Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children #8)(26)
“To some of these travelers, the worlds the Doors offer them are broccoli. They were sure enough to pass through, and remain sure enough to stay, but part of that certainty is the conviction that until they complete their quests, they don’t deserve to go home. Those girls might have ignored us as part of the scenery, or they might have recognized us as something that didn’t belong and refused to let us leave. They might have followed us back to our Door, and tried to take it for their own.”
“Can that happen? None of the people we’ve met in the markets have even been able to see the door we came through.”
“But none of them have been Door-touched.” Vineta shook her head, shifting the basket she carried to her other hand. “Those girls could have seen, and could have followed, and because this place is a nexus, being able to see the Door is enough. You don’t have to be particularly called to it or tied to it for it to take you. We could have come back with two strangers in tow.”
“I was a stranger when I came here,” said Antsy.
“Yes, but the shop called you, even if you weren’t answering an advertisement, and this is where you belong. I didn’t find you somewhere else, already mired in your own story and resistant to changing how it would be told. Come along, now, we have to sort our purchases and put away the perishables.”
“I don’t think anything’s perishable except the bread and cheese,” said Antsy, and followed obediently. She had long since learned that obedience was the easiest way to deal with Vineta, who would spend the mornings pulling her toward whatever Doors had appeared during the night, and then vanish into the back for the mysterious and eternally ongoing process of “inventory,” which was somehow essential to the smooth running of the shop, even though Vineta rarely worked behind the counter or helped the occasional shoppers who came in through more ordinary doors, usually accompanied by hat-wearing magpies who swooped over to chatter excitedly with Hudson.
Once Vineta went to work on inventory, Antsy and Hudson would have the run of the shop until dinnertime. Antsy’s hands and height meant she could deal with messes and shelving issues he couldn’t—and she was getting better at stretching; she could reach shelves now that had been quite out of her reach only a few months before, and she didn’t see anything odd about that, accepting it with the calm, unwavering serenity of a child who was already under too much pressure to notice when something was wrong. The shop itself generated tasks for them daily, piles of boxes blocking walkways and sudden stacks of objects that needed to be put away. It was endless, but it was easy, and even enjoyable. Antsy could feel her arms and back growing stronger as time passed and she became more adept at interpreting the sometimes-odd organizational system. Hudson swooped from place to place, grabbing small, shiny objects and tucking them where he felt they belonged, or exclaiming with a great cacophony when he found an older cache of treasures.
And then there would be lunch, and Antsy enjoyed lunch best of all, because that was when she got to enjoy the fruits of her morning’s labors, strange things from worlds she had never seen before and might never see again. Vineta joined them on days when they had returned from market with a great deal of fruit or jam, and would mutter and wave a crystal spike over each piece, watching to see what color the crystal turned. If it remained clear or turned pink or yellow, she would give the fruit to Antsy. If it turned black or red, she would keep it back.
Antsy had only asked once what the spike was for. Vineta’s response had been a scowl, and a sour mutter of “No one ever misplaces a hospital,” as if that somehow explained everything. Antsy thought the spike might be telling Vineta whether or not any of the things they’d brought home would hurt them in some way, and it seemed like it might be a good thing to take with them when they were doing the shopping, but as the fruit didn’t seem to spoil once it was in their kitchen, and could occasionally be re-sold to people who didn’t carry spikes of their own but seemed to recognize and get excited by it anyway, she supposed it was all right.
On the day when they saw the two Door-touched girls in the world with the malevolent moon, there was hard brown bread and honey that made the spike flicker between yellow and red for almost a minute before it settled on the darkest pink Antsy had ever seen, and butter so rich and delicious that it felt like every other bit of butter she’d ever tasted had just been imitating this butter and not doing a very good job of it. There had been a sausage-seller at the market, but there was no meat with the meal, and Antsy realized suddenly that Vineta had avoided all the stalls selling any sort of animal good that required the animal to be dead first—no meat, no leather, no bone dice or jerky. It was a small but uncommon omission.
She squinted at Vineta, who continued buttering a slice of toast and ignored her. There was no meat, but there was cheese, as fine as the butter, sharp and crumbly and so delicious that it felt almost like a sin to swallow, like the flavor was a living thing that should have been allowed to linger on the tongue forever if that was its heart’s desire.
But even the most delicious cheese must eventually be eaten, and when the last of lunch was put away, Vineta vanished again, and Antsy and Hudson had the run of the store.
Nothing else about that afternoon or evening stood out in Antsy’s memory: it had been a day like any other, once they were past lunch, and she’d gone to bed once again content with the things she had done and the choices she had made. And it never even occurred to her that she hadn’t spent any time looking for the Door that would take her home.