‘Ash, Ash.’ I hear my voice shout his name. I lurch towards him, but Thorn pulls me back.
Ash looks up, his eyes vivid blue, staring from the pink of his beaten face. I gasp at the sight of his blood, and my hand touches my own cheek as though I can somehow feel his wounds.
‘Do you know this Imp?’ Thorn’s breath catches against my ear.
I nod. ‘He’s a friend.’
‘And why is your friend sneaking around my church?’
Ash raises his voice. ‘Violet? What is this?’ He looks at me and then at the rebels. He wears the exact same look Willow wore in canon – hurt, betrayed.
A rebel whacks him in the temple with the butt of a gun. He splays on the floor.
‘Stop it! Please!’ I shout. I can’t believe I dragged him into this mess.
Saskia steps forward. ‘He’s just a kid from the Harper estate who’s sweet on Violet, that’s why he’s here.’
Thorn walks towards Ash with slow, purposeful steps, accentuating the rhythm of his speech. ‘And now he’s just a kid who knows where Rebel Headquarters is, and what we all look like.’
Ash manages to scrape himself off the floor, rocking back into a kneeling position. ‘Who am I going to tell?’
‘Some Gems work for the Imps,’ Thorn says, ‘and some Imps work for the Gems. Not everyone is true to their own.’
I follow Thorn, nausea rising in my stomach. ‘Please, Thorn. He’s no threat to you.’
‘His nickname’s Squirrel, for God’s sake,’ Nate says.
Thorn squats down before Ash and seems to study his face for a moment. ‘Lesson number one, boy – never think with your dick.’
Ash smiles his lopsided smile. ‘I was thinking with my heart.’
‘Lock him in a cell,’ Thorn says.
The exact same line Thorn said in canon. It’s like the story wants to unfold – Baba was right.
I watch as the rebels pull Ash to his feet, stomach acid burning the lining of my throat. He glances over his shoulder at me – his long eyelashes shielding his expression – and a cocktail of guilt and longing swirls in my stomach.
‘I’m sorry,’ I mouth at him.
But they cart him away before he can respond.
The church suddenly feels very cold. I squeeze my arms around my body, wishing I could disappear into myself, sucked into a vacuum of my own guilt. If it weren’t for me, Ash would be stirring Ma’s pot, or sitting on an Imp-bus, or lying on a bunk, or climbing a tree. I should never have deviated from the script and taken all those risks. My lips tingle as I recall last night’s kiss, and his words loop in my head. I was thinking with my heart.
Matthew breaks the silence. ‘Honestly, Thorn. He’s a good lad.’
Thorn ignores him and steers me away from the others to the front of the church. I hear Nate mutter something about being left out again, followed by a sharp smack, probably Saskia clipping him around the ear. But it all seems a little unreal. My knees feel like they won’t bend any more, and my steps become jerky and small. Thorn leads me to the pulpit and gestures for me to sit beside him on the stone lip. The chill of the stone pushes through my overalls.
He sits beside me and stares at the ceiling. ‘Before you ask if you can see him, the answer’s no.’
‘I was going to ask if I can see Baba.’
‘Why?’
I lean forward, letting my hair form a screen so he can’t see my tears. ‘Because I don’t know what to do.’
‘You don’t do anything. You just hope Alice comes up with the goods – it isn’t just Katherine I’ve got locked in a cell any more.’
‘Katie,’ I say, almost to myself. The guilt multiplies as I realize she hasn’t entered my head since I arrived back at headquarters. But something about the way he used her full name, the way he rolled it around his mouth like he was exploring its contours with his tongue, makes me fear less for her safety.
‘You can’t see her,’ he says.
‘Is she OK?’
He nods. ‘For now.’
I take a deep breath and push my hair behind my ears. I need to convince him to let me see Baba. I steady my voice. ‘What if Alice doesn’t deliver the goods?’
‘She’s doing OK so far.’ His single eye flits between my own.
‘Last time I saw her, she was enjoying being a Gem a little too much. It’s a lot to give up.’
‘I managed it.’ He raises his eyepatch to remind me of his origins. This close, I can see his pupil shrink to a dot, unaccustomed to the light.
‘Yes, but the Gems haven’t killed the man she loves.’
‘Speaking of love, it seems your mission may have been compromised by a certain Night-Imp.’
My cheeks flush. ‘Ash is just a friend.’
He laughs like he doesn’t believe me and pulls a silver flask from his jacket. ‘Go on then, what makes you think Alice loves the Gem brat?’
‘Back in my world, Alice is a fanfic writer, a really good one. She gets thousands of hits every day.’
He hands me the flask, his features controlled and still. ‘A fanfic writer?’
‘Alice didn’t write the original book, but she expanded on it, twisted it, wrote new bits.’ Tentatively, I take a sip. It tastes pungent, gouging a path of fire from my tongue to my belly.
‘She makes shit up.’
I laugh softly. ‘Yeah.’
He plucks the flask from my hand. ‘I trusted Baba when she said you were the one. But she got it wrong. And I’m not about to believe her bizarre idea that you’re from a different dimension and our world is just a . . .’ He tails off and takes several hungry slurps. I notice his hand tremble slightly, a sheen of moisture on his brow.
I press on. ‘Alice’s favourite thing was to write stories about girls who could win Willow’s heart, made-up girls . . . and they were all tall and blonde, and called things like Abby and Ada and Amelia. She’s imagined being with him since she was fifteen.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘You still need me, because Alice isn’t on our side. She’s on Alice’s side. She always is.’
Thorn tucks the flask into his jacket and flips his patch back into position. ‘It seems you share a similar view to Katherine. Let me show you something, Little Flower.’
He leads me to the dark rood screen at the front of the church. A golden bird spreads its wings, trapped beneath a circle of angels.
‘The bird is a pelican,’ Thorn says. ‘In ancient Imp mythology, it fed its young with its own blood by plucking the feathers from its breast.’
I don’t know what he wants me to say, so I just mumble, ‘Gross.’
‘There is nothing gross about self-sacrifice, Violet.’
He looks past the painted cherubs to the high vaulted ceiling for inspiration. ‘You get one minute with her.’
‘Who?’
‘Baba.’
I smile. ‘That’s all I need.’
Baba hunches in the corner of her cell, watching the fire and humming a tune. The scent of lilies and woodsmoke transports me to my first meeting with her. I think of the gallows and the falling bodies and my mouth dries up.
She turns her head towards me, her eyes wavering beneath her sealed-up lids as though she’s dreaming. Her lipless mouth puckers at the corners. ‘Violet. You seem . . . different.’
‘Hungrier and sleep deprived.’
‘Stronger.’ She offers her withered hands, and I cross the slabs to hold them. They feel surprisingly warm. ‘Where’s Thorn?’ she asks.
‘He gave us one minute.’
She laughs, causing her frame to rock slightly, the firelight moving across her skin. ‘He’s so mean when he’s stressed.’ She gestures to the ground before her. ‘Come, kneel, my child.’
I kneel – letting the stone cool my shins – and bow my head. This time I want the pain. Something to numb the ache of guilt and failure. She cradles my temples and that bolt of pain shoots down my neck, glancing off my sternum and ricocheting around my body. Every part of me hurts. I inhale, but my lungs reject the air and my throat closes. I get the sense I’m drowning without any water. I see a paper chain of Imps crumpling to the ground, a floating, half-dead boy, a scythe-like blade raised high and glinting in the sun, a muddle of bronzed legs cushioned in satin sheets.
Then, just like before, the pain collects in that space between my eyes. I see Ash kneeling between the rebels, a ribbon of blood running down his chin. I was thinking with my heart, he says.
And as swiftly as it arrived, the pain vanishes.
I know where I stand before I even open my eyes. I breathe in the scent of freshly mown grass, hear the chatter of the birds and the soft thud of falling apples. The orchard. I’ve never been here in the midday sun before. It’s so vibrant – bursting with colour and perfume. The wind shakes the leaves and my skin becomes a collection of strobe-like shadows. I smile to myself.
Baba stands before me, her back straight and her eyes open. She surveys her surroundings. ‘So this is where the magic happened?’
‘Yes. But Willow didn’t fall for me. The magic didn’t work – I’m Neville Longbottom, in the early books, before he gets good.’
Baba laughs, and I notice she now owns a set of teeth. ‘I wasn’t talking about Willow. I was talking about the other one – the one with the baby blues.’
Just the mention of Ash and tears sting my eyes. ‘It’s all gone wrong, Baba. What am I going to do?’ I’m aware I sound like a small child, but I don’t care.
She ignores me and reaches into the boughs of a nearby tree, every strand of her grey hair alive in the sun.
‘How could I have been so stupid?’ My voice comes out high-pitched and whiny. ‘I knew Alice loved Willow. Did I really think she was just going to step aside?’
She plucks an apple from the branch and inhales its scent, her newly found nostrils sucking together from the force. ‘Alice gave you a poisoned apple, but that doesn’t make her a wicked hag. And just because you took it, doesn’t make you Snow White.’
‘She betrayed me.’
Baba shrugs. ‘You were willing to betray Willow, to seduce him for your own gain. The end justified the means. Alice just has a different end in mind.’ She sinks her teeth into the skin of the apple, juice dribbling down her chin. ‘Ash. That’s his name.’ The pulp moves across her tongue. ‘I like him.’
‘What am I going to do?’ I repeat, slightly annoyed by her lack of direction.
She swallows. ‘You still have those ruby slippers, maybe you walk a different path.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You find your own way, Violet. Stop trying to be Rose.’
‘But, I thought sticking to the script was the right thing to do. I thought the story needed to complete so we could go home.’
I must look really perplexed, because she offers me a sympathetic look and says, ‘But you took the odd risk, didn’t you, Violet. And what happened?’
I reply without thinking. ‘I fell in love with the wrong character.’
‘Or is that why you took those risks? Chicken and egg. Everything’s just a loop in the end.’
‘Baba, please, you’re making no sense.’
‘Look at it another way – if you were stuck here, here in our world, how would you live your life? What kind of an Imp would you become?’
I can feel the irritation building inside. ‘I can’t stay here, Baba. I have to go home – me, Nate and Katie, we don’t belong here.’
‘Belonging is just a state of mind, ask Alice.’
She sounds like one of those wall stickers in my auntie’s sitting room. Learn to dance in the rain. ‘Please, Baba. Stop talking in riddles, just tell me what to do.’
‘Now where would the fun be in that?’ The apple reappears in her hands, a bright, shiny orb. She hurls it into the air like she’s releasing a dove – it punches through the branches and sails into the infinite sky. Her laughter dissolves into birdsong. The colours of the orchard run together like paint, and the scent of apples gradually fades.