*
When, early that night, Jane gets ready for bed, Jasper seems a little droopier than usual. She tries to focus on buttoning her Doctor Who pajamas rather than on his disappointment. She wants to tell him, There’s no point in crossing through the painting now anyway, because it’s night in Zorsted, but she can’t even make herself ask him if that’s true.
Has she really spent the entire day discussing complex topics with a basset hound who understands English?
Which is more likely, a psychotic break with lingering hallucinations, or Zorsted inside a painting?
A person who’s hallucinating needs her sleep, Jane wants to say to Jasper, but doesn’t, because her very desire to make excuses to him is the proof that she’s hallucinating.
*
The house wakes her from a dream in which Mrs. Vanders is trying to shove children into the mouth of an enormous fish sculpture in order to keep them safe, but it’s not working, because she can’t figure out which end of the fish is the tail and which is the mouth.
The clock on her bedside table reads 5:08. The house is yelling something, except that houses don’t yell, so the yelling must be part of the dream too. Regardless, she’s awake now. She gets up and drags herself into the morning room, where she stares groggily out the window.
Jasper joins her, leaning against her leg. It’s not yet dawn and there are two figures crossing the lawn, heading to the forest. The moon is visible. A single moon. In Jane’s world, there is only one moon.
Aunt Magnolia made her promise to come here if invited. Fearless Aunt Magnolia, who always traveled to new places, who dropped herself into the water, and explored unknown worlds.
Aunt Magnolia? I’m scared.
But I don’t want to disappoint you.
“Jasper?” Jane says. “Steen?”
Tiny moons shine in the eager eyes he raises to her.
“Can a person wear Doctor Who pajamas into Zorsted?”
*
Someone in some distant part of the house is listening to Beatles music as Jasper and Jane step into the painting. If she focuses on it, Jane can hear the faraway, surreal strains of “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.”
She’s still in her Doctor Who pajamas because Jasper considers her other clothing no less conspicuous. Inside the duchess’s house, he leads her to a nearby room with a wardrobe that contains a large quantity of plain, dark clothing in many sizes.
Her Zorsteddan body is shaped differently from her real-world body. Her pajamas fit oddly, tighter in the shoulders and too long below. And her hands, the more she thinks about it, feel large and swollen, and her Zorsteddan legs and feet feel . . . bouncy. As if perhaps she’s likely to be able to jump higher in this body.
“Which clothes should I choose?” she whispers, trying not to think about it, then noticing that the timbre of her voice is slightly different too.
Whatever you like, he says. Though you’ll draw the least attention in a tunic, loose pants, and cloak. It’s early autumn, he says, and still dark out. Zorsted has a colder climate than the one you’re used to. The sun will rise in a few—he says a strange word—but we may be walking near the sea, where it’s windy. Choose sturdy boots and consider a scarf for your head. Steen is trying to contain his happiness, but he’s practically prancing around her, his toenails clapping on the tile floor as he zooms back and forth excitedly.
“Steen,” she says. “You’re making me dizzy.”
Sorry! he says, stopping in place, but still hopping. Sorry!
Once Jane has pulled them on, the pants are comfortable and warm. “I understand that word you said about when the sun’ll rise,” she says, repeating the strange word aloud. “It’s a unit of time, more like minutes than like hours. I’ve never heard the word before, though.”
We speak a different language in Zorsted, he says. And our days and nights are longer, and we measure our time in different units.
Her hands pause in their rapid perusal of tunics. “Steen! How will I ever pass as Zorsteddan if I can’t speak the language?”
You’re speaking it right now, he says.
“What?”
You’re speaking it perfectly, he says. You have been since the first moment you stepped through the painting.
This is a dizzying piece of information. Boots, Jane thinks, focusing on something concrete. I’ll try on boots instead. But as she does so, she repeats to herself, silently, the words she’s been speaking aloud. They are not English words. And the words she’s thinking in aren’t English words, either. These tall, sturdy foot-coverings are not boots. English is suddenly the only English word she can remember.
In time, Steen says to her gently, you’ll be able to access both languages in both places. Until then, you’ll always have the one you need. That’s how it was for me. I expect you’ll find you can even read our letters.
“But how can I know a language I’ve never learned?”
I don’t know, he says. It’s one of the mysteries.
Dressed in her Zorsteddan clothing, Jane crouches on the floor of a dimly lit Zorsteddan room, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs. Across the room is a wide, full-length mirror. There’s just enough light in this room for her to see the angular cheekbones, the pointy chin of the face that feels like a betrayal.
Steen props his paw on her knee and licks her strange face. It pulls Jane out of herself.
“Ick,” she says, wiping away his spit. “I’ll have you know that I’m not a fan of being licked by Zorsteddan strayhounds.”
Let’s go, he says. The sun is rising.
*
The duchess’s mansion is extensive and has a great many stairs. Steen’s strayhound legs are much longer than his basset legs and he scrambles down them easily.
As Jane approaches what must be the seventh staircase leading down, she hears herself speaking a Zorsteddan expletive. “How many stories does the duchess’s mansion have?”
Fifteen, says Steen. Zorsteddans build tall.
“Tall and elegant,” Jane says, for the stairways and occasional halls through which they move are simple and graceful, composed of a white stone that doesn’t shine like polished marble, but rather, seems to catch the light gently and hold it softly, like the inside of a shell. “Is there—magic in the walls?”
I guess it depends on what you mean by magic. The mansion responds to the sun, and partially lights itself. But so do all stone buildings in Zorsted.
Through glass windows in a stairway Jane catches glimpses of a pinkening sky, flashes of a silver sea. Distantly, that sweet bell starts ringing, the one that means the sun is rising.
“How do you know I’m not from here?” Jane asks again. “How do you know I’m not Zorsteddan?”
I just know, he says, trotting beside her. The same way I knew you were my person.
“But, how did you know that?”
I recognized your soul.
“Oh, please.”
I did! says Steen. I can see your soul! But you’re not from here. You are from the Other Land.
“Then why am I your person?”
I don’t know, he says. Many Zorsteddan strayhounds never find their person. Maybe it’s because their person is in the Other Land.
“Can you commune with other people besides me?”
No, he says. Only you, because you’re my person. But I can commune with other strayhounds.
“Why has no one else in Tu Reviens ever discovered it’s possible to step into the painting? Surely in a hundred-some years, someone would’ve”—Jane gestures vaguely—“stuck an elbow in by accident, or something.”
Not everyone can get through, Steen says.
She almost misses a step. “Really!”
I saw Mrs. Vanders touch it once, Steen says. Nothing. And Colin Mack has had his hands all over it.
“Really?”
Colin touches all the paintings, Steen says smugly. There’s a lot about the house that I could tell you.
“But why me and not them?”
I’m not sure, Steen says, but I have theories. I’ve wondered if it might only be open to seekers.
“Seekers?” Jane says, wondering what she’s seeking.
Or maybe just artists.