Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children, #3)

But Sumi was a silent skeleton, wreathed in shadows and rainbows, and Rini was disappearing an inch at a time, fading away according to the rules of her reality. If they left now, they couldn’t save Rini. They could only leave her to be unmade, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but a memory.

(Would even that endure? If she had never been born, if she had never existed, would they remember her after she disappeared? Or would this whole madcap adventure be revised away, filed under things that never actually happened outside of a dream? What would they think had happened to Nadya, if Rini faded completely? Would they think she had found her door, gone home again, another success story for the other students to whisper about after curfew, hoping that their own doors would open now that someone else’s had? Somehow, that seemed like the worst possibility of all. Nadya should be remembered for what she’d done to help them, not for what people invented to fill the space where she wasn’t anymore.)

“No, thank you,” said Cora primly, and she spoke for all three of them, for Kade, standing stalwart and steady, for Christopher, shaking and pale.

He didn’t look well. Even Rini looked better, and she was being written out of existence.

“I didn’t think you would, but I had to offer,” said the Queen, leaning back in her throne. A chunk of her dress fell off and tumbled to the floor, where a butterscotch mouse with candy floss whiskers snatched it up and whisked it away. “I ask again: how is my old enemy here? What’s dead is dead.”

None of them said a word.

The Queen sighed. “Stubborn little children find that I can be a very cruel woman, when I want to. Did it have something to do with this?” She reached behind herself, pulling out Christopher’s bone flute. “It’s an odd little instrument. I blow and blow, but it doesn’t make a sound.”

The effect on Christopher was electric. He stood suddenly upright, vibrating, the color returning by drips to his cheeks, until they burned like he had a fever. “Give it to me,” he said, and his voice was an aching whisper that somehow carried all the same.

“Oh, is this yours?” asked the Queen. “It’s a funny color. What is it made of?”

“Bone.” He took a jerky step forward, knees knocking. “My bone. It’s mine, it’s made of me, give it back.”

“Bone?” The Queen looked at the flute again, this time with fascinated disgust. “Liar. There’s no way you could lose a bone this big and still be whole.”

“The Skeleton Girl gave me another bone to replace it and it’s mine you have to give it back you have to give it back.” Christopher’s voice broke into a howl on his final words, and he took off running, the rope still dangling from his neck, launching himself at the Queen of Cakes.

His hands were only a few feet from her throat when one of the knights stomped on the end of the rope, jerking him back ward. Christopher slammed into the floor, landing in a heap, and began to sob.

“Fascinating,” breathed the Queen. “What terrible worlds you must all come from, to think this sort of thing is normal, or should be allowed to continue. Don’t worry, children. You’re in Confection now. You’ll be safe and happy here, and as soon as that”—she indicated Rini—“finishes fading away, you’ll be able to stay forever.”

She snapped her fingers.

“Guards,” she said, sweetly. “Find them someplace nice to be, where I won’t have to hear them screaming. And leave the skeleton here. I want to play with it.”

The Queen of Cakes leaned back in her throne and smiled as her latest enemies were dragged away. What a lovely day this was shaping up to be.





8

THE TALLEST TOWER

“SOMEPLACE NICE,” IN THE castle of the Queen of Cakes, was a large, empty room with gingerbread walls and heaps of gummy fruit on the floor, presumably to serve as bedding for the prisoners. There had been no effort to chain the four of them up or keep them apart; the guards had simply dragged them up the stairs until they reached the top of what felt like the tallest tower in the world. The only window was almost too high for Cora to reach, and looking out of it revealed a rocky chocolate quarry, studded with the jagged edges of giant almonds. Oh, yes. They were stuck. Unless they could open the door, they weren’t going anywhere.

Rini was slumped against the wall, eyes closed, the slope of one shoulder gone to whatever sucking nothingness was stealing her away one fragment at a time. Alarmingly, she wasn’t the one in the worst condition. That dubious honor belonged to Christopher, who was curled into a ball next to the door, shaking uncontrollably.

“He needs his flute,” said Kade, laying the back of one hand against Christopher’s forehead and frowning. “He’s freezing.”

“Is it really made from one of his bones?” Cora dropped back to the flats of her feet and turned to face the pair.