Starling House

Elizabeth finds Opal again the next day and lures her into a car with two men. Elizabeth tells Opal that her company is researching several anomalous events in Eden. She shows Opal several newspaper clippings describing incidents of deadly occurrences. According to Elizabeth, the rate of such incidents in Eden is much higher than the national average. Opal reads the article featuring her mother’s death and remembers the night when her mother drove into the Mud River and drowned: a fate that Opal herself also nearly suffered, for she was also in the car at the time. Elizabeth continues to vaguely threaten her, forcing her to tell all that she knows about Starling House and Arthur.

The narrative switches to the third person. Arthur knows of Elizabeth Baine and is well aware that people have been trying to get access to Starling House for generations. Opal tells Arthur everything that Elizabeth has asked but falsely claims that she told Elizabeth nothing. Arthur knows that Opal is lying, but he gives his permission for Opal to tell Elizabeth whatever she wants to know.

Rather than cleaning that day, Opal wanders the house, stealing a letter that is addressed to Arthur. At the end of the day, she finds Arthur outside, standing next to his father’s old pickup truck. He offers to loan the truck to Opal after learning that she walks to work every day. He also gives her his phone number. That night, Opal reads the letter she stole. Written by Arthur’s mother, the letter cryptically alludes to the Gravely boys and asserts that Arthur must be a Warden of the house. Opal is confused but gains the impression that Arthur is stuck in Eden just like she is. She contemplates sending a picture of the letter to Elizabeth but quickly deletes the picture before she can give in to the impulse. The next morning, to Arthur’s consternation, Opal brings a stray cat from the motel to Starling House. Opal feels like Arthur is becoming more human to her, but she is still wary of him.

In just a few days, Arthur takes a liking to what Opal calls “the hellcat” and has named it Baast. Opal finds herself telling Arthur about the motel and Jasper, but Arthur is still closed off to her. Instead of heading to the motel after work, Opal goes to pick up Jasper at a friend’s house. The friend’s mother talks with Opal about the Starlings. Upon noticing that Opal is driving the Starlings’ old truck, she warns her against going to the house, asserting that it is a hotbed for cult-like activities. At the motel, Opal sees an email meant for Jasper, thanking him for his application to Gravely Power. Having just signed the forms to send him to Stonewood Academy and fearing for his future, Opal deletes the email and blocks the contact. Meanwhile, Elizabeth starts requesting pictures of Starling House, and Opal is forced to comply.

Throughout the spring, Opal nearly finishes cleaning the house. She also evades Elizabeth’s questions about a basement, which Opal knows is concealed beneath a small door in the kitchen. Arthur’s bedroom is one of the last rooms that Opal still needs to clean, so she sneaks in one day. The bedroom walls are covered with drawings of beasts that she initially assumes are from The Underland, but she soon realizes that they are Arthur’s drawings of the world as seen from Starling House. She also notices a drawing of herself and rushes out of the room. The house has many twists and turns, as if the rooms themselves often change places, and Opal gets lost and ends up outside, where she sees Arthur beside the shared grave of his parents. When he spots her, Arthur punches a hole through one of the house’s windows, leaving Opal confused and concerned. She messages Elizabeth and claims that she wasn’t able to access the cellar by the woman’s deadline. She tries to forget that there will be consequences for her lack of surveillance on Elizabeth’s behalf.

One day, Elizabeth comes to see Jasper at his school and vaguely threatens him. Later, Opal is surprised to find Jasper on the road to Starling House. He tells her about Elizabeth, and although he already knows that she was secretly working at the house, he now tries to warn Opal about the house just as everyone else has done. Opel realizes that he is genuinely afraid for her.

That night, Opal drives back to the house. Arthur is able to sense the moment when the gates are open. He also finds the door to the basement open and heads downstairs to attack the beast that he assumes is there. Instead, he finds Opal and all the pictures that she has taken of Starling House. While they argue and Opal asks questions that Arthur cannot answer, he hears scratching on the other side of a padlocked door in the basement and tells Opal to run. 

At the motel, Opal finds a box of archival items that Charlotte has given her. Amongst the Gravely documents, Opal finds a picture of her mother with the name Delilah Jewell Gravely written on it. (Opal’s mother went by Jewell and told Opal that her last name was whatever she wanted it to be.) Finding her copy of The Underland, which Opal hid after her mother’s death, she now finds the initials DJG inside the cover and realizes that she herself is a Gravely. She begins to reread The Underland, which tells the story of a girl named Nora Lee who knows that she is going to be eaten by a fox. In the story, a hare tells Nora Lee to search for a place called the Underland. (The story bears a passing resemblance to the story of Nathaniel Boone, who found a crack in the earth at the bottom of the Gravely brothers’ mines.) When Nora Lee reaches the Underland, she tells the beasts there about the fox and unlocks the door that keeps them in the Underland, thereby allowing them to reach the surface. When she reaches the surface herself, she finds the fox dead. She repeats this process every time a fox finds her. Opal finds the dedication of the book especially striking, for it cryptically reads, “To every child who needs a way into Underland. Befriend the Beasts, children, and follow them down” (154).