Every Heart a Doorway (6 page)

“So we’re here to do … what?” asked Nancy. “Learn how to dwell? Eleanor dresses like she’s still living on the other side of the mirror. Sumi is…” She didn’t have the words for what Sumi was. She stopped speaking.

“Sumi is a classic example of someone who embraced life in a high Nonsense world,” said Lundy. “She can’t be blamed for what it made of her, any more than you can be blamed for the way you seem to stop breathing when no one’s looking at you. She’s going to need a lot of work before she’s ready to face the world outside again, and she has to want to do it. That’s what determines which school is better for you: the wanting. You want to go back, and so you hold on to the habits you learned while you were traveling, because it’s better than admitting the journey’s over. We don’t teach you how to dwell. We also don’t teach you how to forget. We teach you how to move on.”

There was one more question that needed to be asked, a question bigger and more painful than all the questions before it. Nancy closed her eyes for a moment, allowing herself to sink into stillness. Then she opened them and asked, “How many of us have gone back?”

Lundy sighed. “Every student I’ve given this orientation to has asked that question. The answer is, we don’t know. Some people, like Eleanor—like me—go back over and over again before we wind up staying in one world or the other for good. Others only take one trip in their lives. If your parents choose to withdraw you, or if you choose to withdraw yourself, we’ll have no way of knowing what becomes of you. I know of three students who have returned to the worlds they left behind. Two were high Logic, both Fairylands. The third was high Nonsense. An Underworld, like the one you visited—although not the same, I’m afraid. That one was accessed by walking through a special mirror, under the full moon. The girl we lost to that world was home for the holidays when the door opened for her a second time. Her mother broke the glass after she went through. We learned later that the mother had also been there—it was a generational portal—and had wanted to spare her daughter the pain of returning.”

“Oh,” said Nancy, in a very small voice.

“The chances are, Miss Whitman, that you’ll live out your days in this world. You may tell people of your adventures, when they’re more distant, and when speaking of them hurts somewhat less. Many of our graduates have found that sort of sharing to be both cathartic and lucrative. People do so love a good fantasy.” Lundy’s expression was sorrowful but kind, like that of a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis. “I won’t stand here and say the door is closed forever, because there’s no way of being sure. But I
will
tell you the odds were against you going in the first place, and that those same odds are against you now. They say lightning never strikes twice. Well, you’re far more likely to be struck repeatedly by lightning than you are to find a second door.”

“Oh,” said Nancy again.

“I’m sorry.” Then Lundy smiled, ridiculously bright. “Welcome to school, Miss Whitman. We hope that we can make you better.”

PART II

WITH YOUR LOOKING-GLASS EYES

4

LIGHTNING TO KISS THE SKY

THE BUILDING WAS BIGGER
than its population, filled with empty rooms and silent spaces. But all of them felt like they harbored the ghosts of the students who had tried—and failed—to find their way back to the worlds that had rejected them, and so Nancy fled to the outside. She hated to rush, but the sun burnt so badly that she actually
ran
for the deepest copse of trees she could find, shielding her eyes with her arm. She flung herself into the welcome shade of the grove, blinking back tears brought on as much by the light as by her dismay. Setting her back to an ancient oak, she sank to the ground, buried her face against her knees, and settled into perfect stillness as she wept.

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” The voice belonged to Jill, soft and wistful and filled with painful understanding. Nancy raised her head. The gossamer blonde was perched on a tree root, her pale lavender gown arranged to drape just so around her slender frame, a parasol resting against her left shoulder and blocking the sun that filtered down through the branches. Her choker today was deep purple, the color of elderberry wine.

“I’m sorry,” said Nancy, wiping away her tears with slow swipes of her hand. “I didn’t know there was anyone here.”

“It’s the shadiest spot on the grounds. I’m impressed, actually. It took me
weeks
to find the place.” Jill’s smile was kind. “I wasn’t trying to say you should leave. I just meant, well, it’s hard being here, surrounded by all these people who went to their pastel dream worlds full of sunshine and rainbows. They don’t understand us.”

“Um,” said Nancy, glancing at Jill’s pastel gown.

Jill laughed. “I don’t wear these because I want to remember where I’ve been. I wear them because the Master liked it when I dressed in pale colors. They showed the blood better. Isn’t that why you wear white? Because your Master liked to see you that way?”

“I…” Nancy stopped. “He wasn’t my master, he was my Lord, and my teacher, and he loved me. I wear black and white because color is reserved for the Lady of Shadows and her entourage. I’d like to join them someday, if I can prove myself, but until then, I’m supposed to serve as a statue, and statues should blend in. Standing out is for people who’ve earned it.” She touched the pomegranate ribbon in her hair—and one piece of color she
had
earned—before asking, “You had a … master?”

“Yes.” Jill’s smile was bright enough to replace the blocked-away sun. “He was good to me. Gave me treats and trinkets and told me I was beautiful, even when I wasn’t feeling well.
Jack
spent all her time locked away with her precious doctor, learning things that weren’t ladylike or appropriate in the least, but I stayed in the high towers with the Master, and he taught me so many beautiful things. So many beautiful, wonderful things.”

“I’m sorry you wound up back here,” said Nancy.

Jill’s smile died. She flapped a hand like she was trying to wave Nancy’s words away, and said, “This isn’t forever. The Master wanted to be rid of Jack. She didn’t deserve what we had. So he arranged things so a door would open back to our world, and I stumbled and fell through after her. He’ll find a way to open a door back to me. You’ll see.” She stood, spinning her parasol. “Excuse me. I have to go.” Then she turned, not waiting for Nancy to say good-bye, and walked briskly away.

“And that, children, is why sometimes we don’t let the Addams twins out into the general population,” said a voice. Nancy looked up. Kade, who was seated on one of the tree’s higher branches, waved sardonically down at her. “Hello, Nancy out of Wonderland. If you were looking for a private place to cry, you chose poorly.”

“I didn’t think anyone would be out here,” she said.

“Because back at home, the other kids were more likely to hide in their rooms than they were to go running for the outdoors, right?” Kade closed his book. “The trouble is, you’re at a school for people who never learned how to make the logical choice. So we go running for the tallest trees and the deepest holes whenever we want to be alone, and since there’s a limited number of those, we wind up spending a lot of time together. I take it from the crying that your orientation didn’t go well. Let me guess. Lundy told you about lightning striking twice.”

Nancy nodded. She didn’t speak. She no longer trusted her voice.

“She has a point, if your world kicked you out.”

“It didn’t kick me out,” protested Nancy. She could still speak, after all, when she really needed to. “I was sent back to learn something, that’s all. I’m going back.”

Kade looked at her sympathetically and didn’t contradict her. “Prism is never taking me back,” he said instead. “That’s not a nonstarter, that’s a never-gonna-happen. I violated their rules when I wasn’t what they wanted me to be, and the people who run that particular circus are
very
picky about rules. But Eleanor went back a bunch of times. Her door’s still open.”

“How … I mean, why…” Nancy shook her head. “Why did she stop? If her door is still open, why is she
here,
with us, and not there, where she
belongs
?”

Kade swung his legs around so they were braced on the same side of the branch. Then he dropped down from the tree, landing easily in front of Nancy. He straightened, saying, “This was a long time ago, and her parents were still alive. She thought she could have it all, go back and forth, spend as much time as possible in her real home without breaking her father’s heart. But she forgot that adults don’t thrive in Nonsense, even when they’re raised to it. Every time she came back
here,
she got a little older. Until one day she went back
there,
and it nearly broke her. Can you imagine what that must have been like? It would be like opening the door that was supposed to take you home and discovering you couldn’t breathe the air anymore.”

“That sounds horrible,” said Nancy.

“I guess it was.” Kade sank down to sit, cross-legged, across from her. “Of course, she’d already spent enough time in Nonsense for it to have changed her. It slowed her aging—that’s probably why she was able to keep going for as long as she did. Jack checked the record books the last time we had an excursion to town, and she found out Eleanor was almost a hundred. I always figured she was in her sixties. I asked her about it, and you know what she told me?”

“What?” asked Nancy, fascinated and horrified at the same time. Had the Underworld changed more than just her hair? Was she going to stay the same, immortal and unchanging, while everything around her withered and died?

“She said she’s just waiting to get senile, like her mother and father did, because once her mind slips enough, she’ll be able to tolerate the Nonsense again. She’s going to run this school until she forgets why she isn’t going back, and then, when she
does
go back, she’ll be able to stay.” He shook his head. “I can’t decide if it’s genius or madness.”

“Maybe it’s a little bit of both,” said Nancy. “I’d do anything to go home.”

“Most of the students here would,” said Kade bitterly.

Nancy hesitated before she said, “Lundy said there was a sister school for people who
didn’t
want to go back. People who wanted to forget. Why are you enrolled here, instead of there? You might be happier.”

“But you see, I don’t want to forget,” said Kade. “I’m the loophole kid. I want to remember Prism more than anything. The way the air tasted, and the way the music sounded. Everyone played these funky pipes there, even little kids. Lessons started when you were, like, two, and it was another way of communicating. You could have whole conversations without putting down your pipes. I grew
up
there, even if I wound up getting tossed out and forced to do it all over again. I figured out who I was there. I kissed a girl with hair the color of cabbages and eyes the color of moth-wings, and she kissed me back, and it was wonderful. Just because I wouldn’t go back if you paid me, that doesn’t mean I want to forget a
second
of what happened to me. I wouldn’t be who I am if I hadn’t gone to Prism.”

“Oh,” said Nancy. It made sense, of course, it was just an angle she hadn’t considered. She shook her head. “This is all so much more complicated than I ever expected it to be.”

“Tell me about it, princess.” Kade stood, offering her his hand. “Come on. I’ll walk you back to school.”

Nancy hesitated before reaching up and taking the offered hand, letting Kade pull her to her feet. “All right,” she said.

“You’re pretty when you smile,” said Kade as he led her out of the trees, back toward the main building. Nancy couldn’t think of anything to say in response to that, and so she didn’t say anything at all.

*   *   *

CORE CLASSES WERE SURPRISINGLY
dull, taught as they were by an assortment of adults who drove in from the town, Lundy, and Miss Eleanor herself. Nancy got the distinct feeling that someone had a chart showing exactly what was required by the state and that they were all receiving the educational equivalent of a balanced meal.

The electives were slightly better, including music, art, and something called “A Traveler’s History of the Great Compass,” which Nancy guessed had something to do with the various portal worlds and their relations to one another. After hesitantly considering her options, she had signed up. Maybe something in the syllabus would tell her more about where her Underworld fell.

After reading the introductory chapters of her home-printed textbook, she was still confused. The most common directions were Nonsense, usually paired with Virtue, and Logic, usually paired with Wicked. Sumi’s madhouse of a world was high Nonsense. Kade’s Prism was high Logic. With those as her touchstones, Nancy had decided that her Underworld was likely to have been Logic; it had consistent rules and expected them to be followed. But she couldn’t see why it should really be considered Wicked just because it was ruled by the Lord of the Dead. Virtue seemed more likely. Her first actual class was scheduled for two days’ time. It was too long to wait. It was no time at all.

By the end of her first day, she was exhausted, and her head felt like it had been stuffed well beyond any reasonable capacity, spinning with both mundane things like math and history, and with the ever-increasing vocabulary needed to talk to her fellow students. One, a shy girl with brown braids and thick glasses, had confessed that
her
world was at the nexus of two minor compass directions, being high Rhyme and high Linearity. Nancy hadn’t known what to say to that, and so she hadn’t said anything at all. Increasingly, that felt like the safest option she had.

Sumi was sitting on her bed, braiding bits of bright ribbon into her hair, when Nancy slipped into the room. “Tired as a titmouse at a bacchanal, little ghostie?” she asked.

“I don’t know what you mean, so I’m going to assume you want to be taken at face value,” said Nancy. “Yes. I am very tired. I’m going to bed.”