Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children #8)(22)

“And you both came through doors like I did?”

“Not me,” said Hudson, puffing out his chest proudly. “This is where magpies come from.”

“All magpies,” said Vineta. “They have magpies in almost every world where there are birds, because the doors open here so often, and sometimes magpies fly through them and don’t make it back before the doors swing shut again.”

“But … magpies don’t talk,” said Antsy, who felt sure she’d seen pictures of them in storybooks, and would have heard if they could carry on a conversation.

“The ones who fly through do,” said Hudson. “But their babies don’t, and they never remember how much they’ve lost by going from the Land of Lost Things to the Land of Found Things. It’s a terrible thing, to be found.” And he shivered, feathers puffing out until he looked like a round ball of a bird.

Antsy had a hundred more questions, but it had been hours since her bedtime, and her head was beginning to spin. So she seized on the one thing she was sure she did understand, and said plaintively, “You mean I really can’t go home?”

“Not unless you’re Found, child,” said Vineta, more gently than she’d said most of her other terrible, perplexing things. “This is your home until that happens, unless you want to go through one of the doors and stay on the other side. You could, if you liked. Many people have found homes in worlds very far from the ones where they began.”

Antsy wanted to argue, but not as much as she wanted to sleep. She yawned, trying hard to smother it behind her hand, and jumped as Hudson flapped over and landed on her shoulder.

“Travel can be hard,” he said. “It wears on the heart, even when it’s done on purpose, and there’s always a cost and a consequence. Come on. I’ll show you where you can sleep.”

Antsy wanted so badly to argue, but she wanted even more to rest, and so she merely nodded and followed the black-and-white bird as he pushed himself back into the air and went gliding into the hall.

The employees-only portion of the Shop Where the Lost Things Go was a labyrinth, beginning with a short hall leading to four different doors. Hudson swooped so that the tip of his right wing brushed against one of them. “Here,” he said. “Go here.”

Obedient and exhausted, Antsy opened the door, which behaved like any other door, offering no resistance, no smell of ozone. On the other side, a flight of stairs beckoned, narrow and plain and simple. The steps were worn, unpainted wood, and the bannister was polished by the passage of many hands. Hudson swept upward, and Antsy followed to the landing, where another hallway opened out.

“This way,” called the bird, and she continued following, too tired to argue.

At the end of the hall was a door.

On the other side of the door was a room. It was small, and as simple as the stairs, with white walls, a tiny dresser, and a single bed pushed up against one wall. There was a window, but it showed nothing, only the deep darkness of a lingering night. A basin of water sat atop the dresser, and Antsy’s mouth was suddenly dry. “Is there a cup?” she asked. “Or a toilet?”

“Bathroom’s across the hall,” said Hudson. “Shop invited you in, so everything you need will be there. We’ll see you when you wake up.”

And he flew away, and Antsy was alone.

Cautious now, she left the room and crossed the hall. The bathroom was not as old-fashioned as she had briefly feared: there was a toilet, and a sink, and a shower, which she wrinkled her nose at and ignored. On the edge of the sink was a toothbrush, and a boar-bristle brush like the one she had at home, and a wooden hair pick and a bottle of oil like her mother used when she had to brush Antsy’s hair, which would break and snarl if brushed when it was dry, and had snapped three plastic brushes in half before her mom realized those wouldn’t work. Antsy ignored the hair supplies and picked up the toothbrush.

There was a tube of paste on the small shelf above the toilet when she looked around for it. She felt sure that hadn’t been there a moment before; maybe Hudson was right about the shop itself making arrangements for her. After a day of talking birds and impossible doors, that wouldn’t be the strangest thing ever.

Antsy brushed her teeth dutifully, used the facilities, and returned to the room where she was going to sleep. There was a nightgown folded on the pillow. Like all the linens, it smelled of lavender. She slipped it gratefully on and slid into the bed, and was asleep almost as soon as she closed her eyes.

She could figure out how to get home when she woke up. She wasn’t going to do anyone any good by forcing herself to stay awake when she was already this exhausted.

And so the world slipped away into dazzling, dizzying dreams of marketplaces filled with cat-people and birds that talked, and Antsy was at peace.





PART III

STAYING LOST





7

ONE’S FOR SORROW, TWO’S FOR JOY




ANTSY WOKE TO SUNLIGHT streaming through her bedroom window and the feeling of having forgotten something terribly important. That wasn’t unusual, really; after more than two years spent living and working in the Shop Where the Lost Things Go, it was more common for her to wake up having forgotten something than it was for her to wake up knowing everything was exactly where it was supposed to be.

Her first six months in the shop, the thing she’d forgotten was the way to get home, which should have been the simplest thing in the world: she’d passed through a single door, looking for help, and what she’d found was a whole new world, one where the rules rarely flowed the same way from one day into the next, one where most of her time was spent in the company of a talking, opinionated magpie, or wandering through the outdoor shopping plazas of impossible realities that she could never seem to find a second time, one where doors and Doors were different things. All she had to do was find her way back to the right Door and she’d be out of here, easy as anything.