Chapter 4 Where Shadows Creep …
FINDING THE OTHER STUDENTS outside of class time was often something easier said than done.
Christopher left Nancy and Eleanor in the office, promising a swift return, and ran off down the hall, trying to decide which way to go first. Kade was almost certainly in the attic, at the very top of the school, but the attic meant stairs and furthermore, finding Kade would mean going back to the office, because there was no way he’d be willing to put off helping Nancy while they searched the house for Sumi.
Sumi could be virtually anywhere. She could be in the music room, playing nonsensical cover songs on her violin; she could be in the turtle pond, trying to squeeze the turtles into dresses scavenged from dolls abandoned by departed students; she could even be in her room, staring at the ceiling and trying to interpret the shadows in the plaster the way some people would interpret clouds.
Her flightiness was her most frustrating attribute at times like this.
In the end, Christopher sighed heavily and turned toward the attic stairs. They could always find Sumi later, after they had the beginnings of a plan.
Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children was located in a rambling old house that had belonged to her family for generations, and had been expanded upon and added to for just as long.
Most of the additions had taken place since Eleanor took ownership of the property, and while they followed the necessary limits for safety’s sake—no building code violations here—that was about as far as it went, where logic was concerned.
Doors were equally likely to lead to the outside, another room, or a blank expanse of wall; windows opened between rooms. Staircases bristled off unexpected places, and led to equally unexpected rooms.
Only the Nonsense children seemed to be able to follow the strange rhythms of the house with anything resembling consistency; the ones who’d traveled to worlds where mushrooms talked and gravity sometimes turned itself off for the amusement of the sunbeams themselves.
Those students had spent so much time removed from the land of logic and reliability that they no longer batted an eye at the strangeness of a house that didn’t rearrange itself, just followed unpredictable rules.
So Christopher was already at a disadvantage when it came to locating Sumi, who could move through the house with effortless ease.
He pulled himself up the stairs to the attic, trying to tamp down his frustration, and rapped his knuckles against the wood.
There was a thudding sound from the other side, accompanied by a slithering crash that could only be a stack of books falling to the floor, and then Kade was opening the door, disheveled but dressed, hair in his eyes as he peered at Christopher.
“What’s on fire?” he asked, Oklahoma drawl clipped tight by the question.
Christopher shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing is on fire, or underwater, or impacted by any other form of natural disaster. I just need you to come and find Sumi with me.”
“Sumi? Why?”
Christopher shrugged. “I think your aunt’s about to send us on another quest.”
“Quests are against the rules,” said Kade. “Aunt Eleanor doesn’t send us on quests, she just sighs and doesn’t stop us when the quests come along.”
“This one’s different,” said Christopher. “Can you help me find Sumi?”
Kade fixed him with a stern eye, frowning ever so slightly. “You’re sure you want her?”
“I’m sure she’d skin me alive if I left her out of this one, and she always finds a way to involve herself whether we want her or not; let’s see how different things are when she’s invited from the very start.”
Christopher leaned forward, grabbing the other boy by the wrist. “Come on, Kade,” he said.
“You’ve been locked in your attic since Cora left, even though you knew it was what she wanted.
You need to come out, and get back into the rhythm of things here.
How else are you going to take over running this place? ”
“What if I don’t want to take over?” asked Kade, twisting his wrist out of Christopher’s grasp and stepping back. “What if I want to do something else with my life?”
“Then you can do something else with your life, but whatever that is, you can’t do it from your attic.”
Kade sighed, rolling his eyes theatrically as he began to unbutton and rebutton his vest, getting it on straight.
Christopher was privately glad to see that, even if he wasn’t telling Kade the reason for their impending quest just yet; Kade would have killed him if Christopher had let Nancy see him for the first time since she went back to the Halls of the Dead with his vest buttoned wrong.
“Rake a brush through your hair,” he said abruptly.
Kade fixed him with a dubious look. “Why?”
“Your aunt will kill me if I bring you in front of her with messy hair.” Christopher wanted to snatch the words back as soon as they were out, but couldn’t.
The lie hung between them, too large and blatant to be believable, and they both considered it for a beat so long that Christopher began to wonder whether it would hurt when Kade pushed him down the stairs.
To his surprise, Kade only shrugged and said, “All right,” ducking back into the attic for a long minute. When he emerged again, his hair was brushed, his vest was buttoned, and he looked more himself than he had in months.
“Come on,” said Christopher, tasting candy-sweet relief. “Let’s find Sumi.”
KADE’S METHOD FOR FINDING Sumi was simultaneously practical and ridiculous, much like Sumi herself, which might have been part of why it worked so well.
“Think of all the places Sumi might be,” he said to Christopher.
“Then dismiss them, and think of all the places Sumi isn’t.
That’s our list. That’s how we’re going to find her. ”
With that paradoxical instruction in mind, the pair of them left the attic, descending first to the library, where Sumi wasn’t, and then to the laundry room, where Sumi wasn’t either, and finally to the conservatory behind the main house, which Talia had converted into a massive incubator for rack upon rack of cocoons.
They dangled, green and brown and yellow, some twitching as the moths within them struggled to be born, and moths fluttered through the glassed-in air, wings catching the slight currents that happened even inside a confined room.
Talia released the day’s moths each night, standing outside next to a spherical light designed to mimic the moon, and if she cried, no one who attended her nightly releases said anything about it, to her or to each other.
The moths brought her peace, if not enough to make a difference, and at Eleanor West’s school, people had long since learned not to question what brought people peace.
Sumi was there. She was stretched out flat on her back atop a decaying log that Talia had scavenged from somewhere in the nearby forest, her bare shoulders pressed into the moss and several large moths perched upon her face, their massive wings opening and closing in a slow rhythm, slow as a heartbeat, slow as a breath.
Talia was nearby at one of her cocoon racks, misting them down with a spray bottle and watching as they twitched.
She glanced around when Kade and Christopher came inside, one eyebrow rising, and didn’t say anything. She knew they weren’t there for her.
As for Kade, he did manage a polite smile for Talia, along with a nod to acknowledge that he understood they were trespassing in her territory.
This was her place, her kingdom of moths and silent wings, and only the invited were meant to walk here.
Which somehow included Sumi. She was rude, crass, and loud, never having a thought she didn’t think deserved to be voiced, but somehow, that endeared her to the rest of the students, rather than driving them away.
Eleanor laughed whenever someone mentioned it.
“An open door is a blessing of nonsense,” she would say if pressed, and then wave the whole topic off like it was an inconvenience she no longer wanted to deal with.
Kade kept walking until he was at the end of Sumi’s log. Christopher followed. “Sumi,” he said. She didn’t respond, only remained still beneath her cloak of moths. “Sumi,” Kade repeated, louder. “You need to pay attention to me now.”
“Does she?” asked Talia. “You’re not one of her teachers, and she’s been here all afternoon—whatever mischief you’re here to accuse her of, she didn’t do it. She can’t have done it.”
Kade scoffed. “If she’d done it, we’d never know. Sumi’s too good at what she does to get caught out that easy. Now come on, Sumi. Christopher’s been looking all over the school for you. Says he’s got a line on a quest that might want us in it.”
Sumi sat up immediately, sending moths flying in all directions. “Why didn’t you say so?” she asked, swinging her legs over to the ground and standing. “It’s been boring as early morning since I got back here, and I’m ready to do something ill-advised and dangerous.”
Talia put down her mister, moving closer to the group.
“We don’t know that it’s going to be ill-advised,” said Christopher.
“Dangerous seems pretty likely, from what I know so far, but I think this might be something a little lower on the peril scale than following the mad scientist through a door made of lightning to a world where the moon can have opinions about whether or not it ought to eat you.”
“Danger is as danger does,” said Sumi philosophically. She plucked a moth out of her hair, where it had taken an excessive interest in one of her genuine gumdrop barrettes, sticking around to taste the sugar after its fellows fled. “Shall we go consider questing?”
“I’m coming,” said Talia abruptly. The trio turned to look at her, blinking quizzically. She looked back, jaw set in a stubborn line.
Talia wasn’t a tall girl, being only a few inches taller than Sumi.
She wasn’t a skinny girl, but wasn’t a fat girl either, existing in that awkward in-between space where it was difficult to find trousers that would fit her without going to the plus-size catalogs, and half of those were too large, sliding right off of her hips.
She had the tawny skin and straight black hair she’d inherited from her Chinese mother, and the Canadian accent she’d been raised to while living with her European father.
Really, the most remarkable thing about her was how intensely stubborn she could be when she got her teeth into something.
They’d all witnessed it, usually during evening therapy sessions, where she’d continued to cheerfully talk over any teachers who tried to interrupt her during her recitation of the Great Song.
Her friendship with Sumi wasn’t remarkable.
Everyone had a friendship with Sumi of one shape or another, even Angela, who generally reserved all her friendliness and good behavior for Seraphina.
Talia was quiet and reserved, still grieving the loss of her Door, but she smiled for Sumi, and the smiling seemed to do her good.
It didn’t help with the stubbornness, of course, but even Sumi couldn’t work miracles.
Kade looked dubiously at Talia. “You don’t know what this is all about, what we might be agreeing to do, why it’s even happening. Why would you volunteer?”
“I want to go home,” she said flatly. “Everyone knows that the people who go on quests with you are the ones who get to go home. I wasn’t here until after they were gone, but people have told me about the Wolcott twins, and how they kicked off the questing.
You went to find Sumi, and Nadya didn’t come back.
You went to that other school and we got new students, but some of the people you freed didn’t make it here because they found their Doors.
You helped Nancy get home, and Cora got to leave right after.
Quests change the probabilities. They tell the Doors we’re sure.
Well, I’m sure, and I need to get home before the text runs out.
I’m supposed to be writing the next verses to the Great Song, and I can’t do that from here. I’m coming with you.”
“Better not argue, Kade-unmade,” said Sumi. “Better get going. If there’s a quest for questing, we need to get it started or you wouldn’t be here now. That’s the way with questing.”
Kade looked between the two girls and sighed heavily. “Fine,” he said. “I don’t even know what this is all about, and maybe this stupid, but fine. It’s not my job to keep you from shoving your arm into the quest. Let’s go.”
Together, the four of them left the warm air of the conservatory, leaving all the moths in view behind.