Chapter 5 In Doorless Chambers #2
“Oh,” said Nancy, wilting slightly. “Well, I only left because I was told to go and find help. I’m still sure of where I belong, where I want to be, and it’s not here.
” She didn’t appear to notice the way Kade winced at her words, like they had been aimed directly at him.
She just looked down at her glass of pomegranate juice, gently twisting the stem back and forth.
Sumi saw that and tensed. If Nancy was fidgeting, even in such a small, dismissible way, she was even more distraught than she appeared. Not that the ghostie-girl looked overly distraught from the outside, but Sumi knew her better than most people did. Sumi could tell.
“I think I can find a Door home if I stand still long enough and really focus,” said Nancy. “I’m ready to try.”
“So the quest depends on someone being able to summon a Door just by wanting it hard enough?” asked Talia. She slumped back in her chair. “If that worked, we’d all be out of here.”
“Not necessarily,” said Sumi. “While I was with Antsy in the Store, I learned a lot about how the Doors work. They don’t hone in on wanting.
Everyone wants, kids especially. A child is a vessel for wanting—and snot.
Lots of snot in your average kid. Anyway, wanting isn’t the point.
It’s the certainty. The absolute conviction that you’re willing to give up everything you know, everything you have, if you can just go somewhere that you’ll be understood.
Most people don’t have that, or if they do, they don’t have it for very long. ”
“Being absolutely sure is hard on the human heart,” said Eleanor. “We’re creatures of contradiction, and that’s how we survive. We need a little nonsense in us to cut all the routine away. And nonsense is like acid for certainty.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” snapped Talia. “You know where your Door is. You could go back any time you wanted.”
Eleanor didn’t respond, just looked away sadly as a strained silence settled over the table.
Everyone at the school knew that Eleanor’s Door was waiting for her, that it had never stopped waiting for her, and she’d be able to go back to her Nonsense world as soon as her thoughts softened enough to accept the chaos without breaking down.
The world she’d traveled to had left her aging more slowly than the human norm, delaying that return, but had also granted her a certain elasticity of thought that would eventually make the transition easier for her.
It was a balanced teeter-totter, currently falling more toward neither option.
“That’s true enough,” said Eleanor slowly.
“Familial Doors are an oddity. I’ve only heard of a few apart from my own, and they tend to vanish after they’ve finished swallowing down the family members who suit them.
Maybe mine will close itself forever after it takes me back.
Kade’s not suited, and there’s no way of knowing whether any children of his would be. ”
Kade’s cheeks flushed a pale shade of red at that, looking resolutely at the wall. “How do these family Doors handle adoption?” he asked.
“Every student who’s come here has been my child, one way or another. The Weald and Wold hasn’t called to any of them. I’m not sure the Doors know what to do with adoption.”
“That’s a little prejudiced of them,” said Talia.
“No, that’s a little inhuman of them,” said Eleanor. “They aren’t people, they don’t think like people, and they don’t understand people the way that actual people do.”
“A Door that only takes girls took me,” said Kade. “The familial Doors only understanding blood relations may be the most reasonable thing I’ve heard about them, and I’ve heard as much as there is to hear.”
“We’re getting away from the actual point, which is that I need people to help me,” said Nancy. “Christopher, I think you’re a great fit for helping the Halls of the Dead. You can play the ghosts away from us. You can be our shield.”
“I hope I can.” Christopher worked his fingers anxiously across the surface of his flute. “I mostly play for skeletons and roadkill. Actual ghosts may be a little bit of a stretch.”
“I believe in you,” said Nancy. She looked at Sumi, not quite meeting the other girl’s eyes, like she couldn’t really believe in Sumi at all—in her existence, which had to seem too much like a miracle to make any sense at all. “Sumi, you’re—”
“I’m coming with you,” said Sumi simply.
“I think that’s all that really matters, don’t you?
If I say I’m coming? I’ve been to more worlds than I think anyone else at this school, and sometimes waking up under the same sky two days in a row is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Plus I’m pretty good at fighting stuff. If Chris gets to be your shield, I get to be your sword, and I’ll cut and I’ll cut and I’ll cut until there’s nothing left for chopping. ”
“I’ve asked you not to call me that,” said Christopher with surprising primness. “Just because you’re happy being called by a nickname, that doesn’t mean I am. My name is my name, just the way it is, not truncated to make it easier for you.”
Sumi huffed quietly, turning to look at Eleanor like she thought she’d find help from that quarter.
Eleanor only shook her head. “Names matter, dear. If someone wants to be called something, that’s what you call them, whether or not it’s what you would want to be called in their place.”
“Fine. Christopher can be the shield, and I’ll chop and chop,” said Sumi.
“Thank you,” said Christopher.
Sumi stuck out her tongue at him.
“Kade…” Nancy hesitated. “You didn’t go to an Underworld, and you’ve never shown much of an affinity for the dead.”
“No, but I can keep Sumi under control, and right now that feels like a skill you’re dearly going to need on this little expedition,” said Kade.
“Fair enough,” agreed Nancy. She turned to look at Talia, who looked challengingly back.
“I’m not a shield and I’m not a sword and I can’t control Sumi,” she said. “I’m just coming with you, because the people who go on quests are the people who find their way home again, and I need to go home before it’s too late for me. So I’m coming, whether you like it or not.”
“What skills do you have?”
“I can weave a silk thread into anything if I try hard enough, and my pockets are full of silkworm cocoons. I can see in the dark, and I can talk to moths. I was trained to be a court poet, and record the history of the worlds so that it can be added to the reprises.” Talia continued to look at her challengingly. “I’m coming with you.”
“All right,” said Nancy. “What’s your name?”
“My English name is Talia, and that’s what I prefer the people here call me,” she said. “My birth name is Ming-Yue.”
Nancy inclined her head, so deeply that it looked like the beginning of a bow. “All right,” she said again. “I’m exhausted after the day I’ve had. Is there a place I can lie down for a while before we start trying to find the door back to the Halls of the Dead?”
“Of course, darling,” said Eleanor. “Sumi doesn’t have a roommate right now. You can have your own bed back.”
“I even promise not to masturbate while you’re in the room!” chirped Sumi, and there was nothing Nancy could do but laugh. She was back, all right. School was exactly as it had always been.