Meeting

by Nina Hoffman

  “Sure,” said Maya. She had been in several apartments at Janus House, but she’d never visited Gwenda’s. “Hey, do you guys celebrate Halloween? We’re carving our pumpkins tomorrow.”

  “Halloween? That’s a whole other subject,” said Gwenda, and then Maya’s mother said it was time to sing again, and everybody settled down except Candra, who went upstairs to get away from the ultimate dorkiness of group music.

  TWO

  “Come on. She said it was okay,” Maya told Candra the next afternoon as they approached the steps to Janus House’s front porch.

  “I know,” said Candra. “I want to go inside. I’ve wanted to for a long time.” Then she turned around and headed back to the sidewalk, away from the verandah that surrounded the big, complicated, old-fashioned building that held the Janus House Apartments and all sorts of hidden rooms and other secrets.

  “Candra,” Maya said. She grabbed her big sister’s hand and dragged her toward the building again.

  “This is what always happens when I try to come over here,” Candra said. “Keep hanging on, will you?”

  “Weird,” said Maya. Candra was trying to pull free.

  “Hey.” Peter came up behind them. “If you guys are going to Janus House, I want to go, too.”

  Peter’s fists were clenched at his sides, his eyebrows lowered, as he trudged up the path toward them. He got halfway there and suddenly turned around. “Hey.”

  An energy reaches out and persuades their bodies they don’t want to come here, Rimi told Maya.

  The wards, Maya thought. She’d heard her teachers and others mention warding the house against intruders, but she hadn’t seen it work before.

  It reaches for their minds, too, but they are focused now, and harder to persuade.

  “You guys, wait here. I’ll go get Gwenda,” Maya said. She released Candra, who wandered away. Peter fidgeted on the pathway, frowning as he faced the house.

  Maya crossed the porch and opened one of the double front doors. She stepped over the threshold into the foyer of the building.

  Inside, the space opened into a broad, three-story entry with a special welcome-to-the-outside-world mat you wiped your feet on as you left the building. Janus House people had to be careful not to take the dust of other worlds where outsiders might sense it. Maya wasn’t sure what her family would make of a doormat on the inside of the door. If anything. Heck. She didn’t have to explain.

  Benjamin’s apartment was to the left as she entered. Wide stairs rose before her, and hallways led past the staircase on either side, with different colored apartment doors opening off them. Maya’s teacher Sarutha’s apartment was on the third floor, with its own tiny balcony, where they sat amid Sarutha’s potted plants and drank tea sometimes while Maya was studying. Maya wasn’t sure which door Gwenda lived behind.

  She knocked on Benjamin’s green door. A moment later, Benjamin answered, and she smiled at him. He smiled back. “Hi. Are we expecting you?”

  “Gwenda said Candra could come over and see her closet today, only I don’t know where Gwenda lives, and anyway, Candra can’t seem to get to the house. How does that work?”

  Benjamin frowned. “Oh, yeah. I bet Gwenda forgot about the wards.”

  “Peter wants to come, too. Is there a way for them to come in?”

  “Sure.” He turned and called toward the kitchen, “Hey, Mom. It’s Maya. I have to go out and let her sister and brother through the wards and take them to Gwenda’s, okay?”

  “Did Harper approve that?” Dr. Porta’s voice was a little muffled.

  Benjamin raised his eyebrows at Maya.

  “Sarutha seemed to think it would be okay,” Maya said.

  “I’m going,” Benjamin called to his mother, and then he stepped out of the apartment and closed the door behind him.

  When Benjamin and Maya came out on the front porch, Candra and Peter were gone. Maya sighed. Benjamin followed her back to her house, across a carpet of grass. “Hey,” Maya called as she and Benjamin came into the living room, “Peter? Candra?”

  Both of them came out of the kitchen.

  “What happened?”

  “Like I said, what always happens when I try going there,” Candra said. “I end up somewhere else.”

  “Let’s try it again. I brought a native guide.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Candra said, “the cute one. Hi, there.”

  Benjamin blushed.

  “Candra, Benjamin. Benjamin, Candra.” Maya was mad at Candra for noticing, for saying “the cute one” aloud, and for making Benjamin uncomfortable.

  “Hi, Benjamin,” Peter said.

  “Hi, Peter. Hey, you guys. Hishlah. Come on over.”

  Hishlah, thought Rimi. Curious.

  This time Maya didn’t have to drag Candra up the front path. She walked on her own, and almost crowded Maya and Benjamin off the path in her eagerness to get inside.

  Peter rushed inside, too.

  Both Maya’s siblings paused in the front entry to stare. Maya, who had been coming here three days a week for a month and a half, blinked and tried to look at it with fresh eyes. The staircase had wide steps covered in warm red carpet that also covered the floor of the entryway and hallways, and the balusters were hand-carved with images of vines. Capping the newel posts at the bottom of the banisters were honey-colored wooden rings big enough to put your hand through. The hallways looked pretty normal, except the light fixtures were shaped like metal dragons holding balls of light. Light came from a skylight somewhere high above, aimed down by frosted mirrors.

  “Wow,” said Candra.

  Maya wondered why she had never drawn the entryway. She guessed maybe it was because the first time she’d come in, she’d felt so sick she couldn’t focus, and the next few times she was rushing through to get somewhere else. Now it was too normal for her to notice.

  “Gwenda lives upstairs,” said Benjamin. He led them up to the second floor.

  Two hallways led past a structure that was an extension of the downstairs central courtyard. Frosted glass let light in from that open space, but you couldn’t see clearly through the windows. Sometimes aliens and strangers from other dimensions met there, so it was just as well.

  Many of the rooms where the Janus House kids trained and practiced the magic skills associated with portal-keeping were on the second floor. Maya studied singing in the music room with the little kids, and also, privately, with Sarutha. Benjamin, Gwenda, and the other Janus House kids Maya’s age had already advanced far beyond her skill in their musical studies, so they had different classes.

  Maya also spent time in another classroom with the youngest kids, studying the principles behind portal magic. She had had to start at the beginning in magic principles, too. So she was friends with the seven five- and six-year-olds in the house, and embarrassed because they were so much better at magic than she was. She had no idea what Gwenda and Benjamin were actually studying.

  Most of the training rooms Maya had visited were off the left-hand hall. Benjamin led them down the right-hand hall and stopped at the third door down, which was sky blue. He knocked.

  Gwenda’s older sister, Fiona, answered the door. She was tall and slender, with short red hair, light skin, and bluegreen eyes. She was wearing jeans and a blue blouse with small white flowers on it. “Good afternoon,” she said, eyebrows up.

  “Hey,” said Candra. “Aren’t you in my botany class?”

  “Candra,” said Fiona. “Huh.”

  “We’re here to see Gwenda’s closet,” Maya said.

  “That’s peculiar,” said Fiona. “Gwenda!”

  Gwenda joined her sister at the door. She was wearing jeans, too, and a yellow embroidered blouse. “Oh, hi! Peter, too?”

  “I wanted to see. Is that okay?” Peter asked.

  “Sure. I cleaned my room, so what the heck.”

  “Why are these people visiting your closet, Gwenda?” Fiona asked.

  “I don’t know. It was Candra’s idea.”

>   “Aren’t you in my botany class?” Candra asked Fiona again.

  “I suppose I am,” Fiona said. “Fiona Janus.” She held out a hand and Candra shook it.

  “I didn’t realize you lived here.”

  Fiona shrugged and wandered off.

  “Come in,” said Gwenda. “Mama? Here are my guests.”

  Vivian Janus rose from a couch in the living room. Her coloring was like Gwenda’s—dark hair and blue eyes—and she had the same high cheekbones and clean beauty. She wore a complicated green dress made of panels of overlapping material, with a gold sash tied at the waist. She set down something she had been knitting. It looked long and tubular, like a sleeve, only it was bigger than any Earth arm. “So nice to see you,” she said, smiling at all of them. “Welcome to our home, Maya, Peter. This is your sister?”

  “Yes. This is Candra Andersen, Mama,” Gwenda said. “Candra, my mother, Vivian Janus.”

  Maya looked past Gwenda’s mother. This living room looked different from the others she had seen in Janus House Apartments. The furniture looked elegant and mostly had spindly legs, with fringed pillows covered in blue and white material arranged on off-white upholstered couches and chairs. A glass-topped table with curly ironwork legs stood on layers of fancy carpets. The apartment smelled like incense. Most Janus House residents seemed to burn things that changed the way the air smelled.

  “Nice to meet you, Ms. Janus. What a nice place you have,” Candra said.

  “Thank you,” said Ms. Janus. Her smiled showed a dimple in her right cheek. “I try.”

  “Candra wanted to see my clothes, Mama,” Gwenda said.

  “Anyone would. Please come in.” Ms. Janus stood aside for them to enter. “Would you like some tea?”

  Candra glanced in all directions. Maya looked, too, trying to see what Candra was seeing, or at least figure out what she was searching for. Candra had made remarks at supper a few times about the possibility of Janus House people belonging to weird religious cults and sacrificing babies, until Dad told her to stop that. “Andersens do not indulge in bad-mouthing people we don’t know,” he had said. “Or those we do.”

  There were no obvious clues to the magical nature of the people who lived here, Maya thought. It wasn’t like they had pentacles or brooms or bloody axes hanging from the wall.

  “Tea?” Candra said to Gwenda’s mother. “What kinds do you have?”

  Peter nudged her. “Tea would be nice, Ms. Janus. Thanks for the offer.”

  Wild that Peter had better manners than Candra, thought Maya. Especially when Candra had started out so uncharacteristically polite. Maybe she had forgotten she was on a fact-finding mission and acted like her true self by mistake.

  Maya also wondered what kind of tea they had. Janus House specialized in peculiar beverages, some of which had strange side effects.

  “We have many sorts,” Ms. Janus said. “I’ll make you some chamomile.”

  Candra hated chamomile. She opened her mouth, and Peter kicked her in the shin. “Uh, thanks,” she said, glaring at Peter.

  He smiled up at her. It was not a nice smile.

  The picture of power is over the couch, Rimi thought.

  Maya looked at the framed artwork over the couch. Every Janus House apartment she’d been in had some picture or knickknack that the inhabitants could touch to contact each other. They seemed to work like walkie-talkies. Maybe phones didn’t work in Janus House. She already knew that her cell phone didn’t, but she’d seen people using handheld communicators made of what looked like wire mesh.

  This communications picture was of a man playing a harp, and Maya had critical thoughts about it. The palette was sour. The man was wearing a yellow shirt. Through the harp you could see dark blue sky. There were red velvet curtains to the sides of the picture. The man’s hair was carroty, and his pants were green. It was an ugly picture that didn’t go with the rest of the delicate, elegant furnishings.

  They’re all ugly, those power pictures, Rimi thought. Maya wondered if Rimi shared Maya’s taste or had her own ideas of how things should look. Maya wasn’t sure how Rimi even saw, a shadow without eyes, but Rimi had shared enough of her visions that Maya knew she saw somehow.

  What does it look like to you? she thought.

  A shadow dropped over Maya’s eyes, and she saw glowing brown and purple and green pinpricks knotted together in a sullen mass.

  Yuck. You’re right. I wonder why they’re like that? She glanced around the room through Rimi’s enhanced vision, noticed Gwenda looked like Gwenda except for the glows of her bracelet. Vivian had a green glowing throat, and Benjamin—his hands had golden gloves of glow. Rimi? What’s that about?

  People wear their power. You don’t see it?

  No. Not like this.

  Tell me when you want to see it like this, and I’ll help you.

  Thanks, Rimi. Maya thought about the drawings she’d work on when she got home. She had several sketch pads hidden in her room. Some she could share with her family, and others were private studies just for herself, and a few others were things she wanted to show the Janus House people. She was still finding images in her mind from Rimi’s first bondmate, Bikos, who had died just as school began. When she could, she drew pictures of Bikos’s memories. Bikos had spent some time on the Krithi planet, and everybody involved in portal traffic wanted to know more about the Krithi. Okay, I’m ready to go back to my own vision now.

  The shadow lifted from her eyes, and everything looked normal again. The power picture was still ugly.

  Gwenda’s mother had gone into the kitchen to make the tea, presumably. Gwenda smiled brightly and said, “Would you like to come to my room?”

  “Sure,” said Candra.

  Gwenda led them down a hall that passed two doorways before she turned in at the third doorway. Her room had a bed, a dresser, a chair, and a desk—more furniture with feet that seemed too small to support the rest of it, let alone if someone actually sat on the chair, leaned on the desk, or lay on the bed. The furniture was white with gold lines, and the bed had flounces.

  Maya was more interested in the walls. Gwenda had made a collage of photographs, some big, some small, all arranged into a beautiful mosaic of colorful people and places: an empty stretch of red desert with tall square rock formations in the distance, a lively marketplace midstream on boats, a winter landscape of snowy expanses with dark pine trees, people wearing heavy hide coats and colorful knitted caps and gloves. There was a white-sand island with palm trees and turquoise water, and high, stark white mountaintop ruins under burning blue skies. Everywhere Maya looked, she saw another intriguing place or person.

  “Wow,” she said.

  Gwenda glanced around, then lifted her hands. “Still working on it,” she said. “I got most of the pictures from old calendars and magazines, but a few are photographs people in my family took.”

  “Very, very cool,” said Maya.

  “Do you know this kid?” Peter asked, pointing to a little boy with dark skin who smiled wide enough to show a twotooth gap. He stood in front of a hut that looked like it was made of dried red-brown mud and straw, and he held up a stick with ribbons wound around it.

  “It’s my cousin Sipho,” Gwenda said. She smiled at the picture of the little boy.

  “Did you take the picture?” Peter asked.

  “My dad did, in Africa.”

  “Neat.” Peter leaned forward, staring at the lower corner of the picture. “Whoa. Look at that. There’s a Goliath beetle! How cool is that?”

  All these pictures glow a little, Rimi said.

  May I see? Maya asked.

  A flicker of shadow and she saw that colors like the bright ones around the stones of Gwenda’s bracelet lay over these pictures, very thin, like gauze scarves, but everywhere. Maya nodded, and Rimi’s shadow-view vanished.

  Gwenda opened the closet door, turned on a light, and stood back. She gestured toward the closet and nodded to Candra and Maya.

  Candra pushe
d past Gwenda and stood in the closet. “Whoa,” she said. “How do you rate a clothes budget like this?”

  Maya peeked in. The closet was bigger than hers, with hanger bars on both sides, and lots of colorful dresses, skirts, and blouses on hangers.

  “I have these friends. They’re, like, my clothes pals instead of my pen pals. Instead of letters, we send each other clothes. They live on the other side of the world. This skirt is from my friend Pavlína in Prague, and that shirt is from Fahima in Cairo. I send them American clothes I get in thrift stores, and they send me stuff they find in secondhand shops.”

  “Awesome,” said Candra. She slid hangers sideways, pausing to study embroidered shirts, pleated skirts, gypsy vests.

  “I get better stuff than my friends do, I think.” Gwenda smiled.

  “Boy howdy.” Candra knelt to peer at the shoes lined up below the clothes. There were only five pairs. Gwenda’s favorite knee-high red leather boots were there, and a pair of narrow leather ankle-high shoes that laced up. Gwenda didn’t seem to own any tennis shoes. “Could you introduce me to your friends?”

  Gwenda sighed. “That would be hard. I could lend you some of my clothes.”

  Candra straightened. She was five inches taller than Gwenda, and she had a bust. Gwenda was pretty straight up and down. Some of the clothes were loose, though, and a lot of the skirts gathered at the waist with ties.

  “That would be great,” Candra said.

  Peter was working his way around the room, still studying the photographs. He muttered to himself whenever he saw a new animal.

  “So that’s the secret of my closet. Are you happy now?” asked Gwenda.

  “Happier than I was,” said Candra, “but not all the way happy. Thanks for showing me, anyway.”

  “You’re welcome,” Gwenda said, and then her mother came to the door and announced that tea was ready.

  Ms. Janus led them back through the living room and into the kitchen, where there was a large, circular table they could all fit around. Fiona nodded to them from the living room couch but didn’t join them.