The Night Country

19

I sat alone in an all-night diner, no idea where to go next.

I read the rest of my book. I ordered toast and ate it, after Sophia’s picked-over feast had been cleared away. I drank my coffee; it’d have to do me for sleep. When I couldn’t put off leaving any longer, I stood, dropping a tip big enough to cover the hours I’d spent squatting.

Outside the air was a soft blue-gray and the birds were testing their voices. I let my fingers close around my pocketknife as I watched a few cars go by. A man on a bike with a radio lashed to its handlebars, scattering timpani. A woman in a cleaner’s uniform, shouldering a heavy purse. In a bus shelter across the street, a little girl in a hooded sweatshirt leaned against the dirty plastic, looking down at her feet. I watched her a while, but she never looked up.

And all the time I was worrying at a riddle: Where do you go when you have nowhere to go?

If you’re Hinterland, you go to the Hell Hotel.

Maybe it was a bad idea to get any closer to Daphne and our bloody-fingered brethren right then, but I had the thought that it would be better to embed myself among them than to always wonder where they were. Or maybe I was just out of ideas, and incredibly tired.

This time, the lobby was empty. Nobody sat behind the desk, or came when I rang the bell. I waited, impatient, the duffel bag I’d stuffed the night before slung over my shoulder. There was a board of keys hanging behind the bellhop’s desk, more keys than empty spaces. When nobody showed after a few minutes, I chose the first three digits of Ella’s phone number—room 549—and headed to the fifth floor.

If I’d stayed in this room when I was eight, just after reading A Little Princess, I might’ve loved it. It felt much higher than it was, like a garret tucked away into the eaves. Or a pigeon’s nest. Decades of smoke had baked the walls as yellow as teeth, and a single painting hung on them like a poppy seed: a tiny, intense portrait of a mermaid sunning herself, her hair layered on with a paint knife.

There was a tuft chair and a dresser and a desk with a Bible in it, half-hidden under an age-stiffened issue of TV Guide. The bed was lumpy, the bathroom not to be spoken of. I made a mental note to pick up Clorox wipes. I set my toothpaste and face wash next to the sink and drank a mugful of water. There was no reason for it to taste different here than at home, but it did.

When I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I lay down and looked out the window. From my bed I could see the gray face of the apartment building across the street, and a sliver of sky. Somewhere, someone was listening to music. You couldn’t tell from which direction the bass was sneaking in. I had to work later, I remembered dimly, though it was hard to believe any part of my life might remain the same. I felt much farther than a few miles from home.

I drifted off around eight a.m. and woke up gasping. I’d been dreaming something. It had the deep-water texture of a hotel dream, anonymous and heavy. Inside it, someone had been speaking to me. I could feel their words inside my ears, but I couldn’t recall them.

Before I left Brooklyn, I’d sent Ella a text to confirm I was alive, then turned off my phone. When I turned it on to check the time, it jittered with notifications I didn’t want to read. I looked up the nearest reputable hotel on Google Maps and texted her a link.

Here’s where I’m staying. Just for a little while. I’m safe and I’m sorry and I love you.

Seconds after I sent it, the phone began to ring. I held it to my chest, letting it vibrate through my sternum. After it stopped, a text came through.

Come home.

I turned it off again.

It was already past three, and I had to be at work in an hour. I headed down to the lobby, figuring I’d find somewhere to eat before heading to the bookstore. Felix was back behind the desk; when he saw me he beckoned me over.

“Hey,” I said. “I should tell you, I took a—”

“Room 549?” His eyes were flat. They gave nothing away.

“Oh. Yeah. You weren’t here, so I just…”

“It’s not a problem. Daphne told me you were coming.”

I frowned. I’d decided that morning to come here. I hadn’t told anyone, not even Sophia. “Daphne said I was coming? Are you sure?”

He was writing my name and room number in a red leather–covered book, pretending he was too busy to hear me. “Check your mailbox, by the way. It looks like you’ve got something.”

My hand was on his arm before I knew what I was doing, grabbing up a fistful of sleeve.

“I’ve got a letter?”

Whip quick, he peeled my hand away. “Watch yourself, ice queen,” he growled. The thing that sparked in his eyes might’ve been anger, or it might’ve been fear. He jerked his chin toward the elevator. “Mail’s that way.”

An archway to the left of the elevator opened onto a corridor lit by a single orange-shaded bulb, honeycombed on either side with wooden mailboxes. I traced my way to box 549. Inside it was a heavy ivory envelope, unaddressed. I teased out the trifolded page and read it standing up.

Dear Alice,

It’s hard not to think of these letters like I’m writing in a diary when I don’t know if you’re reading them, or if they’re really just for me. I had a therapist once who made me keep a diary, except she wanted me to bring it in each week and read it to her. So mainly I just used it to write Dragon Age fanfic. I won’t do that to you.

Instead I’ll tell you a thing I can’t stop thinking about. When I was little my mom used to make me pray, and I’d always pray for magic to be real. And when I wished on stars or at 11:11 or blew on a dandelion I’d say it in my head: let magic be real. But ever since I found out it’s very very real, I don’t wish anymore. I don’t pray. I want things, but I don’t wish them. I don’t know what to think about that. I don’t know that I really have a point. I’m just thinking about it because the world keeps getting bigger, so much bigger than I thought it could be even when I was wishing. I’m using world as a euphemism, of course. I just realized I’ve seen almost as many worlds now as I’ve seen states in the U.S. My dad would hate that. He always acted like life ended outside of New York. I’ve thought about writing to him, too, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. It’s better writing to you. I like pretending I’m talking to you. I like imagining you making your don’t-waste-my-time face when I do it. That was a good face. Generally speaking, you’ve got a good face. Now I’m just rambling.

Maybe I should tell you more. About where I am. Why I am. What I’m doing.

I left the Hinterland. Did I tell you that? It’s hard to remember what I’ve written and what I’ve just thought about. I’m talking to you all the time in my head now. When I go to sleep and when I wake up.

Days run together, but I guess it’s been a couple of months since you left. In my head you’re in New York now, and it’s May. You’re sitting in Washington Square Park eating a paleta from a cart and you’re wearing what you were wearing that time I saw you in Central Park, those jeans with the holes in the knees and that striped shirt. You’re using my letters as bookmarks.

I want you to know that, all promises aside, I’m going to write to you again.

It took me a while to see anything but the letter, hear anything but my own breath.

A couple of months. As the days counted down on my side of the divide, just two months had passed in the Hinterland. Finch was seeing me through the haze of sixty days, while out here, nearly two years had gone.

I hid a while in the cool of the corridor, hearing the words in his voice. Unsure if I was even remembering it right. How did the magic work? Could I write back to him somehow? I turned the letter over and dug a pen out of my bag, pressing the page against a bare patch of wall.

What would I say if I was sure he would read it?

I forgive you.

Do you forgive me?

I talk to you all the time in my head, too.

Maybe I’d pick up somewhere in the middle, wherever we’d left off. He’d always done more of the talking. It was a minefield for me, making conversation. I’d spent too much time with people who forgave me my conversational sins: Ella, who loved me anyway; Sophia, living by the arcane rules of another world; Edgar, so deeply eccentric he wouldn’t know inappropriate if it jumped out of a first edition and bit him.

Finch was different. We’d wanted things from each other, we’d been using each other. He seemed stable enough to steel me when Ella’s disappearance left me entirely alone, and I thought I was trespassing on his kindness, his curiosity, and, yeah, his crush, but the terrain between us was more complicated than that. When I learned he’d been using me for my magic—for my proximity to magic, my ability to pull him into the whirlpool of Althea’s worlds, which looked a whole lot prettier from the outside—I might’ve shut the door on him.

But he put himself in the way of the wrong kind of enchantment, and got himself killed.

Or so I thought. Instead he recovered, somewhere, somehow, and dragged me kicking and screaming—and scratching, if I remembered it right—from my tale. I’d barely had time to thank him. I’d barely had time to let the new shape of him impose itself over the old one in my head. The Finch I carried around with me was somewhere between the narrow, restless prep school kid I’d known, and the scarred, strong, steady-eyed man I only got a glimpse of.

That version of him had looked so grown. So complete. But I bet he was just wearing another kind of armor.

Here’s what I would write to him. If I knew how to deliver the letter.

I always knew magic was real. It might be cheating to say that now, but I really think I did. I just didn’t call it that. I didn’t think it could be benevolent, except in books. Magic was a bully that made my mom cry and followed us at night. In the daytime, too. It was the thing in me that made it hard to get calm again, once I got angry.

One time I counted it up, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen thirty-one states. Some places I’ve only seen their gas stations. Some places that’s all there is to see.

I wrote fanfiction, too. If you find me I’ll let you read it I’ll tell you what I wrote it about. If you find me I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.