In what could have been an eternity or a blink of an eye, Violet was throwing herself from the top of the platform and into a performance. She heard the satin fabric of her dress flitter through the air as she flew from one bar to the next, the gaspsand appreciative claps of the crowd entangling with the beat of her own heart. The sound of it made Violet feel at home again, a smile working its way into the corners of her mouth as the flash of sparklers and turn of a ballerina’s skirt reminded her of how she must look to the spectators, a shot of light that couldn’t be stopped.
As her hands grasped what she knew to be the final bar, Violet felt a sudden pulse of worry start to slip down her spine, as it always did when she reached this part of her dream. But then she remembered that this wasn’t the past any longer but her deepest desire for the future, and she shook away the fears lapping at her dangling ankles, feeling them slip from her skin just like ribbons that had loosened and were now drifting toward the sawdust.
“Wildfire,” she heard Emil call to her, his voice carrying above the roar of the crowd.
Violet glanced up and saw that Emil was moving toward her, his body flying from one bar to the next until he was only a swing away, his hand outstretched as he sought to close the distance between them.
Before Violet gave herself a chance to fear the worst, she stretched her arms as far as they would go, her heart beating so hard in her chest that she thought her bones were going to break beneath the pressure.
But instead of grasping at air, as they always had before, Violet’s fingers wrapped around Emil’s wrist, giving him just the help he needed to grab hold of the bar.
When she could be certain that he was dangling there beside her and not crashing toward the ground, Violet turned to face Emil. He was gazing at her with the same mischievous smile that he had that first night he’d found her in the crowd and given her a taste of what it might be like to feel at home within herself.
And in that instant, Violet was no longer lost.
How could she when it was so clear where she wanted to be?
“Wildfire . . .”
Though Emil’s body was pressed against hers, the sound of his voice felt far away, as if it was coming from somewhere outside the boundaries of her dream.
She moved closer, wondering if his words would sound clearer that way, but as she shifted, a rattling noise began to ripple the red and white stripes of the tent.
Violet’s eyes flew open then, and she saw that the frames along the walls were shaking in the way they always did when the house was trying to wake her.
When she turned over, Violet realized that the window had been thrown open, the curtains covered in a fine layer of snow.
“Wildfire . . .”
The word whipped into the bedroom on the edge of the midnight wind, but instead of chilling Violet’s skin, it warmed her to the bone.
Not bothering to throw her dressing gown about her shoulders or shove her feet into the slippers that the house was trying to nudge her way, Violet sprang from the bed, racing through the hallway and down the stairs in such a rush that the banisters began to shake for fear she’d slip and fall before she could reach the first floor.
But Violet couldn’t be slowed, and before the railing could so much as bend forward a few inches to make it easier for her to grasp, she was already flinging open the front door, knowing with absolute certainty who would be waiting there to meet her.
Emil stood just beyond the threshold, his black curls sprinkled with snow.
Before the bitter cut of the wind could slip past the open door, Violet had pulled him close, needing to feel the touch of his skin to be certain that they weren’t in her dream any longer.
“I know you wanted me to come in the spring,” Emil said as Violet rested her face against him, one of her cheeks exposed to the harsh night chill and the other warmed by the rumble of his chest. “But I couldn’t wait any longer.”
He wrapped his arms tight around her then and shuddered, and Violet knew in an instant that it wasn’t from the cold, but rather from the sheer relief of being able to pull her close again.
“This is exactly what I wanted,” Violet answered, tucking herself deeper into Emil’s embrace.
And as they stood there in the faint light of a crescent moon, Violet thought about the future and smiled.
CHAPTER 37
A Pen
Appears when a new chapter is about to be written.
Though the wind was blowing so hard the next morning that it rattled all the windows of the bookshop, Beatrix failed to notice anything but the sound of her pen scratching against the page.
She’d slipped away from the Crescent Moon late in the night, wandering back toward the bookshop, where the thread of her new story had begun to weave its way into the very center of her thoughts. Scenes were starting to unfold in her imagination as quickly as a kettle that had finally decided to boil over, the texture of her characters’ voices and rhythm of the tale somehow becoming more real than the ground beneath her boots.
As Beatrix had walked along the shadows of the street, she’d gradually let herself fade into the tale, each footstep a new line and every turn of a corner a shift in the plot.
