Chapter 9 Class Re #2
Sumi nodded, still frowning, and continued their trek in silence.
At the end of the hall was a ballroom, large and elegant and echoingly empty.
On the other side of the ballroom was a study, small and elegant and almost rustic in its design, with a fire burning in the fireplace and no one there to greet them.
And on the other side of the study was a library, shelves of books reaching upward into eternity.
In that library stood a tall, thin man with skin the color of ash and hair the color of bone.
His eyes were pale, almost silver in their lack of color, and he was holding a book in one long-fingered hand.
He raised his head at the sound of footsteps, a small smile appearing on his lips when he saw the Lady.
“I feared it was another contingent of the statuary come to request a passage to another place,” he said.
This time, it was Christopher who frowned. “I thought that as soon as our certainty wavered, we would be popped right back out into our own worlds. At least that’s the way it’s worked for most of us.”
“Not wanting to die is not the same thing as being unsure, little skeleton,” said the Lord.
“Not wanting to die is the natural state of all living things. They come to Me seeking survival, not exile, and when I can, I grant it to them. Some will be lost to us forever, but others will find a way back. Their certainty will guide them.”
“Ah,” said Christopher.
“But no, you found Our Nancy, and her friends, and perhaps they can find the answer to what plagues Us.” The Lord of the Dead placed a bookmark in the book, saving his place, and closed it, sliding the book back onto the shelf before turning his full attention toward Nancy. “What have you learned?”
“We’ve learned that the ghosts are being rallied by one spirit, a girl named Jill Wolcott, originally from the world most of us first came from, later of the Moors.”
The Lord of the Dead scowled. “I should have known the Moors were involved! Terrible, untidy place that they are. They’ve never been content to allow the laws of nature to stand unchallenged there, and their disrespect spills out into everything around them.
She must have been pulled here upon her death, and, once she had remembered herself sufficiently, began her campaign of destruction. What are you going to do about it?”
Nancy flinched. “We’re going to do whatever we can to help, but we don’t have your power, sir,” she said. “Sumi can see the ghosts. Christopher can control their movements—to a degree—but we don’t know the limits of what he can do, and I’d rather not find out by dying. Kade can—”
“I can give Jill a stern talking-to, but that isn’t going to save your world,” said Kade. “I don’t know what is.”
“If you can lead her and her army back to the room where the unquiet dead are meant to wait, I can seal the door behind them,” said the Lord of the Dead. “Think of it as a parade, child of Mariposa. You favor parades there, do you not?”
“We do,” said Christopher.
“What about me?” asked Talia. “What can I do?”
“The ghosts attacked your moths,” said Sumi. “How many do you think you can control at one time?”
Talia shrugged. “How many have you got?” she asked.
Sumi grinned.
A DOOR AT THE BACK of the library opened onto the grounds, letting Talia and Sumi exit into a stretch of garden they hadn’t seen before. In the distance, the treetops of the pomegranate grove scraped against the sky.
“How close do you need to be?” asked Sumi. “Can you call them from here?”
Talia frowned thoughtfully, looking toward the trees. Then she stopped and spread her arms, chin tilted very slightly toward the sky. She waited that way for several seconds.
Nothing happened.
“Nope,” said Talia, dropping her arms.
“Great, so we keep going,” said Sumi, and skipped gamely on.
Talia followed, working hard to keep up with Sumi as they crossed the vast expanse of green. “Was coming along on this a good idea?” she asked.
Sumi shot her a withering look. “No, of course not,” she said. “But I’m glad you did, now that it looks like we’re going to need millions of moths to lure the dead back to their room.”
“I don’t know that I like the idea of using my moths as bait,” said Talia.
“Why not?”
“They’re living things; they didn’t agree to be a part of all this.
They should be allowed to go about the business of being moths, without needing to save a bunch of people they don’t know.
Did you know that some species of moth don’t even have mouths after they come out of their cocoons?
They eat so much as caterpillars because after they get their wings, they starve to death.
They just exist to mate and die, but they get to fly first, and that’s enough for them. ”
“Huh,” said Sumi. “Did you like moths this much before you went to Mothland?”
“I’m going to assume you mean Yuemingyuan, and you don’t understand how offensive you’re being, so there’s no point in getting mad at you for it.”
“Sure,” said Sumi. “Go with that.”
Talia shot her a confused sidelong look. “What?”
“If you have an assumption, you should go with it, especially when it makes me look better than I actually am.” Sumi shrugged.
“It’s easier for me if we just let you be right all the time, about everything.
I am a shallow, candy-colored pixie flitting through the world, doing nothing of weight or meaning. ”
Talia glared at her. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to say that.” Sumi shrugged.
“I am what I am, as you are what you are. If my travels left me a little scattered, and yours left you inclined to count everything off like it was going to be a structured poem, who’s to say which one of us is right?
We come from different styles of story. We have incompatible genres. Did you like moths before your Door?”
“I did,” said Talia, still sounding baffled.
“They’re pretty, like butterflies but without the good PR.
They fly around in the dark, and they’re so fascinating and special.
I used to feel like I’d won something every time I saw a moth.
Then I went to a world where everything was built around moths—or to a culture, anyway.
Yuemingyuan was the size of a whole planet, and my people weren’t the only ones living there.
Just the ones who mattered to me. The ones who were my family. ”
“Huh,” said Sumi. “Confection isn’t like that.
Confection is a world that someone made, baked layer by layer over eons of time, and we don’t really have that much cultural variation.
All the people in Confection came through Doors from other worlds in the beginning, and the Baker made them candy hearts so they could stay and be happy and thrive in a place where there’s only sugar, not get sick from malnutrition and go as dead as last season’s gingerbread.
But my world is all them, and their children, and their children’s children.
We didn’t displace anyone because there was no one to displace, and when we needed a new continent, we just asked the world for it and watched it grow out of the ovens. ”
“Wow,” said Talia. “That sounds … Oh, who am I kidding. That sounds absolutely awful.”
“That’s why Confection didn’t call you,” said Sumi. “I don’t think I would like to go to where everything is moths and rules. It wouldn’t make me happy.”
“And I don’t think I’d like to go where everything is all new and all the same,” said Talia. “I like traditions. I like histories so heavy you can feel them in your hands, and so long and light you can wrap them around you like a cloak.”
“So I guess you must like it here.”
“Not really.” Talia glanced around, looking suddenly uneasy.
“There’s weight here, but it’s old and cold and doesn’t bend itself toward kindness.
Who looks at a problem like ‘The dead are killing our guests’ and decides that the answer is a worldwide game of freeze tag with fatal consequences for the losers?
It’s just not … it’s not kind. The Great Song wouldn’t have any room for this verse. ”
“Huh.” They were almost to the garden wall, which was tall and strong with no visible breaks.
Sumi turned around, walking backward so she could face Talia as they continued walking.
“Why is your world’s name in Chinese? I’ve only ever heard you speak English.
We hear the names of our worlds in languages we can understand.
That’s why mine is Confection. I only know English well enough for it to matter.
My parents always hated that I didn’t want to learn Japanese. ”
“My great-grandmother went through a magical door when she was just a little girl in China,” said Talia.
“She told me the world she traveled to was called Yuemingyuan—the Garden of Moonlight—and that’s where I went, too.
” Her face crumpled. “I wasn’t sure enough because I wanted to make it back in time to tell her that I’d learned how to sing the Great Song, and that the verses she’d added were still there, that they remembered her.
So I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay. And then I made it back, and she’d died while I was traveling, and I didn’t get to tell her after all. ”
“It’s all right,” said Sumi. “If you’d been able to be sure enough to stay, part of you would always be wondering what she would have said when you told her.
The not-knowing would have eaten you away inside like acid, and then you’d have been all rotted through and breakable.
This is better. This is just for now. Someday you’ll make it back to Yuemingyuan, and all of this will be forgotten. ”
Talia nodded, eyes wide and awed.
Sumi smiled at her, gesturing to the wall, which was close enough to reach out and touch. “Go ahead. Call the moths.”
Talia nodded again, spreading her arms, and hummed a single soft, low note.
And the moths came, Sumi laughing in delight the whole time, as the air turned into a shower of brown and orange wings, blotting out the world, blotting out the sun. Talia hummed, and the moths came, and everything was beautiful.