Library of Souls (21 page)

This was, as near as I could tell, Siberia.

A single track of shoveled snow led through the room and into the whiteness beyond. We shuffled down the path, out of the room and into the cave, marveling at everything around us. Giant spikes of ice rose from the floor and hung from the ceiling like a forest of white trees.

Emma was hard to impress—she was nearly a hundred years old and had seen a lifetime's worth of peculiar things—but this place seemed to fill her with genuine wonder.

“This is astonishing!” she said, bending to scoop up a handful of snow. She tossed it at me, laughing. “Isn't it astonishing?”

“It is,” I said through chattering teeth, “but what's it doing here?”

We threaded between the giant icicles and emerged into the open. Looking back, I could no longer see the room at all; it was perfectly camouflaged inside the cave.

Emma hurried ahead, then turned back and said, “Over here!” in an urgent voice.

I shuffled through deepening snow to her side. The landscape was bizarre. Before us was a white, flat field, past which the ground fell away in deep, undulating folds, like crevasses.

“We're not alone,” said Emma, and pointed to a detail I'd missed. A man was standing at the edge of a crevasse, peering down into it.

“What's he doing?” I said, more or less rhetorically.

“Looking for something, it would seem.”

We watched him walk slowly along the crevasse, always staring down. After about a minute, I realized I was so cold that I could no longer feel my face. A gust of snowy wind blew up and blanked the scene.

When it died down a moment later, the man was staring right at us.

Emma stiffened. “Uh-oh.”

“Do you think he sees us?”

Emma looked down at her bright yellow dress. “Yes.”

We stood there for a moment, our eyes locked on the man as he stared at us across the white wasteland—and then he took off running in our direction. He was hundreds of yards away through deep snow and a landscape of undulating fissures. It was unclear whether he meant us harm, but we were in a place we weren't supposed to be and it seemed like the best thing to do was leave—a decision that was soundly reinforced by a howl, the likes of which I'd heard only once before, in the Gypsies' camp.

A bear.

A quick look over our shoulders confirmed it: a giant black bear had clawed its way up from one of the crevasses to join the man on the snow, and
they were both coming after us
, the bear clearing ground much more quickly than the man.

“BEAR!” I shouted, redundantly.

I tried to run but my frozen feet refused to cooperate. Seemingly impervious to the cold, Emma grabbed my arm and swept me along. We lurched back into the cave, stumbled through the room, and tripped out the door, around which a penumbra of blowing snow was filling the hallway. I pulled the door shut behind us—as if that would stop a bear—and we retraced our steps down the long hall, down the stairs, and back into Bentham's dead museum to hide ourselves among his white-draped phantoms.

* * *

We hid between a wall and a hulking dust-sheeted monolith in the farthest corner we could find, straitjacketing ourselves into a space so narrow that we could not turn to face each other, the cold we'd run from settling firmly into our bones. We stood silent and shivering, stiff as mannequins, the snow on our clothes melting into puddles at our feet. Emma's left hand took my right—it was all the warmth and meaning we could trade. We were developing a language that was entirely untranslatable into words, a special vocabulary of gestures
and glances and touches and increasingly deep kisses that was growing richer, more intense, more complex by the hour. It was fascinating and essential and in moments like this, made me just a little less cold and a little less scared than I might've been otherwise.

When, after a few minutes, no bears showed up to eat us, we dared to exchange whispers.

“Was that a loop we were in?” I asked. “A loop within a loop?”

“I don't know what that was,” Emma replied.

“Siberia. That's what the door said.”

“If that was Siberia, then the room it was in was some kind of portal, not a loop. And portals don't exist, of course.”

“Of course,” I replied, though it wouldn't have been so strange to believe, in a world where time loops existed, that portals did, too.

“What if it was just a really old loop?” I suggested. “Like ice-age old, ten or fifteen thousand years? Devil's Acre might've looked like that back then.”

“I don't think there are any loops that ancient,” Emma said.

My teeth chattered. “I can't stop shaking.” I said.

Emma pressed her side to mine and rubbed my back with her warm hand.

“If I could make a portal to anywhere,” I said, “Siberia would not be high on my list of choices.”

“Where would you go, then?”

“Hm. Hawaii, maybe? Though I guess that's boring. Everyone would say Hawaii.”

“Not me.”

“Where would you go?”

“The place you're from,” Emma said. “In Florida.”

“Why on earth would you want to go there?”

“I think it'd be interesting to see where you grew up.”

“That's sweet,” I said. “There's not much to it, though. It's really quiet.”

She leaned her head on my shoulder and exhaled a warm breath
down my arm. “Sounds like heaven.”

“You've got snow in your hair,” I said, but it melted when I tried to brush it out. I shook the cold water from my hand onto the floor—and that's when I noticed our footprints. We'd left a trail of melting snow that probably led right to our hiding spot.

“What dimwits we are,” I said, pointing out the tracks. “We should've left our shoes behind!”

“It's okay,” said Emma. “If they haven't tracked us by now, they probably—”

Loud, clonking footsteps echoed from across the room, accompanied by the sound of a large animal breathing.

“Back to the window, quick as you can,” Emma hissed, and we wormed out of our hiding spot.

I tried to run but slipped in a puddle. I grabbed the closest thing at hand, which happened to be the sheet covering the large object we'd been hiding behind. The sheet came ripping away, uncovering another display case with a resounding
zzzzzzwit!
and landing me on the floor in a pile of rumpled canvas.

When I looked up, the first thing I saw was a girl—not Emma, who was standing above me, but past her, inside the case, behind the glass. She had a perfectly angelic face and a ruffled dress and a bow in her hair, and she stared glassily at nothing in what seemed the permanent rictus of a taxidermied human being.

I freaked. Emma turned to see what I was freaking out about, and then
she
freaked.

She dragged me to my feet and we ran.

* * *

I'd forgotten all about the guy chasing us, the bear, Siberia. I just wanted to get out of that room, away from the stuffed girl, and far away from any possibility that Emma and I might end up like her, dead and encased behind glass. Now I knew all I needed to know about this Bentham guy—he was some kind of twisted collector, and I was sure that if we looked under more dust covers, we'd find more specimens like the girl.

We sped around a corner only to find, towering before us, a terrifying ten-foot mountain of fur and claws. We screamed, tried too late to stop running, and slid into a pile at the bear's feet. There we cowered, waiting to die. Hot, stinking breath rolled over us. Something wet and rough mopped the side of my face.

I'd been licked by a bear. I'd been licked by a bear, and someone was
laughing
.

“Calm yourself, he won't bite!” the someone said, and I uncovered my face to see a long furry nose and big brown eyes staring down at me.

Had the bear spoken? Do bears talk about themselves in the third person?

“His name's PT,” the someone continued, “and he's my bodyguard. He's quite friendly, provided you stay on my good side. PT, sit!”

PT sat, then began licking his paw instead of my face. I flipped myself right side up, wiped the slobber from my cheek, and finally saw the owner of the voice. He was an older man—a gentleman—and he wore a subtle smirk that complemented his killer outfit: top hat, cane, gloves, and a high white collar that rose from the top of his dark jacket.

He bowed slightly and tipped his hat. “Myron Bentham, at your service.”

“Back away slowly,” Emma whispered in my ear, and we stood up together and side-stepped out of the bear's reach. “We don't want any trouble, mister. Just let us go and no one gets hurt.”

Bentham spread his arms and smiled. “You're free to leave anytime you like. But that would be such a disappointment. You've only just arrived, and we have so much to talk about.”

“Yeah?” I said. “Maybe you can start by explaining that girl in the case over there!”

“And the Siberia Room!” said Emma.

“You're upset, you're cold, and you're wet. Wouldn't you rather discuss all this over a pot of hot tea?”

Yes, but I wasn't going to say so.

“We're not going anywhere with you until we know what's happening here,” said Emma.

“Very well,” Bentham replied, not losing an ounce of his good humor. “That was my assistant you surprised in the Siberia Room—which, as you likely gathered, leads to a time loop in Siberia.”

“But that's impossible,” said Emma. “Siberia is thousands of miles away.”

“Three thousand four hundred and eighty-nine,” he replied. “But making interloop travel possible has been my life's work.” He turned to me. “As for the case you uncovered, that's Sophronia Winstead. She was the first peculiar child born to the royal family of England. Fascinating life she led, if a bit tragic in the end. I have all sorts of notable peculiars here in my
peculiarium
—well known and unknown, famous and infamous—any or all of which I'm happy to show you. I have nothing to hide.”