, petting it hard. “Is this real?” she whispers.

Yes, he says, snuggling against her happily.

“Can I go back?”

Anytime, he says, through the hanging. But only do it when no one’s in sight.

“Where are we?”

The land I come from, he says. It’s called Zorsted.

Jane understands the spelling of that one too, pronounced ZOR-sted.

We don’t actually have the same letters as you, he adds. I’m transliterating.

“You can spell?” Jane says in her shrieky voice.

Is that so surprising, considering I can also commune with your mind?

“Dogs can’t spell,” Jane says weakly.

I’m not a dog. I’m a strayhound. I’m an excellent speller. I was first in my class, he says, what you would call the valedictorian. We don’t have to go anywhere today. We can sit here until you feel strong enough to go back through the hanging. You can think things over and not come back here until you’re ready.

“Ready for what?” Jane says. “Why are we here?”

I’m here because Zorsted is my homeland, he says. I brought you here because you’re my person.

“Your person?”

Every strayhound can commune with one person, he says. Some never find their person. I thought I never would. Then you came along. I knew you right away, even in your Other Land form. I could barely believe it. My person, in the Other Land! Did you recognize me?

“Recognize you as what? I’ve never heard of a—strayhound. I don’t recognize you now!”

You’re still in shock, he says. I’m going to stop asking you questions.

He curls into a tight ball and snuggles deeper in her lap. Jane closes her eyes, leans back against the wall, and tries to stop her spinning mind.

*   *   *

When she opens her eyes sometime later, she’s still in Zorsted with a strayhound in her lap, but now she’s come to a conclusion: Either this is real, or she’s having hallucinations. And if she’s having hallucinations, she might as well collect more information to bring back to her doctor, Doctor Gordon, who always asks for details.

She tries the name out cautiously. “Steen?”

Yes! he says. Very good.

“I’d like to go back,” Jane says. “But first, I’d like a small peek.”

At Zorsted?

“Yes. At Zorsted.”

All right, he says. Let’s find a window.

“Are we in someone’s house?”

We’re in the servants’ quarters of the duchess’s mansion. The duchess takes in strayhounds who haven’t found their person, he explains. Come along, he says, leading Jane to a different doorway from the one she came through. The room they pass into is also dimly lit, by candles.

“Is there electricity in Zorsted?”

Not the way you understand it, but there’s something else, which you might perceive to be . . . legerdemain. Conjury. Wizardry.

“Wizardry?”

Magic, says Steen. Those candles won’t go out for a very long time.

“Are we going to meet wizards? Like, with wands? Like in Harry Potter?”

It’s not like that, he says soothingly, and anyway, we’re not going far.

“Okay,” says Jane, flustered. “Is it night right now?”

Yes, says Steen, the sun has just set. That’s why that bell rang, did you hear it?

“Bell?”

When we were in Tu Reviens and you were deciding whether to go with Kiran or not. Remember? A bell rang?

“I thought it was wind chimes.”

Yes, that’s what Tu Reviens people tend to think, because there are wind chimes in the east spire. They ring bells here in Zorsted, at sunrise and sunset. But these rooms are often dark. The duchess’s spy network operates from the servants’ quarters, which is where we are. These particular rooms are unknown to most people. They’re used for secret meetings.

“Spy network! What if someone sees me?”

I’ll bite them while you make a run for it, he says.

“Seriously? That’s your plan?”

Well, you don’t need to be making all that noise, he says. Stop talking. I’ll understand you even if you think your thoughts at me.

This is too much. “Are you telling me that you can read my mind?”

Only the things you mean to tell me.

“How can I know that’s true?”

Steen doesn’t answer. Then he says in a small, dejected voice, Because I told you so. You’re my person. I’m not going to lie to you, especially not on the same day I finally get to commune with you. He starts making wet, slurpy noises.

“Are you crying?” she asks.

I’m extremely sensitive, he says. It’s just how I am. And this has been an overwhelming day.

“I’m—sorry,” Jane says in utter confusion. “Jasper, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you upset. There’s just a lot to take in, you know?”

You’re the only person in Zorsted for me. You’re the only person in either land, Steen says. We were meant for each other, don’t you see?

“But Jasper, don’t you see? It’s like I discovered my long-lost twin, except I never even knew I was missing a twin, plus he’s clairvoyant and always wants to sit in my lap! I’m sorry, Jasper—Steen,” Jane says hurriedly, worried she’s making things worse. “It’s just—” She stops when Steen starts to make a snorting noise. “Are you laughing?”

It is a little funny, he says.

Jane gives up. There’s a window in this room, hidden behind heavy curtains. She pushes the fabric aside. What she sees stuns her into silence.

It’s a dark city lit with pinpricks of flame, set against the backdrop of a vast purple sky. She’s high above the landscape; she looks across roofs and through windows into rooms lit with candles. She looks down thoroughfares, lit by street lanterns, that end abruptly at a darkness that puzzles her, until she sees water moving with the flashes of stars. This is a city on the shore of a great sea.

Reflected on the water are two enormous round moons.

“Two moons,” Jane says. “Two moons! Reflected like that, it’s four moons!”

Yes, says Steen. What’s the Other Land expression?

“For what? Multiple moons?”

We’re not in Kansas anymore, says Steen.

A strange instrument is playing wisps of music, somewhere so distant that Jane can barely hear it. It sounds like a piccolo, but even higher. Then laughter rings out, faint and far away.

“Jasper?” Jane says, overwhelmed by the moons, but comforted by the way he’s pressing himself against her feet. “I mean, Steen? Should I pick you up? Do you want to see the view?”

No, he says. I just want to look at you.

“Oh, don’t be such a dip,” Jane says. “You’ve seen plenty of me.”

Ahem-hem, he says. You know how when I stepped through the hanging into Zorsted, I became a different dog?

“Yes.”

Well, he says. You know what, never mind, it’s a lot to absorb, we’ll talk later, yes, please, pick me up so I can see out the window.

Jane has been standing with her face pressed to the glass. Now, looking down at Steen, puzzled by his sudden evasion, an impossible thought touches her. Backing away from the window so that she can see the reflection, she looks into her own face. Someone else’s face looks back at her.

*   *   *

Jane can’t get herself through the hanging into Tu Reviens fast enough. She’s so desperate that she’s careless about it and bursts onto the landing without checking to see if anyone’s there who might witness her appearance. There is, in fact, a man on one of the bridges, the cleaner who interrupted breakfast because he was lost. He’s washing the banisters, wringing a cloth out repeatedly into a bucket of water. Luckily, he’s mostly turned away from her.

Steen—Jasper?—is more circumspect. He waits until the man has completely turned his back, then steps out of the painting, a basset hound again.

Jane has collapsed onto the landing. She sits next to the painting with her back to the wall and legs spread out before her in a V. Jasper—Steen?—takes the long route around her legs, then nudges her thigh with his nose, gently, in a gesture clearly meant to encourage her to get up and step back into the painting.

“No,” she whispers. “Forget it. Never again.”

He burrows his head under her arm and rests his chin on her lap. A moment later, apparently deciding that’s not good enough, he climbs over her leg and rests his chin on the other side of her lap, then, when perhaps that strikes him as no improvement, he tries to perch himself lengthwise on top of one of her legs. Basset hounds are ridiculous. She crisscrosses her legs to give him more room and he manages to nestle awkwardly on top of her lap. Laying his head on her arm, he stares up at her fondly. He weighs a ton.

With tears rising to her eyes, she pets the short hair on the back of his head, gently. Then she strokes his long ears. His basset hound ears are much longer than his strayhound ears.

She both wants his comfort and doesn’t want it. She wants his dog comfort; she doesn’t want his strayhound comfort. “Can we communicate with our minds on this side of the painting?” she whispers to him.

Jasper shakes his head.

That, at least, is relieving. Closing her eyes again, Jane sits there for a long time.

Soothing noises surround her: the man wringing his cloth out into his bucket. The voices of Lucy and Phoebe below, moving across the receiving hall. The sucking of air when gala people open and close the doors. Sometime later, the voice of Colin, speaking to someone who’s not answering—probably Kiran. Jane breathes slowly and pretends her lungs are a jellyfish. She is as vast and deep and heavy as the sea.

Then a new sound: the distinctive shutter slide and clap of Ivy’s digital camera. Opening her eyes, Jane finds Ivy on the opposite landing, seeming to take a picture of the cleaner with the bucket. She remembers, not much caring, that Ivy’s been lying to her about something, or at any rate, been evasive; that Patrick and Philip and Phoebe were up to something sneaky last night. That Grace Panzavecchia might be in the house.

Across the landing, Ivy watches Jane curiously. “Hi again,” she says.

When Jane is unable to stretch her face into anything pleasant or friendly, Ivy’s own face goes guarded, almost a little hurt. Then, as she continues to watch Jane, she begins to look concerned.

“Hey, are you all right?” she asks, walking across the bridge toward Jane.

No, Jane thinks. I stepped into a painting and turned into someone else. “Take a picture of me?”

Ivy pauses, surprised by this, then brings her camera to her face and clicks. Then she comes to Jane’s landing and crouches beside her, pressing a few buttons and handing Jane the camera so she can see her own image on the screen. It’s nicely framed. Jasper is adorable in her lap. And the person in the picture looks just exactly like Jane: Jane’s facial features, her hair, her clothing, her body, and an expression of distress on her face that mirrors exactly how Jane feels. That’s me. That’s me. Right, Aunt Magnolia? Jane resists the urge to touch her own face for further confirmation.

“Thanks,” Jane says.

“You’re welcome,” Ivy says. “You seem . . . upset. Did something happen?”

Did something happen? Laughter rises into Jane’s throat, bursts out of her mouth. Ivy tilts her head, puzzled. There’s nothing Jane would rather do than tell Ivy all about it. She’d like to send Ivy through the painting to show her, as long as she doesn’t have to go in again herself. “Yes,” Jane says, then swallows. “Something happened. I want to tell you what it is, but I don’t think I can just now. I’m sorry.”

Ivy seems unfazed by this. She’s comfortable, crouched beside Jane, her arms resting on her knees and her camera perched in one hand. “It’s funny you say that,” she says, “because there are things I’d like to tell you too.”

Footsteps sound very close. Coming from the direction of the east wing, Mrs. Vanders appears on the landing, then stops short.

“This is not a convenient assembly point,” she says. “Especially on the day before a gala.”

“I’m just leaving,” Jane says, despite not having any intention of ever going anywhere again.

Mrs. Vanders grunts. “Have neither of you located Ravi?”

Right. Jane remembers that once, long ago, in a time before Zorsted, Mrs. Vanders was looking for Ravi, because of something somehow related to a Vermeer painting. It doesn’t matter now, at all. “I saw him,” Jane says. “With fruit and toast. He went up to the third floor to visit someone.”

Mrs. Vanders grunts again. She’s begun to peer at Jane suspiciously. “What’s wrong with you, girl?”

Jane remembers she’s got some questions for Mrs. Vanders about Aunt Magnolia. She was shocked to learn that Mrs. Vanders knew Aunt Magnolia. Since then, Jane’s threshold for what qualifies as shocking has risen. Opening her mouth to form some sort of Aunt Magnolia–ish question, Jane discovers that Mrs. Vanders, who’s apparently not a woman blessed with patience, has grunted yet again and marched on down the stairs. “Ivy,” the housekeeper calls sharply over her shoulder, “I expect Cook could use an extra hand or two today, if you’re quite done with your camera.”

Ivy doesn’t move. “Maybe we can talk later,” she says to Jane.

“I’d like that,” Jane says, “very much.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

One of her legs is falling asleep under Jasper’s weight. “Yeah,” she lies, shifting him incrementally.

“It’s good you’ve got the basset for company,” Ivy says. “Jasper’s never been so obsessed with anyone.” She makes a move to stand up.

“Take my hand?” Jane says.

For the merest, surprised second, Ivy hesitates. Then she reaches out and takes Jane’s hand. Her hand is warm, strong. She holds Jane’s tightly.

“Thanks,” Jane says.

“You’re welcome.”

Somewhere in the house, Mrs. Vanders shouts Ivy’s name.

“Sorry,” says Ivy with a sigh.

“It’s okay. Go ahead,” says Jane.

So Ivy lets Jane go and turns away, leaving behind a faint whiff of chlorine. Closing her eyes again, Jane can’t stop seeing that wrong face that looked back at her in the window reflection.

Suddenly Jane is clambering to her feet while Jasper yelps and trips and fights for his footing. He fixes Jane with an indignant expression.

“Sorry!” she says, already on her way up the stairs. “Sorry, Jasper! But I need a mirror.”

*   *   *

The thing that upset Jane about the face in the Zorsted window reflection wasn’t that it was a terrible, ugly face, because it wasn’t. If someone walked through the door of Tu Reviens wearing that face, Jane would think, Wow, that person has an interesting face. I can’t begin to guess what part of our Earth that person gets her genes from. But she wouldn’t be bothered.

The thing was, Jane could feel herself underneath that unfamiliar face. She had looked out of her own eyes, into those unfamiliar eyes. This is more disturbing than she ever would have anticipated. It’s as if a total stranger broke in and stole her insides.

In her gold-tiled bathroom, Jane stands before the mirror above the sink, Jasper at her feet.

When it comes down to it, there’s little to see: just the old, familiar Jane. I take my face for granted, she thinks, noticing, remembering, that she shares Aunt Magnolia’s cheekbones, her nose. She runs a gentle finger along them. If Aunt Magnolia saw Jane wearing that other face, would she even recognize her? If the people who love you can’t recognize you, are you you?

Jasper follows her into the morning room. The brown-and-gold self-defense umbrella she’s been working on holds no interest for her now. How can she defend herself against herself?

Jasper is quiet beside Jane as she stands in the middle of the room, surrounded by her creations. He seems determined not to desert her today. She wonders if maybe it’s making her claustrophobic. Would it hurt his feelings if she asked him for some time to herself?

“Jasper,” she says, then realizes, when he twists his neck up to look at her with an eager expression, that she doesn’t want him to go. He’s the only one who gets what she’s going through.

Jane makes a frustrated noise. “You recognized me as your person the day I arrived at Tu Reviens, looking like this,” she says. “Right?”

Solemnly, he nods.

“Did you recognize me as your person in the other form too?” Jane asks. “Once we were inside the painting? Did I look . . . right to you?”

Again, he nods.

Jasper, at least, knows who she is.

A bubble of laughter rises into her throat. Once she starts laughing, a growing hysteria propels her to continue laughing, finally so hard that tears stream down her face. Jasper watches her with his front paws held primly together and his head cocked quizzically. She doesn’t speak it aloud for fear of hurting his feelings, and she hopes he can’t read her thoughts: that she will allow her shaky sense of self to be held together by the faith of a dog.

“Except,” Jane says, wiping tears from her face, “you’re not a dog, are you, Jasper? You’re a Zorsteddan strayhound.”

She drops to her knees. Jasper rests his head on her thigh.

“You’re my Zorsteddan strayhound,” Jane says with wonderment, “whatever that means. And I’m your person.”

Jasper sighs happily.

After a few minutes of scratching him behind the ears, Jane rises and begins to search her fabrics for reds and greens that match the umbrella that sits on the floor inside the painting. She wants to work. And this is the only umbrella design she feels capable of focusing on.

*   *   *

Work helps.

The umbrella inside the painting, Jane recalls, has six ribs, rather than the standard eight, and the ribs are straight, rather than curved. She’s never built an umbrella like that; she’ll have to figure out how. Color is also a challenge. She wishes she could reach for the umbrella in the painting, pull it out, bring it up here, and see how the colors look in this light, but she expects there would be an outcry in the house if someone noticed that the painting had lost its umbrella. They would assume—quite rationally—that it was an art heist; that someone had stolen the original painting and replaced it with a sloppy, unconvincing forgery. People would start poking at the painting and falling through, the FBI would come, it would be like a real-life version of The X-Files, and Zorsted would be swarming with confused, disoriented, gun-toting invaders.

“Where did the painting come from?” Jane asks Jasper.

He’s lying on the floor. At the question, he lowers his chin to his crossed paws. It doesn’t feel like a yes or a no. Jane gets the sense that this is his way of saying he doesn’t know.

“Does anyone else in the house know it’s possible to enter the painting?”

He shakes his head.

“Why not? How has no one ever discovered it?”

Jasper’s head pops up at this, then he labors to his feet and runs into her bedroom. Jane hears him whimpering. When she pokes her head in after him, he’s at her bedroom door, looking at her over his shoulder and whining.

“You know the answer,” Jane says, “but you can’t tell me unless we’re inside the painting, where you can talk?”

He nods.

“No way,” she says firmly.

Jasper stomps his two front feet, as if he’s kneading bread dough, but madder. With a grim shake of the head, Jane returns to her work, because it’s not happening. After a moment, he rejoins her in the morning room.

“Something else,” Jane says. “You’re from Zorsted, right? You were born there? It’s home? And I was born here?”

He nods. He’s plopped himself on the floor again, this time with his chin propped on one paw.

“How can I be your person if we’re not even from the same side of the painting? How can you be my strayhound if people where I’m from don’t have strayhounds?”

He whines again, looking at the doorway. That question will have to wait.

“Does anyone else in this house know that you understand human speech?” Jane asks.

He shakes his head.

“Does anyone else in Zorsted know it’s possible to step through the hanging into Tu Reviens?”

He pauses, then thumps his tail on the floor once.

“One other person in Zorsted knows?”

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 clothing, 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.

“Can you commune with other people besides me?”

No, he says. Only you, because you’re my person. But I can commune with other strayhounds.

“Why has no one else in Tu Reviens ever discovered it’s possible to step into the painting? Surely in a hundred-some years, someone would’ve”—Jane gestures vaguely—“stuck an elbow in by accident, or something.”

Not everyone can get through, Steen says.

She almost misses a step. “Really!”

I saw Mrs. Vanders touch it once, Steen says. Nothing. And Colin Mack has had his hands all over it.

“Really?”

Colin touches all the paintings, Steen says smugly. There’s a lot about the house that I could tell you.

“But why me and not them?”

I’m not sure, Steen says, but I have theories. I’ve wondered if it might only be open to seekers.

“Seekers?” Jane says, wondering what she’s seeking.

Or maybe just artists.

“Really?” Jane says. “Artists!”

I’ve watched Zorsteddan people touch the hanging on this side too, and find it to be just like any other hanging, he says. But never anyone I know to be an artist or a seeker.

“Are you an artist or a seeker, Steen?”

I’m a strayhound, he says simply.

“Can all strayhounds get through?”

I don’t know. I’ve never told anyone about it. Tu Reviens is my house, he says, with a possessiveness that Jane finds endearingly doglike, but also pretty human.

“Hasn’t anyone in Tu Reviens ever seen the painting changing?” she asks. “Like when we could see Ivy in the hanging from the Zorsted side? Doesn’t anyone Zorsteddan come looking for their red-and-green umbrella?”

It’s a painting of an unused corner in a dimly lit room, Steen says, in the part of the duchess’s mansion used by her spy network, as you know. The umbrella was placed in that corner ages ago to serve as a sign to Zorsteddan spies that they’ve come to the right place. It’s never been moved in over a hundred years.

“Hm,” says Jane. “And I guess if the umbrella painting briefly changed, then went back to normal, you’d assume you were just seeing things. You’d doubt your own eyes.”

Yes. And as for any changes in the hanging on the Zorsted side, Steen adds, then pauses. Again, it’s a dimly lit room. But also, a hanging with a scene that changes wouldn’t be considered so remarkable in Zorsted.

“I see,” Jane says. Their descent has finally brought them to a long, enclosed corridor with a series of doors. Steen leads her to a wooden door that’s larger and more sturdy-looking than the others.

“Who made the Zorsteddan hanging?” Jane asks.

An artist named Morstlow, says Steen. And it sounds like he did so around the time your Horst Mallow was painting, if Mrs. Vanders is correct.

A lamp on the wall by the door gutters. Yellow light dances across Steen’s fur.

“Did this Morstlow also have a reputation for being eccentric? Like Horst Mallow? The names are awfully similar.”

The Zorsteddan attitude toward . . . people who see things differently is not the same as the Other Land attitude, he says. I don’t think Morstlow had any particular reputation.

“Is he the one person you told me about?” Jane says. “The one person in Zorsted who knows about the passage into Tu Reviens?”

No, says Steen. Morstlow’s been dead a long time. I have no idea what he knew.

“Who is the person, then? Is it the duchess?”

It’s not the duchess.

“Then who?”

Steen’s neck is craned back so that he can look into Jane’s face. She can feel him begin words, touch her mind with the edges of words, then pull them back. It tickles oddly, like a feather in her brain. She recognizes this as the feeling of his indecision.

He breaks eye contact, turning to the door. This door leads to the outside, he tells her. Don’t be scared; you look just like everyone else. Are you ready?

*   *   *

There’s a distinct feeling to being up and about at dawn. This is one of the first things Jane notices: Zorsted feels surprisingly as other places feel at dawn. People communicate not in words but in glances. A number of people on the streets, opening the doors of shops, leading recalcitrant horses, or simply standing in windows, look pleasantly into Jane’s face and say nothing.

Jane tries not to stare. She stays close to Steen, who trots along with his head held high.

The buildings, tall, with steep roofs, are wooden and shingled, the streets made of paving stones. No matter where Steen leads her, she can always see a few stone towers, rose-colored against a gray-pink sky; and always, between buildings, the sea.

Slowly, that magnificent pink wash fades and Jane sees the true colors of the towers: whites and grays and browns. They glow slightly.

“Do the wooden houses respond to the sun and glow too?”

To some extent, says Steen, but not like stone. Stone is older. It contains more power.

“Do all stone things create light? Would you want that to happen with a stone chair, or a bowl, or a tomb?”

The dead of Zorsted are buried at sea, not in tombs, says Steen. But regardless, the stone has an intelligence. It generally won’t light an unpopulated room, and it knows what it’s being used for. It knows if it’s been made into a thing that shouldn’t glow.

“What do you mean? How can it know?”

There’s a consciousness to the world here.

“To the stone?”

To everything, Janie, Steen says simply. The earth, the ground, the clouds.

“The clouds?”

Not an extreme consciousness. Consciousness might be too strong a word, really. But things have awareness.

Jane thinks this through. “But—if the stone has awareness, is it wise to cut into it? Like, to make bricks?”

The wise builder is careful, Steen says, and respectful.

“Or?”

Or the stone is unhappy, says Steen. And then the building is unhappy, and everyone can feel it.

“And then what happens?”

Nothing happens, says Steen. That’s all.

“The building doesn’t do anything? Like, drop rocks on people or something?”

No! says Steen. It’s nothing like that. It’s more like, you might find yourself depressed whenever you enter the building. And it might be bad for business. The owners might eventually decide to renovate, in a way that the stone might like better.

“How would they know what it would like better?”

Some people have sensitivities to stuff like that, says Steen. But this doesn’t happen often, really, Janie. It’s not as strange as it sounds.

“I think maybe you don’t realize how strange it sounds,” Jane says.

More people are on the streets now, and some of them are dressed colorfully, in purples, reds, golds. Jane sees people with dark skin, light skin. She studies the back of her hand. She’s already noticed that her skin here is pretty much the same color it is at home.

Steen notices her examination. Zorsted is an international hub, he tells her. Zorsteddan citizens have roots from all over, including across the sea.

“Across the sea,” Jane says, startled. “How big is Zorsted?”

Zorsted is a small island. It’s only one of the nations of this earth, Steen says, which is an entire planet, just like yours.

She’s too overwhelmed. Tu Reviens is a gateway to an entire other planet? Of conscious rocks, trees, and clouds? “What’s wrong with this place that you haven’t discovered electricity?” she says, distress making her want to be antagonistic. “Is it the dark ages here? Do I have to pee in the gutter?”

Steen makes a small, hurt noise, and Jane is ashamed of herself. “I’m sorry, Steen,” she says. “It’s just a lot to take in.”

He draws himself up tall (for a strayhound). We have plumbing, and toilets, and infrastructure, he says with dignity, and a brilliant and just duchess. We’ve made advances in science and medicine that would astound the quacks in the Other Land. We have technology that doesn’t destroy our environment. If you pee in the gutter, you’ll probably be arrested for public drunkenness and indecency.

“I’m sure I would,” Jane says penitently.

He walks beside her with a stiffness that feels like a cold shoulder in her brain. No, in her heart. She knows how much she’s hurt his feelings.

“Steen,” she says gently. “If I were arrested, would you speak up on my behalf? Do strayhounds ever testify in court?”

Why shouldn’t they? he responds huffily. Every court employs an unbiased human reporter who has a strayhound, to assist with translation of witness strayhounds. It’s entirely civilized.

“Can strayhounds be arrested for crimes too?”

Of course, he says. We have free will. What do you think, we’re pets?

“Do you have jobs?”

Most of us choose to work alongside our person, but we can do what we like.

She watches the prim, careful steps he’s taking. A few other people in the streets have had strayhounds trotting beside them, but the vast majority don’t. And it occurs to her that Zorsteddan strayhounds may, in fact, pee in the gutter. She sighs. It’s complicated to be bound to a telepathic dog.

“Steen?” she says. “I’m sorry.”

He ignores her.

She’s seen some of the people petting their strayhounds, so this must be acceptable public behavior. “Hold on,” she says, stopping, squatting down to Steen. He glares at her.

She touches the soft, silky fur at the side of his face. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Forgive me. The truth is, I’ve never been so scared in my life. If you weren’t here to take care of me, I’d be crying my eyes out.”

He transfers his glare to his feet. Then his manner softens. I remember the first time I stepped through the hanging, he says.

“It’s a lot to get used to,” Jane says.

I’m just so happy, he says. I’ve been looking for you for so long. No matter what happens, you’re my person.

“No matter what happens,” she repeats carefully. “What’s going to happen?”

I don’t know, he says, too quickly.

Jane stays on one knee for a few more minutes, stroking his fur, thinking things through. She’s noticed that the people, all of them, have the same angular, pointy-chinned look to their faces that she has in her present form. Taken individually, no person here would alarm her. But taken together, as the society filling the streets, they are evidence that she’s far, far away from home.

Steen has been leading her down sloping streets that turn back on each other, distorting her sense of direction. But she knows she’s some distance from the duchess’s tall mansion now, and lower. Something brackish stings the air that she breathes.

“Who’s the one person in Zorsted who knows about the painting in Tu Reviens?” Jane asks.

Steen has taken an interest in his own front paws. He lifts one and stares at it. I’m bringing you to that person now.

“Oh?” Jane says. “It’ll be nice to be able to talk to someone who understands.”

He glances into her face, then inspects his paw again. The animals here are different from the animals in the Other Land, he says. We have sea creatures here that don’t live in the seas of your land.

“Is the person who knows about the painting a sea creature?”

No, he says. It’s a human who’s helping to care for our sea creatures. Our sea creatures are sick, he says. I’m taking you to the sea. That’s usually where to find her.

“All right,” Jane says. “Let’s go then, shall we?”

It’s only once she’s walking again, on a road very near the sea, that a kind of impossible understanding touches her, so lightly, she almost can’t feel it. It’s a tiny flame trying to catch hold inside her. A hope. Suddenly frightened, she glances at Steen, who does not look back at her.

At the end of a dock at the bottom of a staircase that hangs over the crashing waves sits a woman in a purple coat, her feet dangling above the water. As Jane’s boots clap along the dock, the woman twists around, turning her face to the sound. Jane has never seen that curious face before, she’s never seen that configuration of eyes, nose, mouth; but of course, Jane was expecting that.

The woman smiles at Jane and Steen, pleasantly. “Good morning,” she says in Zorsteddan, in a voice that Jane doesn’t recognize. Then the woman focuses on Steen. “Why, hello, my friend,” she says in hearty tones. “Don’t tell me you’ve finally found your person? Sing Ho! for the life of a strayhound!”

Disbelief has dropped Jane to her knees. Tears trickle down her face. The woman clambers up and comes to Jane, distressed at her pain. Her coat is open; the lining, silver and gold, shimmers in the light. “What’s wrong?” she says. “Can I help you?”

“Aunt Magnolia,” Jane says. “Aunt Magnolia. Aunt Magnolia.”

*   *   *

Once the interlude of hugging and weeping has passed, Jane seems to be capable of only two words. One of them is How? and the other is Why?

“I used to attend the galas now and then at Tu Reviens,” Aunt Magnolia says quietly.

The three of them are sitting together at the edge of the dock with Jane in the middle. Aunt Magnolia’s arm around Jane’s shoulder is jarring, while Steen’s warmth grounds her in normalcy. Jane is too overwhelmed to appreciate the irony of this.

“I knew the day was coming when I was going to have to plot an escape,” says Aunt Magnolia.

“Escape from what?” Jane asks hoarsely. “Why would you need to escape? And why would you go to the galas? Why did you never tell me? Some man called me from Antarctica and told me you were dead!”

Aunt Magnolia squeezes Jane’s shoulder more tightly. “One night,” she says, “very, very late—the gala was nearly over—I was making my way up to the third floor, when some drunken party guest jostled me and I found my arm going right through that painting. Going through it, and not harming the painting one bit. I managed not to scream. But I knew I hadn’t imagined it, and it left me shaken. I contrived an excuse to delay my departure that night. That was the trip to the Black Sea, do you remember the Black Sea trip?”

“The last trip before Antarctica,” Jane says weakly.

“Yes,” says Aunt Magnolia. “I found the bedroom of someone I knew to be spending the night with Ravi Thrash. I hid there. When the guests had all gone and the house was settling in to sleep, I went back to investigate. I touched the painting and my finger sank in. I reached deeper and fell right through.”

I saw her do it, Steen tells Jane, from the landing above. I followed her in and watched her explore. I’ve kept close tabs on her, but she doesn’t know I’m the basset hound from the house.

“I explored,” says Aunt Magnolia, “and found—well, I found what you’ve also found. A world where no one was likely ever to follow me, and where I’d be unrecognizable even if they did.”

“But why did you need a world where no one was likely to find you?”

Aunt Magnolia pauses. Jane notices that she does this every time Jane asks her a question, as if the pause counts as some sort of answer, which it doesn’t. The Aunt Magnolia Jane remembers never hesitated to answer her questions.

“I returned to Tu Reviens and caught up with my colleagues going to the Black Sea,” says Aunt Magnolia. “After I got back from that trip, I sat you down and made you promise to come to Tu Reviens. Then, next time I was able to get to a Tu Reviens gala, I asked Mrs. Vanders to please pass you a special message. Did she pass you the message?”

“What?” Jane says. “No! I didn’t get any message!”

“I told Mrs. Vanders to tell you to ‘Reach for the umbrella,’” says Aunt Magnolia. “Then, when no one was watching, I passed into Zorsted, intending to stay here and wait for you.”

She didn’t have a strayhound to explain anything to her, Steen tells Jane. She was completely alone.

“How can you say you made me promise to come to Tu Reviens?” Jane says. “That’s not what you did. You only made me promise never to turn down an invitation.”

“I also made Mrs. Vanders promise to invite you, should anything ever happen to me. Didn’t she invite you?”

“No! Kiran invited me! You were dead! Why would I look for you if you were dead? And how can you imagine the message ‘Reach for the umbrella’ would make me think to try jumping into a painting? And even if it did, how would you expect me to find you in a strange city?”

Jane finds herself shaking Aunt Magnolia’s arm from her shoulder. Something is wrong here. The story is grievously lacking sense, and no one is telling her why. Why did Aunt Magnolia need to leave in the first place?

When Aunt Magnolia puts her hands in her lap, clasps them together, and studies them, Jane studies them too. They’re not the hands Jane remembers. They’re larger, the fingernails more blunt. The irises of this woman’s eyes are clear too, unblemished; this Aunt Magnolia has no starry splotch of color in one eye. Maybe this isn’t Aunt Magnolia.

Then Jane sees that her own Zorsteddan hands are very much like Aunt Magnolia’s Zorsteddan hands.

“I’ve wanted to tell you the truth about my life for so long,” Aunt Magnolia says. “Now that I finally can, I’m scared to pieces.”

“The truth about your life?” Jane says. “Aunt Magnolia, what are you talking about?”

“The truth about my work.”

“Your work! The pictures? What are you telling me? Didn’t you take the pictures?”

“I took the pictures,” she says. “I always took the pictures.”

“Then what?”

Aunt Magnolia is staring unhappily into her hands. “One day,” she says, “when I was taking the pictures, I discovered, by chance, a sunken nuclear submarine. A foreign submarine.”

“You never told me that.”

“I was forbidden by the United States government to tell anyone,” she says. “We salvaged it secretly.”

“You helped the US government salvage a nuclear submarine?”

“And then they asked me to help them with other things,” says Aunt Magnolia. “They offered me money. You were a child. We had no money and I was raising you alone, on the paycheck of an adjunct. I didn’t know what was ahead for either of us. I said yes.”

“Aunt Magnolia,” Jane says, piecing this out. “Are you telling me that you became some sort of underwater . . . spy?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Oh,” Jane says, flabbergasted. “What does that even mean?”

“There are underwater operatives,” says Aunt Magnolia. “There are people who salvage sensitive military wrecks like that submarine, and people who tap underwater cables. There are exchanges of goods and information that take place at the bottom of the sea. At first, I didn’t understand the extent of it. I got mixed up in things I now wish I hadn’t. Bad things can happen underwater, in the dark, where no one else can see.”

What Aunt Magnolia is describing is somehow more absurd to Jane than the existence of a fantasy world inside a painting where dogs can talk and rocks have feelings. “You never told me,” Jane says. “You never told me.”

“I wanted to stop,” says Aunt Magnolia. “They started to ask me to do things I hated to do. Bombs are disposed of underwater sometimes, did you know that? And eventually there began to be some confusion about my allegiances.”

“I don’t understand anything you’re saying,” Jane says.

“In time, I’ll tell you every detail,” she says. “I’ll confess every lie. It’ll be a great relief to me.”

“Not to me.”

“That’s my greatest regret,” she says. “I only ever wanted you to be safe. Did Mrs. Vanders tell you about the money? It’s yours to access, whenever you want it.”

Jane doesn’t want to hear about money. “Who called me from Antarctica?”

“A colleague,” says Aunt Magnolia. “A diving friend, another operative, who agreed to help me disappear, though I never told him where I was going.”

“You let me believe you were dead,” Jane says. “You were dead.”

“Darling,” Aunt Magnolia starts, reaching for Jane, but Jane is standing, Jane is pushing away from her.

“You were dead,” Jane says, tears running down her face.

“I’m sorry,” Aunt Magnolia says. “I didn’t have a lot of time to plan and maybe I did it badly. But I’m not dead. I came here. I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve looked for you every day.”

“I might never have found you.” Jane’s voice is rising with hysteria. “I wouldn’t have,” she says, pointing to Steen, “if that dog weren’t nuts. I had a gravestone put up for you. Your friend sent me your things, your supposed Antarctica things. I’ve been sleeping with your fucking hat!”

Aunt Magnolia has always been the type to rush to soothe a person who’s upset. It’s instinct for her, she can’t help herself. Jane can see it now in the unfamiliar face and reaching arms of this strange but undeniable Aunt Magnolia.

The water bulges then under the dock at Aunt Magnolia’s feet. The head of a gray creature rises above the surface of the water, vaguely bear-like in appearance, round-faced with a long nose. It’s as big as a beluga whale and has flippers, whiskers, and a blow hole on the top of its head. In amazement, Jane stares into its face.

The animal’s mouth is set in an even line that gives it an aspect of patience and serenity. Its dark eyes are large and deep with pain. Jane knows as well as anyone that creatures who live in the depths of the ocean are sometimes bizarre to the point of challenging credulity; Aunt Magnolia’s work has taught her so. But just as Jane knows by looking at the people of this earth that they’re not from her Earth, she knows that this animal belongs only to this world.

It doesn’t speak, but gazes intently at Aunt Magnolia. Aunt Magnolia lies down on the dock on her stomach, her trousered legs sticking out behind her and her arms and head hanging over the edge. Her coat lies open, purple with flashes of silver and gold, like a nebula. She reaches out and places a hand on the bear-like creature’s forehead. She says nothing, and Jane doesn’t entirely understand what’s happening. But she recognizes that Aunt Magnolia has found a willing recipient for her soothing. With her touch, Aunt Magnolia is soothing this animal, which now has big tears rolling down its face.

Aunt Magnolia and the sea animal stay in that position for several minutes. Jane stands on the dock, tears dripping onto her cloak. Steen is pressing himself hard against her legs and glancing up at her frequently. Like Aunt Magnolia and the sea animal, he is silent.

The sea animal moves its head so that it’s looking into Jane’s eyes. Jane is locked in its gaze, lost in the well of its feeling. This animal has power, she finds herself thinking, though she has no idea what that power is.

The sea animal sinks away. The water closes silently above it.

Aunt Magnolia shifts to a sitting position again, her feet dangling over the edge. She doesn’t look at Jane. Jane interprets her shoulders. Aunt Magnolia is depleted from soothing someone else, and she’s ashamed for having hurt Jane.

Jane can’t quite get herself to sit next to her, but she sits a few feet removed. She dangles her legs again over the water.

“Steen,” Jane says, “that’s my strayhound’s name, Steen. He tells me the sea creatures are sick.”

Aunt Magnolia’s head dips, slowly, in agreement. “They’re called sea bears.”

“Were you talking to it?”

“Not exactly.”

“Were you giving it—some kind of medicine?”

“It was something much more elemental than that,” she says, “and less fantastical. They’re sick because they’re traumatized and grieving. A huge number of their population were killed by Zorsteddan hunters. Their meat came into fashion and for a period of time, they were massacred. The hunters convinced the government that the sea bears were dumb brutes—though how anyone could think such a thing of a creature like the one we just saw—”

Her voice breaks off, rough and choked with disgust. Jane watches her take one even breath.

“It was a long time ago,” Aunt Magnolia says. “Hunting them is illegal now. But they live a very long time, and Zorsteddan scientists believe their memory goes deep and heals slowly. I’m in a program organized by the scientists. I come out here in the morning and I wait. If one of the sea bears visits, and one usually does, I sit with it, and touch it with kindness.”

“What does that mean?” says Jane.

“I think you know what it means, sweetheart,” says Aunt Magnolia. When Jane doesn’t answer, she looks into her hands and says quietly, “Just being with the sea bear. Not trying to impress anything upon it. And just letting the sea bear be too. They have what we would probably call a . . . psychic ability. If I have the intention of simply being beside it, it will know that’s my intention. That they allow our company in this way now—for they haven’t always allowed it—is a sign that they might come to trust humans again. Until they do, and until the pain of their grief subsides, it’s as if the ocean here has a sickness in its soul. I can feel it, Janie.”

It’s hard for Jane to know how to respond. “This is your job here?” she says.

“Yes,” says Aunt Magnolia. “The government pays the scientists.”

“Are you in charge of the operation?”

“Good heavens, no,” she says. “My position is very junior. I’m receiving training, but I’ve only been in Zorsted a short while. There’s a program. Anyone with an affinity for animals can apply. You could apply.”

Jane blinks at this; she can’t answer. “How did you convince them you were from here? Weren’t they suspicious?”

“I keep to myself, and I pretend that I don’t want to talk about my past. There’ve been moments when I’ve gotten odd looks, sure, but there’s a high tolerance for oddness here. People seem to expect not to understand everything they see. Anyway, if you met someone who didn’t seem to know your customs, would you assume they came from an alternate reality?”

“I guess not,” says Jane. “Do you miss our technologies? Could you solve the problem faster with scuba gear?”

She flashes Jane a quiet, sideways smile. “Even in the absence of compressed air,” she says, “diving techniques here are pretty sophisticated. They have a sort of diving bell, with air tubes that extend up to the surface. Regardless, even if we had scuba gear, I doubt we’d use it. It does not help the healing of the animals for us humans to push ourselves into their homes.”

It’s a particular kind of confusion to be angry with the person who taught her about gentleness, respect; who taught her how to soothe herself. Jane watches the water dancing beneath her feet, conscious of Steen beside her. Carefully, she leans out until she can see her own reflection. Something about that strange face strikes her. Jane turns to study Aunt Magnolia and realizes that even in this world, she has Aunt Magnolia’s cheekbones and her nose.

“How are your umbrellas,” Aunt Magnolia says, “my darling?”

Jane’s lungs are a jellyfish, moving silently through a great sorrow. “I don’t know why I’m here,” she says. “I don’t know why I should have a strayhound if I’m from the other side. I don’t know why I came to Tu Reviens in the first place.”

Aunt Magnolia takes a minute to answer. “I don’t see why creatures from different worlds shouldn’t fit together,” she says. “Zorsted is full of strayhounds who haven’t found their people. Maybe it’s because those people are in different worlds.”

“Steen said the same thing,” Jane says. “But what do you mean, different worlds? Do you think there are more than two?”

“Well,” Aunt Magnolia says, “I used to think there was only one. Once there were two, I guess I began to feel there may as well be a thousand. You know?”

Jane smells the brackish air and hears the water slap against the posts of the dock.

Aunt Magnolia left Jane alone. Orphaned, with no money Jane knew of. Her plan to reunite with her niece obscure and unspoken, balanced on a pin.

“I need to think,” Jane says.

When I need to think, says Steen, I walk.

“Will you come with me?” Jane asks him.

Of course I will, if you want me.

“Of course I do,” Jane says, touching the place between his ears, then standing. “You’re my strayhound, aren’t you?”

Watching Jane, Aunt Magnolia rises to her own feet anxiously.

“We’re going for a walk,” Jane says carefully.

“All right,” Aunt Magnolia says, swallowing. “I’ll see you again, won’t I, darling? Please?”

“I don’t know,” Jane says. You’re not who I thought you were, Jane doesn’t say. You’re not who you pretended to be.

Aunt Magnolia’s eyes are bright with tears. She holds Jane in a long hug and kisses her forehead. She tells Jane she loves her. “Come back,” she says. Jane holds her tightly before letting her go.

*   *   *

“Where are we going?” Jane asks Steen.

Where would you like to go?

“Someplace that isn’t challenging,” Jane says, “for either of us.”

Steen walks her back up the staircase, then along a road crowded with small houses. A snaggle of children runs past. Someone is frying something that smells like bacon.

“I’m hungry,” Jane says. “Are you hungry?”

We could go back to your aunt, he says. She’ll have money.

“I’ll survive,” Jane says, “if you will.”

I know where there’s fruit, he says.

“Do strayhounds like fruit?”

This one does.

The street bends sharply to the right but Steen continues straight, into a patch of gnarled trees. He leads her through thick grass and fallen branches. Eventually the land begins to slope downward and they end up in a grove of stocky trees heavy with a rose-colored fruit that looks somewhat like, but decidedly isn’t, apples.

The Zorsteddan word for it comes to her. She speaks it aloud.

Yes, says Steen contentedly. The duchess owns the orchard.

“Are we stealing?”

Not with me here, he says. I live in the duchess’s mansion. She takes care of us. Her food is mine.

“Are you sure you’re still welcome in the duchess’s mansion, now that you’ve found your person?”

You don’t have a residence here, he says significantly, so I’ll still live with the duchess. If you establish a residence here, that will change.

He doesn’t look at her, and Jane carefully doesn’t look at him. She fills her deep trouser pockets with fruit and continues to follow him down the slope, which grows steeper. Stepping out of the orchard, she finds herself on a small, crescent-shaped beach of pale sand. The sun is strong and her Zorsteddan clothing blocks the chill of the wind. Steen trots to an outcropping of rock and shrubbery and settles in beside it. She joins him there; she sits beside him, watching the water rush onto the sand, then pull itself back. The fruit is crisp like an apple, but sweet, like a pear.

“It’s such a strange feeling, being in Zorsted,” Jane says. “I feel like I’ve died and been reincarnated in a different body, a different life, except they forgot to wipe my memory of the life that came before.”

I don’t believe in reincarnation, says Steen.

“Don’t you? If there’s more than one world, why shouldn’t there be more than one life?”

There are many lives in every life, he says.

“You and Aunt Magnolia are both very fond of obscure philosophical pronouncements,” Jane says. “Tell me, is there a market in Zorsted for umbrellas?”

It certainly rains. Though it never rains frogs.

“Another oddity,” Jane says. “Where would umbrellas be sold?”

In the public market, he says. If you sold enough umbrellas, you might be able to open a shop. Might I ask why you’re asking these questions?

“I don’t know,” Jane says. “Maybe because umbrellas are less scary than existential philosophy.”

Steen passes her a prim look. I saw a strayhound once with a curious umbrella hat, he says. I thought it was quite fetching.

Jane tries not to smile. “Would you like me to make you an umbrella hat, Steen?”

That’s entirely up to you, he says with dignity.

“Would I be making it to fit Jasper the basset hound, or Steen the strayhound?”

He hesitates. I guess that’s also up to you.

Yes. I guess that’s one of the big questions of the day, isn’t it? Tu Reviens or Zorsted?

See? he says. I told you you could talk to me without speaking out loud.

Yes, I see.

Do you— He hesitates, and she feels his eagerness. His vulnerability. Do you like it?

She lets out a breath. I can’t say yet, Steen.

He burrows his nose in the sand, as if it’s a way to stop himself from saying what he wants to say.

This inlet is an awful lot like the one you took me to at Tu Reviens, Jane says, after a pause.

I like to come here, he says.

Do you go to the inlet at Tu Reviens because it reminds you of this one?

I found the one at Tu Reviens first, he says. I guess I like this one because it reminds me of that one.

That’s confusing.

Yes, he says. Home is. After all, it’s one’s headquarters, one’s backdrop, one’s framework. One’s history, and also one’s haven.

Are you good at Scrabble, Steen? Jane asks, smiling.

Steen sniffs. We have a much superior game here. It’s like Scrabble. You win by putting the highest-value words down. But the words you put down also tell a story, and you have to take care, because that story will play out somehow in your day.

Seriously? The game changes your day? That sounds dangerous!

You’re interpreting it too extremely. No one has ever been seriously hurt.

Oh! Just minor injuries, then!

The story plays out metaphorically, usually in some harmless and amusing manner, he says soothingly. I can see it sounds strange. But I promise you, Janie, this world is no more dangerous than yours.

It’s so different here, she says. Do both Zorsted and Tu Reviens feel like home to you?

Yes. And no. In Tu Reviens, I’m mute, and no one understands me, or anyway, no one did before now. In Zorsted, I’m lonely, or, I was before now. He pauses. Don’t you think it’s the people that make a place feel like home?

This does make sense to Jane. It explains why nowhere has felt like home, ever since she got that phone call—fake phone call—from Antarctica.

On the distant horizon, a tall ship with brilliant white sails comes into view. It’s too far away to guess if it’s coming or going.

If I’m a seeker, Steen, I don’t know what I’m seeking, Jane says.

Steen hesitates again. Well, he says, I’ll keep you company while you figure it out.

The long, difficult morning is tugging at her limbs. Her unfamiliar body is asking for the sleep it missed in the night. Yes, please, Jane says.

She curls on her side in the sand with an arm around Steen, and allows her Zorsteddan self to rest.

*   *   *

She wakes to a night lit by two enormous yellow moons. Both are bigger than her moon. Together, they cast far more light. The sky is streaked with stars.

Steen is nowhere to be found.

“Steen?”

There’s no answer. She pushes to her feet groggily, turning in circles, then suddenly wakes with a violent shiver, thinking about Zorsteddan hunters, or predators, or stones that decide they don’t like you. “Steen!”

I’m coming, he says, the message faint in her mind. Turning, she sees his dark form trotting toward her, across wet sand that’s bright with reflected moonlight.

“I got scared!”

I wouldn’t leave you to find your way around alone.

“I mean I got scared for you!”

When he reaches her, she drops down and puts her arms around him. He smells like wet fur and tries to lick her hands. “Ick!” she says. “No licking!”

No hugging, he says. Strayhounds like to be petted, not hugged.

She lets him go. “If you don’t lick, I won’t hug.”

Deal. But you don’t need to be scared for me, Janie, he says. People here pretty much leave strayhounds alone.

“Okay,” Jane says thickly.

Are you cold?

“Yes, and hungry.”

You slept for a very long time. I did too, when I was first adjusting to your world. Crossing over is tiring. Let’s go someplace warm.

“How far are we from the hanging in the duchess’s mansion?”

Your aunt’s home is closer. She won’t mind if we wake her.

“No. Tu Reviens.”

All right, then, he says. The long, uphill climb will warm us.

An orchard on a steep hill is treacherous at night, even in the light of two moons. Jane keeps tripping, and whacking her head on low branches. She pulls her scarf tight around her ears and mutters to Steen that it’d be nice if the orchard would light itself for their convenience.

On the streets high above the water, the silence of the Zorsteddan night is striking. Zorsteddan buildings don’t hum or buzz. Zorsteddan streetlamps make the tiniest sizzling sounds as flames eat away at wicks.

Light and sound spill from the occasional building down the occasional street, but Steen leads her away from those streets. Drunken revelers are the plague of every harbor town, he says fastidiously.

Crumpled and cold from sleep, Jane is content enough to stay out of the way of drunken revelers. They climb quite a distance before the duchess’s mansion looms, and Steen is right. The long walk is warming.

I’ll have to get the attention of one of the few strayhounds in the castle who has a person, he tells her, to let us in.

“How will you do that?”

Strayhounds can communicate with each other mentally, remember?

“How will you explain why I deserve to be let in?”

Hopefully my brother will be awake.

“You have a brother?”

I have twelve brothers, seven sisters, and two hundred and forty-two cousins.

Jane speaks a Zorsteddan expletive. “Does your brother know about Tu Reviens?”

No. I told you, I haven’t told anyone. But he’s my brother. He trusts me, and his person trusts him. His person will open the door for us.

“It all sounds kind of complicated. Your brother trusts you, but you’re not actually telling him the truth.”

Well, it’s hard to know what to do sometimes, says Steen. If I tell my brother, should I tell my other eighteen siblings? What if I tell my brother and he tells his person? It’s not a small thing, a hanging that leads to another world. I have to be careful. You understand that, don’t you?

As she climbs into a garden on some obscure, high-walled side of the duchess’s mansion, Jane feels tired, and old. “I’m not a big fan of deception at the moment.”

Steen glances at her. I know. But you’ll see. It’s your secret now too. You’ll have to decide who to tell. Now, stop talking out loud. You’ll wake the entire ground-floor staff, and anyway, I’m trying to focus on communicating with my brother.

A minute later, a gruff man in a nightshirt opens a wooden door in the high wall, grunts, then steps back inside without even looking at them. A strayhound moves at his feet, shorter and stockier than Steen. He and Steen briefly stand in the doorway together, sniffing and snuggling each other.

Then Steen sets off with purpose. This path will take us through the kitchens, he tells Jane.

Jane follows. They climb all fifteen stories of the duchess’s mansion, gorging on bread, cheese, more Zorsteddan fruit with names Jane magically knows, and a long strip of what tastes like the most delicious beef jerky in any world, all pilfered from the kitchens. She has the sense that her Zorsteddan body finds fifteen stories of steps far less arduous than her real-world body would.

As she changes back into her Doctor Who pajamas, a faraway city clock tolls, and Jane understands the current time in Zorsted. It suddenly occurs to her to wonder what time it is at home. She speaks a Zorsteddan expletive. It’s gala day!

Not anymore, Steen responds. We missed the gala.

Another expletive. What if someone noticed my absence?

Just say you weren’t feeling well. If anyone gives you a hard time, I’ll bite them.

Steen! You can’t start biting people for no reason! My world does very mean things to dogs who bite! Just do something distracting that humans love. Put out your paw for them to shake.

Oh, that’s dignified, says Steen. Next you’ll tell me to roll over.

Jane laughs.

Don’t worry, says Steen. After all, if anything ever happens, I have a safe place I can disappear to.

Jane doesn’t answer, because she’s not ready to tell him that she doesn’t like the idea of him disappearing somewhere without her. When she moves into the room with the hanging, Steen follows. The view of Tu Reviens is dim and unpeopled, so Jane takes a moment to examine the umbrella on the floor. The ferrule and the handle are a bit different in shape and color from her own work and the workmanship is finer, but overall, the umbrella is gratifyingly like the one she’s just built. Picking it up, carrying it to the lantern in the far corner, scrutinizing it under the light, she’s pleased to think that she’s chosen appropriate shades of red and green for hers.

What do you think you’re doing! Steen says. That umbrella hasn’t been moved in over a hundred years!

The workmanship is gorgeous, really, Jane says, smoothing the dark, varnished shaft with her fingers. And someone dusts it regularly.

With the most delicate of feather dusters! Steen says. I wish you would put it down.

You’re one of those strayhounds who never got sent to the principal’s office, aren’t you? Jane says. All right, all right, she adds as he begins to stomp his feet again like bread kneading. Calm down.

But as she sets it down on the floor, the ancient material of one of the gores begins to tear along the seam. As Steen screams bloody horror in her mind, the gore falls out of the umbrella and collapses limply to the floor.

Look what you’ve done! Look what you’ve done!

Steen, Jane says calmly. I’ve got a nearly identical umbrella sitting in my morning room this very moment. It’s well-built enough. It’ll last another hundred-plus years.

Steen is breathing like a husky who’s just finished the Iditarod. Oh, thank goodness, he says. Thank goodness. Let’s go get it. This very instant. Right now!

Steen goes through first. Jane follows.

She needs a minute. It’s amazing, somehow, to be standing on the second-story landing of Tu Reviens; she almost feels as if she’s never been here before. There’s a slight scent to the receiving hall. Sweat, perfume, spilled alcohol, people: a post-party smell. Also, those lilacs, bringing Aunt Magnolia back to her. Hurting differently now, with a whole new confusion.

Someone in a faraway room is listening to the Beatles again. Jasper the basset hound maneuvers himself behind her and head-butts her ankles urgently.

“I’m going!” Jane whispers, obediently climbing to the third-story landing. “Calm down!”

Then Kiran and Ivy appear on the third-story bridge, crossing toward Jane from the west side of the house.

“Janie!” says Kiran. “Where on earth have you been? I looked for you at the party but I never saw you.”

Kiran’s wearing a lovely strapless gown in scarlet. Her mood, her expression are odd: both cheerful and hard. Triumphantly brittle. Also, the bottom edge of her skirt is damp-looking and crusty. Something’s happened.

Jane wants to ask Kiran about it, but she’s afraid it’ll encourage Kiran to ask her questions too, questions Jane can’t answer. “What time is it?” she squeaks.

“Nearly four in the morning,” Kiran says. “Ivy and I have been talking.”

“Actually,” Ivy says to Jane, “I wanted to talk to you too.”

“Right,” Jane says, trying not to gawk at Ivy. Her dress is long and black and so elegant that Jane’s Doctor Who pajamas make her feel twelve years old.

“I’m going to bed,” Kiran says smartly, then sets off down the steps.

“You were magnificent tonight,” Ivy calls after Kiran. “We’re really grateful. We couldn’t have pulled it off without you.”

“I didn’t do it for Patrick’s sake,” Kiran says.

“Yeah, okay,” Ivy says, “whatever. I’m really grateful.”

Kiran turns and gives Ivy a broad, warm smile before walking away. Jane has never seen Kiran smile like that before.

Jane turns to Ivy. “I’m awfully tired. Can I talk to you tomorrow too?”

“Sure,” Ivy says.

“G’night, then,” Jane says. Then she stands there looking at Ivy for another moment, until Jasper head-butts her. “Damn demented dog!” She turns away toward her rooms.

But when Jane and Jasper return to the stairs a few minutes later, carrying the umbrella Jane has made, Ivy is still on the second-story landing, staring intently at the umbrella in the painting. Her nose is probably two inches from the paint, her glasses pushed to her forehead and her eyes focused on the gore that lies limply on the checkerboard floor.

It’s too late to turn back; Ivy hears them. She stands straight and raises her eyes to Jane. Loose wisps of dark hair swing around her face.

And so Jane continues bravely down the stairs, umbrella in hand.

Ivy’s steady blue gaze takes in Jane, Jasper, and, with interest, the red-and-green umbrella in Jane’s hand.

“Going for a walk?” Ivy says, glancing at Jane’s pajamas.

“Possibly,” Jane says.

“Do you want company?”

“Yes,” Jane says. “I mean, yes. I do, very much. But I should probably go alone.”

“Okay,” says Ivy. “I looked for you during the gala. Weren’t you feeling up to it?”

The excuse is on the tip of her tongue. She ate something that disagreed with her, she slept through the gala. She hates parties, she hid in the west attics. She spent the night in a bedroom with one of the guests. “I don’t want to lie to you,” Jane says. “I want to tell you the truth.”

In her long black dress, with her hair up, Ivy looks like a woman in a portrait by Renoir, or John Singer Sargent. She studies Jane. “I want to tell you the truth too,” she says.

Another silence fills the space between them. It’s not an awkward silence. It’s full of something like hope, and curiosity.

Jane knows, finally, what she wants.

She speaks in a whisper. “Ivy?”

“Yes?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Hell, yes.”

Jane thinks through her words before she says them. “Would you please touch that painting?”

“This one?” Ivy says, pointing to the painting, then wrinkling her nose in puzzlement. “Mrs. Vanders would crucify me.”

“Please?”

“Okay,” she says, and stretches her finger to the painting. When she touches it, her finger sinks in. Her entire hand falls through. With a cry of alarm, she snatches it back. She inspects her own recovered hand, carefully, closely. Satisfied that she still has all her fingers, she raises amazed eyes to Jane.

“I can’t wait to hear what you ask me to do next,” she says.

“I’d like to bring you to meet a woman who communes with sea bears,” says Jane.

Ivy blinks. “Sea bears?”

“I want to show you. Will you come?”

Ivy cocks her head at the painting. “Are the sea bears through there?”

“Yes.”

Ivy blinks again. “Will you be with me the whole time?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“I swear it.”

“Okay, then,” says Ivy.

“What do you think, Steen?” Jane says, looking down at him. “Can a strayhound and his human make a home in two different worlds, with an aunt and a friend?”

Jasper holds Jane’s eyes and cants his head to the side, as if considering. Then he walks into the painting.

Jane turns to Ivy, whose mouth has dropped open. “Do you trust me?” Jane says.

Ivy’s eyes on Jane are wide and deep. She nods.

Jane takes Ivy’s hand and leads her into another world.