It was another full week later when Hanna felt it—that strange pulling sensation when she awoke from sleep. She knew, somehow, that this was it—this was the pull that would take her back to the Otherworlds—which she decided was a better name than Otherwheres. It was a strange feeling, understanding what that elastic-like pull was and knowing that her time was limited, but Hanna was finally able to feel at peace with the traveling. It was as if knowing it would happen gave her a sense of control. She tended her garden, leaving instructions with Aema and Sol.
She had been uneasy about telling Aema, but they needed to bring her into the fold sooner rather than later. Just in case. Aema, as it turned out, was fascinated at the thought of other hers. She became prickly when it came to Isis, however, fuming at this other version of herself for being, “—such a damned idiot! She’s clearly being used by that evil Sol—uh—no offense, Sol.”
“Oh, none taken,” Sol had murmured good-naturedly, waving Aema off as if it was the most natural thing in the world to talk about one’s other selves in this manner. Sol simply raised her cup in a silent toast and took a sip.
If anything, fortune smiled upon Hanna this trip. Legacy was off at the University, along with several of the others, and at least half of the house was away at events and banquets, so it was a skeleton crew at the manor. If something went wrong, Hanna didn’t have to worry about the entire house finding out right away. She had time. A commodity she never realized was as precious as it is until she had started losing it.
Sol and Aema worked together in the kitchen to prepare Hanna a hearty meal. She smiled as she watched them from the counter and sipped her tea. It would be nice to have this meal in case things go awry. Then her smile wavered and a thought gripped her, nearly paralyzing her with fear.
“Sol?”
“What’s up, buttercup?” Sol answered absently, frowning as she kneaded the sticky dough for her infamous cheddar biscuits.
“What happens if I die?”
Silence fell like a heavy sheet, casting the kitchen in a chilly darkness and leaving Sol motionless. Aema turned to their leader and, after a moment, nudged her with an elbow. “Sol?”
Sol sucked in a shaky breath and exhaled it, making Hanna’s belly do somersaults. “I don’t know,” she finally replied, resuming her kneading with intensity. “I don’t know if you return here, or—If you die there—the other Hanna comes here. I don’t know if you both die since you’ve never traded places—or if you HAVE traded places, no one seems to remember it..” She trailed off a moment, staring out the window before squeezing her eyes shut and grimacing, her jaw tightening. “Just.. Try not to die, okay? I’d rather not find out.”
Hanna spent the rest of the evening ill at ease. She scarcely remembered eating supper, but recalled that it stuck in her mouth. She couldn’t even remember what it tasted like, which was her biggest disappointment.
--
Hanna made sure to bathe and wear new clothes. After a moment, she quickly brought towels to her bed and set them up. If she were to be unable to wake up, and time DID pass, she hated to think of being the member of the house who wet the bed. Better to be safe than sorry—and humiliated. Once she was done readying herself and her room, Hanna lay in bed and turned out the light.
In World 3, it had been at least a couple of months, possibly more. In World 2, a handful of days, maybe a week or so? In her home world, it had been only a few weeks. Time passed by at different rates, or perhaps not at all during traveling. Or, perhaps Sol was right and consciousness…i…simply returned to the moment it departed. A seamless gap. She took a steadying breath and closed her eyes in the darkness. With the noise of her mind, it took some time to fall asleep. As she slipped over, she felt that familiar stretching, pulling at her mind, tugging at her body. This time, she did not wake up.
--
She was lost. Awash in a dark sea of colored pictures and distant audio, a distorted hallway of images both vivid and blurry. Faces she recognized, places she didn’t. It took a while to get her bearings as she floated along. She felt tuggings of familiarity that made her brain hurt, and a curiosity as she passed by different images. In one of them, she saw a group of girls laughing. She stared at the face of one of them. Dark hair, bright eyes of golden amber and rich brown. The girl was laughing at something, tossing her long hair over a shoulder. She knew this girl. This girl was familiar. But..who was she? After a long time, she shook her head and floated off until she stopped at another of the moving pictures. She watched, head tilted. This girl was familiar too, but she was slightly different. It was the same girl, she was sure, but it also wasn’t. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she knew. She didn’t feel as close to this girl, but she knew they were similar somehow. Connected. This girl.. This girl had a name. What was it? The pain returned, so she turned away, floating through the stream of consciousness slowly, taking in this image or that.
An image caught her eye and she stopped, turned. A young woman with long black hair and eyes as dark as night gazed back at her. She lifted a hand and the other girl did too. She waved, as did the other girl. Then the other girl lowered her hand and turned her head, looking off at something. Looking back at her, the girl pointed the direction she had looked, appearing solemn. She frowned at the familiar girl before looking in the direction the girl had pointed.
An image of a girl with golden-brown eyes frowned back at her from a distance. She floated towards the apparition reflected through the strange portal. The girl’s long brown-blonde hair fell here and there, with slight curls and waves to it. This girl was so young. She stared. So familiar, she thought. Then she thought she heard someone whisper something.
“Legacy.”
She turned around and frowned. Who was that? Who knew she was here? Was somebody else here? How long had she been here?
“Legacy.”
She pushed herself along the current, trying to find the whisperer, trying to find anyone. She had a name once too, hadn’t she? She, herself, had had a name. What was it? What was her name?
“Legacy.” The whisper was louder. More urgent. “Legacy.” Louder. Faster. What was this? Where was it?! She moved with a speed she didn’t realize she was capable of. Pushing through the lines of memories.
Memories.
That was it! These were memories. Memories from all over, everywhere all at once, everyone who had ever had them. Who WOULD ever have them. She was among these too, somewhere. She knew she was. She had a name once. Who was she?
“Legacy!” The whisper sounded panicked, horrified. She pushed through the endless space faster, then suddenly she came up to a scene she hadn’t seen before. Her body stopped, stricken as though with paralysis as she stared at the scene that floated in a canvas before her. So much color. So much RED. She heard the whispered scream with clarity, though it was as though from a great distance.
“Legacy! Legacy! LEGACY!”
Standing rigid, she raised her hands, covered in red. She opened her mouth, tilted her head back, and began to scream. And scream, and scream.
--
Hanna awoke with a jerk, but came-to slowly. Her eyes were wet with tears, her body trembling slightly, though difficult to move, as though she were neck-deep in mud. Her brain felt like a lump of half-wet cement that had already started to solidify. Her body ached and something seemed to scratch and claw at the corner of her mind, but she couldn’t recall what it was. How long have I been sleeping? she wondered to herself, trying to force her eyes open and blink out the blurriness. She could feel the crust of sleep in the corners.
In this state of half-alertness, something popped into her head. Something she hadn’t thought about in a long time. “One pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small..”
As though jolted through with electricity, Hanna sat up in bed like a shot. That was it! If there was a drug to make you STAY in each world you were pulled into, there had to be a drug to make you TRAVEL! Hanna blinked and looked around the room. It only took her a moment to discern World 2. She frowned. This world was, by far, the biggest pain in the ass Hanna could ever imagine. Being watched near constantly, drugged every waking moment. She had more freedom in World 3! And the basement! The basement would be watched now, any chance of gathering evidence likely long gone.
Hanna rose from the bed. She remembered now. The last time she was here she was searching for Sol—searching for answers. She had found the stains in the basement and panicked, but then Aema—no, Isis—had found her and injected her with something to render her unconscious. This struck up another memory—laying in Soohae’s bed in her world before being pulled into another. Realization hit her. That couple of weeks I spent in my world, I woke up in MY bed, she thought. Then she shook her head. One problem before the other.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Hanna’s hands balled into fists. She wanted to make me believe that I killed Sol, she thought with a new rage she’d never felt before. But, I’ll bet a hundred gold that she was the one who hurt Sol. And I am going to make her pay. I’m going to crush the life out of her. I’m going to—A flash entered her mind of Nurse Aema. The Aema who REALLY belonged here in World 2. It was her body that Isis was using now. If she hurt Isis, then she really hurt the good Aema, who just wanted to come back home as desperately as Hanna had.
Hanna’s shoulders sagged as her anger deflated into something simmering, her resolve shaky, but not irresolute. She would find a way. She would make THIS Aema pay—Isis, she reminded herself—and she would get the true Aema home. She had to. There had to be a way.
--
Hanna didn’t have much time to formulate a plan. Really, it came to her almost on a whim just as she needed it most. She would have bragged about her on-the-fly acting had the situation not been so precarious.
She had just began to cross the room, having stood with her mind reeling for far longer than she’d realized. Her heart jumped into her throat as the doorknob rattled and began to turn, the door beginning to open with Candace appearing as the space widened. Candace’s eyes became enlarged with shock and alarm. Without thinking, Hanna rushed the girl and threw herself into Candace’s arms—which were likely being raised in self-defense instead of a hug—and clung to her hard so that her face wasn’t visible.
“Candace!” she cried out in a muffled rush. “I’m so glad it’s you! I had the worst dream! A nightmare, really. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but it was so horrible! Please, tell me I’m awake now! Tell me none of it was real!”
Hanna put on her most sincere look of uncertainty and fright as Candace pulled her back by the shoulders and looked into Hanna’s face, scrutinizing as if searching for the lies. Hanna pulled up her brows and took shaky breaths. “Candy?” she asked weakly, and then made her eyes flutter and went limp at just the right speed that Candace caught her. “Ohh,” she moaned in a squeak.
She allowed Candace to help her back to the bed and tuck her in, then—in a spark of genius—grabbed onto Candace’s sleeve. “Don’t leave me, Candy,” she said, trying to make herself appear as meek and small as a frightened child. “Please, stay until Aema can come and help me. Please.”
Candace seemed to struggle for a moment, indecisive. Hanna saw something flash in Candace’s eyes for only a moment, and her resolve weakened. Hanna’s own eyes widened slightly as she recalled something important. Her eyes searched evil Candace and found something more: love.
“Candy?” she whispered, unsure. Luckily for Hanna, this fed right into her act as well, else she might have been caught.
“Okay,” Candace said softly with a sigh. “For a little while, Hanna.” The girl sat on the bed beside Hanna and stroked her hair until Hanna feigned sleep, trying to give herself slow, rhythmically deep breaths. She felt Candace rise from the bed, hesitate for a long moment as she watched Hanna, before quietly leaving the room. When the doorknob latched with a soft click, she opened her eyes.
Candace is in a coma, she thought, because evil Candace is here. Evil World 3 Candace is here with Isis…but maybe Candace 2 didn’t move worlds. Maybe she’s still stuck inside there? Two minds sharing one body, but which one was in control? Could they fight for control? The thoughts haunted her long after Candace returned with Isis and Hanna, still feigning sleep, listened to their conversation.
This was her new plan. To learn as much as she could, lull them into believing she had no memory of what had happened before—as if she were a new Hanna—and then using the information she gained to aid in her search of the manor. She WOULD find those drugs. She would discover how they worked and how to replicate them. She might not be a scientist, but how hard could it be to figure it out. I mean, cooking is science. Right? So, she thought, it makes sense that it’s like following a recipe. How hard could it be?
She would later come to regret that naivety. Because, as it turns out, ‘science cooking’ is pretty damn hard if you’re not a scientist.
--
Rain poured hard outside, pounding on the window. At some point, during her listening game, Hanna had actually fallen asleep. She hadn’t realized how mentally draining it was to be a spy. Mentally, emotionally…physically. Her body ached from too much time in bed, but there was only so much she could do.
The dimming light of the obscured setting sun filtered in from beyond the clouds. The world was grey, but this was how she liked it. Because it had never rained in this world before, and rain now meant something to Hanna. Rain was a catalyst, a character in its own right in the novel of her life, and she wasn’t about to turn her back on it now.
She had expected Candace or Aema—Isis, she reminded herself for the billionth time today—to have come up with a tray by now of some dinner and some sort of cocktail to knock her into next week, but no one came. Hanna’s stomach protested, arguably the only part of her that thought this was a shame. Hanna just found it interesting. Then she heard the floorboard squeak.
It was a soft squeak, the sound of one being careful. Or just the sound of an old house resting, she told herself silently, not believing in the words for a second. At the second creak, much closer than the first, Hanna’s eyes shot open in spite of herself.
Bare feet, a white, flowing nightdress, wildly bedraggled black hair and skin that had gone too pale for her own good. Soohae stood like a ghostly vision, exactly identical to the Soohae in World 3. Hanna blinked a moment, then sat up slowly, afraid any sudden movement would spook the girl. Hanna opened her mouth to speak, but Soohae slowly held up a single finger to her lips. Then she pointed to the wall to her right, the same wall her bed rested against. A tapestry hung there that Hanna did and didn’t recognize at once, a familiar prickling in the back of her brain as she looked at it drove her crazy. Then Soohae turned as if controlled by an outer force, and drifted across the floor toward the tapestry. In only a single blink, Soohae was gone and Hanna was slowly emerging from the bed toward the fluttering tapestry.
Her feet moved of their own volition and her lips slightly parted as she ran a hand down the tapestry of pink and floral design. She blinked, her hand still resting against it, and the image was that of a torrential sea, done in somber hues of blue and grey. Had she just imagined it was floral? Her breath was quiet and ragged and she felt like a woman possessed as her hand gently pushed past the tapestry and into a hidden hallway between rooms. She moved as though she had done this a thousand times. Gliding in with nary a sound from her bare feet as they moved from warm wood to cold stone, her left hand rising slowly to close the wall behind her by touch. It made no sound as it closed, sealing her away into the dark.
The moment felt like an eternity as Hanna waited in the dark for the match to be struck. This was their way, her and Soo’s. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she knew. A moment later, the match was struck and the ghostly figure of Soo lifted a candle from the ledge and lit it with the match before she set it back upon the small ledge. The two young women stared at each other before, finally, Soo slowly approached Hanna and, after a moment of searching each others’ faces, they embraced.
“I never thought you’d find me,” Soo whispered, her voice slightly hoarse as though from misuse. “I never thought you’d figure it out.”
Hanna backed away just enough to look Soo in the eyes. “Are you her? Are you the other Soo? From the third world?”
Soo just smiled sadly and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she replied, her voice choked with emotion.
Hanna felt like she was back in Sol’s office. “I don’t know,” her leader had said, just as Soo was saying now. Hanna took a breath. “You exist in both times, don’t you? Both places?”
Soo’s face fell and her shoulders slumped, making her look smaller. “I don’t know how it works. I am there, then I am here. Is it separate or the same? Legacy was trying to find out, but.. We don’t really know how it works. But they took her, didn’t they? Legacy? She doesn’t seem to exist in this world—or, at least, if she does they haven’t found her yet. I feel like she’s the key to something they don’t want us to understand, but what?” Soo dropped her face into her hands and began to sob silently. Hanna pulled the girl into her arms and gave her gentle pats to her back as her mind whirled.
“She’ll gut you,” a wild-eyed Legacy had once said. Hanna felt cold permeate through her entire body.
“Soo,” she said slowly. As if she heard the dark promise of the unspoken words, Soo looked up into Hanna’s face with tearful eyes.
“We need to get back,” Soo sighed softly, as if in reply.
“We need to get back,” Hanna repeated.
--
Knowing they had to get back to World 3 and locate Legacy was a given. The real problem lay in how the hell they were supposed to manage that. Which brought a now near-panicking Hanna back to her initial quest: finding the secret recipe to the drug that would allow them to travel, then figuring out how the hell to make it work—if it would even work on Soo.
“Hanna, it’s a formula, not a recipe,” Soohae reminded her with a ghost of a smile.
Hanna shrugged haughtily with one shoulder. “What’s the difference?” she quipped. Soo chuckled to herself and shook her head gently. Now that they were in Soo’s room, Hanna felt a bit safer. Soohae wasn’t much of a concern to Isis and evil Sol, at least not anymore.
“So then, how did it start for you?” Hanna asked, nervously eyeing the bedroom door.
“You don’t have to worry, Hanna. They won’t come in here. They stopped coming in here a while ago. The last time was when they found me with you. After that, I think they just locked it and forgot about me.”
“They locked you in?!” Hanna cried, feeling her shock turn to anger. “What about food or water?!”
Soo looked up at her wearily from where she sat on the bed. “I can get water from the bathroom sink, and I sneak out at night to get food. No one guards the house at night. Everyone is either asleep, out, or drugged.”
Something about that phrase was familiar. No one guards at night.. Hanna flopped across the bed and rubbed her temples, pushing it back and trying to focus on the present. How could anyone do that to someone as sweet as Soo—
Hanna lurched upward, eyes as wide as saucers. “That’s it!” she cried out. She turned to Soo. “We’ll go around at night. We’ll pretend to be—we’ll I’ll pretend to be sleeping until late at night. They won’t drug me if I’m already asleep. And, even if they lock me in, you can come and get me and we’ll go exploring!”
Soo’s face transformed into one of mischievous glee. “Can I put weeds in Bad Aema’s tea jar?”
Hanna grinned and gave a laugh. “One thing at a time, but if we have the time, sure! I’ll help,” she grinned conspiratorially. “Wait, Aema likes coffee, not tea. Right?”
“Aema does,” Soo replied bitterly. “Bad Aema likes tea. She calls coffee ‘the devil’s spittle.”
Hanna rolled her eyes. “Of course she does,” she grumbled with exasperation. She felt a little ping of triumphant happiness at the ‘Bad Aema’ remark. Evil Sol, Bad Aema. They should start a band, she thought with a smirk.
“We should have known she wasn’t an Aema the moment she picked up the tea,” she added, making Soohae giggle.
As Hanna stood to return to the secret tunnel, Soohae’s hand shot out and grasped her wrist. Hanna looked at her questioningly. “Soo?”
“Promise me you won’t leave me here. Don’t leave me alone again. I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“I promise to try not to,” Hanna said soberly, squeezing Soo’s hand a moment before she turned to leave. It was the best promise she could make for now.
Soo rose and showed her how to open and seal the tunnel silently, and Hanna returned to her room carefully. Luckily for her, it seemed no one had come or gone in her absence, and she used the facilities and crawled back into bed to wait for nightfall. She decided to allow herself some sleep while she waited. She had no idea how long it would take them to search the house, but she figured the best place to start would be Sol’s office.
As she drifted into sleep, it occurred to Hanna that she never got the answer to her question: How did it start for Soo?