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.’