Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3)

“You taste of Fairyland, little hero,” said the Lady of the Dead, wrinkling her nose. “All of you taste of something that isn’t meant for here, all but him.” She pointed to Christopher. “Mirrors and Fairylands and Lakes. Even the skeleton tastes of Mirror. The taint lingers past death. You have no business ringing Our doorbell.”

“We’re here to beg a favor, ma’am,” said Kade doggedly. “This is Rini.”

Rini raised her hand in a small wave. She was down to a single finger and her thumb, and half of her palm had melted away, replaced by that same eye-burning nothingness.

“The skeleton is her mother, Sumi, who died before Rini could be born, and now Rini is, well, disappearing,” continued Kade. “One of our old classmates lives here with you. We were hoping she might be able to help us find where Sumi’s spirit went after she died, so that we can try to put her back together and keep Rini from disappearing altogether. Er. Ma’am.”

The Lady of the Dead’s eyes widened fractionally. “You’re Nancy’s friends,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m not,” said Nadya. “I’m a Drowned Girl.”

“So you are,” said the Lady of the Dead. She gave Nadya a thoughtful look. “You went to one of the Drowned Worlds, the underground lakes, the forgotten rivers. Many of them touch on Our borders. They aren’t Underworlds, but they’re under the rest of the world.”

Nadya paled. “You know how to get to Belyyreka?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

“I didn’t say that,” said the Lady. “We have no power over the Drowned Worlds. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—open a door there if you asked Me. But I know the place. It’s beautiful.”

“It is,” agreed Nadya, and started to cry.

The Lady of the Dead turned back to Kade. “You come uninvited, to trouble a handmaiden who still stings from her time in your company. Why should We grant you an audience with her? Why should We grant you anything at all?”

“Because Nancy told us you were kind,” said Christopher. He was staring at her in quiet awe, like he hadn’t seen anything so beautiful in years. “She said you never made her feel like she was broken just because she was different. You and your husband, you’re the reason she wanted to come back here and stay forever. You made this place home. I can’t imagine anyone who’d be that kind to Nancy could be cruel enough not to help us.”

“Mariposa, wasn’t it, for you?” asked the Lady, looking thoughtful. “So many different doors, and yet here you are, all of you together, trying to accomplish the impossible. I’ll let you talk to Nancy.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Kade.

“Don’t thank me yet,” said the Lady. “There are conditions. Eat nothing; drink nothing. Speak to no one save for Myself, My husband, and Nancy. The living who choose to spend their years in these halls do so because they’re looking for quiet, for peace, for solitude. They don’t need you reminding them that they were hot and fast once. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Kade. The others nodded, even Rini, who looked more confused than anything else. She was doing an excellent job of holding her tongue. For a Nonsense girl in a world full of rules, that was just this side of a miracle.

“Good,” said the Lady. “This way.”

She turned then, and walked back into the door to the grove, leaving the rest of them to follow.

*

THE TREES WERE GONE. In their place was a long hall, the sort that belonged in a palace or a museum, its walls lined with statues, all of them standing beautifully still in their frost-white draperies. No, not statues—people. People of all ages, from children barely old enough to have shed their infant proportions to men and women older than Eleanor, their faces seamed with wrinkles, their limbs thinned out by time and trials. There was a certain vitality around them that betrayed their natures, but apart from that, they might as well have been the carved stone they worked so hard to imitate.

Rini shuddered, stepping a little closer to Kade, like she thought he could protect her. “How can they hold so still?” she whispered, voice horrified and awed. “I’d twitch myself into pieces.”

“That’s why this was never your door,” he said. “We don’t go where we’re not meant to be, even if we sometimes get born the wrong place.”

“There was a boy,” said Rini. “When I was small. His parents mined fudge from the northern ridge. He didn’t like the smell of chocolate, or the way it melted on his tongue. He wanted to be clean, and to follow rules, and to understand. He disappeared the year we all started school, and his parents were sad, but they said he’d found his door, and if he was lucky, he’d never come back, not ever, not once.”




Kade nodded. “Exactly. Your mother and I were born in the same world, and it wasn’t right for either of us, so we went somewhere else.” He didn’t ask what sort of lessons would be taught at school in a Nonsense world. His own world had been Logical, and what made perfect sense to Rini wouldn’t make any sense at all to him.

The people on their pedestals and set back in niches in the walls said nothing, did nothing to show that they were even aware that anyone was nearby. The Lady kept walking, and the rest of them kept following, until she reached a pair of wide marble doors. Leaning forward, she tapped them ever so gently with the tip of her left forefinger, and stood back as they swung open to reveal a room that was half cathedral and half cavern.

The walls were naked gray stone, unshaped, unworked, sweeping upward to a crystal-studded bell of a natural vault. Lights hung from the ceiling, their bases set between great spikes of purple amethyst and silvery quartz, and the floor was polished marble, creating a strange melding of the natural and the manmade.

At the center of the room, well away from any of the walls, was a freestanding dais. Two thrones rested atop it, and short pedestals surrounded it, three to either side, each holding one of the living statues.

The statue closest to the door was Nancy.

Nancy at peace: Nancy in her element. She stood tall and calm and strong, one arm raised in a graceful arc, her chin canted slightly toward the ceiling, calling attention to the delicate line of her neck, the organic sculpture of her collarbone. She wore a long white gown, like so many of the other statues, but unlike them, there was a wine-red, pomegranate-red ribbon tied around her neck, casting the rest of her into monochrome relief. Someone had styled her white and black hair, arranging it so that the black streaks left by the Lord of the Dead’s fingers were perfectly displayed, like the badge of honor that they were.

Christopher whistled low. “Damn, girl,” he said.

Kade said nothing. He only stared.

Both thrones were currently empty. The Lady of the Dead led them toward the dais, stopping when they reached Nancy, who must have been aware of their presence, but who did nothing to betray that knowledge.

“Nancy,” said the Lady softly. “Please move for Me. You have company.”