Page 29 of Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

Beetles didn’t have bones, but they had chitin, and whatever magic his flute possessed seemed to work on it just fine. He didn’t think about it too hard. Better to stay alert and listen for signs that Vineta or Yulia was looking for him. He wasn’t sure what sort of threat a little girl or an old woman could present, but he’d long since learned that appearances could be deceiving, especially when trying to figure out how dangerous something was. The Skeleton Girl had seemed like a living nightmare the first time he’d seen her, all long bones walking around without anything to hold her up, painted skull gleaming in the honeyed Mariposa sun. But by the time he’d been whisked away, back into the alley behind the hospital he’d run from, the smell of rot and disinfectant in the air, she’d been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Seraphina, now… she couldn’t affect him with her pearlized glory, but he could still recognize that she was the kindof beautiful that had no reason to exist. She was loveliness turned lethal, and she didn’t belong to their world anymore.

None of them did, not really. Some of them could adjust to reentry, like Kade, or Nichole, who insisted that she was happier with a license to help kids like she’d been than she could ever have been in the world on the other side of her door—although she never gave details about it, not the way that Lundy had. It was like for her, adjusting meant putting every piece of where she’d gone in a box and setting it safely on a shelf, where it could be admired from a distance but couldn’t touch her.

Christopher didn’t feel like that. He woke up every morning missing his Skeleton Girl, and he remained immune to things like Seraphina’s charms for the same reason he would have been unaffected by the world’s most breathtaking vista or most beautiful bird: he didn’t want to be with any woman who needed to cloak herself in flesh and blood. Or at least that was why he assumed he was immune. He didn’t honestly know. No one did. Maybe it was something about his connection to the dead, or maybe he was just lucky. Magic was funny that way.

If he didn’t find his door again, he sometimes thought he’d wind up having a fabulous career as a very strange serial killer, stripping every woman whose voice he found even remotely attractive down to the bone in his pursuit of his lost love. He didn’twantthat future, didn’t think he’d done anything to deserve it, but it was one of the only outcomes he could see of being returned to his family, with their endless pressure to find someone, some “real girl” who existed in their world, fall in love, and do the things they expected of an adult.

Christopher tilted his head back, looking at the distantceiling. Even the rafters had been pressed into use, supporting hanging taxidermy and model aircraft, as well as what looked like dangerously precarious free-hanging shelves, supported by a few loops of rope or chain and, one hoped, a lot of engineering skill.

As he was staring at the shelf above him, distantly wondering whether it was going to come crashing down and answer the question of whether he was even going to return to Mariposa once and for all, he heard voices drifting from the other side of the still-propped door. He sat up at once, eyes snapping to the opening. There had been a lot of sounds since the others left—the whistling of the wind, the warble of something that sounded almost but not quite like a bird, and the furious roaring of something big enough to eat the world. But there had been no voices. Whatever kind of world was out there, he didn’t think it had a lot of people in it.

The voices got closer—not close enough for him to make out words but close enough for him to make out tones, and he bounced to his feet, pulling the door the rest of the way open as he watched his friends make their way through the sea of ferns toward the door.

“Oh, good,” called Antsy, audibly relieved. “You kept it open.”

There was a large black-and-white bird riding on her shoulder. For some reason, it was wearing glasses. That didn’t seem to be bothering any of the rest of them, and so Christopher decided that it wasn’t going to bother him, either.

“No one came this way while I was waiting,” he said. “But I was starting to get really bored. You guys okay?”

There was something that looked like blood on Sumi’s lips and chin, and Kade was limping. Cora nodded.

“We got sort of chased by something out of a Godzilla movie, but we found Hudson and we didn’t get eaten, so I guess we can call this trip a success. And we ran into one of our old roommates from Whitethorn.”

Christopher blinked. “This day has been so weird, that doesn’t even seem strange at this point. Infinite worlds out there, filled with infinite versions of reality, so of course you’d wind up in one where a former classmate had taken refuge. Why wouldn’t you?”

“We don’t believe all possible worlds connect to any one Nexus,” said Hudson primly, as Antsy stepped through the doorway and back into the Store. Taking a deep breath, he ruffled his feathers, puffing them out in obvious pleasure. “Oh,there’sthe smell of home. This is as it’s meant to be, books and dust and other people’s possessions.” For all his delight, he remained firmly on Antsy’s shoulder.

“Meaning what?” asked Christopher.

“Meaning that every Nexus—this Store and your Earth, assuming you all come from the same original world as Antsy—has perhaps two or three hundred worlds close enough to form a stable connection, and won’t reach anything farther away than that. Much as I hate to admit that we have limitations, I’m sure there are worlds accessible from Earth that cannot be reached from here, and very likely vice versa. But where are my manners? I’m Hudson.”

The bird bowed, spreading his wings in a gesture very much like a human trying to make a good impression might spread his arms. His glasses, which were joined together at the back of his head, didn’t budge. Bobbing back to an upright position, he continued. “I’m one of the magpies native to this world. We were here before anything else, when we were just thejunkshop Nexus of this corner of reality. We didn’t build the Store, but we helped as best we could, and we’ve always given our support to the shopkeepers.”

“So you’re on Vineta’s side?” asked Sumi, nudging Antsy aside to let the others through the door. “I don’t like her. She’s a mean lady.”

“I was, once.” Hudson’s wings drooped. “We stopped telling the new arrivals what the doors would cost them five keepers ago. The keeper we had then said that knowing had only caused him pain, that he wished we’d allowed him to spend his life in innocence, instead of turning it into something he had to hoard, and he demanded we let the next keepers come and go in innocence and ignorance. We agreed, because we’ve always allowed the keepers to set the rules of the Store itself. They stock the shelves and change the lightbulbs, and they live out their whole lives in our world, separated from their own. Why shouldn’t we allow them a little autonomy, when it relates to their own kind and isn’t hurting anyone?

“But Elodina, the first shopkeeper, the one who called this place into being with blood and sweat andneeding,began to stir in her long slumber, pulling strength from the Store itself. And then she began to appear to the keepers. Antoinette was the third to hear her message, and the first to take it to heart.”

He bowed his head again, this time in regret. “Antoinette told us we had robbed her, that by lying to her, we had hurt her as much as the people she ran from. This is meant to be a sanctuary. A place where travelers can be safe, for as long as they need to be. For some, aging faster is a blessing, and there have been keepers who returned to their worlds of origin, able to go back once they felt confident that no one wouldbe able to recognize them. For others, it’s a curse. But after Antoinette told us we were going to do things differently, the Store saw fit to send her home, and Vineta said that proved she was wrong, and we had been doing things correctly for all these years. She made me promise not to tell the next apprentice what the costs were, but she forgot that a new promise doesn’t come before an older one, and I had already promised Antoinette I’d tell.”

He launched himself from Antsy’s shoulder then, flying to a nearby shelf and landing on a tree-shaped bookend before he turned to face her. “I taught her the rhyme of keepers. The counting rhyme that shows how fast they come and go. She thought it was a funny little song. I told her of Elodina. She said it was sad, and didn’t care. I kept trying, and she kept refusing to listen. Then Vineta caught us, and said the Store had no need of magpies, not with a keeper and an apprentice. She told Yulia all birds were liars, and she put me in a cage and had the child open a Door so they could toss me away. I thought I would never be home again. I thought I was lost forever.”

“Now you know how I feel,” said Antsy. “How could the Store just throw me out like that? It took my entire childhood!”

“You’re assuming intent,” said Hudson. He cocked his head, looking at her gravely. “There is no intent. The Doors can see who suits a world, and if that person doesn’t suit the one they’re in, they can come and offer an alternative. But it’s only that—an alternative. Any uncertainty, any belief that they might be better off where they were, and the Doors will send them back again. Did you waver, at all?”

“I was angry!” said Antsy. “Youstolefrom me! You didn’tlisten!”

“And you wanted, if only for a moment, to go back to where things were simple, and you wouldn’t have to make decisions or be responsible for convincing others to keep their words to you,” said Hudson. “You weren’t sure.”

“I’m surenow,” said Antsy.

“Good. Then you’ll stay, and be our keeper, and Vineta will be reminded that all keepers are here at the sufferance of the birds who guide them.”

Christopher ran his fingers nervously along the length of his flute, feeling the familiar indentations like a lifeline. “Are you saying we have to kill her?”

“What? No!” Hudson sounded appropriately horrified by the idea. “No, we’ll just send her back where she came from. Her services are no longer needed.”

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