Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children #8)(32)
“I am strangely calm in the face of my own destruction. He has beaten me enough, and he will be kinder to both my mothers and to Mitrofan if I am gone. But still, I find I do not wish to die. I may never fly again, and still there are winds I have never tasted, fires I have never seen, and I yearn for them. I wish to be free of this fate that I did nothing to bring upon myself, did nothing to earn. So I will go.
“There is little enough here which belongs to me. I will take it all, and it will be no more than I can carry, even if I must descend to the ground. Better to be devoured in the dark than to stay and be destroyed by a man who has every reason to love and care for me. He has no right to do as he has done. Let that be the crime for which I am finally convicted: my father is not a good man, and I will not pretend he is, will not praise him in ways he has not earned and never will. So I go tonight, alone, into the dark, and only hope I will survive it…”
Antsy skipped forward again, only a few pages this time, stopping when she caught the word “door” at the top of the page. She paused, frowning, and began to read again.
“… strange door led me to a room such as I have never seen before. The top of it is closed, not open to the sky as a proper room would be, and there is a glass shield over the window, preventing anyone who sleeps here from leaping out into the wind. It is solid and secure, and I think I will be safe here. The wound in my arm is beginning to scab over, and will be healed soon.”
So she had been injured somewhere in the intervening pages. Antsy almost flipped back, but pressed forward at the last second, more desperate to know what would happen than what had happened.
“It seems I am in an entirely new place, for when I open the door that led me here, it does not connect to the forest I left, but to a vast field filled with discarded items. They feel lost to me, as if they have been somehow taken from their proper owners. They wish to be returned. Doors dot the piles, common as red flowers in the fields of home, and I wonder where they might lead…”
A line break, and then:
“The doors lead to other worlds, each and every one of them. I opened one which showed an ocean such as Mother used to speak of. I had never seen an ocean before. I was afraid this door might behave as the one which brought me here, and so I wedged it open with a stone before stepping through. The air pushed back against me for but a moment, and when I stood on the shell-speckled sand, the scab on my arm was all but gone, days of healing accomplished in an instant. I stared at it for a time, then gathered the loveliest of the shells I could see and carried them back through the door with me. The wound on my arm, though diminished, remained, and did not make any further improvements on the return journey. I must consider this.”
A new page before:
“I have begun building walls to allow me to sort and clean the things that were here when I arrived. The walls seem to expand in the night while I am sleeping, as if a swarm of helpful bees is coming to construct its hive of wood and nails. I am not yet very skilled with a hammer, but these things deserve to be treated with some modicum of respect. They have hearts. I can feel them beating. So I will build them a home and haven, as none was built for me, and I will care for them as long as I am able.”
The next several paragraphs were about construction. Antsy skimmed them before settling on:
“The black-and-white birds that fill the skies here have taken an interest in what I do. They say this is the Land Where the Lost Things Go, and that it is a nexus of worlds, of which there are a number beyond counting. It pulls all lost things to it, and that includes the doors, which would normally wander freely. They come here when they have no children to call to them, taking a time to rest and recover themselves. The magpies, lacking hands, have never been able to open the doors themselves, but the children who sometimes come through them can.
“I am the first such child to have both arrived and stayed. Most arrive, look around at the scattered piles of lost things, find something that already belongs to them, and rush to reclaim it, carrying it with them back through their door. The magpies say they have been waiting for me, or for someone like me, to be chosen by the doors to stay and help them. They will assist me in constructing a home for all these things which we must protect.”
Another skipped line, and then:
“The doors are moving. My shelter is but half-constructed, and when I woke this morning, there were two doors along the wall. I studied them a time before I went looking for something sharp, and found a silver blade in a pile of old shoes. Choosing the rightmost door, I made a cut along the back of my hand, opened the door, and walked through it with the wound still bleeding. When I arrived on the other side, it was with a cut scabbed over and clean as if it had been healing under ideal circumstance for two full days. A similar cut made before returning did not heal in the same fashion. I am thus sure of what it costs to play at being a key to another world: two full days of time.
“It is a small thing, to forfeit two days for such wonders as I saw on the other side of that door, and the next one, and the next. Wonders and delights beyond all measure, beyond counting, beyond consideration. I will have my fill of all the universe, and perhaps a sufficiency of days may give my wings the time they need to straighten and heal. Perhaps I can have the sky again, if I take time enough.”
Several pages had been ripped out of the little notebook after that, disappearing completely, and the next page began with four words, sharply underlined: