Page 10 of In an Absent Dream

“I am going to the office. I will tell my father that I am unwell.” Lundy walked to her desk and retrieved her bookbag, watching carefully as Mr. Holmen’s cheeks flared red. He hated to be reminded that her father ran the school. Lundy didn’t get many special privileges from it—if anything, she was punished more than she was rewarded—but in situations like this one, there was no way to beat a child whose card in the hole was the principal.

“Do you need an escort?” he asked, the words heavy on his tongue, like stones. More of the class giggled, not at the vomiting, but at his loss of face.

“No, thank you,” said Lundy. She slung her bag over her shoulder and walked away.

Mr. Holmen would likely be fired when she disappeared, having left his classroom without a hall pass or a helper. Lundy found she didn’t care. He shouldn’t have treated her like she didn’t matter. He shouldn’t have treated her like his idea of agirl.

The door was still there when she returned to the hall. Lundy smiled, and walked a little faster, until the knob was in her hand and the scent of fresh oak was in her nostrils, and when she stepped through, she felt her anger peel away, shedding it like a snake sheds its skin. The door slammed shut behind her. She didn’t bother looking over her shoulder. It was already gone, and so was she.

***

ONCE AGAIN, the door to the Goblin Market had opened on a tunnel somehow carved into the living body of a tree, and once again, the tunnel ended with an unlocked door, where a single step could carry from the safety of the passage out into the better, brighter world she had tried so hard to convince herself had been a dream. The mingled odors of a hundred impossible things struck her, and she stopped, breathing in deeply, letting the sounds and sights of the Market surround her, strengthen her, renew her.

For her, it had been two years. It might have been twice as long for the Goblin Market, or it might have been no time at all, from all the changes she could see. Stalls had shifted. A few of the wagons were gone, while a few more had arrived. But the jumble of wares was as wild and unreadable as ever, and the people passing by were as strange as they’d been the first time. Lundy closed her eyes and kept breathing, filling her lungs with the Goblin Market, chasing all traces of school away.

Her stomach rumbled. Lundy opened her eyes, laughing, and dove into the Market, letting her feet lead the way.

Feet have a longer memory for certain things than minds do, and her feet remembered well the way to get to the pie stall, where Vincent the pie-maker was pulling a tray of sweet fruit pies out of the oven. A rack of lamb pies with baked quince cooled on the counter, next to a dozen butter chicken pies. Lundy’s stomach grumbled louder.

“Hello, sir,” she said, with surpassing politeness. Even here in the Goblin Market, adults liked it when she was polite and looked tractable. Adults seemed to view mannerly children as somehow superior, and hence deserving of better treatment. It was silly at best and dangerous at worst—some of the nastiest bullies in school were capable of pulling out exquisite manners at the drop of a hat—but it could work for her, when she wanted it to.

Vincent turned, eyes widening fractionally at the sight of her, in her pressed skirt and white school blouse. “You’re back,” he said. “Moon’s tried to claim your share of pies twice, but I told her a deal was a deal, and now it seems I’ll be paying them out anyway.”

“How many pies are left on my account?” asked Lundy. It seemed like a safe enough question, and one that would require no additional payment.

“Two meat and two fruit on yours; none on hers.”

“Do you need pencils?” Lundy’s smile was sweet as she swung her bookbag around and dipped her hand inside, pulling out three pencils. These ones were unsharpened, with perfect erasers. She had been carrying them for more than a year, since the dim, gnawing idea of going back had first occurred to her.

She had selected all her trade goods in threes, and she tried not to think about that, even as she knew, deep down, in the part of her that was still and would always be weeping, that Mockery had no more use for pencils or for pies. Mockery was over and done.

Vincent’s eyes widened in earnest this time. He looked like he was fighting the urge to lick his lips as he said, “I always need pencils. They make keeping track of supplies much easier.”

“These are better pencils than the last batch. They’d last you a long time, and the erasers haven’t been used at all.”

Vincent rallied, sensing a bargain in the making. “Yes, but I don’t have a sharpener.”

“Is that all?” Lundy smiled triumphantly as she produced a manual pencil sharpener from her pocket. “You could write everything down for a long, long time, if you had this.”

This time, Vincentdidlick his lips. “What do you want for it?”

It was a dangerous question. It was a trap. “What would be fair value? If ten meat pies and ten fruit pies each was fair value for two pencils that had already been used . . .”

“One of each, fruit and meat, every day, for a year.”

“For all three—” Lundy caught herself. “For both of us?”

Vincent wrinkled his nose. “Yes,” he said finally. “For both of you.”

Lundy beamed as she put the pencils and sharpener down on the counter. Then she held out her hands. “Pies, please,” she said.

They smelled like heaven. They smelled like coming home.

***

LUNDY WALKEDunder the trees toward the Archivist’s shack with her hands full of pies, meat and fruit and flaky crust begging her to sit down and eat them all up, to glut herself until her belly strained against the waistband of her skirt and everything made sense again. She refused to take even the smallest bite. Two of the pies were for Moon, and she knew if she tasted even a crumb, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself. Friends didn’t do that to friends.

It was funny. She had resigned herself to never having friends when she was so little that she barely remembered making the choice, and she didn’t regret it, not for a moment. Most of the kids she went to school with couldn’t see past her father to her, and the few who tried never seemed to like what they found when they reached her. She was too opinionated and too invested in following the rules. She liked the company of adults too much, she spent too much time reading. She was everything they didn’t want to spend time with, and if it hadn’t been for her father and for the reluctance many of them had to hit a girl, she would almost certainly have spent her weekends nursing black eyes and telling lies about where they’d come from.

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