Page 9 of In an Absent Dream

A BEGINNING ENDS

KATHERINE LUNDYhad been missing for eight days. Long enough that the police were starting to speak in hushed tones of calling off the search: they only had so many resources, after all, and while everyone agreed the girl was too young to have run off on her own, there was a point at which things would need to be turned over to the feds. They had the manpower and the training to pursue a kidnapping across state lines. They could find what the local authorities could not.

At home, her mother wept, her big brother stared sleeplessly out his bedroom window, and her younger sister cried herself fitfully to sleep, unable to quite understand why everyone was so upset, knowing only that her sister—one of the few constants in her life—was gone.

Only her father stayed dry-eyed and steady, standing at the back door, waiting. Even as the police said that they were sorry, they were running out of leads, and would he like to speak to someone higher up, he remained calm. He stood at the door, and he kept his eyes on the horizon, and he thought about a long hallway carved from a single piece of living wood. He thought about rules. They were always so careful with their rules in the Goblin Market. They never kept the children on their first visit. It wouldn’t have been fair. They wouldn’t have been sure.

He thought about a golden hind with daisies and pomegranate blossoms in her hair, dancing under a midsummer moon. He thought about the way her kisses had burned when she tucked them into the corners of his mouth, telling him to store them up for the rest of his life, to only use them when he absolutely needed to. They had been barely sixteen on that moon-soaked night, and she had already known he was leaving, even though he himself had still believed that he might stay.

He thought about choices—both the one he’d made and the one he knew his daughter was even now making, the choice that would define everything that came after. He had done his best by her, tried to raise her to live in books and quiet, safe rooms, rather than running wild through fields of gorse and heather. He had always assumed that, after Daniel had passed through his elementary school years without stumbling through any impossible doors, the chain had been broken. That it was over.

He had been so wrong. And so he waited, until one evening, as the moon was rising, a bedraggled little figure came walking up the street toward their house.

Katherine’s school bag was missing, as were both her socks, and the ribbons from her hair. She had a sharp knife of polished glass belted at her waist, its curved bone handle easy to her hand. She had feathers braided in her hair (and if her father’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of them, she wasn’t to know why; she didn’t yet understand). She had a smudge of fruit juice, dark and sticky as jam, drying on one cheek.

Her father was out the door and down the front steps before her mother even noticed that he was moving, and in less time than it takes to say “home again, home again, she was finally home again,” he was on his knees on the sidewalk, holding her close, holding her tight, holding her like the world depended on his never letting go.

Lundy sniffled. Lundy buried her face against the crook of his neck, inhaling that wool and paper and smoke scent that said “father” to her. And Lundy, brave Lundy, who had ridden alongside her friends Moon and Mockery to fight the wicked Wasp Queen for the safety of the pomegranate groves, who had seen that sometimes fair value wasn’t enough to prevent blood on the ground and a little girl with silver feathers in her hair lying broken in the leaves, never to mock or tease or mercilessly barter again, burst into tears.

“I’m sorry,” she wailed. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I won’t go back, I won’t.”

She was lying, of course. But she wouldn’t understand that for two more years.

PART II

WE FIRST MUST SOW

6

BACK THROUGH THE IMPOSSIBLE DOOR

IF ANYONE HAD ASKEDKatherine Lundy—who was happier these days going by her last name, which no one tried to twist or turn into something shorter, sillier, less tiresome for the tongue—she would have said being ten was substantially harder than being eight, and that she would be perfectly happy to go backward, returning to a time where her femininity had been an attribute rather than an expectation.

At eight, she had been able to wear dresses or tie ribbons in her hair, or both, without anyone pointing to it as proof that she was growing up to be a beautiful little lady. She had been able to raise her hand in class without being skipped over in favor of the boys, whose answers, although often identical to her own, were somehow smarter, more thoughtful, morenecessary. She had been able to eat sweets without being asked if she was worried about getting fat.

She had been able to find a doorway and disappear into an adventure, instead of living in a world that told her, day after day after grinding, demoralizing day, that adventures were only for boys; that girls had better things to worry about, like making sure those same boys had a safe harbor to come home to.

Now that she was ten, all of the things she’d thought she knew about girls and boys and herself and the people around her were changing. Family friends and distant relations bought her pretty bangles and new hairbrush sets for Christmas, instead of the books and educational toys she had so carefully requested. She supposed the reason girls were told the great secret of Santa Claus was because otherwise they would think the man had quite lost his marbles, to suddenly change the nature of presents that had been perfectly reasonable before.

Her breaking point, when it came, arrived quite abruptly in the middle of her morning math lesson. One of the questions simplyrefusedto provide the right answer, no matter how many times she twisted it around. Finally, in frustration, she put her hand up.

“All right, Katie,” said her teacher, Mr. Holmen, with a smirk as broad and unwelcome as his mustache. Looking at the rest of the class like he had a secret, he said, “I don’t mind giving the girls a little extra help with their math. It doesn’t come naturally to them, after all.”

All the boys in class snickered. Even Johnny Wells, andshehad been helpinghimwith his math homework all the way since September.

Lundy stood so fast that her math book fell to the floor with a sound like a slap. Mr. Holmen blinked at her, nonplussed.

“I - need - to - go - to - the - bathroom,”she said, a single staccato string of syllables with no pauses between them. She didn’t wait to be given permission. She turned and fled, running out of the room as fast as she could, leaving her bookbag behind.

She stormed down the hall like it had personally offended her, and somehow it wasn’t a surprise when the door to the janitor’s closet—a door she walked past every day, several times—was gone. In its place was a tall oak door. A square made of graven fruit and flowers had been carved exactly at her eye level.BE SURE,read the words at its center, and in that moment, Lundy had never been more sure of anything.

“Only wait here a moment,” she said politely, eyes on the door. “I need to get my bag.” Then she spun on her heel and marched back to the classroom.

Mr. Holmen’s head jerked up when she stepped inside. “Detention,” he said. “You are not permitted to leave the room without permission.”

“I have vomited all over the girls’ bathroom,” Lundy replied calmly. Some of the other girls looked shocked by this admission. Most of the boys snickered. She didn’t care. The wonderful thing about not having any friends was not needing to care what other children thought of her. Let them think that she was crass or rude for being willing to talk about the things her body did—or in this case, didn’t do. She was leaving.

She was going home.

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