Furthermore (9 page)

Alice peered into the open doorway and saw
nothing at all.

“There doesn't appear to be anything inside,” she told Oliver, rattling the box a little. “I think maybe you've got the wrong door.”

“There is nothing the matter with my door.” Oliver snatched the box away from her, setting it down a few feet away. “You must step inside a world to see it honestly. A passing glance won't do.”

She wanted to say something unkind to Oliver, but decided instead to study him awhile, curiouser and curiouser about this boy with the mouth of a liar and hair the color of silver herring. She noticed then that he wore a quiet tunic with no adornments. It was not very stylish. In fact, it had little to recommend it but its hue. It was the color of an unripe eggplant.

Oliver noticed her staring and began to fidget. “Well?” he said.

“Are you certain the door is the only way to get in?” Alice asked. “Perhaps there's a window, something that would give us a quick peek—”

“Are you going to question everything I say?” Oliver asked, his arms flailing about. “Is this how it'll be the entire time?” He caught a passing butterfly and whispered in its ear. “I should snip my head off right now, shouldn't I?”

Alice stifled a laugh.

“Oh very well,” she said, and clambered to her feet. “Go on, then. Make me small enough so I might fit inside.”

“There's no need for that,” Oliver said, releasing the butterfly. It flew in circles around him only to land in his hair, where it promptly fell asleep. “There's plenty of space to fit the both of us. So do be quick about it,” he said, gently plucking the butterfly from his head. “It's rude to keep the door waiting.”

Alice peered into the door before glancing back at Oliver one last time. He was fighting a losing battle with the butterfly, which had very obviously fallen in love with him. It was a silly thing to do, talking to butterflies. Falling in love was their favorite way to pass the time.

Alice stepped one foot into the box and nearly screamed.

“Why on earth is it
wet
?” she shouted, panicking. She tried to pull her foot free but it was now stuck inside the door. “Why didn't you tell me it would be
wet—
?”

Alice didn't have a chance to protest before Oliver grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her up. He said, “It's wet because it's
water
, you silly girl,” and dropped her in.

Alice fell very far.

She fell back for a bit and then slightly to the left, and then up for a very long while until she finally fell down with a
plop
, soaking wet and sinking fast.

She tried to scream but spoke only in bubbles, blinking around at the sea she was drowning in. She was scared and she was mad, but mostly she was mad. Oliver had not told her she'd have to swim in these heavy clothes, and now she would die and it would be all his fault and she wouldn't even be able to tell him so, and that made her even madder and so she kicked and kicked at the water, her delicate headpiece and ankle bracelets slipping off in the process. Horrified, she finally accepted that she could only survive if she untied her cumbersome skirts—and, oh, how it broke her heart to watch them go—but it was then, just as she was thinking of how best to kill Oliver Newbanks, that he was tugging on her arm.

As soon as her head broke the surface, she could hear what he was saying.

“What in heavens are you doing?” he shouted, red in the face and shaking. “Why didn't you come out of the water? Were you trying to kill yourself?”

“What?” She spat water out of her mouth and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Me? Kill myself? What are you talking about? I was only
drowning
, no thanks to—”

“Drowning?” he said, flabbergasted. “Alice, the water is only knee-deep!”

Ah.

That would explain how she was currently standing.

Alice looked down and around herself and spotted her skirts floating only a few feet away. She cleared her throat and said, “If you'll please excuse me,” before making her way toward the clothes.

The water was clear and the color of turquoise. It wasn't cold and it wasn't hot but it was very wet and Alice was looking forward to being out of it. Once she'd secured her skirts and made her way back to Oliver, he gave her a very round look and seemed to think it best not to comment any further.

“Well?” she said, head held high as she shivered in the breeze. “Where from here?”

“Straight ahead,” he said, nodding toward the shore.

Land was just a faint line in the distance, but she could see it, so she told him so. She followed Oliver as he went and asked no additional questions outside of the five questions she did
ask, and paused only to sneeze when her nose required it.

She was just in the middle of a sneeze, in fact, when she noticed the wet carpet under her feet. They were very close to the shore now, and she could see straight to the end: There were tens of dozens of ancient rugs laid out along and up the sand, cutting a vertical line to land. Each rug was a rich red, but woven with threads of gold and violet and sea-foam green into intricate, abstract, faded floral patterns.

It all felt very proper.

Furthermore was welcoming them, and suddenly Alice was glad to have arrived. Suddenly she wasn't cold or wet at all. In fact, suddenly she was warm and her skirts were toasty and her hair was dry and her bare feet were walking on the thick, plush Persian rugs that had been laid straight across the beach. They were heading nowhere as far as she could tell, but she didn't mind. The sky was very pink and the clouds were very blue and the air was sweet as lemonpearl and she felt very cozy and very lazy and very this and very that and very—

“Alice!”

Oliver tugged on her arm and she heard it snap. Not her arm, no. But something. Something snapped. Suddenly they were on the sand and not the beautiful rugs and she felt very cold and very worried and very hungry and very—

Oliver was snapping his fingers in front of her face. “Alice? Alice.
Alice
.”

“What?” she said, frowning. “What is it? What is the matter?”

“You musn't stay on the rugs for long,” he said urgently. “Furthermore can be tricky when you're not paying attention.” He pulled her to her feet. Only then did she realize she'd sat down.

“Where are we?” she asked, looking around. Oliver had nudged them back onto the beach, but that didn't change what she saw. It was a barren landscape, nothing but sand and sea, not a person in sight.

“We are at the beginning,” he said, and that was all.

They stood in the sun and said nothing more, and Alice was so confused she couldn't even remember how to say so. Besides, she was distracted. Oliver was holding her hand now and, though she tried to shake him off, he wouldn't let her.

“You need to be careful,” he said to her. “We are currently at the entry of Slumber, which is just one of the sixty-eight villages we must travel through, and each village has its own very specific rules. We cannot break a single one if we are to find your father.”

“Not a single rule!” she said. “In sixty-eight villages!”

“Not a single rule,” he said. “In sixty-eight villages.”

“But how will we know all the rules?” she asked.

“I will teach them to you as we go. I lived in Furthermore for an entire year,” Oliver said, “so this is all very common to me
now, but I imagine it must be very strange for you.”

“Yes,” she said, sneaking a look at him. “Very strange, indeed.”

Oliver was looking around carefully, his eyes darting every which way. It was as though he was seeing something she could not, something he was afraid of.

“And now?” she asked. “Where do we go now?”

“We don't go anywhere,” he said. “We wait for the sun to sleep.”

Alice wanted to believe Oliver was joking, but she couldn't suss out the humor in his words. “Oh?”

Oliver nodded. “Though we won't wait too long, I hope.” He squinted at something in the distance. “The sun in Slumber is terribly lazy and always forgetting the time. It naps so frequently that its people have stopped waiting for sunshine. Their village only appears in the dark.”

“Oliver,” said Alice, “are you being deliberately absurd?”

It was odd, but for a girl born and bred in magic, Alice could be disappointingly unimaginative. But then I suppose there was good reason for her reaction. After all, the people of Ferenwood had always used magic in the same steady, reliable ways, and Alice had never known magic to be manipulated frivolously; she'd no idea what a little recklessness could do. The magic of Furthermore was entirely foreign to her.

But Oliver still hadn't offered an answer to her question. He
was rifling through his bag again, and this time Alice heard the unmistakable clink of coins.

She narrowed her eyes and poked him in the shoulder. “What else have you got in there?”

Instead of responding, he unhooked their hands and folded himself into a seated position, settling in for a wait. Alice very cautiously followed suit, and she was just about to ask another question when Oliver tugged something out of his bag. It was a small notebook.

“Right,” he said, perusing its pages. “I nearly forgot.”

“What is it?” Alice asked. “What's the matter?”

“Nothing's the matter yet,” said Oliver. “I'm just checking things. Making certain and so forth.”

“Making certain of what?”

“Oh, just sun cycles and such.” Oliver was reading with great focus, following a few scribbled sentences with his finger. “Mmm,” he said. “We should only have to wait here a few moments longer.” He looked up. “What sensational luck. If we'd arrived any later, we'd have had to wait at least a good hour for the sun to sleep, and it would've been
the
most anticlimactic introduction.” He turned back to his notebook. “This first bit of the journey can be terribly boring, you know.”

Alice frowned. “Oliver, what—”

“Oh, ho!” Oliver jumped up with a start, squinting up at the sky. “There we are.”

“What?” Alice asked, scrambling to her feet and looking around. “What's happening?”

Oliver nodded at the sun. “There. He's just about to take his nap.”

“But—”

“Now give us a second, Alice,” Oliver said impatiently. “It takes him a moment to roll over.”

Alice blinked, and the world went black.

Alice had never in her life seen such darkness. Back home they had moons and planets and so many stars that the nighttime was never really night. Not like this. This was something she could not adequately describe. They had been plunged into a sky where everything had been snuffed out. She blinked and blinked and the blindness sent a chill through her heart she could not shake. A fear of the unknown, of the unseen, of what could be waiting for them here in this new world—it would not leave her.

“Oliver,” she whispered.

“Yes?”

“Why didn't we pass through when the sun was
awake
? Wouldn't that have been safer?”

Oliver shook his head. “Slumber is the entry point into all of Furthermore, and as such, the security measures are severe. Any visitors foolish enough to enter at sunlight are seen and snatched up in an instant.”

“But why?” Alice asked. “Snatched up for what?”

“Snatched up for
what
? Are you quite serious?”

“Oh, and you're surprised, are you?” Alice crossed her arms, irritated. “Surprised I know not a single thing about this land I learned existed only a moment ago?”

Oliver was slightly mollified. “Right,” he said, and sighed. “My apologies. It's just that it seems so obvious to me.”

“Well when will it be obvious to
me
?”

He squeezed her hand. “Soon, I'm sure.”

“But how soon?”

“Patience, Alice. Best to introduce yourself to patience now, so that it might find you when you call upon it later.”

“But I have so many questions,” she said, tapping his shoulder very hard. “Why would they want to snatch up visitors? Is that what happened to Father?”

Oliver smiled at her in the dark. “Not exactly, no. Your father is ten steps smarter than all that.”

“But—”

“While I'd like to answer all your questions,” he said lightly, “we've little time to spare and many appetites to avoid. I won't be the reason you end up in someone's stew tonight.”

Alice had not a single idea what he was talking about and she told him so.

“Well,” said Oliver, “if you don't already know what to fear in Furthermore, I can't imagine you'd want to change that
now. Perhaps it's best to be ignorant just a moment longer.” And then he held up a finger and peered up at the sky.

A moment, it turned out, was all it took.

The sky exploded with light, shot through with so many stars and moons and glittering planets that it was blinding in a whole new way. It looked as though the night sky had tried to snow but the flakes had fallen upside down and gotten stuck.

It was, in a word,
magical
.

Not just the sky, but the whole village. People appeared out of nowhere, shops and businesses busy in an instant. Food was cooking and chimneys were puffing and children were crying and parents were shouting and the hustle and bustle was all it took to shuffle Alice right along, right into the heart of it, and she felt her spirits soar despite her many worries. Eyes wide-open, Alice took it all in. This was a
real
adventure, wasn't it? This was what she'd always dreamed of. And, oh, to find Father in the process! She nearly ran into the arms of this new world.

But first, she had priorities.