“I don’t think that’s going to reach quite far enough.”
“This is an enchanted one,” Orville explains. He climbs down from the ladder and rummages through a satchel that I’ve seen him wear numerous times around the book. “Sometimes, when I’m being called by another character, I use this,” he confesses. “If my knees are stiff or if I’m just feeling a tad lazy, I check to see if it’s an emergency before I expend the effort to hike all the way across the pages.” He hands me the brass tube, and I extend it to its full length.
“How does it work?” I ask, peering into one end.
Orville snatches it away from me. “Not like that, naturally.” He chuckles. He sets the scope on the ground and, with a flick of his fingers, sets it spinning like a bottle. “Round and round and round it goes. . . . Where it will stop, nobody knows!”
“Well, that’s rubbish!” I exclaim. “What good is that going to do me?”
“No, that’s the spell, Oliver. Say it, and it will show you what you wish to see.”
“Oh.” Feeling silly, I give the telescope a good spin and repeat the incantation. It stops spinning, and the end glows like the beam of a lantern.
I lift it to my eye and squint.
I’m staring at a place I’ve never seen before, but I know it’s Delilah’s world. There are cars and streetlights and billboards. Delilah is there, and Jules, and Chris, and Edgar. They are playing what seems to be a miniature form of croquet.
Jules starts to swing her mallet, and Chris ambles behind her, wrapping her arms with his own. He starts to count, and she releases the mallet.
All the breath leaves my body.
Edgar holds Delilah, kissing her the way I ought to be.
I drop the telescope as if it is burning my palm and run as fast as I can to page 43.
First I pace.
Who does she think she is?
She’s already found my replacement.
I take out my dagger and begin to hack away at the rock wall.
Every time I think of her, I picture Edgar’s mouth on hers, and I strike the rock until sparks shower.
By the time she finally gets around to opening the book, it is hours after I viewed that catastrophe through Orville’s telescope. She smiles down at me as if she hasn’t been snogging another fellow all afternoon.
I stand up, my fists balled at my sides. “You have quite some nerve!” I yell. “Tell me, will you take anyone, or is it just guys who look like me?”
Her jaw drops. “What are you talking about?”
“Isawyou. Orville gave me an enchanted telescope, and I watched you kissing him.”
Her eyes narrow. “You’ve beenspyingon me?”
“You’ve beencheatingon me!”
“I have not. I didn’t kiss Edgar;hekissedme.And it’s not like either of us wanted it, trust me.” She tilts her head. “How many times did I watchyoukiss Seraphima?”
“You knew Seraphima meant nothing to me. It was a part I was playing.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing!”
“FINE!” I yell.
“FINE!” she shouts back.
We stare at each other for a long moment, furious. Then Delilah lifts her chin. “Is that all you have to say to me?”
