Page 10 of Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

Antsy froze.

Finally, she said, “I know a lot of places.”

6 THE LONG WAY HOME

“I DON’T KNOW ALLthe places you’ve been—I could never go to any of the Drowned Worlds, it wouldn’t have worked out very well for me, since I breathe air and all the ways we had of fixing that were too permanent to be safe—but I knowofmost of them.” She paused for a moment, noticing how raptly they were all watching her. “Did you know Seraphina probably went to a Drowned World?”

“She didn’t,” scoffed Cora. “I would know. That girl’s dry as a desert.”

“Oh, I figure she went to Auxesia, and it’s a split world. Dry above, wet below. They live on ships the size of cities, and they fight war after war to own the most beautiful things in the whole world.” Antsy looked at the piles of books around them. Much easier than looking at the people. “When they can’t find something beautiful to fight over, they make it. So they lure pretty girls through Doors, and they… pearlize them, sort of. Make them the most beautiful things that ever were.”

“It’s always girls,” said Kade, with an odd sort of bitterness. “What happens to the girls they take?”

“Um. Most of them die, which is why I wasn’t allowed to go there. Some escape into the sea, and become water-people, and then they don’t worry as much about being beautiful. But most of them never come home.” Antsy glanced back down the stairs. “I wonder why Seraphina did.”

“Because she’s awful,” said Cora. “Probably even a wholeworld full of awful people figured out they didn’t want her there.”

“A better question might be why she wants to goback,” said Emily. “Sounds like a bad party to me.”

“And when Emily and I were talking in the cafeteria the other day, she said something about maple syrup being the ‘blood of the divine,’ so I’m pretty sure she went to Harvest.”

Emily sat up straighter, eyes suddenly very bright, fingers digging into the floor.

“Do you think the children who travel from different parts of the world use so many English words to talk about the places they go?” asked Sumi.

“No,” said Antsy. “The worlds have their own languages.”

Everyone, even Kade, stared at her.

“Explain,” he said.

Antsy blinked. “Um. It wouldn’t make sense for all these different places to develop the exact same ways of talking? But no one ever goes through a Door and finds themselves totally unable to talk to anybody around them. The Doors give us language when they give us passage, and take it back when we pass through again. So what you call ‘the Trenches’ is actually called,” and she made a strange, harmonious warbling sound that was something like whale song and something like a word that was designed to be heard across miles of open water.

Cora paled and swayed, grabbing the top of the banister to steady herself. “Never do that again,” she said to Antsy.

“Um. Sorry,” said Antsy. “It’s just, it matters, because when people have tried to find other ways to travel, they didn’t get the words, and so they got really lost.”

“There are other ways to travel?” asked Christopher.

“Stop pressuring her,” said Emily. She stood, smooth and graceful, and moved to offer Antsy her hand. “It’s okay, kiddo. Come sit with me.”

Antsy gave her a grateful look and took the offered hand, letting herself be led.

“Kiddo?” asked Cora. “Em, she’s the same age we are.”

“She’s not, though. Look at the way she stands, or the way she’s so careful and precise when she uses really big words. You remember Rowena.”

Cora and Sumi both made sounds of dismay. Emily looked to Kade and Christopher.

“Ro was one of our dorm mates at Whitethorn. She was the same age we were—or so we thought. But she’d been to a world made of clocks and time, and it ate up her whole childhood. She was six when she went. She was twelve when she came back, three hours later. She’d been at Whitethorn for five years. She stayed behind when we ran.” She glanced at Antsy. “She hid it well, but she used to get the same trapped look in her eyes that Antsy does, when we were talking about things she was still mentally too young to understand. How old are you, Antsy?”

No one had asked her that, not once, not even Eleanor, and so it was probably unsurprising when Antsy started to cry. She pressed her face against Emily’s arm as the other girl stroked her hair, and when she finally felt like she could speak without her voice breaking, she sat up, wiped her eyes, and said, “I’m nine.”

“Antoinette Ricci—you’re that girl whose stepfather murdered her!” said Christopher, snapping his fingers. “I mean, I guess not, but it was all over the news a few years ago. They never found a body. I was in the hospital for chemotherapywhen it happened. I saw a lot more breaking news than I wanted to.”

“Is that what they say he did to me?” asked Antsy. “I saw my mom—she thought I was someone else—and she said he was in prison, but not why. She said something about pictures…”

“And if you don’t know, we’re not going to tell you, because you shouldn’t have to know that,” said Kade firmly. “I remember that story too. I’m sorry, Antsy. Why didn’t you say something?”

---