Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children #8)(14)

Antsy burst into tears again. The bird danced backward, wings half-spread, and squawked an alarmed, “No, no, hu man, no, don’t cry! Oh, please don’t cry. Please don’t— Vineta! Vineta, I need you!” The bird launched itself into the air, still calling for someone named Vineta, which was a name Antsy had never heard before.

She kept crying. Crying was something she could understand, and there were so few things she could understand right now that holding on to the one she did have made all the rest seem like less of a loss. She tugged her backpack closer to herself, protecting its precious cargo of sandwiches-yet-to-be. She hadn’t taken a bread knife and wasn’t sure how she was supposed to make sandwiches, but she’d figure it out soon enough, just as soon as she got out of here and back to somewhere where the birds didn’t try to carry on conversations with her.

She might have enjoyed it on any other night, or if her mother had been here with her, or if things had been different in any possible way. A talking bird was magical and strange, and strange, magical things were delightful, but not when the world already felt like it had been flipped upside down and vigorously shaken. She was off-balance and out of sorts, and she wasn’t in the mood for magic.

The bird came swooping back to its original perch, folding its wings as it landed and looking down at her for a few seconds before calling, “Here! Here! Over here!”

“I’m coming, you impatient avian, I’m coming,” said a cross voice. Antsy looked up in frozen terror at the sound of footsteps on the floor, and then an old woman, old as anything, probably older than everything, came creaking around the edge of the shelves. She had white hair piled high atop her head and secured with half a dozen long wooden and ivory hair sticks, and seamed golden-brown skin so serrated with wrinkles that her face was like a photograph of a maze, taken from high above the ground. Her eyes, though, were black and bright and very sharp, and they twinkled in the light as she peered down at the huddling Antsy.

She was wearing a long blue bathrobe embroidered with row upon row of peach blossoms, the pattern picked out in gold and pink thread, the occasional fat, round fruit peeking out from between the petals.

“Hello, girl,” said the woman, and stooped, one hand remaining on her heavy walking stick, her knuckles so large and gnarled that they looked almost like peach pits themselves. “Where have you come from?”

Antsy sniffled and shrank away, but she had been raised to be polite to people older than she was, and this woman qualified if anyone ever had, or ever would again. “The parking lot, ma’am,” she said.

“She speaks the common tongue,” said the woman to the bird. “So she’s lost, but not so lost as all of that. She’s not come from my namesake, if that was your concern. Sell her a bit of frippery and send her on her way, and we’ll sit down to supper as we should have already done.”

Antsy stared at the woman for what must have been a beat too long, because she frowned, eyes still on Antsy.

“Well?” she asked. “Where did you lose your way?”

“I … I didn’t,” said Antsy. “I didn’t lose it at all. I know right where I am.”

The woman chuckled, low and dark. “I sincerely doubt that, child.”

“I do! I went out the back door and I walked all the way along the street until it met the big street we drive on every morning to take me to school, and then I turned left and I was in the parking lot where the grocery store is.” Antsy sat up straighter, annoyed by the very idea that she could be lost. “Your light was on. So I came to the door, to see if anyone here could help me. I need to find a phone so I can call my grandmother and tell her I had to run away.”

“You ran away?” When Antsy nodded, the woman did the same, looking pleased with herself.

“There, she’s lost enough to find her way here,” said the woman. “I’m afraid, child, that you’ve gone considerably farther from home than you meant to. When you found the door that brought you to us, was there anything written on it?”

“It said Anthony & Sons, Trinkets and Treasures,” said Antsy. She paused, then asked, “Are you Anthony?” It could be a last name, she supposed, like hers was Ricci, or her mother’s was Richards now that she was married to Tyler. He’d wanted Antsy to take his last name too, and she’d refused, saying she liked the name she had, and so they’d stapled his name onto hers like an extra piece of paper.

“No, child, I’m not,” said the woman. Then she cocked her head, and said, in a wondering tone, “Anthony and Sons? That’s what the door says when it goes fishing on … Were there any other words, child? Any other words at all? They may not have been on the door itself. They could have been written on the sidewalk, or on a window, or anywhere that you’d be able to see them.”

Antsy bit her lip. “Yes,” she said, after a moment. “Someone wrote on the doorframe. It wasn’t me. I’m not tall enough, and it wasn’t a right thing to do.”

“What did they write?” prompted the woman.

“Be sure,” said Antsy.

The woman straightened up, clinging to her cane for balance. “There, you stupid bird,” she said smugly. “She’s ours, and it doesn’t matter if she saw the advertisement or not, because she’s been put here, right and proper, and we’ll see to her or we’ll answer the reasons why before a council of our betters.”