Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children, #3)

Rini beamed. “Why thank you.”

Sumi’s rainbow-dressed skeleton was still plodding faithfully along, neither speeding up nor slowing down, not even when she put her foot down in a hole or tripped over a protruding tree root. When that happened, she would stumble, never quite falling, recover her balance, and continue following the rest of them. It wasn’t clear whether she understood where she was or what she was doing there. Even Christopher lacked the vocabulary that would allow him to ask.

“Do you know yet?” asked Cora, glancing uneasily at Rini. “What you’re going to do with her? You have to do something with her.”

“I’m going to find a way to make her be alive again, so that I can be born and the Queen of Cakes can be overthrown and everything can be the way it’s supposed to be.” Rini’s tone was firm. “I like existing. I’m not ready to unexist just because of stupid causality. I didn’t invite stupid causality to my birthday party, it doesn’t get to give me any presents.”

“I’m not sure causality works that way, but sure,” said Kade wearily. “Let’s just get to where we’re going, and we’ll see.”

Cora said nothing, but she supposed they would. It seemed inevitable, at this point. So she, and the others, walked on.

*

RINI WAS TRUE to her word. They had been walking no more than an hour when the land dipped, becoming a gentle slope that somehow aligned with the shape of the mountains and the curve of the land to turn a simple candy corn farm into a stunning vista.

The fields were a lush green paean to farming, towering stalks reaching for the sky, leaves rustling with such vegetative believability that it wasn’t until Cora blinked that she realized the ears of corn topping each individual stalk were actually individual pieces of candy corn, each the length of her forearm. Their spun sugar silk blew gently in the breeze. Everything smelled of honey and sugar, and somehow that smell was exactly appropriate, exactly right.

Beehives were set up around the edge of the field, and fat striped humbugs and butterscotch candies crawled on the outside, their forms suggesting their insect progenitors only vaguely, their wings thin sheets of toffee that turned the sunlight soft and golden.

Like the castle of the Queen of Cakes, the farmhouse and barn were both built of gingerbread, a holiday craft taken to its absolute extreme. Unlike the castle, they were perfectly symmetrical and well designed, built with an eye for function as well as form, not just to use as much edible glitter as was humanly possible. The farmhouse was low and long, stretching halfway along the edge of the far field, its windows made of the same toffee as the wings of the bees. Rini smiled when she saw it, relief suffusing her remaining features and making her look young and bright and peaceful.

“My father will know what to do,” she said. “My father always knows what to do.”

Kade and Cora exchanged a glance. Neither of them contradicted her. If she wanted to believe that her father was an all-knowing sage who would solve everything, who were they to argue? Besides, this wasn’t their world. For all they knew, she was right.

“Come on, Mom!” said Rini, exhorting Sumi to follow her into the candy corn field. “Dad’s waiting!” She plunged into the green. The skeleton followed more sedately after, with the three visitors from another world bringing up the rear.

“I always thought that if I found another door, to anywhere, I’d take it, because anywhere had to be better than the world where my parents were asking me awful questions all the time,” said Christopher. “There was this telenovela about a bunch of sick kids in a hospital that my mother made me watch like, two whole seasons of after I got back, giving me these hopeful little looks after every episode, like I was finally going to confess that yes, the Skeleton Girl was another patient with an eating disorder, or a homeless girl, or something, and not, you know, a fucking skeleton.”

“Let’s be fair here,” said Kade. “If my son came back from a journey to a magical land and told me straight up that he wanted to marry a woman who didn’t have any internal organs, I’d probably spend some time trying to find a way to spin it so that he wasn’t saying that.”

“Oh, like you’re attracted to girls because you think they have pretty kidneys,” said Christopher.

Kade shrugged. “I like girls. Girls are beautiful. I like how they’re soft and pretty and have skin and fatty deposits in all the places evolution has deemed appropriate. My favorite part, though, is how they have actual structural stability, on account of how they’re not skeletons.”

“Are all boys as weird as the two of you, or did I get really lucky?” asked Cora.