He was a just a dog again.
“Oh, no!” Sasha cried, hugging him. “What did he do to you?” Mr. Chesterton didn’t answer. His eyes were pools of misery. He didn’t even wag his tail.
A low rumble shook the floor as the distant locomotive powered up. Time to leave. “Heel,” Sasha said, and led Mr. Chesterton out of the baggage cage: Thank goodness he’d had obedience training.
Then the door to the forward car slid open and a large, rather handsome uniformed man stepped through it, a set of bed linens draped over his arm.
“Mr. Big Bill!”
The porter was as surprised as she was. “Miss Sasha!” He looked down at the dog. “Oh, Mr. Chesterton, sir,” he said reproachfully. “Not again!” Putting down the linens, Big Bill seized Mr. Chesterton’s collar. “We’ll have to move fast. If Lord Snow were to come upon us now, he would most assuredly — ”
“Most assuredly what?” Lord Snow said, stepping into the car.
Lord Snow was followed closely by Aunt Adelaide. She in turn held Roland by one ear, hauling the unhappy child after her. The space behind them was thronged with elves, their eyes glittering with inhuman malice.
“Well,” Aunt Adelaide said, “we’re all gathered together at last. Isn’t that nice?”
Lord Snow sat with heavy dignity in the white leather armchair and, when Aunt Adelaide flung Roland down on the floor before him, placed one foot on the boy’s head. “Behave yourself,” Adelaide said, “or my master will pop your head like a grape. Look terrified if you understand.”
Roland looked terrified.
“Excellent.” She turned to Sasha. “The trial will begin. You may now plead guilty.”
“What? No!”
“This spiteful little chit won’t cooperate.” Aunt Adelaide turned to Lord Snow in appeal. He said nothing, though. His face was as impassive as snowfields at midnight, as cold as the moon in February. Behind him, the elves were a shifting, murmurous sea of whiteness. She sighed heavily. “Well, if I must I must.”
Turning to Sasha, she said, “We’re going to play a little guessing game. You like games, don’t you? Of course you do, all children love games. I’m going to ask you a question, and you’re going to guess at its answer. You will have three tries. If you guess right, you may leave.” The elves, whispering and giggling among themselves behind Lord Snow, parted so that Sasha could see a mirror on the wall behind them. Its reflection showed not the train car but the parlor room back home. There were toys scattered about on the rug and a big mound of wrapping paper in the fireplace, where it would later be used for tinder. Her heart ached at the sight.
“But if not — well. Lord Snow has to eat, doesn’t he?”
Somehow, Lord Snow seemed to have faded into the background elves, so that his outline was indistinct and his features, though tremendously large, were difficult to make out. He looked less like a human being than like a vast and lifeless wasteland of ice and rock. Sasha imagined that if she were picked up and thrown at his face, she would fall into it, freezing, forever.
“This isn’t fair!” Big Bill cried, his face dark with anger. “You’re not giving this child the slightest chance. This is a mockery of justice.”
“I’m so glad you understand,” Aunt Adelaide said sweetly. She silenced him with a glare, and turned back to Sasha.
“Here is your question, child: What is stronger than reality?”
“It’s imagination,” Sasha said firmly. She was on solid ground here, and she knew it. Her teachers and books had many times told her as much.
Aunt Adelaide smiled maddeningly, condescendingly. “Imagine your way out of this!” She slapped Sasha so hard that for an instant Sasha forgot who she was. When she came to, one side of her face stung worse than nettles and the ice-desert had wrapped itself entirely around her. All that remained of the train car were the carpet underfoot and the mirror in its gilded frame, resting against a distant boulder. “Try again.”
Sasha thought long and hard. “Is it… love?”
“Oh! Love!” Adelaide held up her hands in a mockery of delight. “What was it the Bard of Avon said? Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love. If you think love is stronger than reality, then try loving your parents alive again. Love your brother out of Lord Snow’s bondage. Love Mr. Chesterton back into his proper self.” Flurries of snow blew past, dusting her hair and settling on her dress. She brushed the flakes from one shoulder and then the other. “You have one last, futile guess.”
Terror made Sasha’s mind go blank. She looked pleadingly to Mr. Chesterton for help — but he was still no more useful than any other dog. Mr. Big Bill’s face was filled with compassion and worry for her. But he said nothing. And out in the bleak and infinite snowlands, half-crushed under a tremendous slab of ice that almost seemed (if you looked at it right; if you squinted) to be shaped like a foot, Roland was —
Roland was trying to tell her something.
She could see it in his eyes. Roland knew something! Now he was working his face, trying to unfreeze its muscles. He swallowed several times. At last he managed to croak, “Sasha! Mr. Chesterton is only a dog! And we’re not —”
With a loud crack, the slab of ice sagged down several inches. A look of astonishment and pain appeared on Roland’s face and the words froze in his mouth.
And that was that. Roland had almost managed to tell her something. But he had failed.
Or had he? Sasha had looked to everybody else for help. Now she looked at herself, down at her hands. They were ordinary hands, a child’s hands, their nails chewed and their palms not overly clean. But in Tesseract House she had seen them differently. There, they had been long and red-nailed, with rings on her fingers and an elegant Longines watch on her wrist.
How did she know the watch’s make? How did she know the rings on that hand, which ones had the valuable stones and which she wore only out of sentiment? How did she know that her nails were painted Vamp Red?
Sasha looked at Mr. Chesterton, trying hard to see him as her brother did. Not as her guardian angel, nor as her savior, nor as a niceums little doggums. But as he was. “You are only a dog,” she said at last, “and it was foolish of me to expect a dog to rescue me. Not from a situation as complicated as this.” Roland still looked anxious, but it seemed to her that there was a touch of hope in his eyes. She turned to Big Bill. “You’re a very nice man. But you’re not a comic-book hero, are you?”
The porter nodded and said, “I strive to do my job in a courteous and professional manner, and to comport myself at all times with dignity. But I can make no claim to being anything other than a human being.”
“So I’m going to have to save myself. I’m not going to make a third guess — ”
“That’s good, child.” Aunt Adelaide said. “Despair is a virtue; embrace it if you can.” She opened her arms to welcome Sasha in.
But Sasha wasn’t falling for that. “I’m not going to guess because I know the answer.”
“Oh? What, then, is it?”
“Understanding.”
There was a long, chill silence, as if all the universe were holding its breath. Aunt Adelaide’s eyes were two glittering chips of ice, unreadable.
“Understanding is stronger than truth, because it allows us to endure truth. I am not a child.” That was what Roland had tried so hard to tell her — that they were not children. “Nor is Roland. We’re adults. Our parents are dead. I’m going to die too. Someday Lord Snow will take me and Roland and everything and everybody I love and this is part and parcel of being alive. A child can’t understand this, but an adult must. It’s the way things are and probably even the way things ought to be. I don’t have to like it. But neither should I allow it to fill me with fear.” Not as a question, she said, “Am I wrong?”