Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children, #3)

“We have to hurry,” she said.

“You have to pay,” said a new voice.

All of them turned as one. Only Nancy smiled when she saw the man standing in the doorway. He was tall and thin, with skin the color of volcanic ash and hair the color of bone. Like his wife, he wore a flowing garment, almost Grecian in design, which drew the eye to the length of his limbs and the broadness of his shoulders.

“Nothing here is free,” he said. “Eat nothing, drink nothing; visitors are told that upon arrival. What makes you think we would give our treasures away, if we will not share our water?” His voice was deep, low, and inevitable, like the death of stars.

“What do you need us to pay, sir?” asked Kade warily.

The Lord of the Dead looked at him with pale and merciless eyes. “One of you will have to stay behind.”





6

WE PAY WHAT WE PAY; THE WORLD GOES ON

“NO,” SAID KADE, without hesitation. “We’re not for sale.”

“This isn’t a sale,” said the Lord of the Dead. “This is an exchange. You want to take one of my residents on a fool’s errand. You want to promise her that she can be alive again, when there’s no possible way. I would forbid you entirely if I thought you would listen, but you’re not the first among the living to seek to play Orpheus and lure what’s mine away. Putting a price on the process is the only way to keep you people from robbing me blind.”

“Sir,” said Nancy, and curtseyed, deep and low. She froze when she was folded fully forward, becoming a statue again.

The Lord of the Dead smiled. He looked strangely human, when he smiled. “My Nancy,” he said, and there was no doubting the fondness in his tone. “These are your friends?”

“From school,” she said, rising. “This is Kade.”

“Ah. The fabled boy.” He turned to Kade. “Nancy speaks highly of you.”

“Highly enough for you to give us a freebie?”

“Alas.”

“Wait.” Nadya took a step forward, nervous, glancing around at the others. Her hair, dry after so long away from either bathtub or turtle pond, was a fluffy brown cloud around her head. “Mr. Lord of the Dead, do you have turtles here? Not ghost turtles, I mean. Real turtles, the kind that swim in ponds and do turtle stuff.”

“There are turtles in the River of Forgotten Souls,” said the Lord of the Dead, looking faintly baffled.

“Okay,” said Nadya. “Okay, okay. Because your, um, your wife, she said she knew Belyyreka. That’s where my doorway led. To a Drowned World, where I was a Drowned Girl. I still am. It’s too dry where I come from. The air doesn’t forgive.”

“I know the place,” said the Lord of the Dead solemnly.

“Doors can open anywhere if the worlds are close enough together, can’t they? Rini”—she gestured toward the sniffling girl with the candy corn eyes—“said a boy from the world she comes from found his door and went away, to someplace where he was better suited. If I stayed here, and Belyyreka wanted me back, could my door still find me?”

“Nadya, no,” said Cora.

“Yes,” said the Lord of the Dead. “And for that, for Belyyreka, I would let you go. For that, I would stand aside and release all claim to you.”

Nadya looked around at the others. “I’ve been at the school for five years. I’ll be seventeen in a month. A year after that and then I graduate, and my family starts expecting me to go somewhere, to make something of my life. I can’t live on a countdown. I want to go home, and that means waiting until Belyyreka calls me back. I’m not a political exile like Sumi. I’m not a cultural exile like Kade, either. I just got caught in the wrong current. I want to go home. I can wait here just as well as I can wait on campus.”

“Nadya, no,” said Cora, with more desperation. “You can’t leave me. You’re the only real friend I’ve got.”

Nadya’s smile was uneven and quick. “See, that’s the best reason for me to stay here. You need to make more friends, Cora. I can’t be the only estuary in your waterway.”

“Aunt Eleanor’s going to kill me,” muttered Kade.

“Not when you tell her it was my choice, and that this place is closer to Belyyreka than the school ever was,” said Nadya, dismissing his concerns with an airy wave of her hand. She turned to the Lord of the Dead. “If you’ll let my friends go, and you’ll let me take my door home when it appears, I’ll stay with you. I’ll haunt your rivers and terrorize your turtles and I’ll never be still, but you don’t want someone still, or you wouldn’t have asked for any of us. You just want someone to stay so you feel like you’re in charge of everything.”

“Guilty as charged,” said the Lord of the Dead, with a very faint smile. “You will stay?”

“I’ll stay,” said Nadya.

Kade closed his eyes, looking pained.

“The compact is sealed.” The Lord of the Dead turned to the group. “Your payment is given; the shade may go with you. Nancy?”

“Yes, milord?”

“Show your friend to the river.”