Wayward Children 01 - Every Heart a Doorway Read online

  “What do you mean?” asked one of the few boys, a tall Latino kid who was spinning a long piece of wood carved to resemble an ulna between his fingers. Nancy felt an odd kinship when she looked at him. Perhaps he’d been to someplace like her Underworld, filled with shadows, secrets, and safety. Perhaps he would understand if she went to him and spoke of stillness and respect for the dead.

  But this was not the time. Jack met the question with a haughty sniff, and a too-calm, “I saw her body, like the rest of you. I know some of you have decided that I’m responsible for her death. I know further that those of you who believe my guilt will probably refuse to believe anything else. Draw on what you know of me. If I had decided to start killing my classmates, would I have left a body?”

  The boy with the bone raised an eyebrow. “She makes a good point,” he said.

  “Making a good point doesn’t mean she’s not a killer,” said Loriel, but the heat was gone; her accusations had been met with reality, and they didn’t have anyplace else to go. She crossed her arms and slouched back in her chair. “I’m keeping an eye on her.”

  “Good,” said Lundy. “We all need to be keeping our eyes on each other right now. We don’t know who hurt Sumi. Eleanor is working with the authorities, and we should know more soon, but in the meantime, we need to be watching out for one another. No one goes anywhere alone—yes, Miss Youngers?”

  Loriel lowered her hand as the attention of the group switched back to her. “What if one of us finds our door before the killer’s caught?” she asked. “I can’t take someone through with me just because we’re not supposed to go anywhere alone, and I am not missing the passage back over this. I’m not.”

  “I think we can all agree that if someone happens to find their door while we’re still staying together, the person whose door has been found will go, and the person who is left behind will find another buddy,” said Lundy, with deliberate precision. Nancy realized with a start that Lundy didn’t think any of them were going to find their doors. Not soon; maybe not ever. Lundy had given up on them. It was clear by her tone and by the way she chose her words. And maybe that made sense. Lundy’s doors were closed, no matter where things went from here. Lundy needed to adapt to the idea that this was the world where she was going to die.

  “Try for groups of three,” said the boy with the bone. “If you can’t manage that, try not to find your door.”

  Some of the students laughed. Others looked pained. Loriel was among the latter.

  “Tell us about your door, Miss Youngers,” urged Lundy.

  “I almost didn’t see it,” said Loriel. Her voice turned distant. “It was so small. This perfect little door, carved into the lintel below the porch light. Like a door for moths. I just wanted to see what it was, that was all, so I got up really close, and I knocked with the tip of my pinkie finger. The world went all twisty and strange, and then I was standing in the hall on the other side of the door, looking back on this impossibly huge porch. I didn’t go through. It pulled me. That was how bad the Webworld wanted me.”

  Loriel’s story was grand and sprawling, a majestic, epic tale of spider princesses and tiny dynasties. Her eyes had always been keen, but after spending a year in service to the smallest, they had sharpened so much that she had to wear lenses made of carnival glass to keep the world from being so magnified that it was painful to behold. She had fought and she had triumphed, she had loved and she had lost, until finally the Queen of Dust had asked if she would become a princess of the land and stay forever.

  “I said I wanted nothing more, but that I had to go home and tell my parents before I could accept,” said Loriel, sniffling. The tears had started to fall somewhere around the death of her beloved Wasp Prince, and seemed set to continue for the foreseeable future. “She told me it would be hard to find the door again. That I would have to look harder than I had ever looked in my life. I said I could do it. That was almost two years ago. I’ve looked everywhere, but I haven’t seen my door.”

  “Some doors open only once,” said Lundy. There was a murmur of agreement from the room. Nancy frowned and sank deeper into her seat. It seemed cruel to dredge up everyone’s pasts like this, pin them quivering to the floor, and then say things like that. Loriel surely knew by now that she probably wasn’t going back through her tiny door to her even tinier world. She was smart enough to have figured it out for herself. What was the point in saying it?

  If this was the school for those who wanted to come to peace with their voyages and remember them fondly, she would have hated to see the other campus.

  “She said I could come back,” said Loriel. “She promised me. Queens keep their promises. I just have to look more closely. Once I find the door, I’m gone.”

  “And your parents? Are they prepared for this inevitable disappearance?”

  Loriel snorted. “I told them where I’d been—a year for me, twelve days for them—and they said I’d clearly been through some trauma and couldn’t be trusted. They sent me here so I’d stop being crazy. But there’s nothing wrong with me. I went on a journey. That’s all.”

  “A journey to a documented world, even,” said Eleanor. She was standing in the doorway, new lines of exhaustion graven in the soft skin around her mouth and eyes. She looked like she had aged a decade in a day. “There have been five children pulled into the Webworld since I began seeking you all out. Two of them found their way back again after returning home. So you see, there is hope. For Loriel, and for all of us. Our doors are hidden, but by looking closely enough, we can find them.”

  “Eleanor.” Lundy stood. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

  “I’ve had rest enough to last a lifetime, and only a lifetime for the rest of what’s to be done,” said Eleanor. She moved away from the door. Several students rose to help her to an open chair. She smiled, patting at their cheeks. “Good children, all of you—yes, even you, Lundy. You’re all children to me, and I your teacher, the only one who refuses to lie to you. So listen to me now, because it sounds like you’re doing a fine job of confusing and upsetting yourselves.

  “You will not all find your doors again. Some doors really do appear only once, the consequence of some strange convergence that we can’t predict or re-create. They’re drawn by need and by sympathy. Not the emotion—the resonance of one thing to another. There’s a reason you were all pulled into worlds that suited you so well. Imagine, for a moment, if you’d fallen into the world described by your neighbor instead.”

  Nancy glanced at Jack and Jill, uneasily imagining what her life would have been like if she’d found their door instead of her own. The moors didn’t seem to care about stillness, only obedience and blood. Neither of those things were strong suits of hers. All around her, other students exchanged equally uncomfortable glances, making their own connections and finding them just as unpleasant as she did.

  “Sumi had Nonsense in her heart, and so a door opened that would take her to a world where she could wear it proudly, not hide it away. That was her real story. Finding a place where she could be free. That’s your story, too, every one of you.” Eleanor tipped her chin up. Her eyes were clear. “You found freedom, if only for a moment, and when you lost it, you came here, hoping it could be found again. I hope the same, for each of you. I want to make excuses to your parents when you disappear, to tell them that runaways will always run again if they have half the chance. I want to see the back of you more than I want almost anything in this world.”

  What she wanted most didn’t need to be spoken, for they shared her hunger, her brutal, unforgiving desire: what she wanted most was a door, and the things that waited on its other side. But unlike the rest of them, she knew where her door was. It was simply closed to her for the time being, until she could find her way back to childhood.

  The boy with the wooden bone put his hand up. “Eleanor?”

  “Yes, Christopher?”

  “Why did your door stay, while all ours disappeared?” He bit his lip before a
dding, “It doesn’t seem fair for it to work like that. We should have been able to go back.”

  “Stable doors like Miss West’s are less common than the temporary kind,” said Lundy, back on familiar ground. “Most children who go through them don’t come back, either on their first trip or after making a short return to their original world. So while we have records of several, the chances of finding a stable door that resonates with the story you need are slim.”

  “What about, like, Narnia?” asked Christopher. “Those kids went through all sorts of different doors, and they always wound up back with the big talking lion.”

  “That’s because Narnia was a Christian allegory pretending to be a fantasy series, you asshole,” said one of the other boys. “C. S. Lewis never went through any doors. He didn’t know how it worked. He wanted to tell a story, and he’d probably heard about kids like us, and he made shit up. That’s what all those authors did. They made shit up, and people made them famous. We tell the truth, and our parents throw us into this glorified loony bin.”

  “We don’t use terms like that here,” said Eleanor. There was steel in her tone. “This is not an asylum, and you are not mad—and so what if you were? This world is unforgiving and cruel to those it judges as even the slightest bit outside the norm. If anyone should be kind, understanding, accepting, loving to their fellow outcasts, it’s you. All of you. You are the guardians of the secrets of the universe, beloved of worlds that most will never dream of, much less see…can’t you see where you owe it to yourselves to be kind? To care for one another? No one outside this room will ever understand what you’ve been through the way the people around you right now understand. This is not your home. I know that better than most. But this is your way station and your sanctuary, and you will treat those around you with respect.”

  Both boys wilted under her glare. Christopher looked down. The other boy mumbled, “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. It’s late, and we’re all tired.” Eleanor stood. “Get some sleep, all of you. I know it won’t be easy. Nancy, can you—”

  “I already said I’d room with her tonight,” said Kade. A wave of relief washed over Nancy. She’d been afraid she would have to go to another room, and while she hadn’t been there long, she was already attached to the familiarity of her own bed.

  Eleanor looked at Kade thoughtfully. “Are you sure? I was going to suggest she room with someone on her hall, and that you lock your door tonight. This is a great imposition.”

  “No, it’s fine. I volunteered.” Kade flashed a quick smile. “I like Nancy, and she was Sumi’s friend. I figure a little stability will do her good, and that makes any inconvenience to me completely beside the point. I want to help. This is my home.” He looked slowly around the room. “My forever home. I turned eighteen last month, my parents don’t want me, and the Prism wouldn’t have me back even if I wanted to go. So it’s important to me that we take care of this place, because it’s been taking care of all of us since the day we got here.”

  “Go to bed, my darlings,” said Eleanor. “This will all look better in the morning.”

  * * *

  THE BODY LAY in the front yard, covered in a thin sheen of dew, face turned up toward the uncaring sky. The dead were capable of sight, as Nancy would have been quick to point out had she been asked, but this body saw nothing, for it had no eyes, only black and blood-rimmed holes where eyes had once been. Its hands were folded neatly on its chest, glasses clutched in cooling fingers. Loriel Youngers would never find her door (which had been waiting for her all this time, tucked into a corner of her bedroom at home, half an inch high and held in place by the most complicated magics the Queen of Dust, her adopted mother, could conceive; it would linger another six months before the spells were released and the Queen took to her chambers for a year of mourning). She would never have another grand adventure or save another world. Her part in the story was over.

  She lay there, unmoving, as the sun rose and the stars winked out. A crow landed on the grass near her leg, watching her warily. When she still didn’t move, it hopped on her knee, waiting for the trap to spring. When she still didn’t move, it launched itself into the air and flew the few short feet to her head, where it promptly buried its beak in the bloody hole that had been her left eye.

  Angela—she of the dissected guinea pig, whose enchanted sneakers had once allowed her to run on rainbows—was just stepping out onto the porch, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and intending to scold her roommate for sneaking out when they were supposed to stay together. Sometimes Loriel couldn’t keep her eyes closed long enough to fall asleep, and then she had a tendency to roam the grounds, looking for her missing door. It wasn’t unusual to find her dozing on the lawn. At first, Angela’s mind refused to register Loriel’s motionless body as anything unusual.

  Then the crow pulled its bloody beak out of her eye socket and cawed at Angela, angrily protesting the interruption of its breakfast.

  Angela’s scream sent the crow flapping off into the morning sky. It didn’t wake Loriel.

  6

  THE BODIES WE HAVE BURIED

  ALL THE STUDENTS had been gathered in the dining hall, most dragged from their beds by either Angela’s shrieks or the staff pounding on their doors. Nancy had been jerked awake by Kade shaking her shoulder, leaning so close that she could see the delicate filigree pattern of lines in his irises. She had jerked away, blushing and clutching the sheets around herself. Kade had only laughed, turning his back like a gentleman while she got up and put her clothes on.

  Now, sitting at a table with a plate of scrambled eggs getting cold in front of her, Nancy found herself clinging to the memory of his laughter. She had the feeling that no one was going to be laughing here for quite some time. Maybe not ever again.

  “Loriel Youngers was found dead this morning on the front lawn,” said Lundy, standing ramrod straight in front of them, her hands folded in front of her. She looked like a porcelain doll on the verge of shattering. “I was against telling you anything more than that. I don’t feel that such morbid things are appropriate for the ears of young people. But this is Miss West’s school, and she felt your knowing what had happened might make you take her request that you stay together more seriously. Miss Youngers was found without her eyes. They had been…removed. We thought at first that it might have been predation by local wildlife, but a closer study of the body showed that they had been removed with a sharp object.”

  No one asked what kind of sharp object. Not even Jack, although Nancy could see that she was practically vibrating from keeping her questions contained. Jill, in contrast, seemed perfectly serene, and was one of the few students who was actually eating. Spending a few years in a horror movie must have done a great deal to harden her sensibilities.

  “Unlike Sumi, Loriel’s parents were still involved with her care, and we have not yet contacted the authorities.” There was a catch in Lundy’s voice. “Eleanor is in her chambers, deciding what to do. Please, finish your breakfasts and then return to your rooms. Do not go anywhere alone, not even the restrooms. The school is not safe.” She turned, not waiting for them to respond to her, and walked quickly to the exit.

  When she was gone, Jack finally frowned and let one of her questions out. “Eleanor sat there last night and said she was looking forward to lying to our parents about what happened to us,” she said. “Why can’t she just make Loriel disappear, and tell that lie?”

  “Not everyone is as comfortable as you are with the idea of getting rid of bodies,” said Angela through her tears. She had been crying since finding Loriel’s body. It didn’t look like she was ever intending to stop.

  “It’s not a bad question,” said Christopher. He touched his bone nervously as he spoke. For the first time, Nancy wondered if it might be real, instead of wood as she had first assumed. “Miss West already has a system in place for making it look like we ran away when we really went home. Why shouldn’t she lie to Loriel’s family? They lost her eit
her way. At least a lie means we can all stay here, instead of going back.”

  “Going back” had two distinct meanings at the school, depending on how it was said. It was the best thing in the world. It was also the worst thing that could happen to anybody. It was returning to a place that understood you so well that it had reached across realities to find you, claiming you as its own and only; it was being sent to a family that wanted to love you, wanted to keep you safe and sound, but didn’t know you well enough to do anything but hurt you. The duality of the phrase was like the duality of the doors: they changed lives, and they destroyed them, all with the same, simple invitation. Come through, and see.

  “I don’t want to stay in a place where we just make bodies go away,” said Angela. “That isn’t why I came here.”

  “Get off your high horse,” snapped Jack. “Bodies are a consequence of life. Or do you truly mean for us to believe that when you were running along rainbows, you never saw anyone fall? Someone plummets out of the sky, they’re not going to get up and walk away from it. They’re going to die. And unless they fell into a place like the Moors, they’re going to stay dead. Someone disposed of those bodies. One slip, and they’d have been disposing of yours.”

  Angela stared at Jack, eyes wide and horrified. “I never thought about it,” she said. “I saw…I saw people fall. The rainbows were slippery. Even with the right shoes, you could fall through if you slowed down too much.”

  “Someone disposed of those bodies,” said Jack. “Ashes to ashes, right? If we call Loriel’s parents, if we tell them what happened, that’s it, we’re done. Anyone who’s under eighteen gets taken home by their loving parents. Half of you will be on antipsychotic drugs you don’t need before the end of the year, but hey, at least you’ll have someone to remind you to eat while you’re busy contemplating the walls. The rest of us will be out on the streets. No high school degrees, no way of coping with this world, which doesn’t want us back.”