Quadrice (Scenes 7-10)
7
And shattering the silence on the other side of the door, in which Colbie had been waiting for her mother to digest the contents of her story through her mind.
Three more knocks resounded from the other side of the door, and Leslie held a finger to her lips and placed her hand against it and manifested a blank omamori charm on its surface. Three more knocks (harder this time) resounded through the space, revealing the name of Mara Cairns on the charm and sending a thought of her own missing key into her mind.
Leslie grabbed the knob and opened the door, revealing Mara Cairns frozen in time, just about to knock three more times. Leslie and Colbie peered through the door past the statue-like Mara and spied three others in a vaulted room frozen in a similar state before a body-length mirror.
“What the hell is this?” Leslie said.
“Mara, is that you?” Colbie waved her hand in front of her face, but she never reacted, then said, “What happened to her?”
“She’s under my spell,” and Leslie pointed it out in Mara’s hand, “because she has my key.”
Colbie looked at her. “You put a curse on your key? Gee, that’s a little overboard, you know.”
“That’s not the point! It’s just a temporary spell for strangers using my key without permission, that’s all,” Leslie said.
Colbie pouted and crossed her arms across her chest. “I guess that includes me, too, right?”
Leslie sighed and said, “You don’t think I trust you? Here, I’ll prove you wrong,” and she grabbed her key from Mara’s hand and placed it in Colbie’s hand. “Don’t lose it.”
“I won’t,” Colbie said.
Leslie then beckoned her across the threshold and asked her to shut the door behind her (which Colbie did) and said, “Stay right there beside her and hold her hand. You and Mara will be my control subjects.”
Colbie obeyed, grasping Mara’s hand, and wondered what her mother was thinking. She merely observed her mother stalking off towards the three other figures standing before the mirror, then recognized Mara’s sister, Nico, and the spirit doubles of Katherine and Madison Hearn (Cooley and Blaze, respectively), all three girls standing still like statues.
And for a time, Leslie remained silent in her observations.
Colbie sensed the gist of it, though, and said, “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t get it,” Leslie said. “This isn’t supposed to happen.”
“What isn’t supposed to happen?”
“My spell only works on those possessing my key. If no one else is holding it, no one else in this room should be affected. Unless . . .” she said, looking around the vault at the spare shelves and other furnishings, letting her thoughts drift off onto various suppositions, perhaps on the source of interference in the room, or even an outside source.
Colbie said, “Maybe it’s someone in this room.”
“Maybe, but I hope not,” Leslie said under her breath, and looked into Cooley’s mirror and saw in the reflection the image of the closed door, still glowing on the edges of its door jamb. She turned towards the door where Colbie stood besides the statue-like Mara and added, “Stay right where you are, Colbie, and don’t let go of Mara. I think it has something to do with this mirror.”
“Maybe she was scrying it.”
“God damn it, why does it have to be this?” Leslie said, for Colbie was right. “Of all things, it has to be a cluster-fuck.”
“What’s going on?” Colbie said.
“Colbie, listen to me,” she said. “Mirrors aren’t just portals to different places. They also reflect things, so I’m thinking that this mirror reflects the same spell as the one on my key.” Leslie looked at Cooley with her hand still pressed to the reflection, and said, “She must have deduced the spell on my key and tried to reverse it using her mirror, but she froze this room, instead. God, this sucks!”
“Seriously?” Colbie said.
“And it looks like I fell into the same time-trap,” Leslie said, then pressed her hand to the mirror and manifested another omamori charm, with the Greek for ’reverse’ on it. “I froze this place the moment I opened that door,” and she pointed toward the door she and Colbie had entered. “And I let you close it without realizing. Colbie, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you with me.”
“Wait, what are you talking about?” Colbie paused, feeling her palm slicked over with sweat in Mara’s hand, and was about to—
“Don’t let go,” Leslie said. “Keep holding her hand.”
Colbie said, “Mom, you’re starting to scare me!”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” she said, “but after I do this, I want you to take Mara with you and find out what’s going on.”
“But what about you?” Colbie said, taking a step.
“Don’t get any closer!” She said, “And don’t let go of her!”
“W-what about the others?” Colbie said. “You’re not gonna die, are you?”
“No, but I might be stuck here for a while,” Leslie said, “and that goes for the others. Just take her with you and find out what’s going on. Maybe she can fill you in.”
“But, Mom.”
“Go,” she said, “but be careful. I’m putting my trust in you, so take care of yourselves out there.” And before Colbie had a chance to speak, Leslie summoned her spell (“Antistrophe!”) (Reverse!) and froze herself into the underground vault—
8
And broke Mara out of the time-trap. At that moment, Mara noticed Colbie’s tight grip on her hand and yanked herself free as Colbie yelled for her mother to stop, but it was too late. Leslie Amame stood in suspended animation with Nico and Cooley and Blaze before the mirror, and there was nothing Colbie or Mara could do about it.
Mara looked at Colbie’s face and saw her eyes wide and her mouth gaping and figured that the older woman was this girl’s mother. The thought brought memories of her own mother screaming for her to run away from Aaron Rancaster’s stage just before Rancaster shot her and the echoes of the gun blast exploded through her head and brought up the moment just before Nico’s death, just as Mara was screaming for her to keep trying, but Nico’s final words to her were that she was sorry.
“I’m sorry,” Mara said, then grasped Colbie’s hand. “I’m really sorry.”
The touch pulled the girl out of her reveries, and wiping tears with the sleeve of her pajamas, Colbie said, “Don’t be sorry for me. My mom’s okay.”
“No, it’s not that,” she said. “I mean, I’m sorry for stabbing you . . . and for causing your friends so much trouble.”
For a moment, Colbie looked at her, and Mara felt her gaze like that of a puzzled lover who said something inexplicable or even inappropriate.
But Colbie said, “Don’t worry about it,” and she pulled Mara towards the door that was reflected in Cooley’s mirror, placed her hand on the knob, and turned to Mara: “Stay close to me, okay?”
Mara nodded, wondering what she was planning to do. She had ideas, but they were inappropriate ones about kissing Colbie, among other things, so she kept her mouth shut and prayed she wasn’t blushing.
Mara just watched Colbie close her eyes, wondering what in God’s name Colbie was thinking, and when she opened the door into the void, Mara followed her into the darkness—
9
And stepped into a different part of the Phantom Realms, where Colbie and her friends called their Floating World, their dream dive retreat. It was the same sukiya-zukuri mansion that bore witness to Mara’s fury and Colbie’s death and Celia’s and Kendra’s tears over the dead, as well as the miracle that took place between Nico and Colbie’s friends.
The place was a mess: long splinters and tatami mats lay scattered over wooden planks, a shoji screen door lay dislodged from its frame, another one was smashed asunder, a hole gaped in the wall that overlooked a ruined garden, and the back wall was caved in where Colbie resisted the fury of Mara’s psychic waves.
Colbie turned to Mara and said, “Do you remember this place?”
She did and wiped her eyes brimming with tears. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Because this is your place, too,” Colbie said. “It belongs to you as much as it does to me, Celia, Kendra, and your sister.”
“Nico?”
Colbie nodded. “Celia and Kendra told me everything that happened here, Mara. Everything.” And she pointed to the dried pool of blood and said, “That’s where you stabbed me, and that’s where I bled out, and that’s where Celia and Kendra were crying over me,” and she turned to Mara, adding, “but that’s also where Nico saved my life. And that,” she said, pointing to the hole in the wall, “is where Kendra punched you through a wall into that garden and almost killed you, but she didn’t. As mad as she was, Kendra couldn’t kill you. And that same place where I bled out on the floor,” she said, pointing to the dried pool of blood again, “was the place where Kendra and I carried you from the garden and where Celia and I checked up on you.”
At Colbie’s words, more tears trailed down Mara’s face. She wiped them away, but more tears came like an overflowing cup filled with something Mara and never felt before in her life, something that washed away the blood from her hands and cleared the guilt from her soul. Prison wardens called it release, judges called it acquittal, kings called it pardon, priests called it absolution, and God called it mercy, but Colbie called it something else.
“Mara,” Colbie said, reaching out and wiping the tears from her eyes, “you don’t have to be sorry for anything. If anything, it’s me who should be sorry. I can’t imagine experiencing what you went through, but I’m here for you now, and I’ll be there for you whenever you need me. It doesn’t matter when or where, I’ll be there for you if you need me.”
Mara nodded her head as she squinted out more tears and choked on Colbie’s words, tongue-tied on what to say.
So Colbie expressed her words with actions, placing her hands on Mara’s shoulders, kissing her eyes, then her cheeks, then her lips, before pulling Mara into an embrace.
And Mara felt the chains of guilt breaking away from her, letting her heart stretch out its wings and flutter and lift off, and for a moment freeing her mind from all pain. Doubtless, Nico would always have a place in Mara’s heart, and nothing would ever change that, but Colbie was here and Colbie was hers.
After a time, Colbie and Mara let go.
Mara looked around and said, “Did I really do all this?”
“Yeah,” she said, smiling, “and I want you to do the same thing when we get to the ballroom.”
“Really?”
“Yep,” she said, and stalked off towards the storage room and beckoned her to follow, “but I want to show you something, first.”
Mara followed and found Colbie opening the pantry door and pushing into the back partition, till it clicked on the inside and opened into a hidden space large enough for them to pass through. Colbie stepped inside, beckoning Mara to follow past the threshold, and Mara followed—
10
And found herself in a blank space of endless white with nothing else in it when Colbie pulled the door shut, encasing them inside.
“What is this place?” Mara said.
“This is Connie’s place,” Colbie said.
“Who’s Connie?”
“She’s our mentor,” Colbie said, “and she designed this place. Whenever Kendra, Celia, and I participate in her dream experiments, it’s always in this format. In this place, we can think of anything, and it’ll become real in this place. Come on. Give it a try. Think of anything you want.”
“Anything?” Mara said, trying to suppress inappropriate thoughts.
“Anything.”
But Mara’s thoughts manifested Colbie Amame sleeping in her dorm room, wherein Mara’s nude dream-self entered her room and turned on the light and saw her sleeping on the bed and pulled off the bedsheets, revealing Colbie also sleeping in the nude, then got into bed with Colbie—
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” Mara said, putting her hands to her face. “I’m not that kind of girl, really!”
Colbie smiled and dissipated the scandalous scene with her own thoughts and said, “Aaaaanyway, back to what I was saying. We use this place to think up anything we want, and during Connie’s experiments, we practice honing our skills here under her supervision. For our purpose, though, we can use this place in another way,” and she manifested the ballroom of Katherine’s dream mansion into the space.
They were now standing at the end of an empty ballroom, near the double doors of the giant grandfather clock in the violet section.
Mara looked around and noticed the clock without hands on the dial-face, wondering what Colbie was up to. “What are you planning to do?”
“Sneak into the ballroom,” Colbie said. “Alice attacked me in my dream bedroom, so I didn’t have a chance to think things through when I made the jump into this place the first time. If I’d have known it would be that dangerous, I’d have done it this way and given myself a way out, instead of getting myself trapped inside with Alice.”
“You met her?” Mara said, knowing full well that this Alice character was nothing short of diabolical.
“Yeah. She’s one tough bitch, I’ll give her that,” Colbie said, then pointed towards the grandfather clock before them. “I couldn’t get that to open when Alice was in this ballroom, so I’m thinking Alice had something to do with it.”
“Can we open it from here?” Mara said.
Colbie shook her head and said, “We can’t open any doors from this place that are closed on the other side, but we can open our own doors from here. It’s how I enter my own—”
A click of a door latch resounded through the space, and another door like the one Colbie and Mara had entered now swung open to their left. Both girls turned and saw Kendra Tellerman and Nico Cairns entering the space dressed like they were on last night's dream dive, with Kendra wearing the same torn Mandarin dress and Nico wearing the same bloodstained shirt that Mara had tucked into her dress skirt, both girls breathing hard when they entered.
“Nico!” Mara yelled, and ran towards her sister and hugged her and kissed her. “How did you get out of that room?”
Nico seemed to blank on her words, saying, “What room?”
As Kendra was shutting the door, Colbie ran to her and said, “What happened to you two?” And on looking at Mara gushing over Nico’s escape from the time-trap of Cooley’s and Leslie’s combined mishaps, she added, “And how did Nico get here?”
“Long story, and longer story,” Kendra said, then looked around the ballroom and whistled. “I like what you did with the place. What’s the occasion?”
“A bad one,” she said, then felt a brainwave flash through her mind, and so she teleported all the way to the blue section at the other end of the ballroom, where she found the program lying atop a salon sofa at the start of her dream dive. She picked it up, looked at the pages, then teleported back towards the violet section, and showed her Katherine's letter and said, “Read this, and you’ll understand.”
So Kendra took it and read it, allowing Mara and Nico to read along with her. This is what they read:
Dear Colbie,
I’ll try to keep this short, because I don’t have much time before the sleeper spell takes effect. And if I ramble, try to bear with me, okay? Anyway, I hereby grant you, Colbie Amame, temporary access to and control over this library, that you will act as stewardess of my knowledge in my absence under the sleeper spell. Once this sleeper spell wears off, which I hope won’t take too long, you will have probationary access to my library. For now, though, you’ll have complete access till I wake up.
Colbie, I know you hold some misgivings about me, so I wish to amend those by granting this to you, but I’m telling you now that I’m not making this grant on a whim. I’m doing this, because my sisters and I are in danger from a man named Rancaster and a girl named Alice. They’ve already seized my dream mansion, and this library’s the last place out of their reach, and I want to keep it that way. By the time you can read the contents of this letter, I’ll be under their sleeper spell, and it looks like I won’t be getting out of it for a while. So I implore you to look after this library, and look after my sisters during my sleep. They’ll need you by then as much as I need you now. . . .
Kendra looked up from the letter, gaping in shock, and said, “Whoa, whoa! This has to be a joke, right?”
Colbie shook her head. “I wish it was.”
“I saw what happened to her,” Mara added, “and it was bad. Her dream mansion’s been compromised, and Cooley’s hideout has been frozen, but what I wanna know is,” and she looked at the anomaly of her sister, Nico, who had somehow escaped from Cooley’s underground vault, still wondering how she did it, “how did you get here, Nico?”
“I wanna know, too,” Colbie said. “Last time we saw you, you were frozen in a time-trap with my mom and Blaze and Cooley. How the hell did you get out of that?”
Kendra and Nico traded looks, and Nico said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What do you mean?” Mara said.
Nico said, “We didn’t get trapped anywhere—”
“—but we did run into a lot of trouble,” Kendra added.
“What happened?” Colbie said.
Kendra looked at Nico, who nodded her head, so Kendra said, “I met Nico on top of a dragon’s staircase, but she was beyond my reach above me while I was one the top step. Nico challenged me to meet her all the way where she stood in the sky, and I thought it was Mara, so I . . .”
