Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3)

Cora, who had never considered that there might be less personal doors, doors that swallowed entire populations whole—with or without their consent—chewed anxiously on her lip, and kept walking. She was getting tired of walking. It had never been one of her top ten ways to exercise. It might not even be top twenty, although she wasn’t sure there were twenty ways to exercise worth considering, unless she started counting every swim stroke and every dance style as a different category. Worse yet, this was necessary walking. She couldn’t complain if she wanted to.

(And even though she wanted to, she never wanted to. If the fat person was the first one to say “hey, I’m tired” or “hey, I’m hungry” or “hey, can we sit down,” it was always because they were fat, and not because they were a human being with a flesh body that sometimes had needs. Maybe Christopher had the right of it, going someplace where people had figured out how to do without the fleshy bits, where they would be judged on their own merits, not on the things people assumed about them.)

Christopher stopped, putting one hand up before bending forward and resting both hands on his knees, flute jutting out at a jaunty angle. “Just a second,” he said. “Almost died a few hours ago. Need to catch my breath.”

“It’s okay,” said Cora magnanimously. She kicked her left foot back and reached down to grab it, pulling it up into a stretch. The muscles in her thigh protested before they relaxed, letting her work out the incipient knots.

When she glanced up again, Kade was looking at her, impressed.

“You’re more flexible than I am,” he said.

“Swimmer,” she said. “I have to be.”

Kade nodded. “Makes sense.”

Rini turned and glowered at the three of them. It was an odd expression, with her one remaining eye and her half-faded cheek muscles, but she managed it all the same. “We need to keep moving,” she said. “I’m running out of time.”

“Sorry,” said Christopher. He straightened. “I’m okay.”

“Good,” snapped Rini. She started walking again, and the others hurried to keep up with her.

Kade moved to walk on her left side, sparing only a brief glance for Sumi, walking on her right. He focused on Rini’s face, trying not to look away from what wasn’t there anymore. She deserved more than that. She deserved at least the pretense of her dignity.

“I know you can’t say for sure how much farther, but we’ll be there soon,” he said. “The Baker will help us, and then you can go home to your family, and things will be better. You’ll see.”

“Time kept happening here and it didn’t happen for you. I’m later than you. My mother’s younger than I am,” said Rini bitterly. “If we fix her, does that fix me? Or do I keep fading, since now she’s too young to be anything but a child bride for my father—and he’d never do that, he would never have done that, even before he had a daughter of his own. Even if we get her back and she’s this much younger than me, do I still lose everything?”

“The prophecy—”

“Only said that she’d defeat the Queen of Cakes and usher in an era of peace and peanut butter cookies. It didn’t say when she would do it, or that she’d for sure get to marry her true love and have a ravishingly beautiful daughter named Rini who’d get to grow up and find a true love of her own.” Rini’s mouth twisted in a bitter line. “Nobody promised me a happy ending. They didn’t even promise me a happy existence.”

Kade looked at the road. “We’ll fix this,” he said again.

“We’ll try,” said Rini.

They kept walking. One moment, they were passing through the pastoral fields of green frosting and sugar flowers; the next, they were approaching the gates of what looked very much like a junkyard, if junkyards were made of the discarded remains of a thousand kitchen projects. Fallen soufflés, pieces of trimmed-off cake, and slabs of cracked fudge were everywhere, heaped into mountains of discarded treats behind a chain link fence of braided fruit vines. Kade blinked.

“This where we’re going?” he asked.

Rini nodded, expression almost reverent. “The Baker is here,” she breathed.

The four of them walked toward the gate. It swung open at their approach, and silently, they stepped inside.

*

THE JUNKYARD WAS impossibly large, stretching on toward forever, like it had its own laws about things like geometry and physics and the way the land should bend. The four travelers walked close together, their hands occasionally touching, like they were afraid that even a moment’s separation might result in one or more of them disappearing into those towering piles of debris and never being seen again.

As they walked, the piles grew fresher. There was no mold—things didn’t even seem to go truly stale—but there was a scent to fresh-baked goods that was missing from the heaps around the edge, a homey mixture of heat and sugar and comfort food that promised safety, security, and sweetness on the tongue.

They turned a corner, and there she was. The Baker.

She was short, and round, and had skin a few shades darker than Christopher’s, and a pretty blue cloth wrapped around her head, concealing her hair. She looked no more than seventeen. Her skirt brushed the ground as she bent to remove a pie from the oven in front of her. Somehow, she had constructed a free-standing kitchen in the middle of a junkyard—or maybe she had created the junkyard around her free-standing kitchen, building it one broken cookie and discarded cupcake at a time.

Rini was staring at her, open-mouthed, a tear in her eye. Sumi actually took a step forward without being prompted, and a piece of biscotti cracked under her bony foot.

The Baker looked up from her oven and smiled. “There you are,” she said, turning to put her pie down on the nearby counter. Had that counter been there a moment before? Cora wasn’t sure. “I was hoping you’d make it.”

Rini made a stifled gasping sound and turned her face away.

The Baker stepped out of her kitchen, walking across the broken-biscuit ground toward Rini, seemingly unaware of how the cracks smoothed out under her feet, how the cookie colors brightened, how the sugar shone. She was healing her world through her mere presence—but that presence was required. She could create. She could repair. She couldn’t be everywhere at once.

“My poor sweet girl,” said the Baker, and reached for what remained of Rini’s hands. “You found her. You found our Sumi, and you brought her home.”

“Can you fix her?” Rini sniffled. Tears were leaking constantly from her eye, running unchecked down her cheek. “Please, can you fix her? The Lord of the Dead said her nonsense would be here. That’s all we need to put her back together again. Can you?”

“Oh, my dear,” said the Baker, and let go of Rini’s hands. “Nonsense returns to where it’s made, that’s true, but it’s like flour in the air: you can’t just pull it back. You have to let it settle. It goes back into everything. It makes the world continue turning. If your mother’s nonsense is here, I can’t reclaim it.”

“Well, can you make more?” asked Cora. “You’re the Baker. You’re the one who makes this world what it is. Can’t you just … whip up a new batch of nonsense?”