“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.”