My Death, 5

It wasn’t the worst way to travel. First off, one of the dogs—Robin thought it was the same tall, willowy one—bent down to allow her to climb aboard. A few of the beast snapped at her in the process, but a cool glare from the hardly-a-spirit-at-all boy quickly stilled them. Second off, the creatures traveled much faster than the horse, as she saw earlier. Third off—and Robin’s personal favorite—was that the boy wasn’t riding behind her, with his arms…
In only a few minutes they reached their destination. Honestly, when she heard the boy say “home,” she thought he meant her home. Apparently not.
The castle was as gray and dull as the dusty land around it. It was wedged between two mountains, part of what Robin was now sure were the Sierra Mountains. The creatures slowed their pace and padded through the castle’s wide gate with ease. They entered a court yard, where Robin’s mount crouched down so she could slide down its waxy fur. The other beasts eyed her with greed, but only licked their chops in her direction. The fear of their master’s wrath must outweigh hunger, Robin thought.
Still, she was eager to put distance between her and her escorts. She scanned the walls around her, looking for an exit. The gates, without her noticing, had shut behind them. Leaving the castle would be pointless anyway, since the boy could just as easily send his dogs after her as he did the first time. Of course, he didn’t use his knife-stick like he had on the man. And he had been so surprised to see her. Robin had considered him one of those people who are never surprised, merely disappointed.
Ah, she found the way out. It was a staircase—wood, apparently—that lead from the court yard up to the second level of the castle. There was a balcony overlooking the yard. Robin wondered if it lead to the rest of the castle.
When she touched the stairs, she knew they couldn’t be wood. They felt like some light-weight, smooth stone. After running her hand up the banister, she discovered it was also covered in a light layer of dust. It was one of the stairs that looked like it should have creaked. She jumped after the first step; it didn’t make a sound. All the fear that she should have felt on the horse caught up with her and hammered in her heart. She ascended the rest of the stairs with great courage.
From the balcony, she saw every red eye of the massive dogs watching her. They followed her as she walked along the balcony to the only door she could see. Did a few of them whimper? One appealed to her by scratching at the wall below her. Don’t go, their eyes said. They seemed so lonely—even monster dogs want to be played with, Robin thought.
Now she reached the doorway. There was no door, just an arch that was totally black beyond. Robin stepped in. A dog barked behind her.
It was very dim inside. The floors were grey stone, as were the walls. The ceiling was very low and made Robin feel as if she were in a box. There were two empty windows looking into the courtyard, whose long velvet red drapes were drawn aside to show the red hazy sky outside. Without a sun (or moon—Robin briefly wondered about the time of day), the sky didn’t give much light. Posted on either side of each window and around the room like sentry guards on a constant vigil were gold candlesticks burning with dim yellow flames. Robin was struck with an epiphany. She checked each position of the white candles. If they were outlining a six-pointed star, she hoped… They weren’t. Not for the first time, Robin reflected on how she would get home, back to her Side.
By now her eyes adjusted to the gloom. She discovered the room was like a furnished entry way. Something about it reminded her of her front door at home, the one she and Tom never use. Robin didn’t know why, because there was nothing similar between the two places at all. This room was old-fashioned and extremely ornate compared to Tom’s simple, ugly, practical standards.
Childish with curiosity, Robin crept on tip-toe to a red velvet chaise longue opposite a matching red armchair that looked so cushy; Robin thought it could swallow her up if she dared sit in it. Between those was an ebony table on which laid a white and black marble chess board. The pieces appeared to be the standard shape, but as Robin snuck closer, they became far more detailed. There were curls coming off the ends of the crosses on the kings that looked so perfect and tiny, they had to be impossible to carve. The rooks had tiny cannons and soldiers in their towers and vines creeping up their brickwork. Robin thought the most beautiful, however, were the knights. She could see the veins in the horses’ heads and individual hairs in their manes.
The game looked half played; the way the white queen was toppled over seemed very recent, as if it had just stopped rocking. Robin knew next to nothing about chess, but it looked like the Whites were winning. The Blacks had almost no pieces left on the board, except for one knight, the rooks, and one pawn. Just as she noticed the pawn, the room changed.
The furniture did not move and the game did not change. The whole room remained conspiratorially silent. It was as if a sign were posted, Reserved. She couldn’t explain it to herself, except to say there was a particular the way the chairs faced each other, the angle of the game on the table, the texture of the white fur rug (Robin looked at its size and thought of the dogs outside. She decidedly averted her eyes). There was a meaning she couldn’t put her finger on.
Then Robin felt guilt sprout in her throat. She was an intruder on the intimacy of this room. No wind came from the open windows, but Robin felt an icy draft. She stubbornly grit her teeth to keep them from shaking. This room had personality and it didn’t like her. She rather felt she didn’t like it either. Gladly, she discovered an ebony door in the farthest corner and escaped.

She expecting a hallway, but stumbled into an adjacent room. This one instantly felt better by its sheer normality. It seemed so comfortable that it inspired Robin to lean against the wall. It was a bedroom for two. Robin didn’t know Spirits slept. Speaking of which, she hadn’t realized how tired she was until she found herself slinking down the wall to the floor. The beds were positioned against the wall in perfect symmetry. Unlike the first room, this one had all the personality of a hotel. In fact, the more she explored the room with her quickly drooping eyes, she almost believed she was in a hotel: some creepy resort for visitors to the Other Side. She noticed silly little things in the way you might see images in the clouds if you stare long enough.
There wasn’t a wrinkle in the bedspread. Oh, there wasn’t a bedspread at all. Or sheets. Or pillows. These were weird beds. Sometime after staring at them in a sort of open-eyed doze, Robin realized they were covered in the same white fur as the rug. Other than that, there wasn’t much else. One wardrobe loomed over the beds from across the room. It looked empty, even from the outside. With a yawn, Robin noticed there were no mirrors, just a night stand between the two beds and a single candle burnt to a nub.
Her were shut only a moment when a violent chill jolted her awake. She sat upright, rubbing her arms and blowing on her hands. Her backside tingled. She stood up, stiff and numb. She looked around again. The breeze couldn’t have come from any windows, unless there were some behind that drapery on the opposite wall. The bedroom suddenly seemed just as bad as the front room, only this was too inviting. The beds were silently calling to her in twin voices. To her relieved surprise, she spied another door tucked away in the far corner. She hadn’t seen it before because it was hidden by the empty wardrobe. With a hasty limp, she crossed the room, passed the two beds that she resolved to not look at. Robin was only too happy to find the third room.
The warmth shocked her after the intense cold of the bedroom. Robin wished she had something to tie her thick brown hair back with; it was like a blanket over the back of her neck. Instead of heatless candles, there was a roaring hearth, with two chairs made for slouching. One looked similar to the armchair in the front room, the other was brand new and antique at once. Its legs were short, its back was tall and there were no armrests. The rest of the room was taken up by shelves. They were majorly filled with books, but Robin spied a few burning candles, pocket watches, hourglasses, sundials, scrolls, and one egg timer. After the first rooms, Robin was beginning to wish she would stop noticing things, but here we go.
The shelves extended far down into the room so that the light of the fireplace could not reach its end. Nor could it light the ceiling, which stretched with the books and other oddities upward into darkness. In fact, the shelves were so closely packed and the space so great that Robin didn’t feel like she was in a room at all, merely a vast forest of books. At the same time, her palms went clammy with claustrophobia. The confusion made her head swim and hew nose prickle, as it does whenever she get nauseous. Bleary-eyed, she sought something to cure it and found long red velvet drapes on either side of the hearth. “Windows!” she gasped and ran to fling them open. “Fresh air…”
They weren’t windows. They were books. Before her, inside a small alcove, set on something like music stands, were three closed books in a row. The way they rested on their stands told Robin something of their weight. The book furthest left was white and something in Robin thought it was very, well, pretty. And Robin being Robin, not many things did that. She guessed the cover was either mother-of-pearl or ivory or marble. Its size made Robin think it was the fattest encyclopedia ever written. It didn’t have a title, so she guessed she would never know.
Robin stared at herself in the middle book. By the tarnish around its edges, she guessed it was silver. Unlike its companions, this one was much slimmer and somehow less attractive. Its smooth surface perfectly reflected Robin’s frizzing hair, olive-skinned face, masculine jaw, scowling eyebrows, downward-pointing corner of her mouth, and extra fat reserve under her chin. With a short “humph,” she turned to the last book.
The farthest right was blacker than night, like the pupil of an eye. Robin wanted to think obsidian or black marble. Like the others, there was no title, but this didn’t need one. Robin, in her deep gut, knew exactly what was written in this book. She knew she would find what she was looking for.
She took a step forward. She laid two fingers on the cover and whipped them back. She stuffed them in her mouth—partly to sooth and partly to stop herself screaming—and sucked. The book was so cold, it burnt her fingers. She stared in the cover. Gordon’s face reflected back at her. He was in the book.
Robin, touching the cover as little as possible, tried to flip it open with a single quick finger. It was heavier than she thought, because it rose only an inch and shut again with a sound like stone striking wood. Robin couldn’t feel her fingers. A quick glace told her they were still there, but a riotous noise made her jump around. Out in the court yard, the dogs were braying.