The Night Country

32

There was more than one trick to the pocket watch. Iolanthe told him the next morning, when they’d ventured into a pastoral world for breakfast and for the kind of air that felt good to breathe. The book she’d read from to get them there had been in a language of trilling runs and hard stops, which tickled the ear to hear it. When he opened his eyes, they were stepping into a meadow so idyllic it looked like a Thomas Kinkade print.

He lay down beside an honest-to-god haystack while Io went off to drum up some food—jerky, milk in a skin, bread with cheese and honey. All of it, even the bread, even the honey, tasted of goat.

In the lazy golden shade of the haystack, she pulled out her watch. It wasn’t completely blank, he realized: it was pearlescent, colors chasing themselves over its face.

“Wait for it,” she said.

A minute passed, and something showed: a string of numbers like a digital display, pinkish but unmistakably there. They darkened to red as he watched, then faded slowly to nothing.

“Call numbers,” she said. “Corresponding to books in the library, corresponding to worlds. Everywhere, in every world, a version of the Night Country tale exists. When the numbers show like that, someone in that world is reading the story, or hearing it. When the numbers turn solid, you know: that’s a world where someone is building it.”

“It has to be built?”

She’d taken a big bite of goat-flavored something; her “Yes” sprayed him with crumbs.

“And we … what? Jump in there and steal it?”

“Think of the picture book. The girl and the boy work together to make their world. It’s better that way, with more minds.”

“So you’re saying we’d be doing these random strangers a favor by appearing out of nowhere and trying to take over their world?”

She thought about it, dusting off her hands. “Yes.”

“But you say you can build a night country. How? Why don’t we just build one our—”

“Look,” she said testily. “I’ve got the magic watch, I’m telling you how this is gonna go.” Then, seeing his face: “No, no, we’re partners. Sorry, what did you want to know? How do you build a night country? That’s the thing, I don’t know how to do it. But somebody, somewhere does. We’ll find one in time.”

He should walk away. He knew he should. But the key was in the lock. Strange treasures awaited him beyond the door. And he’d already told Alice he was doing it, so. He didn’t want to go to her empty-handed. He had his green stacks of fairy gold, his magic pen, the mysterious walnut. He had a few new tricks—he could make goat cheese, drive fence posts, speak passable German. He’d gotten pretty into whittling for a while. But he didn’t think Alice wanted his carved rabbits that looked a hell of a lot like bears. Instead he would bring her what she loved best: stories. He was collecting all the tales he’d tell her when he got home. He was becoming his own kind of library.

Those were strange days. He and Io dipped into and out of worlds, spending a day or an hour or an evening in misty mountain villages, ruins sliced into gold and gray pieces by the falling sun, cities crisscrossed by elevated trains, or wreathed in strange overgrowth, or veined like Venice with waterways. She chose the books carefully, picking worlds where they’d be safe, where they’d blend in. Finch didn’t know how she knew, and she didn’t tell him.

They talked a lot, but she didn’t tell him much. Only tales of her travels through the Hinterland, and a little bit about her life when she was young—reckless, mischievous, underdisciplined. She loved to hear stories about New York if he could make them funny, but he took her lead, never sharing too much about himself.

A week passed. Two. One navy-blue night, drunk on clear liquor served in tiny glasses in a shanty bar on the edge of a vast red sea, Finch cracked open the walnut he’d taken from the Hinterland, which Grandma June gave back. He wanted to see the dress of stars, the meticulous white cat. What came out instead was a man’s voice, bellows deep and touched with stardust.

The moonless child will die

And the starless child will fall

And the sunless child rise higher than them all

The startled bartender made a gesture at the two of them—that world’s way of warding off the evil eye, Finch guessed—and turned their cups over to show them they were no longer welcome.

“A dead world’s prophecy,” Io said, standing. “Were more useless words ever spoken?”

She took out her watch to consult it, as she always did, and her face changed. She held it up.

Numbers blazed off its face in solid black.

The silence between them swelled, then was shattered by the bartender, inviting them in her own language to kindly get their asses out of her bar. Finch laughed a little, looking into Io’s anxious eyes.

“Here we go.”

Back in the library her face was grayer than the walls. She didn’t let him fetch the book, even though she looked two steps from keeling over. On shaking legs she found it, with shaking hands she took it down. They’d been shocked sober by the pocket watch, but she was four-thirds of the way back to drunk by now, taking continual nips off her bottomless red bottle.

Before she opened the book, she gave him a look. A hard, bright-burning look too packed full of feeling for him to master. It made him put a hand on her arm.

“We’re good,” he said, peering into her eyes and trying to make her believe it. Oddly, her fear made him less afraid. He felt like a man lifting a sail, shouldering a pack. Walking on down the road. “This is good. It’s the very last secret, right?” He squeezed her arm. “We’re ready.”

One more inscrutable look, and she opened her mouth. Her eyes searched his. He thought she was going to say something, something important.

But her head dropped, and she opened the book. Holding it so he couldn’t see its pages, she read the first words. “Once upon a time.”

He startled. “Really?” None of the books had been in English before, or in any language he could identify.

She ignored him. “Once upon a time, there was a man and a woman and a vast green land, with cracked places where the land rose and became rippling stone, and broken places where blue water came in. And the man made stories of the earth and the woman told stories with the stars, and with the children she bore the stories multiplied.”

“Wait,” Finch said. His voice was distant from him, it seemed to come from a place outside his body. “Where are we going?” But the magic was already lifting them, taking them.

“Shh,” said Iolanthe, and began again. “Once upon a time…”