“No, that’s not a common skill among the rest of the current students,” agreed Christopher. He glanced at the door before asking, “So … Alexis, huh?”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have an objection to my choice of partners?”
“Not at all! I mean, my true love is literally a skeleton, so I figure I don’t get to judge. People love who they love. I just never thought you were into…” He paused, waving his hands as he tried to finish his thought.
“Fat girls?” asked Cora, a dangerous note in her voice.
Christopher snorted. “Please. Anyone with skin seems fat to me, including myself. Once you have working musculature, you’re not my type.”
“Disturbing but accurate,” murmured Jack.
“I’m honestly more thrown by the ‘person with a physical body’ part,” continued Christopher. “I guess I sort of assumed that one day you’d reproduce by budding, or by digging up a bunch of dead things and stapling them together.”
“Alexis has been dead twice, and while she might be able to get pregnant via conventional means, neither science nor necromancy recommends she attempt to do so,” said Jack. “I, on the other hand, am capable of reproduction when inhabiting my proper body, but find the idea abhorrent. It’s a messy, dangerous process, and I want nothing to do with it. Should Alexis decide she wants to be a mother, I’ll construct her the child or children of her dreams, and I won’t use anything as primitive as a stapler.”
“Why does that sound romantic when you say it?” asked Cora.
Christopher laughed. “Fair enough, biology bows before you. I got it. She seems nice.”
“She’s more than I, in all my weakness, could possibly deserve,” said Jack. “She’s the moon that lights my way and the stars that steer my course, and I spent every day I was enrolled in this school sharing a room with the sister who killed her, who’d never been able to understand what it was for me to be in love. When I arrived home and saw Alexis standing by Dr. Bleak’s side, I felt…”
She stopped for a moment, throat working. Finally, in a soft voice, she said, “I felt like I’d been forgiven. I felt like I’d been rewarded for my willingness to stand against my sister, who I loved once—who I love still—with the restoration of the thing I cared for most in this or any other world. She’s everything to me, and the Moors are her home, and I’ll save them, for her. I won’t pretend there’s no selfishness here. I want my body back. Remaining in this one will surely drive me mad. But I’d accept that madness if not for the fact that Alexis would never forgive me for leaving her family behind.”
Christopher whistled, long and low. “Invite me to the wedding, okay?”
Jack smiled. “I doubt you’ll be able to handle the commute, but I’ll light a candle to the Moon for you all the same.”
The door at the top of the stairs banged open and Sumi came skipping down, pausing when she saw Jack. Then she lit up, bouncing onto her toes and grinning as widely as her face allowed. “There you are!” she declared, loud enough that people could probably hear her three rooms away. “I wondered, but you put your petals back in place, and you’re the right rose after all! We’re going to have an adventure, did you know?”
“Miss West agreed, then?” Jack looked past Sumi to where Kade and Alexis were descending the stairs. “You’ll accompany us to the Moors?”
“We will,” said Kade. “You’re sure you can get us back here, right? This isn’t a one-way trip?”
“Dr. Bleak will gladly reward you for assisting us, if he’s able,” said Jack. Her face twisted, sorrow and resignation warring for ownership of her expression. “And if all is as I fear it may be, I’ll stand in his stead as new scientist to the Moors, heir to all the Moon’s commands. Either way, the lightning will see you home.”
“Jack…” Kade hesitated. “That sounds like a pretty permanent position.”
“The first marriage any scientist makes is to their art,” said Jack. “The second, if they’re fortunate, is to someone somewhat softer. I’ve found both the loves of my life, and I’m not so arrogant—although I am, let us be clear, quite arrogant—as to think I could do better. I’m going home. I’m taking up the place I have trained for since I was a child, if that’s what has to happen. Or perhaps I’m getting lucky, and Dr. Bleak will rise and hold his title for a little longer.”
The look in her eyes made it clear that she didn’t expect any further luck to be coming her way. She turned to Christopher and Cora.
“You’re quite welcome to accompany us: Christopher, at least, has skills that would serve him well in the Moors, and I’m sure you”—she nodded to Cora—“have useful things to offer, although I don’t know you well enough to guess at what they might be. The choice is yours. I should warn you that there are shadows in the sea where I come from. They might be more interested in you than you’ll entirely care for.”
“What, having managed to nab Kade and Sumi, you’re happy to leave the rest of us behind?” asked Christopher.
“Having managed to ‘nab’ the Goblin Prince in Waiting and the war heroine, you mean? Yes, I’m quite content. But we’re wasting time. Will you come, or no?”
“We’ll come,” said Cora, before Christopher could speak. She knew what his answer was going to be, could see it in the way he held his flute. He was hungry for adventure. He wanted to glut himself on it, to digest it slowly through the days ahead. Whether his door came for him again or not, he could at least remember there was magic in the world.
She didn’t think she could bear it if he left her behind.
Jack nodded, relief flickering across her face like lightning licking at the sky. “I swear I’ll do my best to get you home. Alexis?” She turned to the larger girl. “Will you do the honors?”
Alexis reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a key. Or at least, Cora thought it was a key; it didn’t seem like it could be anything else, given the way it fit into the curve of Alexis’s fingers. She’d just never seen a key crafted from living lightning before. It bucked and struggled against Alexis’s grasp, trying to break free and ground itself.
Alexis stepped forward and slid the key into the empty air, closing her eyes. Jack put her hands over Alexis’s, stepping closer, so the two girls were pressed together, holding each another steady, holding each other up.
“We’re sure,” said Jack, and together, they turned the key.
The room flashed white with lightning. It poured from the light fixture, cascading over Jack and Alexis before slamming, again and again, into the already-blackened floor. Alexis’s unbound hair stood on end. Jack’s hair, confined by a tidy braid, was more restrained, but Cora realized she could hear something under the pounding of the lightning.
Laughter.
Jack was laughing, high and bright and utterly delighted. It was the laughter of a child waking on Christmas morning to find a pony tethered to the bannister; it was the laughter of a monster rising from the primordial ooze to devour the world. Cora wasn’t sure which of those two thoughts frightened her more, and it was almost a relief that the lightning already had the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck standing on end, so she didn’t have to blame it on the laughter.
Thunder rolled through the room, loud enough to vibrate the shelves, and the lightning stopped. The key remained, now protruding from the brass keyhole of an old oak door. Jack grasped the handle.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
PART II
THE MOORS
7 THE ROLES WE CHOOSE OURSELVES
THE OAK DOOR opened on a rolling hillside that stretched on for the better part of forever. Crimson moonlight painted every curve and corner, draping it like a shroud. Knee-high grass covered the landscape, peppered with patches of flowers, thorn brakes, and stunted, twisting trees.
Alexis was the first through the door, followed by Sumi, then Kade, Christopher, and Cora, with Jack bringing up the rear. For a moment the door remained open, showing a narrow sli
ce of Christopher’s basement bedroom. Then it swung closed, vanishing in the same instant, so that there was nothing but the Moors.
None of them noticed. Jack was too busy closing her eyes and breathing deeply; Alexis was too busy tucking the lightning key back into her apron. As for the others, they’d never been to this particular world before, and they were too busy staring.
Ahead of them lay the sea, great and roiling and terrible; something about it called to Cora and repulsed her at the same time, cautioning her that these depths would hold things she’d never seen in the Trenches, things that might not be as friendly as the monsters she’d already faced and defeated. Behind them loomed the mountains, craggy peaks covered in snow and dotted with castles. Kade knew without asking that there would be goblins, of a sort, in those high reaches, and that they would know him if he went to them, if he bowed his head and asked to see their king.
To the right stretched open fields, heading toward some distant village, some unknown monster. And to the left there stood a windmill, and beyond that in the far distance, a village splashed across the hills like it had fallen from some great and unknowable height, watched over by the towering, somehow terrible shape of a castle which seemed to defy all laws of architecture and good taste at the same time. It was a monster in its own right, and when it opened its mouth to feed, it would devour the world.
Sumi looked up and smiled serenely. “Look at the moon,” she said. “It’s like the sugared cherry on the biggest murder sundae in the whole world.”
“Not a bad description,” said Jack. “The Moon and the Moors are connected; She watches over us, and while She might not always approve, She remembers all.”
“That sounds almost like superstition; Jack, I didn’t know you had it in you,” said Kade, teasing to cover his own nervousness.
Jack looked at him blandly. “It’s not superstition when it’s a proven scientific fact. The rules are different here. Remember that, and you’ll be fine. Now we need to hurry.”
“I thought you said we had until the next full moon,” said Cora.
“We do, but the Moon waxes and wanes more quickly here than she does in the world we were all born to: the last full moon was six days ago, and the next will come three days from now. At the moment, however, that is less important than the fact that sunset is approaching, and no one with any sense wants to be caught outside when the sun goes down.”
Christopher blinked slowly. “You mean it isn’t night already?” The world was overcast and gray, and together with the nearness of the bloody moon, it seemed reasonable to assume they were walking washed in moonlight, with no reason for the sun to get involved.
“Night is a much deeper darkness,” said Alexis. “We need to get to cover. The windmill will welcome us.” Unspoken was the fact that, if Dr. Bleak still lived, they would find him there.
“Lead the way,” said Kade.
Jack did exactly that, stepping across the uneven ground with the graceful ease of long practice. The others followed, some more easily than others. Sumi skipped, as carefree as if this were a trip to an amusement park built on questionable design choices. Cora took quick, careful steps, skirting the various gopher holes—which, she suspected, hadn’t really been made by anything as friendly as actual gophers—and questionable vegetation. Christopher, on the other hand, managed to trip three times in the first minute and a half, causing Jack to look at him and mutter caustically about setting records.
The whole time, Cora could hear the singing of the sea. It was a soft, ceaseless sound, and it matched the timbre of her heartbeat, echoing through her entire body. Maybe they could go there, when they were done at the windmill.
Maybe she could touch the waves. Maybe the waves could touch me, she thought, and the idea was and wasn’t hers at the same time, and it was as enthralling as it was horrific, and she kept on walking.
None of the others noticed the growing vacancy in her eyes. Maybe that was for the best; there wasn’t much they could have done about it. Kade fell back until he was walking alongside Alexis. “Hey,” he said, voice pitched low, in the hopes that it wouldn’t carry to Jack. “We haven’t had much of a chance to talk. I’m—”
“I know who you are,” said Alexis, amused. “I know all of you, except for the girl with the ocean in her hair. You’re the stories Jack tells me at night, when my scars ache and I can’t get to sleep. You’re the children of the doors. You share something with her that I never will, and I suppose I ought to resent you for that, but honestly, I’m just glad you were there for her when I couldn’t be.”
“Ah,” said Kade. “I’m not sure how I feel about being someone else’s bedtime story.”
“Everyone is somebody’s bedtime story,” said Alexis. “Most of us just don’t have to face it so directly. I thought you’d be taller.”
“I wish I were taller.”
Alexis smiled, a twinkle in her eye. “Don’t say that where Jack can hear you. She likes any excuse to grab a shovel and get to work.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Kade hesitated before saying, with as much delicacy as he could manage, “The lightning that summoned the door seems to have given you your voice back. Do you know how long that’s going to last?”
“I have a reservoir filled with lightning under my heart,” said Alexis. “How fast it runs down depends on a lot of things. My voice is usually the first thing to go, followed by my balance, followed by the strength in my arms and legs. Eventually, I wind up unable to move without hurting so much it feels like the storm that brought me back to life is ripping me to pieces. I don’t know how long I could stay that way without dying. I’ve never felt like it was important to learn. Is that what you wanted to know? Would you like more details? I’d offer to show you my scars, but Jack might notice if I started pulling off my clothes, so I’d prefer not to.”
Kade winced. “You’re angry.”
“A little bit, yes. I understand wanting to know what your allies are capable of, but the fact that I’ve been damaged doesn’t make me broken, and you don’t need to behave as if it does. This is my home, my world, and I’m going to fight to get it back, just as hard as Jack will. Harder, maybe. She’ll always be a newcomer here. She loves her land, and she’ll protect it, but this is where I was born. The Moon has known my first breath, all three times I’ve taken it, and She loves me all the same.”
Kade nodded, and was silent.
Ahead of them, leading the ragged gang of teens across the impossible landscape, Jack suddenly stiffened. All of them could hear her anguished cry of “Dr. Bleak!” before she broke into a run, moving with surprising speed over the uneven ground.
Sumi raced after her, easily matching Jack’s sudden, panic-driven speed. Christopher and Kade were close behind. Alexis didn’t run. Alexis walked with quiet resignation, as if she knew that hurrying would change nothing.
She paused for a moment when she reached Cora, who had stopped dead in her tracks, and whose eyes were filled with iridescent swirls, like sunlight dancing on the surface of the sea. Alexis bit her lip.
“I don’t suppose it would make any difference if I said that you’re supposed to help us save the world, would it?” she asked.
Cora didn’t move.
Alexis closed her eyes.
She should have anticipated this, should have found a way to warn Jack of the risks—but then, it was so unpredictable, who’d be called and who wouldn’t be, when they tumbled through the doors. The Master had called the Wolcott girls to him through the sheer force of his wanting, plucking the twin foundlings out of their uncertainty when either one of them could have been his beloved little girl. Dr. Bleak had stolen Jack away, but only because Jill would never have been able to walk away from the Master alive. Christopher’s heart was sworn to a girl with fingers of bone and butterflies where her heart belonged. Kade was … well, based on what Jack had said about him, Kade was sworn to the school.
This girl, though, this girl, with the ocean in her hair
and the scales melting under her skin, she’d been vulnerable from the start.
Alexis opened her eyes in time to watch Cora turn away from the windmill, toward the ancient, swallowing sea, and break into a run. She moved faster than seemed possible, legs devouring distance the way a storm devoured ships. In a moment, she’d be gone.
Alexis whirled and ran, not after Cora, but after the others. She caught up with Kade first, grabbing him by the arm and yanking him to a halt. He turned to stare at her, startled and a little angry, only to pale when he realized Cora wasn’t with her.
“What—” he began.
“The Drowned Gods are singing a song that only your friend can hear,” she said. “I’d never make it to the shore. Someone has to go with her.”
Kade’s expression faded into blankness. “The Drowned Gods,” he repeated. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that sometimes, the Moors claim their own,” said Alexis. “Please. She’s getting away.” She pointed toward the horizon, where a flicker of blue-green hair was still visible against the washed-out colors of the field.
Kade hadn’t been as loud or as flashy in his heroism as Sumi, but he was still the Goblin Prince in Waiting; he had still saved his share of lives. He nodded, once.
“Tell Jack I’ll find her,” he said, and then he was gone, running after Cora, leaving Alexis standing alone in the middle of the Moors.
Slowly, the girl with the lightning-powered heart turned and trudged toward the windmill, and the inevitability of what she knew she’d find there.
8 EVERYONE HAS A MASK
SEEN UP CLOSE, the windmill was surprisingly pastoral. The walls were half-covered in trellises that dripped with bean runners and massive white flowers, their petals edged in lurid red. A low stone wall surrounded the gardens, and a cobblestone path led from the gate to the open door. The stones had been gray when they were pressed into place, each chosen for the precision of its fit with its neighbors.
Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children) Page 6