CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I choked awake.
There was wa-ter in ev-ery pore of my body. I was swollen with it, rasp-ing and deliri-ous. I coughed and coughed and coughed, un-til the coughs be-came vomit and I soaked my lap with silty lake wa-ter.
And then I looked up and around.
I soon wished I hadn’t.
It was a labyrinth of por-traits and mir-rors.
Ex-cept the por-traits were not hu-man busts and faces; they were the back-grounds of por-traits. Ab-stract swirls of color and shade, pe-cu-liar tex-tures and planes of smooth-ness, shapes and pat-terns that never seemed to so-lid-ify into any-thing rec-og-niz-able, all re-fracted and re-peated by vast swathes of sil-vered mir-rors.
I looked down to find that the floor was not the floor at all, but rather a re-flec-tion of the sky, which was it-self the mir-ror im-age of the earth.
I vom-ited un-til there was noth-ing left.
Clam-ber-ing to my feet as though my bones were made of gelatin, I cast my gaze fran-ti-cally around, try-ing to see where there might be a path. A way for-ward, if not out.
Out.
How was I ever go-ing to get out?
I couldn’t think about that now. All that mat-tered was find-ing Catalina.
I heard no sobs, no wails. Just si-lence so ab-so-lute it was like death it-self.
One step at a time. Don’t look up or down, just around.
But it was im-pos-si-ble. The walls of the labyrinth shifted and swirled the sec-ond I locked my sight too firmly on them. In one I thought I saw a sil-hou-ette of a bust, the out-line of a per-son, but they van-ished into noth-ing as I stepped to-ward them.
Ears ring-ing, I reached out my arms and grazed my fin-ger-tips over the near-est wall. It seemed to shiver and shud-der be-neath my touch, then mor-phed from an ab-stract fern-like swirl into the rugged peaks of a moun-tain range from above, then into a mir-ror clouded with a cu-ri-ous fog.
At the sight of what was in-side the mir-ror, I bit back a scream.
A lit-tle girl of no older than four sat cross-legged on a mar-ble floor, a wooden chess set splayed be-fore her. She wore pink denim dun-ga-rees, a sun-flower T-shirt, and a look of in-tense con-cen-tra-tion, nose scrunched and brows fur-rowed as she stud-ied the board in front of her.
And she was bald.
Mem-o-ries flooded my brain like a river burst its banks. Mem-o-ries I had no con-scious knowl-edge of ever re-press-ing.
Of course.
I’d had alope-cia as a child.
How could I have for-got-ten?
My hair fell out, al-most overnight, when I was two. The doc-tors didn’t un-der-stand why. By my fifth birth-day, it had mirac-u-lously grown back, thick and lus-trous, the cop-per of molten coins.
When it first fell out, I don’t re-mem-ber ever par-tic-u-larly car-ing—I was a kid, and my ap-pear-ance was the last thing on my mind. Why would I have wor-ried about such a thing, in a world where there was chess, and books, and car-toons?
As I watched Kid Me make a killer knight move in a game against her-self, tears stung at my eyes. She beamed, big and bright, then looked around hope-fully to see if any-body saw her ge-nius. Her whole body sank when she re-al-ized she was alone.
My heart ached and ached at the sight of her, at the thought of all the pain I would later in-flict upon her. How could I tell this lit-tle girl that I was go-ing to let her starve? How could I tell this lit-tle girl that she was worth-less with-out her hair?
This sweet, in-no-cent, lovely lit-tle girl. I could not imag-ine tak-ing a scalpel to her bones—nor could I fathom ex-plain-ing to her why I wanted it to hap-pen.
I was so per-fect be-fore the world told me oth-er-wise.
Trem-bling, I planted my palms on the mir-ror, let-ting my breath fog up the sil-vered glass.
Could I pin-point it—the ex-act date or age at which I learned the im-por-tance of beauty? Was there an axis point, a tip of the scales, a hinge be-tween child-hood in-no-cence and this, me, now? Or was it more of a slow in-doc-tri-na-tion, an air-brushed mag-a-zine cover, a skele-tal cat-walk in Paris, a barbed com-ment from a boy in school? An un-flat-ter-ing photo, a lack of con-trol, a vague sense that I needed to pun-ish my-self. An ar-ti-cle about acid peels, or toxic in-jec-tions, or cele-bri-ties who’d had ribs re-moved just to be a lit-tle smaller. An ex-er-cise in mimicry in or-der to fit in—copy-ing my friends as they picked at lunches, as they pinched their stom-achs in bath-room mir-rors, their be-hav-iors in-grained from their own moth-ers, their own sis-ters, their aunts and cousins and grand-moth-ers.
Where did it all be-gin? And what was it all for?
The an-swer floated to the sur-face of my mind like a dead body in a lake.
My mother had al-ways taught me that beauty was my most valu-able cur-rency, and in a sense it was.
It’s just that the money—the power—did not flow to-ward me. It flowed to-ward the bil-lion-dol-lar in-dus-tries. It flowed to-ward the diet clubs, the shapewear brands, the detox teas. Even my beloved fash-ion houses, the makeup em-pires, be-cause re-ally, where were the lines drawn? It was all built at the al-tar of beauty. Em-pow-er-ment was just a pretty lie we’d been sold to keep us feel-ing good about the sac-ri-fices we made day af-ter day. Life af-ter life.
My grand-mother, metic-u-lously mea-sur-ing her-self with a pink dress-maker’s tape, and my mother, ob-serv-ing, in-ter-nal-iz-ing. A gen-er-a-tional curse passed down like a set of an-cient pearls, im-pos-si-ble to es-cape from once they were hang-ing around my neck.
The truth was clearer than ever, and I could never un-see it.
I had sold this lit-tle girl’s soul to line a rich man’s cof-fers.
Tears sprung to my eyes, hot and ashamed, and my breath caught in my throat. I wanted to reach through the mir-ror and take her by the hands. I wanted to tell her that she was loved, and she was per-fect, and she de-served so much more than what I was go-ing to put her through. I wanted to drop to my knees be-fore her and beg for her for-give-ness. I wanted to pro-tect her. I wanted to play chess with her, and bake cook-ies with her, and go on long walks through the woods and teach her about the dif-fer-ent kinds of trees. I wanted to mother her, to sis-ter her, to care for her. I wanted it so much I felt like I could shat-ter the mir-ror with my bare hands, if only it would get me to her.
Maybe I could still do all of those things. Be-cause she was still in me.
I just had to save Catalina and get the hell out.
And if I could, I had to find the back of my por-trait and sever the an-chor. For-ever.
I kept go-ing, push-ing through the labyrinth.
“Catalina?” I called out, ex-pect-ing an echo. There was none—the sound dropped dead at my feet.
An-other mir-ror caught my at-ten-tion: a scene I was all too fa-mil-iar with.
My past self ly-ing on a chaise longue, the Masked Painter crouched be-side me. Carv-ing at my bones.
I had thought I’d hid-den my pain rea-son-ably well, but my whole face was con-torted with it. And I couldn’t help but no-tice how much I still looked like that lit-tle girl play-ing chess. It was the same girl. Only this time, I was will-in-gly hurt-ing her.
I pressed my fore-head against the cool glass.
“I’m sorry,” I whis-pered.
And the me in the mir-ror jolted ever so slightly.
All my blood ran sev-eral de-grees hot-ter as I re-al-ized what was hap-pen-ing.
The voice that came to me un-bid-den right as it hap-pened.
I’m sorry.
Was it my fu-ture self? Echo-ing from this lim-i-nal world?
My mind spi-raled and spi-raled, a hel-ter-skel-ter, a tor-nado.
As I turned away from the mir-ror, some-thing ten times more hor-ri-fy-ing ap-peared around a cor-ner I hadn’t re-al-ized ex-isted.
My-self.
Only this ver-sion was not in a mir-ror.
And she was not four years old.
She was cor-po-real.
She walked as I walked, breathed as I breathed.
Skele-tal. De-ranged.
The ver-sion of me from my por-trait.
Our eyes met, and I had never been so pro-foundly ter-ri-fied in my life.
We both froze for a mo-ment. My vi-sion swooped and dived, and I clasped on to con-scious-ness with all my might.
She started to-ward me, a look of pure men-ace in her eyes.
My eyes.
I turned in the other di-rec-tion and ran.
Straight into an-other por-trait back-ground, which be-came a mir-ror, and then an-other sil-hou-ette ap-peared in the mid-dle dis-tance of the brushed ma-roon pat-tern, and I screamed at the top of my lungs.
Fin-ger-tips graz-ing ei-ther side of the labyrinth’s cor-ri-dor, I kept run-ning, turn-ing cor-ners when they came, not dar-ing to look up or down, nor be-hind me to see whether I was fol-low-ing.
I ran and ran and ran, as though my life de-pended on it.
The walls of the labyrinth were un-re-lent-ing in the way they ed-died like a mur-mu-ra-tion of swal-lows, full of dead ends and trick turns, mir-rors that were re-ally por-traits and por-traits that were re-ally mir-rors. One par-tic-u-larly enor-mous pane of sil-ver was starkly fa-mil-iar—was this the other side of the one that hung in Drum-mond? The one in which a sil-hou-ette had ap-peared?—but I couldn’t stop for a sec-ond.
Around an-other cor-ner was a corpse.
It was not rot-ting, not crawl-ing with rats or in-sects, and yet I knew for a fact the per-son was dead.
For a sin-gle hor-rific sec-ond, I thought it was Catalina. I thought I was too late.
Yet it wasn’t her.
Or-lagh.
The flow-ing gown, the blood-ied wounds over her face and chest, the va-cant eyes star-ing up at the sky-ground.
Above her was the rav-aged por-trait she had once be-longed to, as though she had fallen straight out of the frame.
I rec-og-nized this back-ground—blues and pur-ple, a curl of ocean spray with mot-tled heather blooms. It was the ex-act por-trait from the Gallery of the Ex-quis-ite. Had I found a seam, of sorts?
The ma-te-rial of the thing—for here it was not can-vas, but some-thing al-to-gether more ephemeral—had been shred-ded by a blade.
Foot-steps echoed down the near-est cor-ri-dor.
There was no time to fig-ure out what this meant. I had to keep mov-ing. Keep run-ning from my-self, like I’d been do-ing all these years.
As I stum-bled over Or-lagh’s phys-i-cal corpse, she twisted around the mid-dle and her hand smacked the back of my leg with an icy thump.
I jetéed out of the way, palms plant-ing heav-ily on the op-po-site wall.
An-other mir-ror.
This time, through the ethe-real fog I saw my eight-year-old self. Writhing in twisted pink bed-sheets, jerk-ing and thrash-ing my way through a night-mare. The daisy-shaped dig-i-tal clock on the night-stand read 11:11.
Glanc-ing quickly be-hind me in the labyrinth, I re-al-ized my por-trait self had stopped fol-low-ing me through the maze. A mere morsel of re-lief. Breath-ing raggedly, I took the spare sec-onds to watch my younger self thrash and con-tort in the mir-ror, re-mem-ber-ing vividly those My Lit-tle Pony pa-jama shorts from my aunt Polly. The soft brush of them against my stom-ach, the elas-tic waist-band loose from over-wash-ing.
Ob-serv-ing the scene now, I could al-most feel the move-ments in my own body, could feel the raw ter-ror. I dug my fin-ger-nails into the glass. What was she dream-ing about? The raves she’d just wit-nessed? The co-matose bod-ies slumped over stiff chester-fields?
Why did no-body pro-tect me? I wanted to howl.
“It’s okay,” I whis-pered in-stead. “You’re okay.”
Abruptly, the girl in the mir-ror star-tled awake, palm pressed to her chest. She sat bolt up-right in bed, her head whip-ping around the room—as though to find the source of the voice.
And then she turned to stare straight at me.
No no no no no—
Her eyes were wide and some-how blank, some-how wrong.
The hor-ror of it all was mount-ing. It was tow-er-ing over me like a shadow, ready to swal-low me whole.
I ran again, foot-steps grow-ing heavy and clumsy. Tears were stream-ing down my face now, over-flow-ing with the cer-tainty that this could not pos-si-bly be real, it was just an-other one of my night-mares, and yet I knew, I knew I was re-ally here, in this ter-ri-ble lim-i-nal space, and there seemed the very real chance I would not get out again.
Were Catalina and I trapped here for-ever?
Would I ever find her?
Even-tu-ally I fell to my knees, lungs still choked full of wa-ter, and I pressed my fore-head against the sky-ground, let-ting my hot sobs wrack my whole body, and I started beg-ging. I don’t know what I was beg-ging for—or who I was beg-ging to—but I felt it right to the bot-tom of my very be-ing, a vis-ceral litany of please please please please stop …
And then a voice. At once achingly fa-mil-iar and some-thing en-tirely new.
“Penny?” A sharp in-hale of breath.
I looked up slowly, fear-fully, mor-tally pet-ri-fied of who I might see.
At the sight of the fig-ure in front of me, my heart folded in on it-self like a dy-ing star.
My mother.