YOU MIGHT THINKinterdimensional travel is difficult or frightening, but it’s usually not that bad. Picture the multiverse as an endless book with endless pages, where each page is a different reality. If you were to retrace the letters on one of those pages enough times, the paper might grow thin, the ink might bleed through. In this metaphor, I’m the ink, and the ink is totally fine. There’s a brief moment when I’m falling from one page to the next, my hair tangling in a wind that smells like old paperbacks and roses, and then someone sayshelpand I tumble into another version of my own story.
This time, though, the moment between pages is not brief. It’svast. It’s a timeless, lightless infinity, like the voids between galaxies. There are no voices calling for help, no glimpses of half-familiar realities. There’s nothing at all except the viselike grip of fingers around my wrist and a not-insignificant amount of pain.
I mean, I don’t know if I technically “have” a “body,” so maybe it’s not real pain. Maybe my conviction that my organs are turning themselves inside out is just a really shitty hallucination. Maybe all my neurons are just merely screaming in existential dread. Maybe I’m dying again.
Then there are more pieces of story rushing past me, but I don’t recognize any of them: a drop of blood on fresh snow; a heart in a box, wet and raw; a dead girl lying in the woods, pale as bone.
The fingers release my wrist. My knees crash against cold stone. I’m lying flat on my face, feeling like I was recently peeled and salted,regretting every single beer and most of the churros (although nothing I did with Diego).
I attempt to leap to my feet and achieve something closer to a woozy stagger. “It’s alright, it’s okay.” I hold up empty hands to show I mean no harm. The room is spinning unhelpfully. “I’ll explain everything, but if there’s a spindle in here, please don’t touch it.”
Someone laughs. It’s not a nice laugh.
The room settles to a slow lurch, and I see that it’s not a lonely tower room at all. It looks more like the apothecary in a video game—a small room stuffed full of stoppered bottles and glass jars, the shelves loaded with books bound in cracked leather, the counters strewn with silver knives and pestles. If it belongs to a wizard, there are certain indications (a yellowing human skull, chains dangling from the walls) that they are not the friendly kind.
The woman from the mirror is sitting in a high-backed chair beside a fireplace, her chin lifted, gown pooled around her ankles like blood. She’s watching me with an expression that doesn’t make any sense. I’ve met forty-nine varieties of Sleeping Beauty by now, and every single one of them—the princesses, the warriors, the witches, the ballet dancers—has looked surprised when a sickly girl in a hoodie and jeans zaps herself into the middle of their story.
This woman does not look surprised. Nor does she look even slightly desperate anymore. She lookstriumphant,and the sheer intensity of it almost sends me to my knees again.
She studies me, her brows lifted in two disdainful black arches, and her lips curve. It’s the kind of smile that doesn’t belong on Sleeping Beauty’s face: sneering, languorous, strangely seductive. Somewhere deep in my brain, a voice that sounds like Rosa’s great-grandmother says,¡CUIDADO!
She asks sweetly, “Why, what spindle would that be?” which iswhen I notice three things more or less simultaneously. The first is a small silver mirror in the woman’s left hand, which does not seem to be reflecting the room around us. The second is an apple sitting on the counter just behind her. It’s the sort of apple a child would draw, glossy and round, poisonously red.
The third is that there is no spinning wheel, or spindle, or shard of flax, or even a sewing needle, anywhere in the room.
Somewhere deep in the bottom of my backpack, muffled by spare clothes and water bottles, comes a tinny, warbling whistle, like a mockingbird singing out of key.
2
SURE, OKAY.I should have figured it out a little faster. But in my defense, my brain was recently soaked in Sol Cerveza, dragged through the liminal space between worlds, and tossed at the feet of a tall woman with silken hair and a dangerous smile.
Also, in five years of adventuring through the multiverse, I’ve never once made it out of Sleeping Beauty. And let me tell you, I tried. I hung my hair out of high windows and bought apples from old ladies at the farmer’s market; I went dancing until the stroke of midnight and asked my father to bring me a single rose from the grocery store. None of it worked. Charm theorized about clusters of related realities and drew graphics that looked like the branches of some great interstellar tree. I pretended like I understood when really all I understood is that there are some rules you can’t break.
But now, somehow—my eyes flick to the silver mirror in the woman’s hand—the rules have changed. It occurs to me that I have no idea what’s going tohappen next. A thrill shoots up my spine and buzzes at the back of my skull.
“You,” I say, and my voice is shaking now, but not with fear, “are not a princess.”
Her perfect brows arch half an inch higher, and I wonder dizzily if this world has eyebrow threading. “Not anymore, no.” She touches the pink indent at her left temple, which I’m suddenly sure was left by the weight of a crown.
“So where am I?” But it’s a simple equation (apple + mirror + royalty) with only one answer. There are no spindles here, and no fairies, but I’d bet my left lung there are seven dwarves living deep in the woods. “Who are you?”
Her triumph flickers very briefly, as if she doesn’t like that question much. “You may call me Your Majesty, or My Queen, should you find yourself begging for mercy.”
I’ve heard more than a few villainous threats, but none delivered with such bored sincerity. My excitement dims somewhat. “Right. Cool. Well, it’s an honor.” My eyes slide to the only door. I’m several feet closer than she is. “I’m sure you’re wondering how I got here—”
Her eyes flash, the triumph swallowed by a bottomless, fascinating hunger that makes me forget, for a moment, that I’m in the middle of an escape attempt. The mockingbird in my bag sings an octave higher. “And I would just love to tell you about it. But, uh, is there a bathroom I could use, first?”
The queen tucks the hunger away with practiced ease, like someone leashing a dog; some very unwise part of me is sorry to see it go. She says with polite amusement, “No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh.” I take a sidling step toward the exit. “Could I at least have something to drink? I have this condition, see, this mysterious illness.” Generalized Roseville Malady (GRM) isn’t actually that mysterious, but premodern monarchs aren’t generally familiar with terms like “amyloidosis” or “in utero genetic damage.” “It causes me great suffering, and will one day surely kill me.” My only symptoms at the moment are a high heart rate and a headache, which could be explained by being hungover, freaked out, and—sue me—a tiny bit horny, but I drag my hand dramatically across my brow anyway.
The queen looks profoundly unmoved. “How tragic,” she says passionlessly. The part of me that isn’t busy calculating the distance between me and the exit and the likelihood of dying in a fairy tale I don’t even like goeshuh. Twenty-six years of terminal illness has taught me to anticipate and weaponize pity, however tedious and gross it feels—but the queen’s face is the definition ofpitiless. It would be gratifying if it weren’t so inconvenient.
I take another step, edging behind a chair. “It is, truly it is.” The queen is watching me in a way that reminds me uncomfortably of a lean-boned stray watching a very stupid robin. “It’s a sad tale, which I will relate to you, at length and with footnotes, should you desire it, Your Majesty.” On the final syllable I shove the chair hard, sending it tumbling between us, and rush for the door.
I make it, hands slapping hard against the wood, fingers fumbling for the latch—
Which is, as it turns out, locked.
