Page 19 of In an Absent Dream

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LUNDY WALKEDthrough the trees with a spring in her step and the weight of her bag hanging against her hip, every pilfered pencil and stolen scrap of ribbon reassuring her that she was going, she was on her way. There was no turning back now. Evening walks were allowed for birdwatchers, but they were logged out and logged back in, and by now the upperclassman in charge of watching the register would surely have noticed that she was running late.

She’d been walking for more than an hour, heading deeper and deeper into the trees surrounding the campus. Strange sounds called to her from out of the foliage, the cries of owls and the rustling of nocturnal animals. She ignored them. Nothing here could frighten her, not after the things she’d seen and done and faced in the Goblin Market. What did a few noises have on the Bone Wraiths, on the Wasp Queen? This was a test at most, a distraction at least, and so she walked on.

Her feet hurt. Her legs, no longer accustomed to traveling miles in a single session, ached, and her thighs chafed where they rubbed together. If not for the feathers on the back of her neck, she might have started to believe what her father had said before committing her to boarding school—that she had had a dream, wonderful and terrible and untrue, and now was the time to wake up. She might have turned back.

But the feathers on the back of her neck were real. It hurt when she tugged on them, and as her mammalian body had undergone puberty, they, too, had changed, growing longer and stronger and darker. Even for a bird, she was no longer a fledgling. And if she wasn’t a fledgling, she could walk.

She walked until she saw a tree that looked like it belonged to a different forest, twisted until there wasn’t a straight line anywhere in its trunk or in its branches, with leaves in a dozen delicate shades of green. Lundy’s breath caught. She did not hurry, but angled toward it as a flower angles toward the sun.

When she drew closer, she saw that at the center of its trunk, there was a door, and that graven on the door were two simple words:

BE SURE

“I am,” she whispered, and pushed the door open, and stepped through, and was gone.

11

IN AIR AS CLEAR AS CRYSTAL

LUNDY STEPPED OUTof the impossible hall and into the comforting, golden-lit darkness of the Market by night. Candles, paper lanterns, and colorful glass lamps hung from wagons and stalls, providing enough illumination to see by, if not to do fine needlework or read. She didn’t need to do either of those things. As if in a dream, she wandered toward the first rank of sellers.

A few were still open, despite the lateness of the hour. They looked at her uniform, at her legs, long and gawky with the latest attack of puberty upon her frame, and politely looked away. The clothing booths were closed for the night, and she was dressed; there was no value to be had in pulling a seamstress or tailor from their bed and thrusting her at them.

Surprisingly few of them recognized her, for she was a child no longer: her hair, which had never been very long before, or terribly well tended, hung loose down her back, secured with a ribbon tiedjust so, according to the exacting standards of the Chesholm School. Her skin, which had been dirty and bruised and freckled in the way of Market children, was clean. Even her uniform, too short and too tight in the chest, marked her as a teenager. It was rare for someone to begin visiting at such a late age. It was not unheard of. And so Lundy walked past the homes and businesses of people who had once brought her their laundry, or clucked their tongues when she tumbled into mud puddles in front of them, and not one of them stopped her, or said a word in greeting.

Her progress was neither smooth nor steady. She tripped over the uneven ground, her heavy school shoes uniquely unsuited to the terrain. She stopped, over and over again, to gawk at things that had been familiar once and might be familiar again, after her heart had stopped pounding in her chest, after her head had stopped spinning with the intoxicating scents of night-blooming flowers and the ashes of the day’s food vendors.

Vincent’s stall was closed up tight for the evening, the shutters sealed, but the scent of fresh-baked pie lingered, lifting her up and steadying her. No food she had eaten in her own world had tasted as good as his pies—no other food in the Goblin Market, either. There might be healthier meals, more balanced meals, more nuanced meals, but his pies were the first things she’d eaten upon finding this wonderful place, upon making her first real friend, and to her, they would always taste like coming home.

She touched the weathered wood of his counter, thinking of the pencils in her pocket, and smiled to herself. Moon must have gone through the last of the pies Lundy had bargained for by now, even if she’d managed to talk Vincent around to giving her Lundy’s share after a “short visit” home had turned into more than two years. Lundy’s smile faded. More than two years. Who knew if Moon was even still here? So much had changed.Shehad changed. Who was to say anything was the same?

Barely conscious of the decision, Lundy broke into a run. Her clumsiness fell away as she stopped focusing on her feet, until she was loping easy on her newly lengthened limbs, cutting across the Market toward the one place she was almost sure would still be there. The Archivist was a rock, a monument to stability in this place, where things changed every day, but the rules were immutable.

“Be sure,” she whispered as she ran. “Be sure, besure. Iamsure, I swear I am.”

The Market didn’t reply to her convictions. It surrounded her, engulfed her in the creak of wood and the rustle of canvas, in the slow settling of the dark, which had its own, subtle sound. That was the only reassurance it could give.

Lundy ran down once-familiar trails turned strange by the passage of time, catching her toes on tree roots and stumbling through mud puddles. It was only the knowledge that without her shoes she’d have nothing to barter for a new pair that kept her from stripping the hated things off and throwing them away, to be found by one of the scavengers who worked the edges of the Market. She was no longer the tough-footed child she thought herself to be; if she wanted to be that girl again, she would need to change by stages, to have something thick and safe to fall back on. Not these shoes, perhaps, but another pair, one better suited to her feet, one she had chosen.

She ran, until the Archivist’s shack appeared in front of her like a promise fulfilled, lantern-light slipping out through the cracks in its roughly hewn walls. She stopped, gasping for breath, her heart hammering hard against her ribs. This was it, then; this was where she found out whether she had been gone too long to ever be welcomed home.

“Be sure,” she whispered, and took a step.

“Besure,” she said, and took another.

“Be sure,” she hissed, a command meant in equal parts for herself and for the night around her, and she was running again, running until she was almost at the door, until that door swung open and the Archivist was there, the Archivist was laughing in surprise and delight and spreading her arms to catch Lundy as the girl who was no longer a child flung herself into them.

They held each other, both of them laughing and both of them weeping, and if this were a fairy tale, this is where we would leave them, the prodigal student and the unwitting instructor reunited after what should have been their final farewell. This is where we would leave them, and be glad of it, even as Lundy had long since left a girl named Katherine behind her.

Alas, that this is not a fairy tale.

“I made it, I’m sorry, it shouldn’t have taken so long, but Imadeit,” said Lundy, her voice muffled by the Archivist’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize,” said the Archivist, and pushed her out to arm’s length, looking her thoughtfully up and down. “How old are you now?”

“Twelve,” said Lundy. “About to be thirteen.”

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