The Caterwaul purred, “Nooot goodbyyye. Aaall you haaave to dooo is rememberrr meeee, and I willll beeee with yooou agaaaaaain.”
Her lantern brightened even more.
Cecelia watched the Caterwaul bid her mother farewell. Hurt and love and loss and friendship and laughter and thankfulness thrummed as one new emotion inside her being. She didn’t want to leave the gnomes or the Caterwaul, having grown so fond of her new friends, whom she loved like family—farts, claws, and all. But then Cecelia realized something: she loved them enough to let them go.
Below them, waves slapped the side of the Captain’s rowboat. A serene pleasantness emerged from each deep wrinkle of the Captain’s weathered face. Purple lightning flashed in his beard as he peered up at them.
“I guess this is it, then,” Cecelia said. “Trystyng, Phantasmagoria, Caterwaul, I hope one day we meet again.”
Since the balloon could lower no more, Cecelia and her mother clasped hands and leaped into Captain Shim’s boat together. By the time they settled on the boat’s bench, the balloon had begun drifting away.
The gnomes held their tiny hats at their chests and waved at them with their free hands; they appeared to be sniffing back tears. Cecelia’s hair reached toward the balloon. The Caterwaul held a paw up in a still wave.
Farewell, Cecelia thought, not goodbye.
Mazarine stroked her daughter’s anxious hair until it calmed. “Letting go is just another way to love, isn’t it? I see that now.” Four crystalline tears plinked from her eyes to the floor. “We carry those we love in our hearts always, no matter where or how far we go.”
Cecelia took a deep breath and hugged her mother gently. “Yes,” Cecelia replied, thinking of her brother. “I believe you’re right.”
Captain Shim, sitting opposite them, had observed quietly until now. He tipped his hat to Mazarine and Cecelia. “Nice to see you again, Daughter of Paper and Tears, and you, too, Mother of the same.”
Mazarine slumped against Cecelia, barely able to sit upright. Lantern light shone through the cracks in her mother’s skin. Parchment crawled up and over her knees. Mazarine grew frailer each time Cecelia looked at her, which prompted her to check her own skin. The left side of Cecelia’s face had fully papered, and the right was well on its way. Her lower and middle back, too.
They needed to make this quick.
“I’ll get right to the point, Captain. We’ve come to rescue my father from the mad house that kidnapped him. I suspect it crashed into your sea.”
One of Mazarine’s hands, crumpled and torn in the castle, slipped into the shimmering waters. The daisies riding the waves went to work to fix her. Her hand surfaced wearing a long glove of white blooms that held her together, good as new.
“I always knew you’d figure out the right place and time for a rescue”—Captain Shim gestured toward her lantern and winked—“bright girl that you are. Your house passed over my sea trying to keep up with you, sure. However, its spirit wasn’t strong enough to sustain its burners. It crashed into my waters and sank. You followed the clues successfully, with the help of family and friends.” Cecelia flushed. When she looked for the balloon next, it was gone. Shim continued, “I know leaving them was hard. But knowing when to let go is one of the most important lessons we can learn in life, and you managed it with grace.”
“Thank you, Sea Captain.” Cecelia nodded to him and then turned to face her mother. “Before we go, in case anything should happen to either of us, I need to tell you something else. Something that might hurt you.”
“You can tell me anything,” Mazarine said.
Cecelia took a quick breath. “Celadon’s spirit came to me.” Instant tears sprang to her mother’s eyes; Cecelia wiped them away. “But leaving Yesterday cost him dearly. The last time I saw him was on the Planet of Nightmares. He led me to a secret passageway into Yesterday right before . . .” Not knowing how to continue, Cecelia simply opened the doors of herself and unlocked her cage. And there, leaning against her lantern—now untarnished, shining, and clean—was her paper brother, no bigger than Cecelia’s hand.
“Oh.” Mazarine covered her mouth. “Is that . . . Is it really . . . ?”
“It’s him.” Cecelia wrung her hands. “I didn’t want to lose him again. But it happened anyway.”
“I know, Cecelia,” her mother said, pulling her close.
“Would you like to carry him? I bet he’d like it if you sang some of your old songs. You know how he always loved that.”
Mazarine nodded and sputtered a wistful laugh. “Oh, yes. I’d like that very much.” Cecelia passed her mother what remained of her lost child. Carefully, with the hand gloved in daisies, Mazarine opened the center of herself right above her navel, in a neat door shape. She unlocked her rusted cage, and set Celadon at the base of her own lantern, just south of her heart. In a great burst, Mazarine’s lantern brightened and spilled over with pure white light. “There.” Mazarine sniffed. “My boy is safe and sound. Now we go rescue your father.”
Their paper doors closed. The time had come to make their move.
With that thought, hundreds of daisies gathered alongside the boat and began weaving a stairway to the bottom of the sea. The last time Cecelia had submerged in these waters, she ended up falling through space.
“My daisies are ready when you are,” Captain Shim said with a lighthearted grin.
The boat rocked and creaked. Mazarine was the first to stand. “Come on, Cecelia,” she said, chin high, one paper boot on the boat’s rim. “If Joan of Arc, not much older than you are now, could lead a holy rebellion, then surely we can submerge in an ocean of tears and down a stairway of daisies. Are you with me?”
With confidence, Cecelia answered, “I am.” She perched alongside her mother and bowed to Captain Shim. “Thank you, Captain, for everything.”
“Don’t mention it.” He tipped his hat and winked. “Sometimes all you can do is trust you’ll find your way home.”
Chapter 22
A Stairway to the Bottom of the Sea
Hands clasped, Cecelia and her mother descended into the unknown. Their teeth chattered. Their hair flowed out behind them—Cecelia’s in streamers of blue, Mazarine’s in moonlit silver. The Sea of Tears moved in and out of their lungs as naturally as air as they followed the daisy staircase down.
The water surrounding them echoed with haunted cries. Mourning mothers, hungry babies, children whose little brothers had died. Songs of the sorrowful pressed in as tight and cold as the ghostly weeds reaching up to grab them. Yet the thrill of finding Aubergine fluttered like metal wings inside their cages. And that was enough to keep them moving fearlessly forward.
Cecelia kept glancing back at her mother to make sure she hadn’t fallen apart. The only visible fragments of Mazarine that remained unpapered were on her lower neck and collarbone. Much of Cecelia’s neck had turned, as had more of her right cheek, though most of her upper back was still flesh, and, she guessed, so was her still-beating heart. Bits of shredded parchment flaked from their softening limbs as they moved through the water. If they didn’t save Father soon, the sea might devour them.
Icy water slipped past, chilling as a grave. No fish lived in this sea; nothing seemed alive except for them. Bubbles swirled around their bodies, echoing as they popped. Daisy petals floated by like delicate jewels, along with a single photo, this time of the Dahls, Widdendream and all. Her mother fell behind only once. After Mazarine became tangled in willowy vines, Cecelia rushed back and worked the knots with softening fingers until her mother slipped free. Exhausted and broken, but more determined than ever, they finally reached the bottom of the sea.
The water down below was darker and as cold as snow. Feet wobbling, they glanced about. Everything was murky and dim. Mazarine and Cecelia stepped wearily off the daisy steps and onto the rippled underwater sands.
Behind them, the daisies untwisted from the staircase they’d built of themselves and then, all at once, undulated through the shimme
ring water toward Cecelia and Mazarine. First the blooms sniffed their wounds and the rips in their perforated paper skin like curious dogs. Then they sprang. Twining their broken bodies, binding each bend and rip until zip-zap-bang, Cecelia and her mother were dressed in the finest daisy armor anyone in any world had ever seen.
Mazarine and Cecelia tested their arms, fingers, legs, and toes, stretching, flexing, grinning from ear to ear. They found their armor sound and wonderful; their lantern light shone through the cracks. Together, they bowed to the daisies. And together, the daisies bowed back. Those that remained shot toward the surface, back to Captain Shim. Cecelia and her mother waved another not-quite goodbye.
Something flashed in the water ahead.
Twin spotlights, angled like furious eyes, turned toward them in the distance. Cecelia would know their shape anywhere. The last time Cecelia had seen these particular lights, their owner had been unable to turn them on. Due to Mazarine leaving home, the owner of these lights was forced to use candles instead. But now the window-eyes blazed with electricity, casting back and forth as if surprised by the sudden outpouring of light. A photograph of Mazarine playing tea party with a cheerful Widdendream bobbed past Cecelia’s nose. A noxious odor spread through the sea from the direction of the glow; the same moldy green stink that had plagued their house since that first evil Tuesday. They’d done it. Together, they’d found Widdendream.
The lantern flickered in Cecelia’s cage: her father was still inside.
Black water moved past Widdendream, smudging its already foreboding appearance. The attic swiveled as it scanned the base of the sea. Cecelia wasn’t sure if it could see them or not.
Mazarine gave her a grave look. “Stay close to me.” Despite their being underwater, their voices rang clear, if not a little warbly.
“No,” Cecelia replied. “It wants you in return for releasing Father. Who knows if, once Widdendream has you, it’ll even let him go? And who knows what it’ll do to you if you go inside? I should face Widdendream alone.”
“Absolutely not,” Mazarine answered in a motherly voice of authority. “Warm and luminous things often infuriate cold and shadowy things. Which is why, if we’re going to sneak inside and rescue your father, we’ll have to look out for each other. I won’t let you do this alone. We must stick together.”
Cecelia sighed. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I know I am.” Mazarine winked.
Cecelia’s hair shook with amusement. “Even still, take this for luck, okay?” Cecelia dug past the daisies and reached inside her pocket, then placed Joan of Arc in her mother’s hand.
Mazarine lit with pride and clutched it tight. “For luck.”
The sound of furniture breaking echoed from Widdendream’s attic. Shadows crossed its windows as Aubergine let out a sharp cry.
Big-eyed with worry, Cecelia whispered, “Father.”
“I know,” Mazarine replied. “Let’s go.”
The light within Widdendream brightened the closer Mazarine drew. The outside remained dark as night. Concealed in the watery shadows, Cecelia and Mazarine swam to the back of the house. Every crack and hole in Widdendream’s outer shell had been chinked with seaweed and sludge, keeping the inside airtight and water-free. Still, Widdendream had neglected to lock the cellar doors. “When you enter,” Cecelia told her, “Widdendream might know.”
Mazarine gave a curt nod. Then, as quietly as possible, she opened the cellar doors. Seawater rushed down the stone steps. Mazarine submerged into the basement with the flood, and raised their Joan of Arc high. “Onward,” she said with a grin, and vanished into the dark.
Cecelia followed in a dim circle of shine and closed the doors behind her.
The bare bulb in the cellar flashed on. The seawater that had rushed in with them came up to their knees, and lit with a brackish green glow. Tiny rivulets of water ran down the walls. Fruits and vegetables that Cecelia and her mother had canned together still sat on the shelves, same as they always had. Except now, the floating jars looked sinister. Like eyeballs and brains and dead things, setting their focus on her.
A steady bang-bang-bang echoed from the attic—undoubtedly from her father. In the background, Widdendream howled a string of distracted and mournful cries: “It’s their fault she left, not mine, never mine—how could they do this to me?”
Mazarine climbed the stairs that led to the kitchen. She paused at the door, and faced Cecelia. Water dripped from her hair and armor of daisies with soft little plinks. Mazarine mouthed, Attic, and pointed at the door, and then, Stay quiet. Don’t stop running for anything.
Cecelia nodded and pushed her worries from mind: how best to protect her mother while saving her father from further harm, how not to lose the last of her flesh before that happened.
Mazarine opened the door to the kitchen. A thin layer of water streamed out from the kitchen and spilled down the steps. Seaweed and bottom-of-the-sea muck patched the fissures inside the house, too. Other than a few leaks, Widdendream’s interior didn’t seem too badly flooded.
A scream ripped through the house from Aubergine—painful, tortured, and deafening. Without thinking, Mazarine cried out, “Aubergine!” She quickly covered her mouth, but the damage was done.
The attic noise ground to a halt. Widdendream had heard her cry.
A low vibration hit the groundwater. Jars of flour and sugar, coffee, and herbal teas trembled on the countertops. The refrigerator door banged open and closed as the rumble increased. Shadows slithered across the waterlogged floors and clawed up and down the walls. The structure of the house shrank and expanded. Then, for an infinity of seconds, everything stilled.
Until slowly, Widdendream’s voice reverberated through time and space and the truth of all things. “At last,” Widdendream said with a sigh. “You’ve come back to me. . . .”
Chapter 23
The Mysterious Torment Surrounding Aubergine
The lights in the kitchen flashed on, illuminating everything.
“Mazarine.” Widdendream’s voice shivered through the drowned house like thunder. “Mazarine, please, speak to me.”
Crouched in ankle-deep water behind the island in the center of the kitchen, Cecelia seized her mother’s hand. She could see by her anxious and angry expression, she wanted to give Widdendream a piece of her mind. Cecelia shook her head at her mother, silently urging her to stay quiet.
With a sigh, Mazarine nodded and let her daughter take the lead.
“Mazarine, I know you’re here . . . my friend, please . . . ,” Widdendream pleaded, “at least let me know you’re all right.”
Widdendream seemed both relieved and concerned about her mother’s well-being. It sounded so much like its old self Cecelia didn’t know how to feel. If her home retained enough heart to love, maybe there was still hope. Maybe, one day, Widdendream could overcome the darkness that had taken over its gentle soul.
Follow me, Cecelia mouthed to her mother. When she unfroze from her place in the kitchen and sprang, Mazarine followed.
Together, they sprinted as fast as their daisy armor could carry them. They hurried past the breakfast nook, where they used to eat pancakes. They pushed beyond the island and stools, where Cecelia and Celadon used to make funny faces at each other, laughing until they cried. Moving through the family dining room, they passed the table and Celadon’s empty chair, and all the ghosts of their past.
“Mazarine, don’t shut me out. I’m not myself without you. You’re the only one I”—Widdendream’s voice cracked—“you’re the only one I have left!”
Cecelia glanced back at her mother. Mazarine shook her head and mouthed, Don’t listen. Find your father. She had to get her mother out of the house before Widdendream captured her, too.
Mother and daughter waded quickly up the hallway. The walls were damp. Water leached through Widdendream’s patched holes and cracks, and soon began to rise. Scraps of paper on the water’s surface clung to their ankles like cold little hands. Yet the closer
they got to the attic, the stronger their lantern lights grew.
They were almost to the stairs when a rogue wave rolled out of the library and knocked Mazarine down. By the time Cecelia realized what had happened, Widdendream had shoved a bookcase between them.
“Please, Mazarine,” Widdendream moaned in haunted tones. “Why do you ignore me? Why do you run from me? I don’t understand!”
Cecelia kicked and shoved at the bookcase, but it was too heavy for her weak paper arms, even with her armor of daisies, to move.
From behind the bookcase, her mother shouted, “You aren’t the home I remember, Widdendream. You’ve hurt the family you were supposed to protect. And you’ve hurt me.”
“That’s not true. We—we helped each other. I could never hurt you—you’re the only one who’s ever understood me.” Widdendream trembled with a sadness so complete she thought it might give up all together. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. I never meant to hurt anyone—unlike your daughter and that liar Aubergine!” The emotion in its voice was so real and raw. Cecelia almost felt sorry for it.
Almost.
“My husband may be a lot of things, Widdendream, but he is no liar.”
Widdendream roared.
Upstairs, Aubergine pounded the walls, shouting, “Mazarine, Cecelia, I know why it’s doing this, it—”
BAM-BAM-THWACK.
Aubergine said no more.
Any sympathy Cecelia felt for Widdendream withered. Narrowing her eyes, Cecelia, the daisies, and her hair latched onto the case of books and slid it sideways, just enough for Cecelia to squeeze through.
“Come on,” Cecelia whispered to her mother. “Let’s go.”
Side by side, they entered the foyer and started up the stairs. Lights flashed on as they went. Mazarine lost a chunk of hair along the way and Cecelia’s knees kept giving out. Widdendream shook the staircase and surrounding water, trying to knock them down the steps. Almost to the second floor, Cecelia and Mazarine passed the once-broken knob at the top of the banister. They clasped hands, shared a brave smile, and kept going.
The Land of Yesterday Page 13