Caraval

Death was the color purple. Purple wallpaper and purple temperatures. Her nana’s purple gown—only the honey-blond young woman wearing the gown, and sitting in the purple chair, looked much more like Donatella.

Her cheeks were full of color, her smile full of mischief, and the bruise that had marred her face days ago was healed, leaving her looking healthier than she had in ages. If Scarlett’s heart had been beating, it would have stopped. “Tella, is that really you?”

“I know you’re dead right now,” Tella said, “but you should try to come up with better questions. We don’t have much time.”

Before Scarlett could respond, her sister opened the ancient book on her lap. Much larger than the journal Aiko carried around in life, this book was the size of a tombstone, and the color of dark fairy tales—black ice covered with tarnished gold script. It swallowed Scarlett with its leather-bound mouth, and spit her onto a chilly sidewalk.

Donatella materialized beside her, though she looked less corporeal than before, transparent around the edges.

Scarlett didn’t feel very solid herself; her head was fuzzy from dreaming and dying and all that came with it, but this time she managed to ask, “Where can I find you?”

“If I told you, that would be cheating,” Tella sang. “You need to watch.”

In front of them, a purple sun fell behind a grand home, similar to the turreted building that housed Caraval, but smaller, and painted dark plum with violet trim.

The girl inside it wore a shade of purple as well. Again, it looked like her nana’s purple dress. In fact it was that gown, only this time the woman who wore it was her nana, a much younger version, almost as pretty as she had claimed, with golden-blond curls that reminded Scarlett of Tella.

Her arms were wrapped around a dark-haired young man who seemed to think she would look better without the purple dress on. He also looked a great deal like her grandfather, before his body went to fat and his nose filled with blue veins. The young man’s fingers fumbled with the purple gown’s laces.

“Ugh,” Tella said. “I don’t want to see this part.” She vanished again as Scarlett scrambled to find anywhere else to look. But everywhere she turned she saw the same window.

“Oh,” her young grandfather mumbled, “Annalise.”

Scarlett had never heard her grandmother called that name; she’d always been just Anna. But something about the name Annalise rang familiar.

Then bells were ringing everywhere. Bells of mourning, in a world covered in mist and black roses.

The purple house was gone and Scarlett was on a new street, surrounded by people wearing black hats and even gloomier expressions.

“I knew they were full of evil,” said a man. “Rosa would never have died if they hadn’t come.”

Black rose petals rained on a funeral procession, and without being told who they were, Scarlett knew the man referred to the players of Caraval. A woman had died during Caraval’s long history. The year Caraval had stopped traveling, after rumors started that Legend had murdered her.

Rosa must have been that woman, thought Scarlett.

“This dream is just awful, isn’t it?” Tella reappeared once again, though now her image was ghostly sheer. “I’ve never really liked black. When I die, will you please tell everyone to wear brighter clothes at my funeral?”

“Tella, you’re not going to die,” Scarlett scolded.

Tella’s image flickered like a candle lacking confidence. “I might if you don’t win this game. Legend likes to—”

Tella vanished.

“Donatella!” Scarlett called for her sister. “Tella!” But she seemed to be gone for good this time. No more traces of her purple dress or blond curls. Just a funeral of endless gloom.

Scarlett could feel the gray press of everyone’s grief as she continued to listen, hoping to learn what Tella had been unable to say, as words of mourning switched to gossip.

“Sad, sad story,” whispered one woman to another. “When Rosa’s fiancé won the game, his prize was finding her in bed with Legend.”

“But I heard she was the one who called off their wedding,” said the other woman.

“She did, right after her fiancé caught them. Rosa said she was in love with Legend and wanted to be with him instead. But Legend laughed and said she’d gotten too carried away with the game.”

“I thought no one ever saw Legend,” said the other woman.

“No one sees him more than once; they say he wears a different face every game. Beautiful but cruel. I heard he was there when Rosa flung herself out the window, and he didn’t even try to stop her.”

“Monster.”

“I thought he pushed her,” said a third woman.

“Not physically,” said the first. “Legend likes to play twisted games with people, and one of his favorites is making girls fall in love with him. Rosa jumped the day after he discarded her, after her parents found out and refused to let her return home. Her fiancé blames himself, though. His servants say he moans Rosa’s name in his sleep every night.”

The three women turned as a young man trudged by at the very rear of the procession. His dark hair was not so long and his hands contained no ink from tattoos—no rose for Rosa—but Scarlett recognized him right away. Dante.

This must have been why he wanted to win the wish so badly, to bring his fiancée back to life.

Just then, Dante’s head cocked in Scarlett’s direction. But his wounded eyes did not fall on her. They roamed the crowd as if hunting. Searching through the thickening curtain of black flower petals. A soft puddle of them formed around Scarlett’s feet, and several petals covered Dante’s eyes as he walked past her. The flowers blinded him from seeing the one person whom Scarlett imagined he’d been looking for, a young man in a velvet-rimmed top hat only a few paces from where she stood.

All the air raced from Scarlett’s lungs. In every other dream Legend’s face had not been clear, but this time she could see him perfectly. His handsome face held no emotion, his light-brown eyes were void of warmth, no hint of a smile curved his lips; he was a shadow of the boy she’d come to know. Julian.