“Like I said, cooking is a form of science, and I am a scientist,” said Jack.
“We do need to figure out what’s going on,” said Kade. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not so well-equipped to go back to my old life. My parents still think they’re somehow magically going to get back the little girl they lost. They haven’t let me come home for five years. No, maybe that’s unfair—or too fair. They won’t let me come home. If I want to put on a skirt and tell them to call me ‘Katie,’ they’ll welcome me with open arms. Pretty sure that if the school closes down, I’m homeless.”
“My folks would let me come back,” said Christopher. “They think this is all some complicated breakdown triggered by the things that happened after I ‘ran away.’ Mom genuinely believes the Skeleton Girl is some girl I fell for who died of anorexia. Like, she asks me on the regular whether I can remember her ‘real name’ yet, so they can track down her parents and tell them what happened to her. It’s really sad, because they care so damn much, and they’re so completely wrong about everything, you know? The Skeleton Girl is real, and she isn’t dead, and she was never alive the way that people are here.”
“Skeleton people generally aren’t,” said Jack, setting her cocoa aside. “If they were, I would expect them to die instantly, due to their lack of functional respiration or circulatory systems. The lack of tendons alone—”
“You must be a lot of fun at parties,” said Christopher.
Jack smirked. “It depends on the kind of party. If there are shovels involved, I’m the life, death, and resurrection of the place.”
“I can’t go home,” said Nancy. She looked down at her cocoa. “My parents … they’re like Christopher’s, I guess. They love me. But they didn’t understand me before I went away, and now, I might as well be from another planet. They keep trying to get me to wear colors and eat every day, and go on dates with boys like nothing ever happened. Like everything is just the way it used to be. But I didn’t want to go on dates with boys before I went to the Underworld, and I don’t want to do it now. I won’t. I can’t.”
Kade looked a little hurt. “No one is going to make you do anything you don’t want to do,” he said, and his tone was stiff and wounded.
Nancy shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t want to go on dates with girls, either. I don’t want to go on dates with anyone. People are pretty, sure, and I like to look at pretty things, but I don’t want to go on a date with a painting.”
“Oh,” said Kade, understanding replacing stiffness. He smiled a little. Nancy, glancing up from her cocoa, smiled back. “Well, looks like we’ve all got good reason to keep this school open. We’ve had two deaths. Sumi and Loriel. What did they have in common?”
“Nothing,” said Christopher. “Sumi went to a Mirror, Loriel went to a Fairyland. High Nonsense and high Logic. They didn’t hang out together, they didn’t have friends in common, they didn’t do any of the same things for fun. Sumi liked origami and making friendship bracelets, Loriel did puzzles and paint-by-numbers. They only overlapped in class and during meals, and I’m pretty sure they would have stopped doing that if they’d been able to. They weren’t enemies. They were just … disinterested.”
“Nancy said something before about Sumi’s hands being the most important things about her,” said Kade.
Jack sat up straighter. “Why, Nancy, how callous and odd of you.”
Nancy reddened. “I’m sorry. I just … I just thought…”
“Oh, that wasn’t a complaint. It’s just that usually, if someone around here is going to be callous and odd, it’s me.” Jack frowned thoughtfully. “You may be onto something there. Each of us has some attribute that attracted the attention of our door in the first place, some inherent point of sympathy that made it possible for us to be happy on the other side. It’s an assumption, I know, built on seeing only the survivors—maybe most of those who go through the doors never return, and so what we see is only ever the best-case scenario. Either way, we’d need to have something to get us through the story alive. And for many people, that intangible something seems to have been concentrated in a certain part of the body.”
“Like Loriel’s eyes,” said Kade.
Jack nodded. “Yes, or Nancy’s incredibly robust musculature—don’t look at me like that, you need very strong muscles to stand without collapsing for the sort of times you’ve described—or Angela’s legs, or Seraphina’s beauty. The girl’s a rancid bucket of leeches on the inside, but she has a face that could move angels to murder. I’ve seen pictures from before she went traveling. She was always pretty. She was no Helen of Troy, until she traveled.”
“How have you seen pictures from before she went traveling?” asked Kade.
“I have the Internet, and her Facebook password is the name of her cat, which she has a picture of above her bed.” Jack snorted. “I am a genius of infinite potential and highly limited patience. People shouldn’t try me so.”
“I’ll keep that in mind the next time I’m trying to keep a secret,” said Kade. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that back when I worked for Dr. Bleak, sometimes he wanted me to gather things for him,” said Jack. “Only the best would do, which was absolutely right and fair: he was a genius, too, a greater genius than I can ever dream of being. So he’d say ‘I need six bats,’ and I would spend days with a net out on the moor, catching the very best, biggest bats, and bring him the finest specimens for his work. Or he might say ‘I need a golden carp without a single silver scale,’ and I’d spend a week by the river, netting fish after fish, until I had something perfect. Those were the easy jobs. Other times he’d say ‘I need a perfect dog, but you’re never going to find a perfect dog, so go out and find the parts I need.’ Head and haunches, tail and toes, I’d have to gather them wherever they were found, and bring them back to him.”
“Okay, first, that’s gross,” said Christopher. “Second, that’s inhumane. Third, what are you saying? That some mad scientist is trying to build a perfect girl out of the best parts of us?”
“I’m the only mad scientist at this school, and I’m not killing people,” said Jack. “Apart from that? Yes. I’m saying that sometimes, murder isn’t about the bodies, or the dead. Those are the things that are left behind. Sometimes, murder is about what’s missing.”
There was a knock at the attic door. Everyone jumped, even Jack. Cocoa slopped over the side of Nancy’s cup. Jack sat up straight, putting her cup down and tensing, like a snake getting ready to strike. Kade cleared his throat.
“Who is it?” he called.
“Jill.” The doorknob turned. The door swung open. Jill stepped inside. She looked curiously around before announcing, “I looked for you, and when I didn’t find you, I decided to come here, since it was the highest point in the house and the closest to the sun, which made it the least likely place for you to be. Now there you are, and here I am. Why did you run off and leave me alone for so long?”
“I was disposing of the body, as I had been asked.” Jack slid off her perch, straightening her vest with a quick tug, and said, “Speaking of the body, the acid should be finished with Loriel’s soft tissues by this point. Christopher, did you want to come help me with her bones?”
“Sure,” said Christopher, sounding bemused. He stood, setting his cocoa aside, and followed Jack out of the attic.
Jill didn’t say anything as her sister walked away and left her. She just turned a bright, guileless smile on Kade, and asked, “Is there any more of that cocoa?”
8
HER SKELETON, IN RAINBOWS CLAD
JACK DESCENDED THE STAIRS as if they had personally challenged her, taking them two and three at a time, until Christopher had to jog to keep pace. Throughout her flight, she never seemed to be working: she remained perfectly serene, cold-eyed and thin-lipped, not breathing hard or struggling in the slightest. She didn’t speak. Christopher was worried, but also grateful. He wasn’t sure he would hav
e been able to answer her without gasping.
“Do we need to clean the bones before you call them?” she asked, as they walked the last length of hallway between the last stretch of stairs and the basement. There were no students there. They hadn’t seen any students since leaving the attic. The campus would have seemed deserted, if not for the whispers still drifting from behind closed doors. “Acid is pretty, but it’s not a good thing to dress a dancer.”
“No,” said Christopher, taking the bone flute from his pocket and wrapping his fingers around it, as much for reassurance as for anything else. “She’ll rise up clean and lovely. Back in the Country of the Bones, we would free new citizens by—” He stopped midsentence, like he’d just realized he was about to say something horrible.
Jack looked back at him as she opened the basement door. “All right, now I’m genuinely curious. You have to tell me. Don’t worry about upsetting me, I once removed a man’s lungs from his chest while he was still alive, awake, and trying to talk.”
“Why would you do something like that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Jack shrugged and started down the stairs.
Christopher stared after her for a moment before he started moving again. When he caught up, he said defiantly, “We freed new citizens by cutting through their flesh. Big, deep cuts, all the way down to the bone. That way the skeletons within could rise up without having to struggle and risk fracturing themselves. Bones heal slow, even outside the body.”
“The fact that the bones healed at all is the strange thing to me,” said Jack. Her voice was quiet. “The rules were so different there. For all of us.”
“Yeah,” agreed Christopher, looking at the reddish liquid filling the tub. A few chunks floated on the surface. He didn’t want to think about them too hard.
“You shouldn’t tell anyone what you just told me. The petty-minded fools here think surgery and butchery are the same thing. Look at the way they look at me. Right now, you’re still one of them, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that can’t change.” Jack walked across the room to the wardrobe. “Everything changes.”
“I know,” said Christopher, and raised his flute to his lips, and began to play.
There was no sound, not that the living could hear: there was only the idea of sound, the sudden, overwhelming sensation that something was being overlooked, something small and subtle and hidden between the molecules of silence. Jack opened the wardrobe and took out a cravat, listening as hard as she could as she removed her bow tie. She heard her own breathing. She heard Christopher’s fingers brushing across bone. She heard a splash.
She turned around.
Christopher was still playing, and Loriel was sitting up, a polished bone sculpture. Her scapulae were delicate wings; her skull was a psalm to the elegant dancer waiting beneath the flesh of all who walked the earth. There was a pearlescent sheen to her, like opal, and Jack wondered idly whether that was the acid or the magic of Christopher’s flute at work. It was a pity she would probably never know. The school, pleasant as it was, didn’t exactly go out of its way to provide her with bodies to examine.
Slowly, gingerly, Loriel’s bones stood, wobbling slightly, and climbed out of the tub. A single drop of acid rolled from her elbow and fell to the floor, where it hissed as it ate a pit in the stone. She stopped, rocking from side to side, her empty eye sockets fixed on Christopher.
“That’s amazing,” said Jack, taking a step forward. “Can she see you? Is she aware? Or is this just magic animating her bones? Does it work on any skeleton, or just those who died violently? Can you—you can’t answer any of my questions unless you stop playing, can you?”
Christopher shook his head and gestured with an elbow toward the stairs that would lead to the old servant’s door. Jack nodded.
“I’ll get them open,” she said, and trotted off, tying the cravat as she went. Her fingers, while not as nimble as Sumi’s, were quick, and the knot was a familiar one; by the time she reached the door and shoved it open, she was once more impeccably dressed. Of all the skills she’d learned from Dr. Bleak, the ability to groom herself while running for her life seemed the most likely to continue to serve her well in this strange, often confusing world she presently called “home.”
Christopher followed her more sedately, playing his silent flute all the way. Loriel trailed after him, her toes tapping on the stairs, making a sound that was virtually indistinguishable from the clatter of dried branches on a windowpane. Jack stood and watched as the pair walked outside, and then she followed, closing the door.
“Are we looking for a place to bury her where she won’t be found?” she asked. Christopher nodded. “Follow me, then.”
Together, they walked across the property, the girl, the boy, and the dancing skeleton wrapped in rainbows. Neither of those who still possessed tissue and tongue spoke. This was the closest thing Loriel would have to a funeral; it would have been inappropriate to make light of it. They walked until they came to the place where the landscaping dropped away, replaced by tangle and weed, and the hard stretch of stony earth that had never been farmed or claimed as anything other than wilderness. Eleanor West owned it all, of course: her family had owned the countryside for miles around, and now that she was the last, every inch of it belonged to her. She had simply refused to sell or allow development on any of the lots surrounding her school. The local conservationists considered her a hero. The local capitalists considered her an enemy. Some of her greatest detractors said she acted like a woman with something to hide, and they were right, in their way; she was a woman with something to protect. That made her more dangerous than they could ever have suspected.
“Wait,” said Jack, when they reached the waste. She turned to Loriel, and said, “If you can hear me, if you can understand me, nod. Please. I know you didn’t like me when you were alive, and I didn’t like you either, but there are lives on the line. Save them. Answer me.”
Christopher kept playing. Slowly, Loriel’s skull dipped toward her sternum, moving in the absence of muscles or tendons to command it. Jack blew out a breath.
“See, this could be a Ouija situation, where any answers I get from you are just the things Christopher wants me to hear, but I don’t think that’s the case,” she said. “Maybe it would have been a week ago, but Nancy’s at the school now, and ghosts want to be near her. I think you’re still Loriel, on some level, deep down. So please, if you can, tell me. Who killed you?”
Loriel was still for several seconds. Then, slowly, as if every move were an impossible effort, she raised her right arm and pointed her index finger at the space next to Jack. Jack turned to look at the empty air. Then she sighed.
“I suppose that was too much to ask,” she said. “Christopher?”
He nodded, and moved his fingers on the flute. Loriel’s skeleton walked down the short hill into the waste—and kept walking downward, her steps carrying her into and through the ground, as if she were walking on an unseen stairway. In less than a minute, she was gone, the crown of her head vanishing below the soil. Christopher lowered his flute.
“She was so beautiful,” he said.
“I’d find that less creepy if I thought you were talking about her with the skin on,” said Jack. “Come on. Let’s get back to the others. It’s not safe to be alone.” She turned, and Christopher followed her, and they trudged together across the wide green lawn.
9
THE BROKEN BIRDS OF AVALON
LUNCH WAS A STILTED affair, with no one talking and few students actually eating. For once, Nancy’s preference for sipping fruit juice and pushing the solid food around her plate without tasting it didn’t come across as strange; if anything, the strange part was her willingness to ingest anything at all. She found herself scanning the other students, trying to guess at their stories, their hidden worlds, to figure out what, if anything, would drive them to kill. Maybe if she had been there longer, if they hadn’t been such strangers to her, she would have been able to find
the answers she needed. As it was, it felt like she wasn’t able to find anything but questions.
After lunch there was an assembly in the library, where Miss Eleanor praised everyone for their calm and their compassion, and thanked Jack, Nancy, and the others for disposing of Loriel’s body. Nancy reddened and sank lower in her seat, trying to avoid the eyes that were turning toward her. She was a stranger, as far as they were concerned, and as such, her willingness to be intimate with the dead had to be suspicious.
Eleanor took a deep breath and looked out upon the room—her students, her charges—with a somber expression on her face. “As you all know, my door is still open,” she said. “My world is a Nonsense world, with high Virtue and moderate Rhyme as its crosswise directions. Many of you wouldn’t be able to survive there. The lack of logic and reason would destroy you. But for those of you who thrive in Nonsense, I am willing to open the door and let you go through. You can hide there, for a time.”
A gasp ran through the room, accompanied by a few quick, choked-off sobs. A girl with bright blue hair bent double, burying her face against her knees and starting to rock back and forth, like she could soothe her distress away. One of the boys got up and went to the corner, turning his back on everyone. Worse were the ones who simply sat and wept, tears running down their faces, hands folded tightly in their laps.
Nancy looked blankly at Kade. He sighed and leaned closer to her.
“Miss Eleanor is very protective of her door. Doors can be fickle, and she’s waited so long to go back that every time she lets someone through, she risks being replaced. Now she’s offering to put all the students who can thrive in Nonsense through. That means she’s scared, and she’s doing what she can to take care of us.” He kept his voice low. The students around them didn’t seem to notice. Most were too busy crying. On the other side of the room, even Jill was weeping, propped against her sister for support. Only Jack’s eyes were dry. “Trouble is, Nonsense is one of the two big directions—she can save half the students, at best, and not everyone who’s been to a Nonsense world is suited for every Nonsense world. They’re all so different. Maybe a quarter of the kids she’s just offered to save will be able to go through.”