I wake alone, the taste of dirt in my mouth. The remnants of several nightmares swim in my head: blood reaching across concrete, two freshwater pearls staring from the riverbed, metal snakes moving through water. My eyelids flicker and the walls of a white, sterile room throb in and out of focus. A cell, similar to the one Rose woke in. I try to sit, but my arms bow under my weight. Not nightmares – memories. The images continue to hover in my line of sight, transparent and ethereal, like they’re printed on the finest of silk sheets.
The door opens and a couple of squaddies enter. They set various things beside me – a towel, a hot drink, a white dressing gown, a tray of food. They leave the room and the lock clicks into place. Soon, I will meet President Stoneback. The man who makes Thorn seem like Santa Claus. Whose nephew’s death I witnessed back at the bolthole. I close my eyes and take deep, steady breaths.
The food smells amazing, like Christmas dinner and birthday cake rolled into one – proper food. I realize I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday’s bread, and although I shouldn’t be able to touch a crumb, the juices in my stomach begin to swirl. So I kneel before the tray and shovel the food into my mouth like I’m back in Ma’s house.
I look around the cell, not used to the feeling of fullness in my stomach. A small bathroom sits in the corner. Clean and sparkling and floral-scented. I stumble towards it, and for a while I just sit on the floor, waiting for the food to reappear, finding some comfort in the hardness of the tiles. But after a while, the nausea recedes. I notice for the first time since I woke that my clothes cling to my skin like a thin layer of ice, and even though I can’t stop trembling, even though my thoughts are muddled and my breathing jagged – the early stages of hypothermia bedding in – I delay the inevitable moment when I undress. Because I know I’m hurtling towards the climax, the end of the canon. And maybe I will return home, maybe I will incite a revolution and become that little flower who brings hope to the Imps, but Ash is going to hang too. He won’t return home. He will just die. Tears pool in the corners of my eyes, but I know I need to think clearly if I want to ensure his survival. So I command myself to unpeel my clothes and place them in the drying pod.
I step into the shower. At first, the water scalds, like a hundred little irons branding my skin. But the pain subsides, and I feel the warmth penetrate my flesh, gradually reaching my bones. Slowly, my brain starts working again. I take some time trying to unravel the confusion. The ambush, the bolthole . . . Alice’s betrayal.
My thoughts turn to the noose and the flying trapdoor. I wonder how much it will hurt. Whether I’ll be aware of Ash, his legs whirling beside mine as life escapes him. And I don’t really know if Baba was right, if hanging will even work – one moment, the life choking out of me, and the next, lying in a heap of rubble back at Comic-Con or maybe in a hospital bed. It all seems a little far-fetched now I’m standing in the shower in a military bunker, preparing to hang.
The questions multiply along with the panic, spiralling out of control. Will Katie and Alice wake beside me? And what if Alice tries to turn Willow against me again? What if Willow doesn’t profess his love and the canon doesn’t complete? Will I just die for real, and will Katie and Alice live in this world for ever? And what about Nate? My funny, clever, quirky little brother. Will he wake up too? The questions build inside till my skin starts to feel tight and ready to split. I snap off the shower and towel myself until every bruise stings – a welcome distraction.
I know I should probably put that white, clean dressing gown on, but I wrinkle up my nose and slip on my overalls. They stink of the city, itch to high heaven and feel rigid with grime and dried blood – my own, Ash’s, Thorn’s, Nate’s. But they make me feel safer. I don’t know how long I sit on the edge of the bed, staring at the white ceiling, wishing it were a sky full of bubbles and Nate were beside me shouting, More bubbles, Violet, more bubbles please.
I begin to wonder what the President will say to me. I remember his conversation with Rose. He was so condescending, I wanted to slap him. Well, well. If it isn’t Rose. The beautiful, fearless Imp rebel. The girl who stole Willow Harper’s heart, only to lose hers in return. Please, come sit with me. But I can forget about the script now. It would make no sense, seeing as I was pulled from the river with Ash and not Willow.
Eventually, the squaddies return. They escort me down a long, sterile corridor, perfumed with lilies and cleaning products. I see a large, wooden door, heavily guarded and boasting the colours of the Gem flag. I wipe my eyes out of habit, but I have no tears. Every last drop of moisture has been squeezed from me. I take small, shaky steps towards the door, half expecting my joints to creak, hoping my body will crumble on impact.
The guards open the door and I see him. The man from canon. Rose’s nemesis. The Gem President. He lounges in a velvet tub chair, sipping from a porcelain teacup.
He smiles his plastic smile and says, ‘Well, well. If it isn’t Rose. The beautiful, fearless Imp rebel. The girl who stole Willow Harper’s heart, only to lose hers in return. Please, come sit with me.’
My lips part, but I feel too confused to speak. These are the lines from canon. The exact lines he spoke to Rose when he met her. How does the President even know about Willow? I don’t know what to do, what to say. So, blindly, I follow canon, forcing out my lines: ‘Willow. Where is he now?’
‘Back at the manor. Licking his wounds. Don’t worry. You will see him again. He will, of course, attend your hanging tomorrow.’
Again, the President follows the script. Somehow, he must have found out that Willow helped me escape the ambush. I say my next line, unsure of what else to do. ‘Please, no.’
The President smiles. ‘Come now, Violet, you can deliver your lines with more pizazz than that.’
At first, I think I must have misheard. The fatigue and the anxiety and the remnants of the sedative. ‘Pardon?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Have I gone off-script?’ He turns to the soldier. ‘Lieutenant, please pour our guest some tea. She has, after all, travelled a long way to be with us.’
The world seems to shrink. Everything around me – the coffee table, the picture frames, the vases of lilies – reduced to a series of knick-knacks. The lieutenant passes me some tea and I set the saucer on my lap. The dark liquid begins to tremor. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I finally say.
‘You don’t need to play dumb with me, Violet. You’re the new protagonist, isn’t that right? The dashing heroine of your favourite tale.’ He looks me up and down. ‘And a pretty convincing one at that.’
I stare at him, my mouth hanging open.
He smiles his strange, plastic smile. ‘I know the lady with no face, too.’
‘Baba.’ I say her name and it all clicks into place.
He nods. ‘Amazing precognitive abilities, she knows where you’re going to be before you do, Violet. And what psychic powers – a mole who can visit me in my dreams. She may look a sight, but she is Gem through and through.’
A black, ugly mess of emotions surges up my throat. Baba told the Gems about the raid, the bolthole, the escape across the river. Baba betrayed us. Baba killed Nate. My teacup begins to clink in its saucer. ‘But, in canon . . .’
‘She was on the side of the Imps?’
‘Yes.’
‘Haven’t you noticed? The “canon” as you call it is just a framework, the bare bones over which we have draped our rich and detailed universe.’
I screw my eyes up. Thinking really hurts now, like I’m peeling thoughts off the inside of my brain. ‘She told you about our universe, about the book?’
He nods. ‘I’ve known for a long, long time.’
All my questions begin to expand. I can practically see the rips appearing across the backs of my hands, my wrists, my skin straining against the pressure. ‘But Baba only found out a week or so back, when she first met me at the church.’
He chuckles to himself and sips his tea. ‘She played dumb. She’s known for years. Since The Gallows Dance was first published.’
‘I – I don’t understand.’
‘No. I imagine you don’t. Your small, ape brain will struggle to take it all on board.’ He stands and walks to a small window, veiled by an emerald curtain. He pulls a cord and the curtain is drawn back. It isn’t a window, but a portrait. Sally King. ‘I painted her from memory. Baba introduced us in a dream. You know who it is, of course?’
I nod.
‘I thought it fitting she should watch over me. She did, after all, create me.’ He stares at the painting, an unfamiliar softness in his voice. ‘I know that somehow her universe, your universe, created ours – the power of the collective conscious, Baba called it.’
‘The collective conscious?’
‘Yes. When a group of people share the same beliefs, the same ideas—’
‘You’re talking about the Fandom?’
‘You could call it that. In fact, let’s call it that. The Fandom – it has a better ring to it. Well, the energy from the Fandom created something . . . Something real.’ He circles his hand, a dramatic flourish. ‘This!’
He leans over the table and dips his finger in his tea. It still steams, but he doesn’t flinch. He draws a circle on the coffee table with the moisture. ‘Baba told you about a story being a life cycle. Birth to death.’
I try to nod.
He holds my gaze with his glassy eyes. ‘Well that’s what this is. A never-ending cycle. A perpetual loop . . . I know because I’m stuck in it.’ He dips his finger in his tea again and draws a series of lines around the circle, so that it resembles a scant clock face.
This makes me think of the markings in the sewers and Nate’s face, lit up with excitement as he traced the yellow paint. I get this throbbing in my chest which makes it difficult to breathe. But the President continues. He points to the top line – the twelve o’clock line. ‘The beginning of the loop. Here. I’m sitting in my office. I hear the news about a thistle-bomb at the Gallows Dance. Some rebels freed the condemned Imps, they said, nothing to worry about, sir, they said.’ He moves to the three o’clock line. ‘Here. They tell me that Willow Harper has gone missing. The rebels are involved, nothing to worry about, sir. We launch a search party.’ He moves his finger to the bottom of the circle. Six o’clock. ‘Here. They arrest some jumped-up little rebel called Rose.’ His finger hits nine o’clock. His voice rising with urgency. ‘I meet her in my office, she shows no remorse. I think how lovely she’ll look dancing on a rope.’ He moves his finger close to the first line – the twelve o’clock line. ‘I watch the bitch hang, the crowd turns and rips the gallows to the ground, then . . . Bam.’ He jabs his finger to the top of the circle again. ‘I’m back in my office, hearing of the thistle-bomb like it’s just happened.’
He dips his finger in his tea again and refreshes the fading loop. ‘At first I doubt my mental health. I’m the President, I’m under a lot of pressure. I take some pills and I go through the motions again.’ His finger continues to circle the table, gathering speed. ‘I meet the bitch, I watch her hang, the gallows fall, and then, bam.’ He pushes so hard, I swear I see some blood mingling with the tea. ‘Office. Thistle-bomb. The bitch hangs. The gallows fall. Bam.’ His finger gets faster and faster, until the circle is entirely red. ‘Office. Thistle-bomb. The bitch hangs. The gallows fall. Bam.’
He screams in frustration and knocks the table over. The sound of bouncing wood and shattering porcelain fills the room. I freeze. Only my chest moves – a series of shallow gasps. He turns to me, his features arranged into such a banal smile I struggle to imagine he was capable of such an outburst.
He then speaks in a soft, low voice. ‘Trapped in a loop, in a cycle, unable to break free. It’s a nightmare, Violet.’
The lieutenant silently replaces the table while the President straightens his jacket. And just before Stoneback pulls his sleeves into place, I notice the tiniest of marks on the inside of his wrist: a black mole with the middle missing, kind of like a small hoop.
‘So each time the story completes, it resets?’ I ask.
He nods. I feel the ghost of hope, heavy in my chest. It makes me feel a little brave. I lick my finger and darken the twelve o’clock mark, smudging his blood. ‘So when the story resets, what happens to the people who died?’
‘They are reborn.’
A shaky laugh escapes from my mouth. Ash will be reborn. Matthew will be reborn. The hope grows suddenly, bursting through me like something tangible and warm. ‘My brother?’
He places a finger on my own and slides it towards me. A mixture of his blood and my saliva forms a thin line. ‘Your universe is not cyclical. It is linear. If your brother died in this reality, The Gallows Dance, he will never be reborn, not in this universe or your own.’
The clasp of grief tightens on my throat.
He lifts his finger and sits again, his posture straight and proper. ‘I suppose you’re wondering how I remember this loop while everyone else in my world is blissfully ignorant?’
I’d been thinking only of Nate, his sparkling eyes and pixie grin, but I nod regardless.
‘Some of us Gems are a little too enhanced. Just like the old precog you were so fond of. Whereas she ended up with psychic abilities, a few of us ended up with enhanced memories. The best scientists, the best engineers, the top politicians. We remember the echoes, the reflections, everything – every damned loop. And we’re tired of it. Life is supposed to move, to progress.’ He stares sadly at the circle of blood. ‘And we can’t change the story, we can’t do a goddamned thing, because the consequences of the loop failing to complete may be dire. It’s a risk we’re not yet willing to take.’
I shove my fingers into my head as if I can somehow reach into my brain and untangle all the information. ‘But if the Fandom created you, how do you have a childhood, a past? It makes no sense. Your existence could only have begun when the story started.’
‘There are many paradoxes involved in transdimensional quantum resonance, which I do not expect your monkey brain to understand. Perhaps an analogy will help. Another perpetual loop – the chicken and the egg.’
‘Which came first,’ I whisper. Baba used this same analogy; she was taunting me even then.
‘Yes. Well done. I’ll get you a banana. Did the Fandom create us, or did we create the Fandom? Did the book create us, or did we create the book? It matters not. It’s a question which cannot be resolved. Both are true – our universes are symbiotic – the Gems have childhoods, we have a history, we even share a history with your universe. But time flows differently in our universe.’
‘I don’t get it.’ I feel so stupid. I wish Nate were here; he would do his Sheldon Cooper thing and he would understand. I feel his loss intensely, a hollowing-out of where my heart should be.
‘No, I don’t suppose you do.’
I swallow back the tears, try and slow my breathing. ‘So why am I here?’ I finally ask.
‘That’s the thing with a genetic super-race. We can solve most problems, given enough time. We devised a way to breach the layer between our universes. A way to reach her.’ He points to the portrait of Sally King.
‘But . . . Sally King is dead.’
‘She is now. But she wasn’t. You remember how she died?
‘She killed herself.’
‘Because of the voices in her head?’ He taps his temple with a long, elegant finger. ‘Sometimes the mad aren’t really mad.’
‘The voice was you?’
He nods. ‘I tried to convince Miss King to write a sequel and break the loop.’
I look at Sally’s face, the sadness behind those oversized glasses. ‘You killed her?’ I feel such anger, such hatred, towards this man. For Sally, for Nate, for Matthew, for all the Imps he’s killed. I lift my teacup to my lips to avoid speaking, afraid I might shout or scream or curse.
‘Not intentionally. She was our only hope. The problem was, when she started The Gallows Dance sequel, we had artistic differences.’ He smiles to himself. ‘She wanted the Imps to prevail. I did not. I’m afraid I may have pushed her too far.’
‘She died protecting the future of the Imps?’ I recall the pelican again – giving life with its own blood – and a brief smile touches my lips.
He ignores me. ‘But then a new hope emerged. A rising fanfic writer.’
A clear image forms in my mind’s eye. Bronzed legs wrapped around bronzed legs, almost like two stems twisted together, opening out into two separate blooms. The sleeping lovers – the two blooms – almost form the shape of a heart. I reach for my necklace then remember I broke it. My best friend, the fanfic writer, the beautiful Imp who loves a Gem. It almost hurts to say her name. ‘Alice.’
The President nods. ‘Anime Alice. Thanks to her, a new Fandom grew, holding the promise of a new story, an existence beyond this eternal loop. We could feel their presence, this new Fandom. We began noticing tiny changes in canon, new characters appearing, little glitches here and there. Alas, nothing dramatic enough to change our future, to break the loop. But imagine if this Alice returned to your world and wrote a sequel, a published story which reached a whole new audience. We would have a Fandom powerful enough to break the loop. We would have a future.’
‘You would have another book – another loop.’
He claps, long and slow. ‘You must be one of those clever monkeys that can sign and do tricks for peanuts. No. What we will have is an opportunity. Who knows what will occur once we are freed. Your A plus B equals C logic is rather antiquated.’
I feel my brow knot together, hear the rattle of porcelain against porcelain as my legs continue to shake. ‘So why am I here?’
‘We realized our mistake when Sally King died. Sally was pro-Imp, of course. She is an Imp, you all are in your universe. And telling her to be pro-Gem, it just didn’t work. We needed Alice to live like a Gem, to become a Gem, to learn what animals the Imps truly are. So now, when she returns to your world and writes us our sequel, she won’t remember her little adventure, but she will be Gem through and through. She will create a future in which we Gems would like to live.’
I begin to feel sick. ‘It was you? You brought us here from Comic-Con?’ The trill of the teacup crescendos and abruptly stops as the cup topples. Hot tea soaks into my thighs, but I barely register the pain.
The President just laughs. ‘Yes. Like I said, we have brilliant scientists. If you like I can bring one of them in. He will explain the quantum physics of transdimensional tunnelling, but I fear your primate brain may explode, and I’m wearing my favourite suit.’
I look at my cup, broken on the floor. Two perfect halves. ‘And does Alice know about this?’
‘No. Alice knows nothing. As far as she’s concerned, she’s having a lovely time living with the Gems. She still thinks so long as you don’t complete the canon, she gets to continue living here. If she knew the truth she would feel . . . manipulated.’
‘But why bring me? Katie?’ I have to swallow before I can say his name. ‘Nate.’
‘We only meant to transport Alice. But things never go quite as planned. And when you all arrived, my word, did it get interesting. Baba’s been keeping me posted.’
‘Rose wasn’t meant to die?’
He scoops up my teacup and pushes the halves together so the cup becomes whole. ‘Not then, no. She was supposed to hang at the Gallows Dance tomorrow, inciting a revolution, completing the cycle, and sending Alice home.’ A glimmer of pride offsets his usual look of disdain. ‘I must admit, Violet, you surpassed my expectations as an understudy. Baba told me you would.’
‘So I will hang in Rose’s place.’
He grins – his teeth remind me of those foam sweets I used to love as a kid. ‘That is correct. It is the only way the four of you will awaken in your world.’
‘So we are unconscious?’
He smiles his patronizing smile. ‘In your world, yes. And if you and your friends ever want to wake up, you will dance on those gallows as I ask.’ He laughs. ‘What a pickle you’ve found yourself in. To fear the thing you need the most – the hangman’s noose. Don’t worry, all good heroines find themselves in a double bind. It adds to the tension.’
I recall the paper chain, the grabbing hands, the Dupes, the crescent scythe, the Imps at the Meat House. Nate’s body dead on the concrete. I feel such fury. And then I think of Mum and Dad, Maltesers and Netflix and A levels and sleepovers. The President was right; I am in a double bind, he just got the wrong one.
‘I won’t do it,’ I hiss.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I won’t do it. I won’t play along. When Willow shouts out he loves me at the Gallows Dance, I’ll shout back that I hate him, that I used him. I won’t complete the canon and then Alice won’t be able to wake up to write her pro-Gem sequel. The Gems will never prevail.’
‘How interesting. Just as Alice has identified with the Gems, you’ve identified with the Imps.’
‘I am an Imp.’
He sneers. ‘As I said earlier, failing to complete the loop has consequences which we can’t determine. They may be dire. Not only will you fail to cross over, but this universe may just cease to be.’
‘Maybe that’s a risk I’m willing to take.’
‘We’re talking oblivion, Violet. Oblivion for you and that gutter-monkey boyfriend and all the Imps you love so much. You may gamble with your own life, but I seriously doubt you’ll gamble with theirs.’
He’s got me. I know it and he knows it. Deflated, beaten, I shake my head.
‘So when Willow Harper bursts forward at the Gallows Dance and shouts –’ he leaps from his chair and clasps his heart in a melodramatic pose – ‘“I love you, Rose,” you will say?’
‘I love you too.’
‘The Gems tear down the gallows, a revolution begins, the story completes and you can go home.’ He glances down at me, a sneer fixed across his plastic face. ‘Good little monkey.’