Page 69 of Echo North

The surface of the glass rippled and changed.

I saw the wolf in the room behind the black door, roaring and raging, ripping the glass baubles down from their strings. His cries seemed to shake the room, and his fur and his bandage were streaked with blood. Behind him the spider clock ticked, whispering and whirring, the mechanism winding down.

The mirror shifted. I saw Hal pacing a shadowy corridor, his body so faded it was nearly translucent. He dropped to his knees before the mirror that contained his memories, bowed his head into his hands. His shoulders shook as he sobbed.

The image blurred before me.

There was only one day left, and I didn’t know what to do.

IPACED THROUGH THE WINTRYgarden, huddled in furs, my breath a white fog before me. Panic seethed in my mind, festering like an open sore.

Hal was the wolf, the wolf was Hal, and I had less than a day to save him.

Snow clung to my eyelashes and the last of the dead roses dropped their petals to the ground like blood. God in heaven, I didn’t know what to do.

“I have fought the wildness every day for nearly a hundred years,”whispered the wolf’s voice in my head.

I blinked and saw the clock, the gears winding down. Maybe all I had to do was wait, see the year through to the very last day without lighting the lamp. Maybe when the time was up the wolf would transform into Hal in front of my eyes and be free forever. The Queen of the Wood had said the truth was always simple.

But what if I was wrong?

Ice stung my cheeks and I pulled my hood tighter. A mouse scurried beneath a tangle of dead ivy, scrabbling for seeds in the snow. My boots crunched and the wind bit sharper, but I didn’t turn back to the house.

I couldn’t stop seeing him, tearing the baubles down from their strings, howling in rage. Kneeling in the shadowy corridor, weeping.

In the fairy stories, there was always athingto do. A kiss to give. An object to retrieve or destroy. A magical sword. A magical mirror.

Or a lamp, perhaps?

“There is one thing you must not do,”the wood queen had told me,“one rule you must not break. You must break it. That will nullify the enchantment. That will free him.”

But Hal had said:“She always lies.”

I trusted Hal, certainly more than I trusted the queen—but what if his enchantment forced him to say that? What if lighting the lampwasthe way to break the curse?

I’d promised to live with the wolf for a year. I’d promised to never look at his face in the night.

Hal’s face.

What if I lit the lamp and broke his curse?

What if I lit the lamp and imprisoned him further?

It was impossible to know, but I needed to know it.

What was I supposed to do?

The clock behind the black door was ticking.

Time was almost up.

IWENT BACK TO THElibrary, shrugging out of my cloak and slinging it across one of the couches. I was desperate to speak with Hal and stepped into a book-mirror at random, hoping he would come to me.

I found myself hurtled along on a sea voyage to find a lost kingdom and a mythical prince. I let the story carry me, leaning over the ship’s railing and drinking in the salty air, listening to the haunting cries of the sea-wisps—strange creatures that appeared to be a cross between fire and mist. They swirled about in the sky above the ship, sparking orange or blue or rose-blush pink.

Hal didn’t come.

I waited for several book-days, through raging storms and an attack by an opalescent sea-dragon. The ship landed on an island in the eye of another storm, and as the crew and I and a brave red-headed farmer’s daughter stepped onto the shore, the East and West and South Winds came and drew the whole island up into the sky. They seemed younger than before, fierce and full of anger, and they didn’t seem to know me.