I recognize the corridor from the film, stone and tight and sloping downwards, taking us deep into the bowels of the church. Thorn leads the way, stooping slightly to avoid knocking his head on the domed ceiling. Rose walked this very corridor, but unlike me, she had no idea what waited for her behind that wooden door. A faceless precog. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.
‘This is so cool.’ Nate pulses his hands in a quick rhythmic motion, his wrists still red and sore from the recently removed binds. ‘We’re going to meet Baba.’
I silence him with a glare. The way he’s talking, all excited, anyone would think we’re about to meet a celebrity. We follow Thorn into the chamber. It’s just like the film set, but there’s this sense of oppression, the air almost sticky with something sweet and fresh – lily pollen perhaps. And it strikes me as odd that I can smell flowers in a place so lacking in vegetation. I imagine I can see the ghost of Rose walking beside me, about to meet Baba for the first time. I suddenly feel this sense of loss. Rose is dead.
‘Rose is dead?’ a voice says, as though echoing my thoughts.
I know exactly where to find Baba, hunched in the corner like a pile of rags. She lifts her head and I see her. The book described her as having an extra piece of skin stretched across her face, sealing in her eyes and nostrils, and a mouth which is no more than a thin opening, as though long ago a surgeon’s knife wished to hear her words. In the film, she was even worse, like some kind of gruesome, featureless monster. But the woman before me just looks asleep, her heavy lids resting shut. She doesn’t even look that old, maybe the age of my grandma, and her skin looks soft and doughy, like it would retain the indentation of a fingertip if touched. The only real peculiarity is her lack of nostrils, but I only notice that when she tilts her head back.
I hear Nate exhale slowly, clearly disappointed by her more approachable appearance.
‘Such a shame. I liked Rose,’ Baba says.
‘You never met her,’ Thorn says.
She shrugs. ‘OK, well I was going to like her.’
Thorn plumps a cushion and slips it behind her back. ‘Would you like me to see to the fire?’ It’s strange seeing Thorn so attentive only minutes after he held Nate at knifepoint, and it’s this unpredictability which makes him so scary. He’s all smiles and cushion-plumpings one minute, only to swing into psycho-mode the next. He’s the same in canon, only now, of course, the knife is real.
And I think Baba must feel the same; unable to trust his kindness. She waves him away. ‘No, thank you. I can manage myself.’ She turns to me, as though she can somehow make out my shape through her eyelids. Perhaps she can – they’re so paper-thin. ‘Who have you brought me instead, Thorn?’
‘God knows,’ he replies.
She laughs and her eyeballs shift beneath their lids like baby birds wriggling inside their eggs. She reaches a trembling hand towards me, and without thought, I take it. I brace myself for the bolt of pain, the shot of fire transferring through her palm into mine . . . but it never comes.
She smiles, revealing a pair of toothless gums. ‘This flower is little, but she has other qualities. Her name is Violet. Always shrinking, am I right?’
‘You’re right.’ My exact thought as I stood at the front of the class.
Thorn steps forward, and for a moment, I think he may pull my hand from hers, but he settles for clenching his fists. ‘She knows things she couldn’t possibly know. It’s like she’s in my head or something. Is she like you, Baba?’
‘Do you have precognitive abilities? Can you mind blend?’ she asks me.
I shake my head, then realize she can’t see, so I say, ‘No,’ then realize she can probably read my thoughts, so I blush and feel a little silly.
‘And what about you, Nate, any precog talents?’ she asks.
He claps his hands together and uses this fast, excited voice, as though she just gave him a permission slip to speak. ‘Oh my God, you know my name, that’s so cool. And you’re nowhere near as scary as you are in the film, they really got you all wrong.’
Thorn clips him round the back of the head. ‘That’s what the girl kept saying, that she’s from an alternate universe and that we’re living in a book or a film or some bullshit.’
Baba remains composed. ‘Well that is quite simply preposterous, wouldn’t you say?’
Nate snorts. ‘Says the five-hundred-year-old woman with no face.’
Thorn raises his hand to deliver another blow, but Baba intervenes. ‘That’s quite enough, Thorn. Show our guests a little respect. I like them.’
‘They’re responsible for Rose’s death.’ He continues to stare meaningfully at an invisible target on Nate’s head.
‘Yes,’ Baba says, like she’s addressing a child, ‘and when one flower dies, another blooms in its place.’
His hand flops to his side, dejected. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘That’s the thing about the viola flower, it’s little, but it’s rather special. It contains a scent which turns off the receptors in the nose, making it undetectable for moments of time.’
‘Don’t talk in riddles, old woman,’ Thorn says.
She laughs and dismisses him with a flick of her hand. ‘Leave me with them, and go and figure out this old woman’s riddle.’
He fidgets with his eyepatch, not used to receiving orders. ‘And why would I do that?’
‘Don’t be difficult,’ she says. ‘You forget that I already know you’re going to leave, it’s one of the benefits of being a precog.’
He turns on his heel and marches from the room, his features fighting to hide his annoyance. The door slams behind him and the rush of air stirs the flames – shadows dance across the granite. Baba yawns, her toothless mouth like a baby’s mid-cry. ‘His bark’s worse than his bite.’
‘You sure about that?’ Nate says. ‘He nearly slit my throat.’
‘OK, they’re both pretty bad. He’s been through a lot, but I guess you already know that.’ She gestures around the room. ‘Take a seat, Nate. Make yourself comfy. I need some time with your sister.’
He plonks himself down, missing the cushion but not seeming to care. ‘You’re going to mind blend, aren’t you? This is so cool – do me next.’
She ignores him. ‘Come now, Violet, let me rest my hands on your brow.’
I kneel before her, just like Rose should have done, and once again, I feel that sense of loss. But something more toxic runs beneath – guilt. It should be her, not me, resting her knees on these stone slabs, her dark hair falling forward as she offers her brow. I close my eyes to prevent a giant tear splashing on the ground.
Baba lays her palms on my head like she’s checking an infant’s fever. The anticipated bolt of pain shoots through me, swelling my tissue, cracking my bones. It’s so much worse than the description in the book. I want to scream but it’s like there’s no air in my lungs. I see a knife slicing a peach, the palest blue eyes I’ve ever seen, a minidress torn by grabbing hands, Saskia’s hair fanning around her face as Matthew weeps, a stage set hurtling towards me, a girl in a mirror dressed in a tunic.
The pain migrates towards my frontal lobes, intensifying to a single spot between my eyes.
I see Mum . . . Dad . . .
Home.
The pain grows and grows until I teeter on the edge of consciousness. And just when I think I will surely die, when I start to long for the peace of death, it begins to fade. The colours, the feelings, the pain, all leak from my temples, drawn through my skin into the warmth of her palms.
I open my eyes and see only white. I blink several times and realize I’m standing in a snowstorm. I’m about to shout for help, to reach blindly for Baba, suddenly united by our lack of sight, when the snow thins. Only it isn’t snow. It’s thistledown. Swirling, dancing, spiralling through the air like a flock of tiny white birds. The air continues to clear and I see Baba standing beside me. Same doughy skin, same toothless smile, but her back is straight, her legs strong, and her eyes finally open to reveal two apple-green irises. She inhales deeply through her brand-new nostrils. ‘That’s better,’ she whispers to the air.
I slowly spin, taking in my surroundings. We stand in the Coliseum. High stone walls dotted with gun towers. To the front, a wooden stage displays nine hungry ropes. I know that on one side rests London, broken and grey, and on the other stretches the Pastures, fresh and green. Just like in canon. Just like earlier today. Yet it seems so different – empty and still, like a playing field at night. And I feel strangely calm. The sky looks clear and the air tastes delicious, fresh – lemony, perhaps.
I find myself inhaling too. ‘How did we get here?’
‘We’re in your mind, dear. I thought it apt to visit the Coliseum, the place where it all started.’ She laughs and catches a piece of thistledown. ‘Bet you feel like Dorothy right now?’
I nod.
She releases the thistledown back into the air as though freeing a dragonfly. ‘There’s no place like home . . . There’s no place like home.’
The word home brings tears to my eyes, hot and fast.
She cups my face and dries my cheeks with her thumbs. ‘But the thing is, your arrival rather knocked our story off-track. Rose wasn’t meant to die, she was meant to infiltrate the manor and fall in love with Willow. A love so strong and pure it transcended the Imp–Gem divide, and eventually reunited mankind as one. But you know this, don’t you?’
I try to nod but she holds my face stationary.
‘And some stories simply need to unfold,’ she says. ‘They need to reach their beautiful climax, existing almost like a life cycle, an entity in their own right.’
‘I – I don’t understand.’
‘Don’t you feel it, Violet? Our story – the canon, you call it – pulling you back in, dragging you along. It’s almost impossible to resist, is it not?’
I think of the two pieces of thread, running in parallel, twisting together, and I nod.
She drops her hands to my shoulders and spins me so I face the stage. I see each noose, waiting for another neck to choke.
Her voice heats my ear. ‘You must save the Imps, Violet. Through self-sacrifice and love, you must complete the story. Only then will our world release you.’
I laugh – a nervous trill – and my breath disrupts the path of a lazy seed. ‘How am I supposed to do that?’
‘You take Rose’s place. An insert. You put right what you made wrong. Then you can go home.’
Nausea rises in my stomach.
I turn to face her, the green of her eyes knocking me off balance. ‘This isn’t Quantum Leap!’ My voice sounds a little petulant, completely out of place in the grandness of the Coliseum.
She closes her eyes for a moment. ‘Quantum Leap . . . the fictional man who jumps between realities . . . your Dad’s favourite show.’
‘Putting right what once went wrong – how do you do that? And come to think about it, how do you know about The Wizard of Oz?’
‘It’s in your head. If it’s in your head, it’s in my head.’ She smiles. ‘And did Sam Beckett squash a main character when he entered those realities?’
I see something in my peripheral vision, a streak of black falling from the top of the wall and thumping into the ground. My hand sails to my mouth as I whisper the word no. I manage to focus and see the ruby butterfly wings opening across the slabs. Rose. My head reels and I stumble forward.
Baba catches me. ‘Well I’m afraid that you rather squashed our main character.’ She glances at the broken girl behind her. ‘And you didn’t squash the Wicked Witch of the West, you squashed the plucky heroine, the one person our reality simply can’t do without.’
I shake my head, heavy with guilt and disbelief.
‘I’m not plucky, and I’m not a heroine.’ My voice crumbles at the edges as though proving my point.
She shrugs. ‘Then you and your friends can stay in our reality for ever.’
My parents’ faces appear in my mind’s eye, the grief etched into their skin, still waiting for me and Nate to return from Comic-Con. My legs go weak and I find myself slowly crumpling to the ground, only metres from Rose’s body. And the loss just keeps on growing, expanding in all directions until it loses all boundaries and edges and fills my whole brain: hot showers and TV shows and Instagram and Ben & Jerry’s and make-up and comfy beds and Google and camping and Kindles and Nando’s and parties and A levels and going to uni and getting a job . . . raising my future children in a world which values them and treats them justly . . .
I shove my hands into my scalp and feel this scream building inside.
Baba kneels before me and gently teases my fingers from my hair. ‘This may only be a story, Violet. It may be generated by your world, from a book or a film.’ She points to the crest of the wall, and I see another figure. A female – Sally King. The late author of The Gallows Dance. I recognize her from the book cover; her long, mousy hair pulled taut from her face, the heavy frame of her glasses swamping her child-like face. And I remember the news reports when she died. Up-and-coming author of bestselling dystopian novel throws herself from a tower block after long struggle with mental illness. She looks straight at me, smiles, and then steps forwards as though she’s stepping on to an escalator. Her body twists through the air and lands next to Rose.
Baba strokes my hair. ‘Our reality may be generated by a single author’s vision or an audience’s collective conscious . . . Who knows? But it is our reality. It matters to us just as your reality – your home – matters to you.’ She uses a finger to raise my chin so my gaze meets hers, but her green eyes only heighten my loss, reminding me of forests and meadows and Christmas wreaths, all things I will never see if I remain in this God-awful city. She blinks like she knows I need some kind of respite. Her words, however, offer none. ‘A story is like a life cycle, Violet. You will be released only when the story concludes. Birth to death.’
Birth to death. A burst of adrenalin travels through me. Birth to death.
Again, she turns me to face the stage, her fingers curling through my tunic like talons. ‘The place where it started, and the place where it must end.’
I look at the nine loops of rope and gain a sudden clarity. I fill my lungs with the lemony air.
‘I’m going to hang in Rose’s place,’ I whisper.
‘Yes.’
‘Next week, at the Gallows Dance?’
‘Yes. For your friends, your family, and above all else, love.’
The justice is almost poetic – we killed Rose, after all. I laugh, but it quickly morphs into a sob. ‘Exactly one week today, I will hang.’ And upon speaking these words, I finally pass out.