Chapter 5 In Doorless Chambers
CHRISTOPHER TOOK THE LEAD as they were approaching Eleanor’s office, subtly working his way up to the front of their little formation and then continuing as if this was nothing remotely unusual, as if he always tried to replace Kade as the leader of their strange outings.
When he reached the door, he motioned for the others to stay where they were for a moment, then stepped into the office.
“I found them,” he said. “Are you sure you just want to bring them in here, no warning?”
“You didn’t warn them?” asked Nancy.
Christopher shook his head. “I thought that should be your decision.”
“Ghostie-girl!” squealed Sumi behind him, launching herself into the room on a collision course with Nancy.
She impacted with the taller woman, arms wrapping tight around her waist as she lifted her off her feet and spun her around.
Nancy’s natural stiffness aided with this process; she didn’t bend or yield as she was hoisted and spun, only stared at Sumi, expression caught between fondness and surprise.
Christopher stood in the doorway, gawping, as Eleanor walked over and patted him on the shoulder. “If you wanted to make a grand presentation, you shouldn’t have recruited a Nonsense girl,” she said, affectionately. “May as well get Kade in here.”
She stepped into the hall, only blinking once when she saw Talia standing behind Kade.
There was a green-and-silver moth perched on the girl’s hair, where she had yet to notice it, and the sight drew a smile from Eleanor’s lips, even as she stepped to the side, gesturing for them to go into the office.
“My darling boy, there’s someone here who wants to see you,” she said, turning that smile on Kade.
It warmed and softened at the same time, looking at him.
He bore such a strong resemblance to some of her childhood cousins, the West blood showing through, as it always seemed to do.
They were called to travel, the children of her bloodline, and the only surprise when she’d heard from her niece that Kade had disappeared had been that he wasn’t in the Nonsense world that stole so many of them away from home.
She would have known at once if he had passed beyond the gates of wonder and wilting. Even after all this time, she always knew.
Kade walked slowly to the office door, and Talia walked equally slowly behind him, watching him the whole way.
For all her stated willingness to force her way onto this quest, she still seemed to have a sense of self-preservation, and was perfectly willing to let Kade be the first into the line of fire.
When he reached the door he stopped, putting his hands over his mouth and simply staring for several long, terrible seconds. Finally, he lowered them and asked, in a voice that was higher and squeakier than his norm, like it belonged to someone much younger, “Nancy?”
Nancy looked away from her solemn contemplation of Sumi, the other girl’s face still held between her hands, like it was a rare bird that might fly away if she didn’t hold it gently.
Her eyes lit up, more quickly than was seemly for a living statue, and she turned fully around, beaming.
“Kade!” she said gleefully. “Oh, I was so glad to hear that you were still here. Not because I want you to be trapped here or anything, just because I missed you.”
She rushed across the office, which for Nancy meant moving at almost the speed of a normal person. She still had that jittery stop-motion look when she moved, and Christopher was pleased to see it stop Sumi dead in her place, eyes going wide and round with awed surprise.
“How are you doing that, ghostie-girl?” she asked. “Are you not a people anymore?”
“Sumiko!” said Eleanor, sounding scandalized. “You can’t ask your friends if they’re still people, it’s cruel.”
“I am a people,” said Nancy, pausing just before she reached Kade, who was glaring at Sumi like she had just betrayed him beyond all forgiveness. “I’m just a people who’s wired a little differently right now, that’s all. I’ve been a statue for years. I need to relearn how to move.”
Then she turned back to Kade, expression melting into a smile. “I missed you,” she murmured, and put her arms around his shoulders, and held him close. He responded to her embrace by closing his own arms around her waist and holding her as tightly as he could without the risk of hurting her.
Several seconds ticked by in silence before Talia said, “I was promised a quest. This doesn’t look like a quest. Who’s that?”
Kade finally loosened his grasp on Nancy, pushing her out to arm’s length so he could look at her as he answered Talia’s question. “This is Nancy Whitman. She used to be a student here.”
“Technically she still is,” said Eleanor. “She never graduated, and I never took her off our roster. Her parents think she ran away again, and since they were wrong about her running away in the first place, I’ve never gone out of my way to correct them.”
“Oh,” said Talia, taking in Nancy’s odd clothing and perfect posture. “Is she the quest?”
“I suppose I am,” said Nancy, still looking at Kade like she thought he might disappear if she took her eyes away.
“Well, this is all very exciting,” said Eleanor, clapping her hands together. “Who wants lunch?”
IT WAS EARLY AFTERNOON—too late for lunch, too early for tea—but the kitchen was always open, and the leftovers from the day’s lunch buffet were still fresh in their plastic containers, all but begging to be eaten.
Eleanor and Christopher began their food preparation for the group with gusto.
It probably helped that all of them had actually had lunch already that day, except for Nancy, whose metabolism was so slow that she could have skipped a whole week’s worth of meals without feeling hunger gnawing at her ribs.
But creature of nonsense or not, Eleanor was well aware of how food and drink could act as social lubrication, opening the necessary space for difficult things to be exhumed.
So they set a table for six, with tea and delicate sandwiches for Eleanor, a heartier ham-and-cheese sandwich for Christopher, a crystal flute of pomegranate juice for Nancy, and a bowl of candy for Sumi. When it came to Talia, she hesitated.
“I’m sorry, dear,” she said, after the silence had stretched out long enough to become awkward. “I’m afraid I don’t know your specific dietary needs by heart just yet.”
Children who had traveled to other worlds often came back with different needs than their counterparts who had remained safely home.
It was something about the passage, about adjusting to the realities of life in another world entirely.
Talia met Eleanor’s earnest, hopeful eyes and visibly decided to take the statement at face value, not to be insulted by Eleanor’s apparent disinterest in her specific situation.
“White rice and mulberry jam would be lovely, thank you,” she said. “With soy sauce and chopsticks, if you please.”
“Nice,” said Sumi, approvingly. “A little salty and sweet to set the mood, huh? I like putting soy sauce on licorice sticks sometimes. It makes a flavor like nothing else in the whole world.”
“That flavor is ‘bad,’” said Christopher, deadpan, and Sumi crowed laughter.
Nancy leaned back in her seat, smiling slightly as she listened to the unfolding chaos.
“Very well, my dear,” said Eleanor, and returned to the kitchen to get Talia’s meal. When she returned, she brought a plate of barbecued chicken and corn bread for Kade, setting it down in front of him as she took her own seat. “Does everyone have something to eat?”
“You know we do, Auntie,” said Kade. “Thank you. Now let’s hear about this quest.”
Nancy looked to Christopher, raising her eyebrows in a silent plea.
“She doesn’t want to recap,” he said, turning to face the newcomers. “So I’ll summarize, and she’ll correct me if I get anything wrong. All right, Nancy?”
“All right,” she said.
“She’s been in the Halls of the Dead, playing statue—”
“Wait,” interrupted Talia. “She’s dead?”
“No,” said Christopher. “She’s very much alive, like all the statues in the Halls of the Dead.
I guess when your whole world is dead people, you start importing live ones to supplement the home décor.
Nancy never died, she just went where all the dead people were.
Same as I did, same as Emily did, same as Jack and Jill did.
There are lots of Doors to places that seem creepy when they’re not for you. ”
Talia nodded, looking slightly abashed. “All right,” she said. “Continue.”
“Thanks for the permission,” said Christopher.
“Anyway, Nancy was playing statue in the Halls of the Dead, and had been since she left here. But time doesn’t work the same in that world as it does here, so for her, it’s been years.
She’s very good at standing still as a consequence of all that time spent doing it, and she was going to keep doing it forever, but something pissed off the ghosts that haunt the Halls of the Dead—the actual dead people—and they started attacking the statues.
So Nancy got the hell out of there and came here, because we might be able to help her save her friends. That sound about right, Nancy?”
“It’s not perfect, but it’s close,” said Nancy. “The ghosts are attacking the living statues, and they’re killing us. I need people to come with me to the Halls of the Dead, so we can save them.”
“How are we planning on getting there?” asked Kade.
“You did it once before,” said Nancy.
“We had Rini with us then, and she had a bracelet made of magic sugar beads that let her open up Doors so she could accomplish her own quest. We don’t have one of those now.”