Live comment: T are you ok?!
Live comment: She looks so young & scared rn what is wrong w our Viloki queen
[Tai startles and grins big, then waves]
[End of video]
VILOXIN
NONI
The road splits at Viloxin airport: one path shoots you toward the tiny, glittering jewel of Limatra city, nestled at the sea’s edge, and the other weaves you deeper into the lush, hilly terrain at the base of Mount Vilox. To reach Stökéwood, people take the latter, past the affluent neighborhood of Mitella, where the upper crust of Viloki society lives, and through a wooded area known to locals and foreigners alike as Delirium Forest.
In the old Viloki legends, one ventured inside to see vivid glimpses of the future, or treasured glimpses of the past, long thought lost. Inside the forest of delirium, the present melts away to nothing at all. That’s why they find bodies inside, lost to dehydration, smiles stretched across the corpses’ lips. That’s why my classmates’ nightmares lived inside this forest. Inside this brain-tingling, dark beauty.
On this stretch of forest road far west of the city, we’ve hardly seen a building for half an hour, much less a single soul. The dancing green foliage outside threatens to burst through the car’s windows at every turn. This surreal green is home, in a way that sends a chill up my spine. It smells of moss, thyme, and earth, intermingled.
But I can’t shake this feeling we’re being watched, by someone quiet, someone careful. I’ve felt that way ever since we landed—I froze at baggage claim, where a group of elderly locals followed us like ghosts, whispering with half smiles and gesturing with wrinkled hands. When I told Tai, she replied casually, “Of course people are watching us. We’re practically royalty.” A stranger with gnarled, arthritic fingers helped her lift her luggage off the carousel.
Now, Tai reaches her phone across my body, toward the window on my sunnier side.
“Must you?” I ask, swatting her hand away.
“I’m just sending Linos a photo so he knows I’m here,” she explains, as if Linos Arnoix, Viloxin’s resident Narcissus, has ever noticed anything beyond his own aristocratic reflection.
She won’t even tell me if they’re dating. If pressed, she says they’re just friends. Tai taps away, the volume on her phone excruciatingly turned up all the way. “And yes, I can hear you judging me and shitting on him inside your brain, by the way,” she adds, eyes and fingertips glued to her screen. “Your skull’s not that thick.”
I would open my mouth to tell her I don’t think she meant to say that, but it’s not worth the oxygen.
When we reach Stökéwood’s gate—a movable, massive iron fence straight out of a Gothic novel—the driver buzzes the house via the intercom about a dozen times, to no avail. When I punch in the gate code I remember, nothing happens, either. Only then does my heart start to falter, like it’s missing a beat in my chest. Random childhood memories stab me—Tai skinning her knees on the gravel a few feet off; Mama tying red balloons to the fence before a birthday party. I know this gate. But where is everyone? We knew Teddy wouldn’t be here—he sent the car to pick us up—but we didn’t expect to arrive at an empty house that wouldn’t let us in.
Now that seems naive.
Tai, the driver, and I heave ourselves against the prickly iron gate until it scrapes against stone and opens enough to let the car through. As we drive up the winding, forest-lined path, I look ahead for any sign of our home itself, but the trees are overgrown, shadowing the gravel.
“What the hell is that?” Tai asks, clutching her phone to her chest. Outside the car window, a large, bearded man in gray runs out of the woods and toward us, another six-foot figure in a neon vest and beanie stock-still behind him.
“Misses Hammick! Fítsím!” the running man shouts at the car window. He stops running, his hands falling to his knees as he catches his breath.
Tai shrinks back, but I see it now: the security guard uniform, complete with badge and radio. He looks like he’s fiftysomething—and local, on account of his Viloki greeting.
“Misses Hammick, your uncle sent me to man the gate. I’m Tomí,” he says, extending a machine-oil-coated hand through the open window, which I take in mine, relieved.
His skin is warm and rough and greasy to the touch. He looks tired, and the reddish blooms by his nose make me think he’s a heavy drinker. I wonder how long he’s been here.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t by the gate when you arrived—the security system was acting up,” he says, pointing at the man in the beanie behind him.
My stomach lurches as I realize—
The figure is stiff. And when I squint, I see it has no nose or mouth: just a flesh-colored plastic mask. Its eyes dilate strangely, zooming in and out, as I stare back at it.
“It’s … a mannequin?” I ask.
“It’s state of the art,” Tomí corrects. “One of Clouded Cage’s new surveillance machines that uses facial recognition technology. You girls can rest easy, Misses Hammick, with the two of us here, and Mina inside,” he adds, pulling up his sagging pants. I smell sweat and cigarettes and stale booze. Dad couldn’t stand drinkers: He even frowned and batted Mama away when she’d had too much wine.
“Is Mina your wife? Do you both live around here?” I ask, as Tai sighs quietly next to me—frustrated, I guess, that I’m prolonging the chat with our sole living security guard.
But Tomí chuckles. “No, no. You haven’t met Mina? I thought she’d been here for years. You’ll see—she’s gone to great pains to get the house ready for you.” He leans closer and waves at Tai to catch her attention. “Hi, Miss Hammick Number Two. I hope you had a good journey?”
She looks up from her phone and smiles after a beat. It reads genuine, even though I’m sure it’s not. Tai has never been referred to as Number Two in her life.
“A long one,” she replies. “Thank you for the good wishes.”
Tomí’s cheeks burn. He nods awkwardly and pats the car door, as if urging us along. “Sorry to keep you!” And he hustles back into the forest dark, where the motionless robot watches and waits.
“Don’t be rude,” I whisper to Tai under my breath, as the car rolls forward.
“I’m so tired and hungry I could cry,” Tai says. “We can suck his dick later, okay? Just let me unpack and take a bath.”
“Thaïs Hammick,” I hiss back, with a look at the driver.
But he and Tai are already staring straight ahead, where Stökéwood’s peaks have appeared. Its silhouette grows from a jagged yet familiar mound into its full over-the-top glory, throwing my heart into its first backflip. My childhood home, Stökéwood. A several-centuries-old basalt castle, built in an H shape (Fit for a Hammick, they said), with four dangerous towers accessible only by rusty ladders, with double-height ceilings made for a place of worship, with underground tunnels and mazelike corridors leading to so many rooms lost to the light. The hypermodern extension is visible too— built in an H shape (For Hëró, they said) by our father forty years ago. Dozens of filthy twelve-foot windows of glass wink at us ominously, the cataract-filmed eyes of an elderly grande dame lost to madness.