The Edge of In Between Read online

  Also by Lorelei Savaryn

  The Circus of Stolen Dreams

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Viking,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2022

  Copyright © 2022 by Lorelei Savaryn

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Ebook ISBN 9780593202111

  Edited by Liza Kaplan

  Cover art © 2022 by Tracy J. Lee

  Cover design by Samira Iravani and Olivia Lo Sardo

  Design by Monique Sterling, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by Lorelei Savaryn

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  All That a Color Can Hold

  Alone in the World

  An Uncle

  The Gray Lady

  The in Between

  Forsaken

  Agnes and George

  The Frozen Tree

  A Fiery Heart

  Henry Warwick, the Splintered

  The Crying Hall

  The Hidden Boy

  This Key with the Heart

  The Garden of Ice and Decay

  Timmy

  Hope Unfurling

  The Thawing

  The Family

  Hemlock

  The Splinter

  The Veil

  The Great Tangle

  A Final Goodbye

  Restored

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Kayla and her children

  If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.

  —The Secret Garden

  “What needs could I have,” she said, “now that I have all? I am full now, not empty. I am in Love Himself, not lonely. Strong, not weak. You shall be the same. Come and see.”

  —C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

  Everyone is born with a measure of magic.

  It is a glow inside,

  A tether that ties each soul to the source of magic and life—the Great Magician itself.

  For many, over time, it fades.

  For some, it splinters, breaking off from the source.

  But a few . . . a few find a way to keep it.

  ALL THAT A COLOR CAN HOLD

  The fall fires burned in all the parks across Vivelle, dotting the city with pockets of glow. They turned leaves to ash and sent a warm, woody aroma winding through the busy streets.

  A tiny cyclone lifted into the alleyway beside Lottie, twisting leaves the color of fire and goldenrod and umber through the air, faster and faster until they blurred together. The wind stopped and the leaves settled, nestling back onto the pavement. Lottie stepped on one and smiled as it gave a satisfying crunch.

  She breathed in deeply. Her nose had taken on a hint of pink in the chilly wind, but she didn’t mind the cold. It only meant that winter crept closer from the north, readying itself to wrap Vivelle, the capital of the Land of the Living, in an embrace built of steaming hot cocoa and glimmering icicles and bright snow.

  Each of the seasons held a special place inside Lottie’s heart. Each had its own scents, sights, flavors, and best of all colors. Colors she would run home and mix up until she created just the right shades to paint a scene from her day and present it to her parents. Lottie’s Gallery, the long hall that separated the living spaces from their bedrooms, rotated its collection each season. It was now nearly packed to the brim with images of foliage and pumpkins, brown leather coats and hands tucked into pockets, bright red apples and acorns fallen from a tree.

  Lottie’s fingers itched, longing to get to her paints so she could try to recreate the way the leaves had smudged together as they spun in the air.

  She peered in through the wide front window of Felicity’s Enchanted Treats, a shop that was always crowded, regardless of the season. In the fall, they sold sticky buns and cider. In the winter, candied nuts and the best hot cocoa in town. Spring was sugar cookies and tea made from flowers that bloomed in hot water. And summer, of course, was ice cream and lemonade.

  Lottie allowed her gaze to roam the line of patrons inside the shop until she found her father at the checkout, getting ready to pay. Her mouth watered and her eyes lit up at the sight of the steam rising and swirling from the cups on the counter. A treat and a walk through the park before supper—their weekly tradition was well underway.

  “Ouch!”

  Lottie startled as someone knocked into her shoulder from behind, sending her stumbling. She reached her hands out and braced herself against the wall of Felicity’s shop, the color of which had been enchanted to change with the seasons. She could tell instantly it had been done by an artist with magic—the kind Lottie hoped to be someday. Today it was a deep burgundy that echoed the color of the remaining leaves on the line of maples across the street.

  Lottie regained her footing and whipped her head around until she spotted the woman—one of the Living Gray, in a long cloud-gray trench coat and steel-colored scarf and hat. The woman tucked her neck into her shoulders and shuffled down the sidewalk, the magic inside her a faint, flickering yellow, as thin and as fragile as a butterfly’s wings.

  Lottie’s heart hurt for the woman more than any bump to the shoulder ever could.

  The people who kept their pigment and their magic glowing strong remained speckled brightly around her, moving briskly, eyes held high and filled with purpose, while throngs of Living Gray muddled slower and wearier through the streets.

  Lottie sighed. How very sad it would be to lose one’s color, to have one’s magic dim and fade. She touched a hand to her chest, at the warmth tucked away behind her ribs, where her own magic glowed and gleamed the color of melted gold.

  Colors could hold so very many things. Feelings, for one. Black thunderclouds of anger or canary-yellow hope. Seething red envy or wild wishes tucked into a purple haze.

  They could hold memories. Her easel set up under the falling pink blossoms of a cherry tree on a spring day, the sandy color of the crust on her mother’s mixed berry pie, the coral skies at sunset on the shores of Vivelle’s endless sea.

  And colors also held magic. Everyone, everywhere, had magic, or at least they were born with it. That was just the way it was. A gift from the Great Magician, tethering the world’s people to its power.

  Part of Lottie’s gift was seeing the color in others. Seeing
the glowing magic inside them, or, if it had faded, what was left of it once they’d turned Living Gray.

  “Here, kiddo.” Lottie’s father slipped a warm cup of cider into her cold hands.

  “Thanks.” Lottie took a sip, letting the tart, spicy drink coat her tongue. But something else was there too—something warm and sweet.

  Her eyes lit up.

  “You added caramel!”

  Her father’s blue-green eyes crinkled at the edges as he smiled. “If I know one thing to be true, it’s that caramel makes everything taste better. Especially in the fall.”

  Lottie couldn’t argue with him there. She mentally listed all the good caramelly things about the season. Caramel apples, caramel corn, salted caramel chocolates. A person could never get too much caramel this time of year.

  “And now . . . to the park!” Her father thrust an arm up like he had just given some sort of bold rallying cry. The poorly sewn brown leather elbow patches on his tweed coat stood out even when he kept his arms at his sides. He worked hard, long hours at his job, using his gift of thinking to solve all sorts of Vivelle’s trickiest problems. He knew the coat looked silly, but he’d had it forever and said it helped him think. The pine-colored magic glowing inside his chest was one of her favorite magics of all. But all that brainwork made him a bit goofy at the end of the day.

  “To the park.” Lottie giggled. She found her father’s free hand with her own, and they waited for a break in the congestion of evening traffic before scurrying across the street and into City Greens. The park wasn’t enchanted itself, though one could find enchanted things inside it if you knew where to look. From there, they would make their way home, to Lottie’s mother and to supper.

  * * *

  • • •

  They passed by more than a few fall fires along the way, burning in wide iron bins. A smattering of Living Gray huddled around each one, firelight reflecting off their smoky faces.

  Over time, most people lost both their color and their magic and joined the ranks of the Living Gray. Some faded quickly if they faced something shocking and sudden. But for others, it happened slowly and painfully as years went by. Maybe things didn’t work out for them the way they had hoped, or their dreams were deferred. A person could become Living Gray, losing both their pigment and also their ability to see color around them, from any number of disappointments. But as a person faded, one thing was certain: their magic faded, too. It was still there, but too weakened to add to the world all the beauty and goodness for which it had been created. A faded person survived and survived only, all thoughts of living something richer and fuller having been swallowed up by the gray.

  The Living Gray could also still benefit from those who kept their magic, and from the enchanted things that magic created. But they were spectators, not participants. And watching something and having it be a part of you were two very different things. Some even looked down on those who carried their magic well into adulthood, whispering about them behind their backs like they were silly children. Oh, what sweet dears, when will they ever grow up and join the rest of us in the real world?

  Lottie shook her head and pulled her hand away from her father’s, rushing to rub at the hair on her arms that stood on end whenever her mind drifted toward sad, colorless things. Though she couldn’t help it from time to time—couldn’t stop herself from trying to see inside the Living Gray, to unearth what magic might be left there. To find what remained of the color that had once glowed bright inside their chests.

  Hope and magic were tangled together in the most beautiful of knots, her father often said, and Lottie was certain: it couldn’t be that hard to keep it, if a person wanted it badly enough.

  But she wouldn’t have to worry about that. She had a gift, and each day she grew in her skill and ability to use it. She had her family, her cozy apartment, her paint-filled room. Her parents had each kept their magic, and so had most of their family friends.

  Nanny Nellie, who had helped take care of Lottie for the past five years, was another story. But Lottie had grown a stubborn determination to accept her sourness as something endearing. It wasn’t Nellie’s fault she’d turned gray. Her tiny little glow shone the color of a clementine, plucked fresh from the tree. It would have been so very beautiful, if she hadn’t lost nearly all of it when she faded. Now it only gave a small spark inside her on occasion—when she closed her eyes as a symphony built to a crescendo on a string-filled stage, or lost herself in staring at the sunset across Vivelle’s skyline. It was a rare, fleeting thing.

  Both Lottie and her father slowed as they approached the wide green space at the center of the park. Lottie’s father’s eyes—the window to his thoughts and feelings—clouded over, like they always did when they saw it.

  The home of the Stone Man.

  Any person who didn’t know his story might think he was an art installation, a near-perfect sculpture of a man pulling his two children by the hands through the park. How lovely, a person might say. What a gorgeous fixture.

  As it was, groups of people often picnicked around him, or read books on blankets, or soaked in the sun in the summer, all gone numb to what the Stone Man meant.

  He wasn’t an art installation, carved by an artist to add beauty to the urban green space.

  The Stone Man hadn’t been carved at all. He had been made.

  A third option existed for the people of Vivelle. One could lose one’s sense of magic and wonder, and become one of the Living Gray. One could keep one’s magic and use it to make the world a better place, and see the world in color for all of one’s days—as Lottie planned to. Or, though rare, upon facing a sharp and terrible sudden change in one’s life, a person could grip on to their magic so tightly that instead of fading, it snapped, splintering off from its source—the Great Magician itself.

  And splintered magic, separated from the source of goodness and beauty that had made it, without fail manifested into something awful. It became magic twisted into something it was never meant to be.

  Lottie had first learned about it years ago, when she was seven years old.

  “The Stone Man had begged his magic to help him never feel pain again,” her father had told her. “But splintered magic lies. It’s never to be trusted. The person whose magic splinters believes they can manipulate it to relieve their suffering in the way they think is best. But magic isn’t meant to be separated from its source. It always comes at a cost, and there’s always a catch.”

  First, the man’s heart had turned to stone, slowly, over time. Then his stone heart pumped stone blood through his veins. The stone blood began to infect his organs, and he ran into the park to seek help from someone whose magic hadn’t splintered, pulling his children along with him. But the stone spread like poison through his limbs, then onward to the little ones at his side.

  And just like that, he would never feel pain again. In fact, he wouldn’t feel anything at all.

  As good and beautiful as magic had the potential to be, Lottie’s father had warned her, was how ugly and bad it would get when it turned. A splinter was a ticking clock toward destruction, and those who splintered never survived.

  And so even though they had to cross this part of the park to get home, Lottie and her family never came here to play. They gave the Stone Man and his children a wide berth and didn’t speak again to each other until they had exited the clearing.

  Lottie finished her cider and set her now-empty cup in the Reprocesser, a magical bin that compacted garbage and, using both magic and heat, transformed it into moldable, reusable material. It had been a Warwick invention, and Henry Warwick of Vivelle had been one of the best magical engineers of their time. So much so that Lottie had sat through an entire lesson devoted to him in school. But he’d disappeared over a decade prior—yet another tragic story of magic that had splintered, leaving only wreckage in its wake.

  Lottie’s father toss
ed his cup in as well just as Lottie tagged him, swiping her arm playfully across his shoulder. She gave a devious grin and shouted, “Can’t catch me!” before sprinting down the path.

  She didn’t have to look back at her father’s eyes to know the cloud had lifted. He didn’t linger on sad things for overly long. His gift was to look forward, to solve problems. He spent his energy on the things he could change and he found ways to change them for the better. Right now, he was looking forward at his daughter, joining her in a game of chase.

  * * *

  • • •

  Lottie’s mother’s chestnut waves hung like a curtain across her cheek. She leaned over the counter, examining a recipe torn from a piece of notebook paper. Her glasses perched on her nose and an open cookbook rested on a stand beside the stove. The warm scent of roast beef and carrots and potatoes floated through the air.

  Lottie ran to her and inhaled the scent of vanilla and gardenia as she folded into a big mom-sized hug. A full, beautiful fall arrangement of flowers rested on the counter to Lottie’s right: burning orange blooms surrounded by deep chocolate sprigs. That was her mother’s gift. She could, literally, create beauty from and work magic with nature—and flowers were her specialty. She made bouquets and floral arrangements for people all over Vivelle, and always brought home the extras to fill their apartment.

  Lottie’s mother’s magic glowed the soft, sweet purple of lavender.

  “How was cider?”

  “Good,” Lottie said, pulling away from the hug and seating herself on a chair at the counter. “I beat Dad in chase.”

  “I’m getting old,” her father said, holding his hand to his chest in fake affliction.

  “Well, you’d better bolster your strength,” her mother teased. “You’ve got an award to accept tomorrow and you need to look the part of honoree.”

  “They’re rewarding my brain,” said her father, “not my body, remember? And my brain is very ready to accept the award.”