Thresholds

by Kiriki Hoffman, Nina

  Sully rushed up to Maya and barked. She backed away from him, and he followed her, barking and barking, until she was trapped between the refrigerator and the stove.

  “Sully! Stop that right now! Maya, do you have a steak in your pocket or something?” Mom asked.

  “No!” Egg-person, she thought, is there any way we can calm the dog?

  You trust this being? You like this being?

  Yes.

  “Sully, shut up,” Peter yelled, but Sully ignored him. Benjamin looked worried, uncertain. His hands flexed as though he was about to do something, but he didn’t follow through.

  The egg thrummed, a sound below the threshold of hearing. Maya felt calmer and calmer as she felt the hum travel up the bones of her arm. It wasn’t the same as when the egg calmed her during the council; this was more of a meditative state. Sully’s frantic barks slowed. Finally he sat back with a yip and let his tongue loll out in a dog smile.

  Maya crouched. “Hey, Sully,” she murmured.

  Wagging his tail, Sully came to lick her face. “Hey, boy. Hey.” She hugged him and he woofed. Maya looked up at Benjamin. His face was still, his head tilted as though listening. He smiled then, and she felt better.

  “What was the matter with you, you daft, darling dog?” Mom asked. “A moment of identity crisis? Did you forget you were a golden?”

  Sully whined and went to sniff Benjamin’s jeans. The dog accepted petting from everyone as Maya straightened. Can we talk to animals? she wondered.

  That wasn’t talk, answered the egg. It was feel.

  Either way, it worked. Thanks, egg-person.

  Welcome.

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Andersen, Peter. I better get home now,” Benjamin said.

  “Benjamin, do you sing?” Mom asked suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Do you sing? We like to make music on Saturday nights. I was wondering if you’d care to join us.”

  He stood, his hand resting on Sully’s head, and then a smile lit his face. “All of my family sings, ma’am, and I’d love to come if I can. I have to check with my parents.”

  “Bring anyone else you like, and if you have sheet music, that might help. If we don’t know your music already, we’d like to learn.”

  “And bring your instruments,” said Maya, remembering the weird-looking not-guitars and not-flutes she had seen them play.

  “I’ll tell them,” he said. “Thanks, ma’am. Maya, see you tomorrow.”

  “’Night, Benjamin.” Maya collected dishes and flatware and went to set the table.

  TWENTY

  In her room after supper, Maya painted a couple of pictures of the aliens she had seen in the courtyard that afternoon, even though she knew she was doing something Rowan wouldn’t like. Benjamin had challenged Rowan on some of his rules. Maybe this was not a real rule, either. She wanted to paint another picture, but she was too tired to hold her eyelids open anymore.

  She woke when something crackled in the air around her. Disoriented, she sat up, untangling her egg arm from its nest of pillows. The egg felt hot, and she was surrounded by a faintly gleaming pale blue bubble.

  “Maya?” whispered someone. Two shadowy people stood in her bedroom, one much taller than the other.

  Maya blinked and checked the clock. Two A.M. She reached to switch on her bedside light, and the bubble moved with her, staying about a foot from her in all directions.

  In the light, she saw that the shadows were Gwenda and Ara-Kita. “What?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m sorry we didn’t let you know we were coming,” Gwenda whispered. “We need to set up some kind of communication system for that.” She went to the door and tapped the lock, then gestured through the air, singing a faint phrase of song that sounded like wind. “Okay, I set a silence ward so the rest of the house shouldn’t be able to hear us,” she said in a more normal tone. “Great-Uncle Harper cleared Ara-Kita to question your egg.”

  “At this time of night?” Maya rubbed her eyes.

  “We wanted to make sure everyone else was asleep,” said Gwenda. “Will you let us ask the little one questions?”

  Egg? Maya thought.

  Strong, the egg thought, but it sounded unsure.

  “May I ask questions about Kita?” Maya said.

  “Some I will answer,” said Ara. “Please. What you know tell. What your partner knows tell.”

  “Okay,” said Maya. She straightened the bedcovers, pulled her knees up to her chest, and pointed toward the foot of the bed. The bubble moved with her. “Have a seat.”

  “Will you lower your shield?”

  “My shield? My shield?” Our shield, egglet?

  Ours. The egg tensed, and then, with a plink, the bubble vanished.

  “Thanks,” said Ara-Kita. She sat at the foot of Maya’s bed. “Strong one, so early a shield to make. Svelala.” She smiled, flashing pointed teeth.

  Kita lifted its head-knob and flowed through the air toward Maya, though most of its body stayed looped over Ara’s shoulders and head. It paused about a foot from Maya’s face.

  “Your arm lift? Your sissimi show?” Ara said.

  Maya raised her left arm and slid her sleepshirt’s sleeve back to uncover the egg. Yellow, green, and rosy lights darted across its surface.

  “Ah,” said Ara, “so pretty. Good health.”

  Kita neared Maya’s wrist, approaching slowly, its head weaving. It paused a couple of inches away.

  “Ready?” Ara asked.

  Maya bit her lip and nodded.

  The black head dipped to touch her egg. Shock jolted through Maya, tingled out the ends of her fingers and toes. Her hair crackled with electricity.

  And then, a honey-sweet flow, a caress, a mother-child touch, the brush of feathered wingtips. A high, lilting tune. No words, but a whistle of lifetimes passing each other, a two-way street with near-instant traffic going in both directions.

  Maya’s mouth was wide. She stared at Ara, whose face was stretched, wide-mouthed and wide-eyed, too.

  A final kiss of farewell. Kita lifted its head from Maya’s egg. Maya gulped breath. Tension she hadn’t even been aware of holding ran out of her. Ara’s shoulders slumped and her head dropped forward. “Oh,” she gasped. “More than I knew.”

  Oh, oh, oh!

  Egg-person! Are you all right?

  I am so happy!

  Maya leaned back against her headboard, her arms and legs sagging like a marionette’s whose strings had been cut. Happy?

  I’ve learned so much. We will be able to—

  Ara straightened. Her pale green tongue darted out of her mouth and licked her lips. “Oh, so much help! The taste-smell of the Rimi-thief, the images of Krithiworks. Rimi-thief the other thieves knew, all together on Krithi trained. We them will find. Blessings, blessings! You I thank, and you I thank, Maya-Rimi.”

  Rimi? thought Maya.

  Maya, thought the egg.

  “Rimi,” Maya said aloud, and smiled.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Friday, Maya found herself drowsing through school almost as much as Travis did. Rimi hummed on her wrist, thinking thoughts too quick for Maya to catch, full of satisfaction and excitement.

  She and Travis both sat with the Janus House kids at lunch. Benjamin had brought an extra lunch for each of them. Maya ate her own lunch, the lunch Benjamin brought her, and everything anybody else didn’t. The Janus House kids taught them a few Kerlinqua words.

  After school, they all set out together. “I think I better actually go home today,” Maya said. “For one thing, I need a nap. And I don’t want Mom and Dad thinking I’m spending too much time at your house.”

  “You have to start learning—” Rowan began.

  “Not today.”

  “You go, Maya.” Twyla pumped her fist.

  Maya smiled at her.

  They were halfway home when an older girl in gypsy clothes ran up to them on the sidewalk. “We need you,” she said to the Janus House kids. �
�And you,” she said to Maya. She looked at Travis. “Not sure about you.”

  “What happened, Alira?” asked Rowan.

  “The Force found the sissimi thief and brought him to the house.”

  In an upstairs apartment outfitted like a hospital room with interesting artwork and no television, Chikuvny Boy lay on a bed under a warm yellow light. A middle-aged, dark-skinned woman in a raspberry dress hovered over him. She tipped something into his mouth from a small, steaming teapot with a long crooked spout.

  Harper and the Tree Sisters and Ara-Kita were all in the room when the kids arrived.

  “She found him in the park near the middle school,” Raspberry Woman said. “He was very ill, hiding, but Ara-Kita scented him. I don’t recognize his origin, nor does she.”

  Chikuvny Boy’s breath rattled in and out. His eyes were closed; the sockets looked bruised. His ruddy hair was flattened against his skull, damp and dark. His skin was even paler than it had been when Maya had seen him two days earlier, and slick with sweat. The freckles across his nose and cheeks looked like dark stars in a white sky.

  Rimi was agitated on Maya’s wrist. My other Other. My other Other!

  “I don’t know how to treat him, since I don’t know where he’s from.” Raspberry Woman bathed the boy’s forehead with a wet cloth. “Our usual remedies are as likely to harm as help.”

  “Maya,” Harper said gently, and Benjamin led her over to the sick boy.

  Help! cried the egg. The blue bubble sprang up around Maya, reached toward the boy on the bed. It pushed out toward him and stubbed itself on his arm, unable to enclose him. No, whispered Rimi. He is no longer mine. A melody of mourning ran through Maya’s mind. Rimi’s shield dropped. Maya pressed her hands to her stomach, trying to push back the pain.

  Chikuvny Boy opened his eyes and stared into Maya’s. He sucked in a gurgling breath. “Does it hurt you now?” he whispered.

  “No.” She held up her wrist where he could see it. He stared at the lights shining from the egg.

  “Good. Beautiful.” He lifted a hand toward the egg, dropped it. “Where?” He looked around without moving his head.

  “These are the people who know about the portals,” she said.

  “Good,” he gasped. “She will be safe. Good.”

  “Child,” said Harper to the boy, “we are trying to help you. Can you tell us who you are and where you are from?”

  The boy took some more rattling breaths. “My name is Bikos Serani.” Pause. “My home is Minsla.”

  Harper glanced at the others. They all shook their heads. “We don’t know where that is.”

  “It has no real portals. Only Krithi portals.”

  “Krithi portals!”

  Maya hunched her shoulders. Everybody in the room looked mad or frightened, and the air felt tight.

  “Is there no way we can get a doctor from your world?” Raspberry Woman asked.

  “It is too late,” Bikos said, his voice fading on the last word. “Only to know she is safe. That is enough.” He lifted his hand again, and this time Maya reached across, set the egg under his fingertips.

  He gasped, and she gasped. She fell into being who he had been—

  He huddled under a large, battered, plastic half bubble while rain from an amber sky drummed down on the clear rounded surface above him, and on the ground, sending up splashes of thin red mud. Wrapped in a ragged cloth, his toes in the cold water, he watched small dead things float by.

  Then he was surrounded by tall, narrow people with lemon chiffon–, key lime pie–, and blueberry yogurt–colored skin, their snaky, knobby hair-vines darker colors, their clothes bumpy and strange, with parasols—or something made of webbing stretched over jointed frameworks—moving behind their heads. Their eyes were wide and pale and jeweled, and some had two sets of eyes, one above the other.

  The blueberry yogurt one knelt near him, tipped back the bubble, and held out slender arms that ended in hands with doubled fingers. He shrank back. The alien took him anyway. It hugged Bikos to its hard, bumpy chest. It felt so warm in the cold rain, and it smelled like wet leather and fried rice. The two parasols—large webbed batwing hands—reached forward over its shoulders to shield Bikos from the rain.

  The alien carried him through a red rip in the sky. A painful twisting in the gut as he went through, a clawing in the chest as his last breath fled and there was no air to take another breath, a ringing in the ears, but then, out the other side, a different world.

  The sun shone hot here, and the buildings were sand-colored domes, the plants wispy and thin leaved, brownish orange and dark plum purple. The knobby-haired people carried him inside and underground and put him in a warm, weedy-smelling pond with a tray of food floating on its surface. One came into the water with him and fed him.

  Everyone was similar to those who had saved Bikos—varied colors, batwing hands, knobbly dreads, beautiful eyes. They fed him and shared comforts with him he had never known before, warmth and luxury and music. They trained him to run and taught him other skills. He didn’t know what they wanted. He didn’t ask. For the first time in his memory, his stomach was full enough all the time, and he was not cold. One of the people was his special caretaker, and she was always nice to him; he adored her.

  When they asked him if he would do a thing for them, of course he said he would.

  “We have to send you to a place we cannot go. There’s something there we need. It is the seed of a friend who will protect you and love you. If you can claim it, you will always have a friend with you.”

  Yes, he said. They showed him images in the air of places, taught him the safe ways to run through them, and told him what he would need to do.

  They showed him the portal. A red rip in the sky.

  Again it hurt to go through, but not as much as it had the first time. He had strength now, and hunger wasn’t clawing at him.

  He stood inside a warm, steaming glass house full of sprawling, muscular vines. Glowing, egg-shaped fruit dangled between large velvety purple and blue leaves. He reached up, took a fruit (“Make sure you get a glowing one; the others are not ripe,” they had told him), and snapped it from its stem. All the leaves surged in the glass house. Other fruits still on the branches trembled, and vines squirmed. Long, curl-tipped tendrils reached for him.

  The fruit’s steady yellow glow changed as he took it. Blue and green lights glowed under its velvet skin. He tucked it inside his shirt, felt the first swell of loving-kindness from the one who would now be his absolutely, and he ran.

  Friend.

  Maya knew that feeling, something you could wrap up in, safe and warm. She felt again the break that happened at separation, Bikos’s loss as he pressed the egg against Maya’s wrist to save its life, the gaping empty place that tore through Maya the afternoon she went to the hospital to visit Stephanie and learned she had died that morning, while Maya was in school.

  Bikos knew he would kill the egg if he kept it. He couldn’t do that to a friend.

  Maya hadn’t been able to do anything to stop Stephanie’s death from coming, but she had rescued Rimi.

  “Maya?” Gwenda touched her shoulder.

  She blinked. Chill touched her wet cheeks.

  A roomful of strangers stared at her.

  Bikos stared at her, too.

  The edges of his mouth curved up into a tiny smile.

  His hand slid off the egg.

  His eyes fell shut, and he stopped breathing.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Weeping raged through her. She dropped to the floor. She ripped open her pack and pulled out her new sketchpad, grabbed a big soft pencil, and drew and drew. Drew the bubble with rain streaming down over it, the clouded sky, the water flowing past with small dark things in it. Drew the face of the alien caretaker, with the wing-hands up behind it; drew other faces of those Bikos had seen on the sandy planet, some with four eyes, some with two; drew their ropes of hair and knobby clothes and wing-hands, spread or collapsed, fanning gently
or shading them from the sun.

  The pool where Bikos had first tasted a special root only Inkept people could have.

  The warm, sandy pit where they had set him to play with their young, games of grab-the-shiny-first-and-curl-away-from-others—how he longed for his own wing-hands to protect him! And muscular hair vines to tickle and snatch and signal moods. The other children, not Krithi, who were being trained to run, to steal. Other children like him who lacked wing-hands and hair-vines.

  The glass house with the sissimi vines; the big, splayed, many-fingered leaves; the glowing fruit dangling within reach, asking to be picked.

  She sketched across each page, clotted it with details, then ripped it out and went to the next, sharpening her pencil as it wore down. All the while, another feeling flooded her—the loss the egg had felt, this second tearing away of its first twin.

  She cried, too, for Stephanie, so tired of all the if onlys. If only Steph were here—well, she wasn’t. She wasn’t. Maya had to do this without her.

  She drew a huddle of three people facing inward, many-fingered hands laced together, wing-hands fluttering around their heads.

  The red rip in the sky—though with pencil, she couldn’t show the color. No circle of six had created it; she looked through memory at the times Bikos had seen it. No special cavern, no songs, no markings on the ground. Oh. There was a machine, both times—she outlined it, and its two operators.

  She couldn’t draw how Bikos had felt when they picked him up to carry him away through the stomach-twisting rip, but she still felt it, the fear and hope as he left behind everything he had ever known.

  She drew a boy wrapped in the embrace of three of these people. She didn’t know if they were men or women, only that they closed in around him and made him feel warm and safe.

  She drew until her pencil was nothing but a nub. She cried the whole time, sniffling, sobbing, scrubbing her nose on her arm.

  She looked up at last and found Rowan and Gwenda and Benjamin close around her, like the three people huddled around the boy in the last picture. Across from her sat Harper and some others. They were studying her pictures, murmuring to each other.