Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children #8)(34)
“That must not be allowed to happen. I have told Eider what I understand, and made him promise to tell whoever comes after him, to make sure they understand before they open a single door of their own. He swore he would never be one who abused children as he had been abused; he would allow no one to act without understanding what it might cost them.
“When I die, which will not be as far from now as I would wish it to be, this place will be left in good hands. Eider will guard the doors, and the magpies will help him manage the shop we have made together. It will be safe. I think, as it grows, that it is becoming aware, much as the doors are, much as this world is. It knows us, and it grows under our caring hands. It is the only explanation for the way it expands. We work through the days, sometimes pausing to travel together through a door that Eider opens, and we sleep through the nights, and when we wake, the shop is larger. Shelves build themselves without our aid; rooms appear. I think it has always been here in potential, only waiting for hands such as ours to come along and put a shape to it.
“It has been waiting so long for the opportunity to exist, but even as I avoid opening the doors myself, my time dwindles day by day, moving at the normal pace of things. My kind live shorter lives than Eider’s; he wears the marks of his days much less openly than I wear mine, and I will leave him soon. I only plan to wait until I have so few days remaining that I can count them on the fingers of one hand, and then I will open a final door.
“I will go through it, and I will rest.
“It will be very nice, to rest.”
There was one more open line, and then a new handwriting took up the narrative, blockier, heavier, easier to read:
“Elodina is gone. She opened a door this morning, and upon seeing that the other side was a vast and tangled forest like the ones she had described from her childhood, she sighed, and bid me to be careful in the remainder of my time here, and stepped through. The toll thus paid, I followed her, and helped her into the shadow of a great tree, where she sat and closed her eyes and held my hand until her breath stopped, and she was over. The great tale of her being shall be extended no more; she is gone to the Library where all of us must one day be Returned, and she will pay no overdue fines on her soul.
“But I will miss her so very much. She was my first and only friend, and I am lost without her.”
Antsy sniffled, dragging the back of her hand across her cheeks, which were wet with streaky tears. Elodina had died long before she arrived here—it was impossible to say how long ago, with the apparent age of the store and the way the doors ate time—but still, she felt she knew her now, and it was easy to grieve for her. For what she’d lost, and what she’d found, and the fact that they had never been able to be children together.
Returning her attention to the book, she read on:
“A girl came through one of the doors today, and it closed behind her. She has a broken arm and she screamed herself awake when she tried to sleep. I think she will be staying for a while. Her name is Anya, and she yearns for safety. I can offer her that.
“I have told her what the doors demand, and she is young yet; she sees no danger in the exchange. Time for travel is a tempting bargain to her. I have few enough doors remaining to me, but if she will open them while her time is long, then it will not matter that my time grows short. We can continue our work. The sorting of the things behind the shop requires only our effort, and the travel to other worlds repays us in food and drink and wonders.
“We can be happy here. This is Elodina’s book, and this is the last I will write within it. Her story ended with her; let me return her accounting to the shelf the shop has made for her. It has made another such for me, and I believe Anya will have a shelf soon, if it is not there already. We were lost and now we have been found, and that is more than good enough for a man like me.”
There was nothing more. Antsy stood, looking down the row of shelving units, each one containing multiple shelves, each shelf packed with mementos of someone who had spent all their time here. Slowly, she put the book back where it belonged and turned toward the aisle.
She and Vineta were going to have a conversation, and if she didn’t like the way it went, she was done here. She would open one more door, and she would allow it to close behind her, and she would be gone.
All she needed was to know.
11
A CONVERSATION AND A CONCLUSION
HUDSON WAS ALREADY AT the counter when Antsy came stalking out of the aisles, her chin down and her hands balled into fists. Years of working around bipeds had left Hudson better keyed to their moods and expressions than most birds, and he ruffled his feathers in dismay at the look on her face.
“Er, Antsy?” he said. “Is something wrong?”
“Where’s Vineta?”
“It’s early yet; we have inventory to do before it’s time to go gathering for the day. She’s not going to be up for hours. Surely whatever you need to talk to her about can … wait…”
Antsy cocked her head, eyes growing dark with unexpressed storms. “Elodina mentioned black-and-white birds,” she said. “She meant you and your people, didn’t she? The magpies who live here? Who come from this world? She knew you. Do you remember her? Do you have a counting rhyme about her, and Eider, and Anya, and all the other shopkeepers?”
Hudson shivered. “We do,” he admitted, voice small.