Page 17 of Lost in the Moment and Found

When they got back to the counter, the girl’s Door was still there. It hadn’t disappeared the way Doors usually did when no one was looking at them. The girl bounced and waved with her free hand before running to pull the Door open, revealing a slice of green-grassed countryside on the other side. Then she ducked through, and she was gone.

Antsy looked at Hudson. “Does that happen often?”

“How often has it happened since you got here?”

“Fair enough.” Antsy stepped back behind the counter. Hudson hopped off her arm and onto his perch. “You were going to show me how to work the register?”

That night, she went to bed tired but feeling oddly accomplished, like she’d done something truly important, and when she woke up in the morning, two of her baby teeth were lying on the pillow, bits of tarnished ivory, leaving empty holes in her mouth. She looked at them for a long and quiet moment before sweeping them into her hand and shoving them under the pillow, getting out of bed.

It was time for another day.

That day, they found two Doors. One led to a world filled with flowers, some of which talked, all of which were happy to accept coins of pressed fertilizer in exchange for jars of honey and pellets of nectar. Some of them sold their own perfume, and those ones delighted Vineta most of all.

The other Door led to a dark and gloomy world, with asingle red moon hanging in the sky like the eye of a baleful giant, and they did their shopping at an outdoor market built in the shadow of a terrible, looming castle like something out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon. Antsy couldn’t bring herself to look at it directly, which seemed to please Vineta; none of the villagers looked directly at the castle, either, and staring would only have attracted attention.

They had been there a few hours, no more, when two girls who looked several years older than Antsy appeared, identical and opposite as sunrise and sunset. Both had golden hair and pale, pinched faces, but one was dressed like a princess out of a fairy tale, while the other was dressed like the world’s youngest funeral director. The strange pair made for the stalls, and Vineta’s hand clamped down on Antsy’s shoulder.

“We’ll be leaving now,” she said, voice a quick hiss. “Come along, Antoinette.”

“Are we done shopping?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. We’re absolutely done.” And away they went, back to the Door that led to the shop, which was hidden in a fold of shadow along the city wall. Vineta didn’t relax or let go of Antsy’s shoulder until they were through the door and it was shut behind them for good measure. Then she sagged, exhaling heavily.

“What was that?” demanded Antsy.

“Those were other Door-touched,” said Vineta. “I don’t know what world they came from, or whether it was anywhere near to yours, but you mustn’t linger where the children of the Doors are already gathered. It isn’t safe.”

“Why not?”

“Because there aren’t many nexuses like ours,” said Vineta. “And most of the Door-touched want nothing more than they want to go home. They would change the world, if it meantthey could go home. They’re as likely as not to think they’re on some sort of grand storybook adventure, and for them, saving the world and destroying it mean the same thing, as long as it comes to the same end.”

Antsy blinked slowly. “But you said the Doors came for people who would be better on the other side than they were where they’d started.”

“A thing being good for you doesn’t make it a thing youwant,” said Vineta. “Did you like being told to eat your broccoli because it was good for you?”

Antsy frowned but had to shake her head. “No, not at all.”

“To some of these travelers, the worlds the Doors offer them are broccoli. They were sure enough to pass through, and remain sure enough to stay, but part of that certainty is the conviction that until they complete their quests, they don’t deserve to go home. Those girls might have ignored us as part of the scenery, or they might have recognized us as something that didn’t belong and refused to let us leave. They might have followed us back to our Door, and tried to take it for their own.”

“Can thathappen? None of the people we’ve met in the markets have even been able to see the door we came through.”

“But none of them have been Door-touched.” Vineta shook her head, shifting the basket she carried to her other hand. “Those girls could have seen, and could have followed, and because this place is a nexus, being able to see the Door is enough. You don’t have to be particularly called to it or tied to it for it to take you. We could have come back with two strangers in tow.”

“I was a stranger when I came here,” said Antsy.

“Yes, but the shop called you, even if you weren’t answering an advertisement, and this is where you belong. I didn’tfind you somewhere else, already mired in your own story and resistant to changing how it would be told. Come along, now, we have to sort our purchases and put away the perishables.”

“I don’t think anything’s perishable except the bread and cheese,” said Antsy, and followed obediently. She had long since learned that obedience was the easiest way to deal with Vineta, who would spend the mornings pulling her toward whatever Doors had appeared during the night, and then vanish into the back for the mysterious and eternally ongoing process of “inventory,” which was somehow essential to the smooth running of the shop, even though Vineta rarely worked behind the counter or helped the occasional shoppers who came in through more ordinary doors, usually accompanied by hat-wearing magpies who swooped over to chatter excitedly with Hudson.

Once Vineta went to work on inventory, Antsy and Hudson would have the run of the shop until dinnertime. Antsy’s hands and height meant she could deal with messes and shelving issues he couldn’t—and she was getting better at stretching; she could reach shelves now that had been quite out of her reach only a few months before, and she didn’t see anything odd about that, accepting it with the calm, unwavering serenity of a child who was already under too much pressure to notice when something was wrong. The shop itself generated tasks for them daily, piles of boxes blocking walkways and sudden stacks of objects that needed to be put away. It was endless, but it was easy, and even enjoyable. Antsy could feel her arms and back growing stronger as time passed and she became more adept at interpreting the sometimes-odd organizational system. Hudson swooped from place to place, grabbing small, shiny objects and tucking them where he feltthey belonged, or exclaiming with a great cacophony when he found an older cache of treasures.

And then there would be lunch, and Antsy enjoyed lunch best of all, because that was when she got to enjoy the fruits of her morning’s labors, strange things from worlds she had never seen before and might never see again. Vineta joined them on days when they had returned from market with a great deal of fruit or jam, and would mutter and wave a crystal spike over each piece, watching to see what color the crystal turned. If it remained clear or turned pink or yellow, she would give the fruit to Antsy. If it turned black or red, she would keep it back.

Antsy had only asked once what the spike was for. Vineta’s response had been a scowl, and a sour mutter of “No one ever misplaces a hospital,” as if that somehow explained everything. Antsy thought the spike might be telling Vineta whether or not any of the things they’d brought home would hurt them in some way, and it seemed like it might be a good thing to take with them when they were doing the shopping, but as the fruit didn’t seem to spoil once it was in their kitchen, and could occasionally be re-sold to people who didn’t carry spikes of their own but seemed to recognize and get excited by it anyway, she supposed it was all right.

On the day when they saw the two Door-touched girls in the world with the malevolent moon, there was hard brown bread and honey that made the spike flicker between yellow and red for almost a minute before it settled on the darkest pink Antsy had ever seen, and butter so rich and delicious that it felt like every other bit of butter she’d ever tasted had just been imitating this butter and not doing a very good job of it. There had been a sausage-seller at the market, but there was no meat with the meal, and Antsy realized suddenly that Vinetahad avoided all the stalls selling any sort of animal good that required the animal to be dead first—no meat, no leather, no bone dice or jerky. It was a small but uncommon omission.

She squinted at Vineta, who continued buttering a slice of toast and ignored her. There was no meat, but therewascheese, as fine as the butter, sharp and crumbly and so delicious that it felt almost like a sin to swallow, like the flavor was a living thing that should have been allowed to linger on the tongue forever if that was its heart’s desire.

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