The Ten Thousand Doors of January(83)
Jane, who had struggled up to one elbow and was listening now with puffy-eyed effort, made a grunt of enlightenment. “But then how did Julian find you?” she asked. Her voice sounded as if her throat had been lined with sand in the night.
“Well, there are still rumors. Stories about mischievous spirits that haunt the coast, stealing pies from windowsills and milk from cows. Julian knew how to follow a story. We are fortunate that there are few men like him. Well”—Molly heaved herself back to her feet, dusting her tailcoat—“we can hardly send the three of you out scavenging if you’re wanted criminals.”
“We’re not—” Samuel began.
Molly flapped an annoyed hand at him. “Are there powerful people after you? People with money and influence and patience?” We exchanged uneasy looks. “Then you’ll be criminals soon, if you aren’t already, and we sure as hell don’t have feathers to spare on you. We’ll have to find other work for you.”
This threat proved to be both earnest and immediate; the three of us spent the next week laboring alongside the Arcadians.
I—as the member of our party with the fewest practical skills—was sent to work with the children. The children were unnecessarily amused by this. They taught me how to skin prairie rats and haul water with almost offensive enthusiasm, and delighted in the discovery that I was slower and clumsier than the average Arcadian nine-year-old.
“Don’t worry,” advised a gray-eyed, dark-skinned girl on my second morning. She wore a grimy lace frock and a pair of men’s work boots. “It took me years to get really good at balancing the water buckets.” Demonstrating both maturity and nobility, I resisted the urge to knock the bucket off her head.
Even Bad was more useful than me; once his leg had healed enough to remove the splint, he was recruited to join Jane and the hunters. They trotted out onto the plains before dawn each morning, armed with a truly random assortment of weapons and traps, and returned with limp rows of furred bodies slung over their shoulders. Jane was unsmiling, but she moved with a predatory ease I’d never seen in the narrow halls of Locke House. I wondered if this was how she’d looked as she’d prowled through the forests of her lost world, hunting with the leopard-women; I wondered if her Door was closed forever. Or if I could open it, if I were brave enough to try.
Samuel seemed to be working everywhere with everyone simultaneously. I saw him repairing a thatched rooftop; bent over a steaming copper cauldron in the kitchens; stuffing mattresses with fresh-dried grasses; tilling the gardens and sending clouds of yellow dust into the air. He was always smiling, always laughing, his eyes glowing as if he were on some grand adventure. It occurred to me that perhaps he’d been right: he wouldn’t have made a very good grocer.
“Could you be happy here? Truly?” I asked him on the fourth or fifth evening. It was the slow-moving, after-dinner time of the day when everyone lounged, full-bellied, and Bad crunched contentedly on the small bones of prairie rats.
Samuel shrugged. “Perhaps. It would depend.”
“On what?”
He didn’t answer immediately but looked at me in a steady-eyed, serious way that made my ribs tighten. “Could you be happy here?” I shrugged back, eyes sliding away. After a short silence I moved to sit with Yaa Murray, the gray-eyed girl, and cajoled her into braiding my hair. I fell quiet beneath the hypnotic twist and tug of her fingers.
Could I truly be happy never knowing my father’s fate? Never seeing the seas of the Written or the archives of the City of Nin? Leaving the Society to their obscure machinations, their malevolent Door-closing?
But then—what else could I do, really? I was a misfit and a runaway, like everyone else here. I was young and soft and untried. Girls like me do not fling themselves against the crushing weight of fate; they don’t hunt villains or have adventures; they hunker down and survive and find happiness where they can.
The sound of running steps thudded down the street and Yaa’s fingers froze in my hair. The comfortable babble of the Arcadians ceased.
A boy came hurtling into the square, chest heaving and eyes wild. Molly Neptune stood up. “Something wrong, Aaron?” Her voice was a mild rumble, but her shoulders were squared with tension.
The boy bent in half, panting, his eyes white-ringed. “It’s—there’s a old lady down by the tree, real upset, saying a man chased her through the door. No sign of him now.” Fear clotted my throat like cold cotton. They found us.
But the boy was still trying to speak, looking up into Molly’s eyes and moving his lips soundlessly.
“What else, boy?”
He swallowed. “It’s Sol, miss. His throat’s been cut clean open. He’s dead.”
If Mr. Locke had successfully taught me anything, it was how to be quiet when I wanted to howl or shriek or claw the wallpaper to ribbons. My limbs stiffened like stuffed appendages tacked onto some poorly taxidermied subject, and a ringing silence filled my skull. I tried hard not to think anything at all.
While Molly shouted orders and Jane and Samuel sprang to their feet to help—I didn’t think: Oh God, Solomon. I didn’t think about his jaunty golden feather, his scarecrow clothing, his genial winks.
When a crowd of people departed and left the courtyard mostly empty except for children and their mothers, I didn’t feel the fear slinking snakelike through my belly, didn’t think: Will I be next? Are they already here?