Off the Page Read online

  Humphrey runs a circle around my mother, licking the back of her knees. “You taste delicious,” he says, and she gasps.

  “You . . . you can speak?”

  “Yes, I can,” Humphrey replies. “I know lots of words. Potato. Thermos. Pencil. Communism.”

  “That’s . . . great,” my mother says as Socks shyly drops a daisy at her feet. She pats his mane, a smile washing over her face. “You were always my favorite.”

  “I knew it,” Socks replies, prancing away.

  Orville is the first to fold my mother into a hug. “Welcome home, my dear,” he says.

  One by one, the other characters step forward to introduce themselves. The fairies zip around her face; the mermaids flip and splash their tails; the trolls reveal a sand castle built in her honor. Even Pyro soars through the clouds like a skywriter, spelling out her name.

  “I hate to say I told you so,” I murmur. “But I told you so.”

  My mother looks at me and shakes her head. “I’m dreaming this. I must be dreaming this.”

  “Kind of,” I say. “You’ll get used to the weird stuff. Like the way you can jump extra high and run extra fast and eat anything and never gain an ounce. Or the way you move from page to page. It feels like it must be a dream . . . but this is our new real.”

  She created this adventure for me, years ago, when I was afraid of death. This time, I’m going to do the same for her.

  “Come on,” I say, taking my mom’s hand. “There’s a lot to see.”

  I can tell she still thinks she’s going to wake up at any moment. I can tell she doesn’t trust what’s in front of her eyes. Maybe it’s just going to take time.

  At that thought, I can’t help but grin. Because here, that’s exactly what we have.

  The castle is just the way I remember it: dazzling, grand, ornate. I watch my mother walk into the great hall, staring at the vaulted ceilings and intricate tapestries, occasionally reaching out to touch a marble statue or sword mounted on the wall. I take her into one of the towers, to Queen Maureen’s chamber, and open the double doors, revealing a round room with a high carved canopy bed, a massive fireplace, and a gigantic armoire containing the finest silk and satin gowns, embroidered with golden thread.

  “So?” I ask shyly. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s lovely,” my mother says. “I can’t wait to tell you all about it when I wake up.”

  I sigh. “You’re not dreaming, Mom. You’re here. We’re here. For good.”

  The clock on the mantel chimes. It is made of bone china and gold, covered in rubies and emeralds and sapphires. My mother’s eyes fly to its face, and she begins to reach into the pocket of the scrubs she is still wearing. “I have to take my medication,” she says, but of course, the pills aren’t there. They’ve already disappeared in the transition.

  My mother pats down all the pockets. “They must have fallen out on that beach,” she says. “We have to go back.”

  “No we don’t. You don’t need those pills here. You don’t need them anymore at all.”

  “Edgar, you have to accept the fact that I’m sick. It’s not what you want, and it’s not what I want, but it’s what we have to deal with. And it’s going to be a lot easier to handle if I don’t keep having seizures.”

  Frustrated, desperate to prove to her that she’s going to be healed here, I grab the clock from the mantel and smash it as hard as I can against the stone wall. It shatters into hundreds of pieces: gears and springs and gems scatter across the parquet floor.

  “What have you done?” my mother cries. She immediately falls to her knees, trying to gather the pieces, but they begin to tremble in her hands. They pop out of her palm, quivering, gears finding each other and notching into place, golden joints fusing together, until the clock—whole and restored—rests on the floor in front of her.

  I pick it up and set it gently on the mantel. “This is what I’m trying to tell you,” I say. “You can’t be broken here. The book will fix you.”

  My mother stands and, with a shaking hand, reaches toward the clock to touch it. “Of course,” she murmurs. “I understand.”

  “You . . . you do?”

  “You never die in your dreams.”

  I close my eyes. No matter what I do to convince my mother of the book’s magic—whether that’s cutting myself with a sword and letting the wound heal, or jumping off a cliff and landing safely on my feet—she’s going to think this is a dream, and it might as well be. After all, this entire story came from her imagination.

  Suddenly I realize exactly where I have to take her.

  The copyright page is a sea of white ice, as far as the eye can see. My shoes slip as I pull my mother behind me, teetering, trying to balance in the slant of the italics. The copyright symbol is a tiny divot that grows as we get closer—the only marker to let me know we’re getting anywhere at all as we walk. Overhead, text hangs so low that I keep smacking my forehead against the tails of the y’s and g’s and p’s.

  The closer we get to the copyright symbol, the more the ground seems to slope. I’ve been to this page since Seraphima was sucked out of the book—but the vortex was sealed shut. I still don’t really know what made it open that first time. I only know I’m going to do my best to make it happen again.

  It’s an optical illusion, but the whole page is shaped like a cone, with the copyright circle at the very bottom. Because of this, by the time we reach the bottom, my mother is struggling to keep from falling forward on top of me. “Grab hold,” I tell her, reaching down to grasp one edge of the letter c. She follows my lead, and immediately the circle shifts to the left.

  “I think we have to turn it,” I say, and I put all my weight into pulling clockwise. Inch by inch, with a screech, the wheel unlocks and finally pops open like the hatch of a submarine. I look at my mother. “Jump,” I tell her, and I disappear through the hole.

  She lands lightly in a crouch beside me and slowly stands, in awe of what she sees. There are shelves of bound papers and thrones draped with cobwebs, a giant man-sized birdcage. There are baskets full of broken glass hearts and corked bottles stuffed with rolled-up notes. There’s a dragon’s tooth the size of my head propped against the wall, and a wagon wheel. In the corner, a cello is playing itself.

  “Welcome to your imagination,” I say.

  I don’t think my mother hears me. She is walking through the obstacle course of assorted objects, lightly touching them as she passes. Her hand stills on the statue of a leopard cast in gold. “It was a jealous leopard,” she murmurs, “who begged a witch to make him the most prized animal in the kingdom. Because of his selfishness, she turned him into precisely that: a golden statue.” She walks up to the birdcage. “Mad science experiment gone wrong: the bird became the master.” Then she runs her hands through the basket of bottles. “A man goes off to war. He marches upriver with the army and sends a love letter in a bottle every day to his wife, who lives at the mouth of the stream.” She touches the cello that still plays. “A human boy falls for a muse, but the only way he can impress her is with a magic cello created by the gods that never ceases to play. The muse adores his music . . . and eventually the musician himself . . . but he can never let go of the cello’s bow in order to hold her, because she will realize he is a fake.” Finally she reaches for the portrait I saw the last time I was here: King Maurice, holding a baby. It might as well be a photo of my dad and me, dressed up in costume. My mother turns, her face filled with wonder. “These were all my stories,” she murmurs. “The ones I never wrote down.”

  “You used to believe in the impossible,” I say. “Couldn’t you do it again?”

  I shove aside a feather boa and a bearskin rug to reveal a pristine ivory desk with a quill pen and an endless curl of parchment. I pull one of the empty thrones closer to the desk, holding it out so my mother can sit.

  Gingerly she picks up the quill and, for the first time in years, begins to write again.

  Leaving my mother behind on