Page 24 of In an Absent Dream

Everyone should have a perfect year. The two girls fell in and out of minor debts, with the Market and with each other; they laughed when they found feathers curving along the lines of their hips or tangled in their hair, they scowled when their lips hardened, and always, they worked and they played and they gave fair value as best they could, until there were more debtless days than otherwise, until it seemed like things would be good forever.

Until the day Lundy rose and started for the door, intending to go to the stream and wash her face before she started making plans for breakfast, and the Archivist called, “Wait.”

Lundy turned obediently to face her. It was the two of them alone: Moon had left them at dawn, off to help Vincent prepare for the day. “Yes?”

“Do you know what today is?”

Lundy frowned thoughtfully. “It isn’t my birthday,” she said. “It isn’t Moon’s finding-day, either, and if you have a birthday, you’ve never told me what it is.”

“It’s been a year and a day since you came back to us,” said the Archivist. Then, with deep sorrow, she said, “It’s been a year since you bought Moon’s debt.”

Fear uncurled in Lundy’s stomach. Feathers were only funny when they were something to be set aside. “Already?”

“Already, and she still loves you.” The Archivist looked at her sadly. “You know what that means.”

Lundy wanted to argue, wanted to say it wasn’t fair, that she wasn’t ready, that she had offered fair value each and every day since her return, and she should have earned herself free. But that wasn’t the bargain, and a bargain was like a rule, wasn’t it? Rules existed to be obeyed, to protect people from a world where no one knew what to do or how to do it.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“It will be easier if you undress,” said the Archivist.

Lundy did, removing each article of clothing and setting it aside, until she stood naked in the middle of the room. She looked at the Archivist.

“Will it hurt?”

“No,” said the Archivist, and held out her arm, as a falconer might hold out their glove. Lundy felt a sudden burning need to go to it, to follow this rule as she had followed all the rules before—because there had never been a specificruleagainst going through an impossible door into a world that wasn’t, had there? She had always been a good girl, even when it hurt her. Now, being a good girl meant going to that hand.

So she did. Flight came naturally, and when she landed, she grasped the Archivist’s wrist with as much delicacy as her talons allowed. The Archivist stroked her beak and sighed.

“You can carry messages; you can catch fish,” she said. “You can buy your way back. If someone asks if you’d like them to keep your credit, tell them yes however you can and collect it all at once, to shed feathers and find feet, not be caught in the in-between. Do you understand?”

Lundy screeched agreement. The Archivist walked to the door, opened it, and held out her arm. The sun was warm, oh, the sun was warm on Lundy’s feathers. She shrieked, once, and she was gone, wings beating at the air, all the sky below her.

“Try to remember you want to come home,” said the Archivist, and closed the door.

PART IV

WE FIRST MUST GO

13

ONE MORE DOOR

LUNDY COLLAPSED, unfamiliar legs shaking, unfamiliar hands clutching at the dirt as she tried to remember what it meant to have fingers, to have thumbs, to manipulate the world with something other than beak and talons. The Archivist spread a blanket over her narrow, naked shoulders; Moon put a plate with two small pies down in front of her.

“Welcome home, Lundy,” she said, her voice full of tears. “I’m sorry.”

“How . . . long?” rasped Lundy. Time had been strange to the eagle she had been, seeming to ebb and flow according to its own whims, and not to any logical progression.

“A year,” said Moon. “You were gone for a year.”

A year was a very long time. Lundy picked up a pie, noting that her fingers were longer, not because she owed anything, but because herhandswere longer, because everything about her had stepped closer to adulthood while she was flying above her own life. She took a bite. Her stomach, no longer accustomed to cooked food, attempted to revolt. She swallowed anyway, forcing the food to stay down.

A year. She was fifteen. The idea was ridiculous. How couldshebe fifteen? It didn’t make sense, but there it was, and Moon had never lied to her. Lundy took another bite of pie.

She’d been almost thirteen when she’d gone through the door and back into the Goblin Market. Her family had been wondering where she was for two years. More and more, she thought—no, sheknew—this was where she belonged, but somehow, disappearing on them without saying goodbye didn’t feel like fair value.

“Fifteen,” she said. She put down the pie. She stood, wrapping the cloak around herself, and looked at the Archivist. “I have to go back. I have to say goodbye before it’s time for me to choose.”

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