Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3)

“I finally had an adventure, Mama, like you’re always saying I should,” said Rini softly. “I went to see the Wizard of Fondant. I had to trade him two seasons of my share of the harvest, but he gave me traveling beads so I could go and bring you back. I went to the world where you were born. I breathed the air.…”

On and on she went, describing everything that had happened since she’d fallen out of the sky as if it were the greatest adventure the universe had ever known. How she had argued with the Queen of Turtles and bantered with the Lord of the Dead, how she had been there for the cleverest defeat of the Queen of Cakes, when a Mermaid and a Goblin Prince had conquered her at last. It was all lords and ladies and grand, noble quests, and it was magical.

Quests were a lot like dogs, Cora thought. They were much more attractive when seen from a distance, and not barking in the middle of the night or pooping all over the house. She had been there for every terrible, wearying, bone-breaking moment of this quest, and it held no magic for her. She knew it too well. But Rini described it for Sumi like it was a storybook, like it was something to whisper in a child’s ear as they were drifting off to sleep, and it was beautiful. It was truly beautiful.

“… so I need you to wake up now, Mama, and go with your friends, so you can come back here, so you can marry Papa, so I can be born.” Rini leaned forward until her head was resting on Sumi’s chest, closing her eye. “I want you to meet me. You always said I was the best thing you’d ever done, and I want you to meet me so you can know it’s true. So wake up now, okay? Wake up, and leave, so you can come home.”

“Look,” whispered Kade.

Sumi’s hands, which had never once in her life been still, were twitching. As the others watched, she raised them off the table and began stroking Rini’s hair, her eyes still closed, her face still peaceful.

Rini sobbed and lifted her head, staring at her mother, both eyes wide and bright and filled with all the colors of a candy corn field in full harvest. Cora put her hands over her mouth to hide her gasp. Christopher grinned, and said nothing.

“Mama?” asked Rini.

Sumi opened her eyes and sat up, sending Rini stumbling back, away from the table. Sumi blinked at her. Then Sumi blinked down at her own naked, re-formed body.

“I was dead a second ago, and now I’m naked,” she announced. “Do I need to be concerned?”

Kade whooped, and Christopher laughed, and Rini sobbed, and everything was different, and everything was finally the same.





PART V

WHAT CAME AFTER





13

TIME TO GO

RINI HELD FAST TO her mother’s hands, squeezing until Sumi pulled away, taking a step backward.

“No and no and no again, girl who says she’s a daughter of mine, in the some bright day when I get to come home, instead of coming wherever and whenever this is: don’t damage the merchandise.” Sumi shook her hands like she was trying to shake Rini’s touch away before tucking them behind her back and shifting her sharp-eyed gaze to Layla. “The door you’ve baked, you’re sure of where it goes?”

“I told the oven what I wanted,” said Layla.

The door was gingerbread and hard candy, piped with frosting details that looked like golden filigree and dusted with a thin veneer of edible glitter. It looked like something that would open on another world. Nothing else entirely made sense.

“You’re the Baker.” Sumi shook her head. “Always thought you were a myth.”

“When you’re saving our world, I am. I come after you,” said Layla, and smiled, a little shyly. She turned to look at Kade. “Remember what I said. Don’t look for me. I need to find my door, and that means I need everything to go just the way I remember it going. Leave me alone.”

“I promise,” said Kade.

“If you ever find yourself back in Brooklyn, give us a call,” said Christopher. “We take students throughout the year, and it’d be nice to know that you were going to where there were familiar faces.”

“I’ll keep you in mind,” said Layla, and flicked her hand toward the door, which swung lazily open, revealing nothing but a filmy pinkness beyond. “Now get out of here, so the timeline can stop getting tied into knots.”

“Wait!” said Rini. She darted forward, pulling Sumi into a rough hug. “I love you, Mama,” she whispered, before letting the younger woman go and turning away, wiping her eyes with her fully restored hand.

Sumi looked bemused. “I don’t love you,” she said. Rini stiffened. Sumi continued: “But I think I’m going to. See you in a few years, gumdrop.”

Turning, she started for the door, with her classmates tagging after her.

The last thing Layla and Rini heard before the door swung shut behind them was Sumi asking, “So why didn’t Nancy come?”

Then the door was closed, and the strangers were gone. Bit by bit, the door crumbled away, joining the debris that covered the ground. Layla looked at Rini and smiled.

“Well?” she asked. “What are you waiting for? You have about a day’s walk between here and home, and I bet your parents want to see you.”

The sound Rini made was half laugh, half sob, and then she was off and running, leaving the junkyard and the girl who only wanted to make cookies behind, racing into the bright Confection hills.

*

FOUR STUDENTS HAD LEFT and four students returned, even if they weren’t the same ones, stepping out of a door-shaped hole in the air and onto the dry brown grass of the front lawn. Eleanor was standing on the front porch, smiling wistfully—an expression that transformed into a gasp of open-mouthed delight when she saw Sumi.

“Sumi!” she cried, and started down the stairs, moving faster than such a frail-looking woman should have been able. “My darling girl, you’re home!”

“Eleanor-Ely!” cried Sumi, and threw herself into Eleanor’s arms, and held her tight.

Kade and Cora exchanged a glance. There would be time, soon enough, to tell Eleanor about everything that had happened: about leaving Nadya behind, about Layla, who might someday join them at the school, about the ways that Nonsense could be underpinned with Logic, and how this changed the Compass. There would be time for Kade to find Layla’s family, to seize the chance to watch someone—from a distance, never interfering—who was about to be chosen by a door. There would be time for so many, many things. But for right now …

For right now, the only thing that mattered was an old woman and a young girl, embracing in the grass, under a bright and cloudless autumn sky.

Everything else could wait.





14

THE DROWNED GIRL

WELL. PERHAPS NOT EVERYTHING.