Wayward Children 01 - Every Heart a Doorway Read online

  “And that, children, is why sometimes we don’t let the Addams twins out into the general population,” said a voice. Nancy looked up. Kade, who was seated on one of the tree’s higher branches, waved sardonically down at her. “Hello, Nancy out of Wonderland. If you were looking for a private place to cry, you chose poorly.”

  “I didn’t think anyone would be out here,” she said.

  “Because back at home, the other kids were more likely to hide in their rooms than they were to go running for the outdoors, right?” Kade closed his book. “The trouble is, you’re at a school for people who never learned how to make the logical choice. So we go running for the tallest trees and the deepest holes whenever we want to be alone, and since there’s a limited number of those, we wind up spending a lot of time together. I take it from the crying that your orientation didn’t go well. Let me guess. Lundy told you about lightning striking twice.”

  Nancy nodded. She didn’t speak. She no longer trusted her voice.

  “She has a point, if your world kicked you out.”

  “It didn’t kick me out,” protested Nancy. She could still speak, after all, when she really needed to. “I was sent back to learn something, that’s all. I’m going back.”

  Kade looked at her sympathetically and didn’t contradict her. “Prism is never taking me back,” he said instead. “That’s not a nonstarter, that’s a never-gonna-happen. I violated their rules when I wasn’t what they wanted me to be, and the people who run that particular circus are very picky about rules. But Eleanor went back a bunch of times. Her door’s still open.”

  “How…I mean, why…” Nancy shook her head. “Why did she stop? If her door is still open, why is she here, with us, and not there, where she belongs?”

  Kade swung his legs around so they were braced on the same side of the branch. Then he dropped down from the tree, landing easily in front of Nancy. He straightened, saying, “This was a long time ago, and her parents were still alive. She thought she could have it all, go back and forth, spend as much time as possible in her real home without breaking her father’s heart. But she forgot that adults don’t thrive in Nonsense, even when they’re raised to it. Every time she came back here, she got a little older. Until one day she went back there, and it nearly broke her. Can you imagine what that must have been like? It would be like opening the door that was supposed to take you home and discovering you couldn’t breathe the air anymore.”

  “That sounds horrible,” said Nancy.

  “I guess it was.” Kade sank down to sit, cross-legged, across from her. “Of course, she’d already spent enough time in Nonsense for it to have changed her. It slowed her aging—that’s probably why she was able to keep going for as long as she did. Jack checked the record books the last time we had an excursion to town, and she found out Eleanor was almost a hundred. I always figured she was in her sixties. I asked her about it, and you know what she told me?”

  “What?” asked Nancy, fascinated and horrified at the same time. Had the Underworld changed more than just her hair? Was she going to stay the same, immortal and unchanging, while everything around her withered and died?

  “She said she’s just waiting to get senile, like her mother and father did, because once her mind slips enough, she’ll be able to tolerate the Nonsense again. She’s going to run this school until she forgets why she isn’t going back, and then, when she does go back, she’ll be able to stay.” He shook his head. “I can’t decide if it’s genius or madness.”

  “Maybe it’s a little bit of both,” said Nancy. “I’d do anything to go home.”

  “Most of the students here would,” said Kade bitterly.

  Nancy hesitated before she said, “Lundy said there was a sister school for people who didn’t want to go back. People who wanted to forget. Why are you enrolled here, instead of there? You might be happier.”

  “But you see, I don’t want to forget,” said Kade. “I’m the loophole kid. I want to remember Prism more than anything. The way the air tasted, and the way the music sounded. Everyone played these funky pipes there, even little kids. Lessons started when you were, like, two, and it was another way of communicating. You could have whole conversations without putting down your pipes. I grew up there, even if I wound up getting tossed out and forced to do it all over again. I figured out who I was there. I kissed a girl with hair the color of cabbages and eyes the color of moth-wings, and she kissed me back, and it was wonderful. Just because I wouldn’t go back if you paid me, that doesn’t mean I want to forget a second of what happened to me. I wouldn’t be who I am if I hadn’t gone to Prism.”

  “Oh,” said Nancy. It made sense, of course, it was just an angle she hadn’t considered. She shook her head. “This is all so much more complicated than I ever expected it to be.”

  “Tell me about it, princess.” Kade stood, offering her his hand. “Come on. I’ll walk you back to school.”

  Nancy hesitated before reaching up and taking the offered hand, letting Kade pull her to her feet. “All right,” she said.

  “You’re pretty when you smile,” said Kade as he led her out of the trees, back toward the main building. Nancy couldn’t think of anything to say in response to that, and so she didn’t say anything at all.

  * * *

  CORE CLASSES WERE SURPRISINGLY dull, taught as they were by an assortment of adults who drove in from the town, Lundy, and Miss Eleanor herself. Nancy got the distinct feeling that someone had a chart showing exactly what was required by the state and that they were all receiving the educational equivalent of a balanced meal.

  The electives were slightly better, including music, art, and something called “A Traveler’s History of the Great Compass,” which Nancy guessed had something to do with the various portal worlds and their relations to one another. After hesitantly considering her options, she had signed up. Maybe something in the syllabus would tell her more about where her Underworld fell.

  After reading the introductory chapters of her home-printed textbook, she was still confused. The most common directions were Nonsense, usually paired with Virtue, and Logic, usually paired with Wicked. Sumi’s madhouse of a world was high Nonsense. Kade’s Prism was high Logic. With those as her touchstones, Nancy had decided that her Underworld was likely to have been Logic; it had consistent rules and expected them to be followed. But she couldn’t see why it should really be considered Wicked just because it was ruled by the Lord of the Dead. Virtue seemed more likely. Her first actual class was scheduled for two days’ time. It was too long to wait. It was no time at all.

  By the end of her first day, she was exhausted, and her head felt like it had been stuffed well beyond any reasonable capacity, spinning with both mundane things like math and history, and with the ever-increasing vocabulary needed to talk to her fellow students. One, a shy girl with brown braids and thick glasses, had confessed that her world was at the nexus of two minor compass directions, being high Rhyme and high Linearity. Nancy hadn’t known what to say to that, and so she hadn’t said anything at all. Increasingly, that felt like the safest option she had.

  Sumi was sitting on her bed, braiding bits of bright ribbon into her hair, when Nancy slipped into the room. “Tired as a titmouse at a bacchanal, little ghostie?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what you mean, so I’m going to assume you want to be taken at face value,” said Nancy. “Yes. I am very tired. I’m going to bed.”

  “Ely-Eleanor thought you might be tired,” said Sumi. “New girls always are. She said you can skip group tonight, but you can’t make a habit of it. Words are an important part of the healing process. Words, words, words.” She wrinkled her nose. “She asked me to remember so many of them, and all in the order she gave, and all for you. You’re not Nonsense at all, are you, ghostie? You wouldn’t want so many words if you were.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Nancy. “I never said I was from…a place like you went to visit.”

  “Assumptions will be the death of a
ll, and you’re better than most of the roommates she’s tried to give me; I’ll keep you,” said Sumi wearily. She stood, walking toward the door. “Sleep well, ghostie. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Wait!” Nancy hadn’t intended to speak; the word had simply escaped her lips, like a runaway calf. The thought horrified her. Her stillness was eroding, and if she stayed in this dreadful, motile world too long, she would never be able to get it back again.

  Sumi turned to face her, cocking her head. “What do you want now?”

  “I just wanted to know—I mean, I was just wondering—how old are you?”

  “Ah.” Sumi turned again, finishing her walk toward the door. Then, facing into the hall, she said, “Older than I look, younger than I ought to be. My skin is a riddle not to be solved, and even letting go of everything I love won’t offer me the answer. My window is closing, if that’s what you’re asking. Every day I wake up a little more linear, a little less lost, and one day I’ll be one of the women who says ‘I had the most charming dream,’ and I’ll mean it. Old enough to know what I’m losing in the process of being found. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “No,” said Nancy.

  “Too bad,” said Sumi, and left the room. She closed the door behind herself.

  Nancy undressed alone, letting her clothes fall to the floor, until she stood naked in front of the room’s single silver mirror. The electric light was harsh against her skin. She flipped the switch, and smiled to see her reflection transmuted into the purest marble, becoming unyielding, unbending stone. She stood there, frozen, for almost an hour before she finally felt like she could sleep, and slid, still naked, between her sheets.

  She woke to a room full of sunlight and the sound of screaming.

  Screams had not been not uncommon in the Halls of the Dead. There was an art to decoding their meaning: screams of pleasure, screams of pain, screams of sheer boredom in the face of an uncaring eternity. These were screams of panic and fear. Nancy rolled out of her bed in an instant, grabbing her nightgown from where it lay discarded at the foot of the bed and yanking it on over her head. She didn’t feel like running into potential danger while completely exposed. She didn’t feel like running anywhere, but the screams were still happening, and it seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

  Sumi’s bed was empty. The thought that Sumi could be the screamer crossed Nancy’s mind as she ran, but was quickly dismissed. Sumi was not a screamer. Sumi was a reason for other people to scream.

  Half a dozen girls were clustered in the hallway, forming an unbreakable wall of flannel and silk. Nancy pushed her way into their midst and stopped, freezing in place. It was a stillness so absolute, so profound, that she would have been proud of herself under any other circumstances. As it was, this felt less like proper stillness and more like the freeze of a rabbit when faced with the promise of a snake.

  Sumi was the cause of the screaming: that much was clear. She was slumped limply against the base of the wall, eyes closed. She wasn’t breathing, and her hands—her clever, never-still hands—were gone, severed at the wrists. She would never tie another knot or weave another cat’s cradle out of yarn. Someone had stolen that from her. Someone had stolen everything from her.

  “Oh,” whispered Nancy, and the sound was like a stone dropped into a still pool: small, but creating ripples that touched everything in their path. One of the girls whirled and ran, shouting for Miss Eleanor. Another began to sob, pressing her back to the wall and sinking down to the floor until she looked like a cruel parody of Sumi. Nancy thought about telling her to get up and decided against it. What did she know of grief in the face of death? All the dead people she’d ever met had been perfectly pleasant and not overly inconvenienced by the fact that they no longer had material bodies. Maybe Sumi would find her way to the Underworld and be able to tell the Lord of the Dead that Nancy was still trying to be sure, so that she could come back. He would be pleased, Nancy was sure, to hear that she was trying.

  Belatedly, Nancy realized that it might look suspicious, her roommate dying when she had just arrived from the Underworld—maybe they would assume she preferred the dead to the living, or that Eleanor’s comments about them killing each other had been warnings—but since she hadn’t touched Sumi, she decided not to worry about it. There were better things to worry about, like Eleanor, now hurrying along the hall, flanked by the girl who’d run to fetch her on one side and by Lundy on the other. Lundy was wearing a grandmotherly flannel nightgown, with curlers in her hair. It should have looked ridiculous. Somehow, it just looked sad.

  The girls parted to let Eleanor through. She stopped a few feet from Sumi, pressing one hand over her mouth, her eyes filling with tears. “Oh, my poor girl,” she murmured, kneeling to press her fingers to the side of Sumi’s neck. It was just a formality: she had clearly been dead for quite some time. “Who did this to you? Who could have done this to you?”

  Nancy was somehow unsurprised when several of the girls turned to look at her. She was new; she had been touched by the dead. She didn’t protest her innocence. She just held up her hands, showing them the pale, unblemished skin. There was no way she could have washed the blood away so completely in one of their shared bathrooms, not without being seen. Even in the middle of the night, the amount of scrubbing required to get the blood from under her fingernails would have attracted attention, and she would have been undone.

  “Leave poor Nancy alone; she didn’t do this,” said Eleanor. She wiped her eyes before offering her arm to Lundy, who helped her up. “No daughter of the Underworld would kill someone who hadn’t earned their place in those hallowed halls, isn’t that right, Nancy? She might be a murderess someday, but not on the basis of two days’ acquaintance.” Her tone was leaden with sorrow but perfectly matter-of-fact at the same time, as if the idea that Nancy might someday start mowing her friends down like wheat was of no real concern.

  In the here and now, Nancy supposed that it wasn’t. She watched dully as Lundy produced a sheet from somewhere—linen closets, there had to be linen closets in a house this large—and covered Sumi’s body. The blood from Sumi’s stumps soaked through the fabric almost instantly, but it was still a little bit better than looking at the motionless girl with the ribbons in her hair.

  “What happened?”

  Nancy glanced to the side. Jack had appeared next to her, the collar of her shirt open and her bow tie hanging untied on the left. She looked unfinished. “If you don’t know what happened, why are you here?” It occurred to Nancy that she didn’t know where Jack’s room was, and she amended, “Unless this is your hall.”

  “No, Jill and I sleep in the basement. It’s more comfortable for us, all things considered.” She adjusted her glasses, squinting at the red blotches on the sheet. “That’s blood. Who’s under the sheet?”

  The girl with the brown braids from the Rhyme and Linearity world turned to glare at Jack. There was pure hatred in her gaze, enough that Nancy took an involuntary step backward. “Like you don’t know, you murderer,” she spat. “You did this, didn’t you? This is just like what happened to Angela’s guinea pig. You can’t keep your hands or your scalpels to yourself.”

  “I told you, it was a cultural mix-up,” said Jack. “The guinea pig was in a common area, and I thought it was supposed to be for anyone who wanted it.”

  “It was a pet,” snapped the girl.

  Jack shrugged helplessly. “I offered to put it back together. Angela declined.”

  “New girl.” The voice was Kade’s. Nancy looked over to see him nodding toward her room. “Why don’t you take that Addams and show her your room? I’ll try to intercept the other one before she can show up and start trouble.”

  “Anything to avoid another angry mob with torches,” said Jack, seizing Nancy’s hand. “Show me your room.”

  It sounded like a command rather than a request. Nancy didn’t argue. Under the circumstances, getting Jack out of sight and hence hopefully out of mind seemed mu
ch more important than forcing the other girl to ask nicely. She turned and hauled Jack to her door, still ajar after her hurried exit, and then inside.

  Jack let go of Nancy’s hand as soon as they were inside, producing a handkerchief from her pocket and wiping her fingers. Her cheeks reddened when she saw Nancy’s startled look. “Difficult as it may be to believe, none of us escaped our travels unscathed, not even me,” she said. “I am perhaps a bit too aware of the natural world and its many wonders. A lot of those wonders would like nothing more than to melt the skin off your body. All those people in their creepy labs hooking dead bodies up to funky wires? There’s a reason they usually wear gloves.”

  “I don’t really understand what the world you traveled to was like,” said Nancy. “Sumi’s world was all about candy and not making any sense at all, and Kade went to a war or something, but the world you describe and the world Jill describes barely seem to match up.”

  “That’s because the worlds we experienced barely seemed to match up, despite being the same place,” said Jack. “Our parents were…let’s go with ‘overbearing.’ The sort who always wanted to put things in boxes. I think they hated us being identical twins more than we did.”

  “But your names—”

  Jack shrugged broadly, tucking the handkerchief back into her pocket. “They weren’t so upset that they were willing to pass up the chance to make our lives a living hell. Parents are special that way. For some reason, they’d expected fraternal twins, maybe even that holy grail of the instant nuclear family, a boy and a girl. Instead, they got us. Ever watch a pair of perfectionists try to decide which of their identical children is the ‘smart one’ versus the ‘pretty one’? It would have been funny, if our lives hadn’t been the prize they were trying to win.”

  Nancy frowned. “You look just like your sister. How could they think she was the pretty one instead of seeing that you were both lovely?”