“I still don’t understand,” said Nancy.
Sumi sighed extravagantly. “He’s saying he fell into a Fairyland, which is sort of like going to a Mirror, only they’re really high Logic pretending to be high Nonsense, it’s quite unfair, there’s rules on rules on rules, and if you break one, wham”—she made a slicing gesture across her throat—“out you go, like last year’s garbage. They thought they had snicker-snatched a little girl—fairies love taking little girls, it’s like an addiction with them—and when they found out they had a little boy who just looked like a little girl on the outside, uh-oh, donesies. They threw him right back.”
“Oh,” said Nancy.
“Yeah,” said Kade, emerging from the maze of books. He wasn’t carrying Nancy’s suitcase anymore. Instead, he had a wicker basket filled with fabric in reassuring shades of black and white and gray. “We had a girl here a few years ago who’d spent basically a decade living in a Hammer film. Black and white everything, flowy, lacy, super-Victorian. Seems like your style. I think I’ve guessed your size right, but if not, feel free to come and let me know that you need something bigger or smaller. I didn’t take you for the corsetry type. Was I wrong?”
“What? Um.” Nancy wrenched her gaze away from the basket. “No. Not really. The boning gets uncomfortable after a day or two. We were more, um, Grecian where I was, I guess. Or Pre-Raphaelite.” She was lying, of course: she knew exactly what the styles had been in her Underworld, in those sweet and silent halls. When she’d gone looking for signs that someone else knew where to find a door, combing through Google and chasing links across Wikipedia, she had come across the works of a painter named Waterhouse, and she’d cried from the sheer relief of seeing people wearing clothes that didn’t offend her eyes.
Kade nodded, understanding in his expression. “I manage the clothing swaps and inventory the wardrobes, but I do custom jobs too,” he said. “You’ll have to pay for those, since they’re a lot more work on my part. I take information as well as cash. You could tell me about your door and where you went, and I could make you a few things that might fit you better.”
Nancy’s cheeks reddened. “I’d like that,” she said.
“Cool. Now get out, both of you. We have dinner in a little while, and I want to finish my book.” Kade’s smile was fleeting. “I never did like to leave a story unfinished.”
* * *
SUMI WATCHED NANCY as they walked down the stairs. The taller girl was holding tight to her basket of black and white clothing, cheeks still faintly touched with red. The color seemed almost obscene on her, like it had no business there.
“Do you want to fuck him?”
Nancy almost fell down the stairs.
After she had caught herself on the banister, she turned to Sumi, sputtering and blushing, and said, “No!”
“Are you sure? Because you looked like you did, and then you looked sort of upset, like you’d figured out you didn’t want to after all. Jill—you’ll meet her at dinner—wanted to fuck him until she found out he used to be a girl, and then she called him ‘she’ until Miss Ely said that we respect people’s personal identities here, and then we all had to listen to this weird story about a girl who used to live in the attic who was really a rainbow who’d managed to offend the King of the Sky in one of the Fairylands and got herself kicked out.” Sumi paused to take a breath and added, “That was sort of scary. You never think about people from there winding up here, only people from here winding up there. Maybe the walls are never as impermeable as we think they are.”
“Yes,” said Nancy, recovering her composure. She began walking again. “I’m quite sure I don’t want to … have sexual relations with him, and I don’t think his gender expression is any of my business.” She was reasonably sure that was the right way to say things. She’d known the words once, before she left this world, and its problems, behind her. “That’s between him and whoever he does, or doesn’t, decide to get involved with.”
“If you don’t want to do the bing-bang with Kade, I guess I should tell you I’m taken,” said Sumi breezily. “He’s a candy corn farmer from the far reaches of the Kingdom and my one true love, and we’re going to get married someday. Or we would have, if I hadn’t gone and gotten myself exiled. Now he’ll tend his fields alone, and I’ll grow up and decide that he was just a dream, and maybe one day my daughter’s daughter will visit his grave with licorice flowers and a prayer for the departed on her lips.”
Her tone never wavered, not even as she was talking about the death of someone she called her one true love. Nancy gave her a sidelong look, trying to decide how serious she was. It was difficult to tell with Sumi.
They had reached the door to their shared room. Nancy reached a decision at the same time. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re taken or not,” she said, opening the door and walking toward her bed. She put down the basket of clothing. She would need to go through it at more length, to check the fits and fabrics, but it was already an improvement over what she had left behind with Kade. “I don’t do that. With anyone.”
“You’re celibate?”
“No. Celibacy is a choice. I’m asexual. I don’t get those feelings.” She would have thought her lack of sexual desire had been what had drawn her to the Underworld—so many people had called her a “cold fish” and said she was dead inside back when she’d been attending an ordinary high school, among ordinary teenagers, after all—except that none of the people she’d met in those gloriously haunted halls had shared her orientation. They lusted as hotly as the living did. The Lord of the Dead and the Lady of Shadows had spread their ardor throughout the palace, and all had been warmed by its light. Nancy smiled a little at the memory, until she realized Sumi was still watching her. She shook her head. “I just … I just don’t. I can appreciate how beautiful someone is, and I can be attracted to them romantically, but that’s as far as it goes with me.”
“Huh,” said Sumi, heading for her own side of the room. Then: “Well, okay. Is it going to bother you if I masturbate?”
“What, right now?” Nancy was unable to keep the horror from her voice. Not at the thought of masturbation—at the idea that this girl she had just met was going to drop her trousers and go to town.
“Um, ew,” said Sumi, wrinkling her nose. “No, I meant in general. Like, late at night, when the lights are low and the moon-mantas are spreading their wings across the sky, and a girl’s fingers might get the urge to go plowing in the fields.”
“Please stop,” said Nancy weakly. “No, I will not be upset if you masturbate. At night. In the dark. Without telling me about it. I have nothing against masturbation. I just don’t want to watch.”
“Neither did my last roommate,” said Sumi, and that seemed to be the end of that, at least as far as she was concerned; she climbed out the window, leaving Nancy alone with her thoughts, the room, and her new wardrobe.
Nancy watched the empty window for almost a minute before she sank onto the bed and put her head in her hands. She’d expected boarding to school to be full of people like her, quiet and serious and eager to go back to the lands they’d left. Not … this. Not Sumi, and people slinging around technical terms for things she didn’t understand.
She felt like she was trying to sail her way home without a map. She’d been sent back to the world of her birth to be sure … and she’d never been less sure in her life.
* * *
DINNER WAS HELD in the downstairs ballroom, a single, vast space made even larger by the polished marble floor and the vaulted cathedral ceiling. Nancy paused in the doorway, daunted by the scope of it, and by the sight of her classmates, who dotted the tables like so many knickknacks. There were seats for a hundred students, maybe more, but there were only forty or so in the room. They were so small, and the space was so big.
“It’s rude and lewd to block the food,” said Sumi, shoving past her. Nancy was knocked off balance and stumbled over the threshold into the ballroom. Silence fell as everyone t
urned to look at her. Nancy froze. It was the only defense mechanism she had learned from her time among the dead. When she was still, the ghosts couldn’t see her to steal her life away. Stillness was the ultimate protection.
A hand settled on her shoulder. “Ah, Nancy, good,” said Eleanor. “I was hoping I’d run into you before you reached a table. Be a good girl and escort an old woman to her seat.”
Nancy turned her head. Eleanor had changed for dinner, trading electric orange trousers and rainbow sweater for a lovely sheath dress made from tie-dyed muslin. It was shockingly bright. Much like the sun, it hurt Nancy’s eyes. Still, she offered her arm to the older woman, unable to think of anything else that would fit the laws of propriety.
“How are you and Sumi getting on?” asked Eleanor, as they walked toward the tables.
“She’s very … abrupt,” said Nancy.
“She lived in high Nonsense for almost ten years subjective time, and much as you learned to be still, she learned never to stop,” said Eleanor. “Stopping is what got people killed where she was. It was very close to where I was, you see, so I understand her better than most. She’s a good girl. She won’t steer you wrong.”
“She took me to meet a boy named Kade,” said Nancy.
“Oh? It’s unusual for her to start making introductions that quickly—unless … Did you have trouble with your clothing? Was what you packed not what you found in your suitcase?”
Nancy didn’t say anything. Her reddening cheeks and averted eyes said it all. Eleanor sighed.
“I’ll write your parents and remind them that they agreed to allow me to guide your therapy. We should be able to have whatever they removed from your suitcase mailed here within the month. In the meantime, you can go back to Kade for whatever you need. The dear boy is a whiz with a needle. I really don’t know how we got along without him.”
“Sumi said he’d been to something called a ‘high Logic world’? I still don’t understand what any of those words mean. You throw them around like everyone knows them, but they’re all new to me.”
“I know, dear. You’ll have therapy tonight and a proper orientation with Lundy tomorrow, and she’ll explain everything.” Eleanor straightened as they reached the tables, taking her hand from Nancy’s arm. She clapped, twice. All conversation stopped. The students seated there—most with spaces between them, a few in tight conversational knots that left no visible way in—turned to look at her, faces expectant.
“Good evening, everyone,” said Eleanor. “By now, some of you have doubtlessly heard that we have a new student with us. This is Nancy. She’ll be rooming with Sumi until one of them attempts to murder the other. If you’d like to place a bet on who kills who, please talk to Kade.”
Laughter from the girls—and they were overwhelmingly girls, Nancy realized. Apart from Kade, who was sitting by himself with his nose buried in a book, there were only three boys in the entire group. It seemed odd for a coed school to be so unbalanced. She didn’t say anything. Eleanor had promised her an orientation, and maybe everything would be explained there, making questions unnecessary.
“Nancy is still adjusting to being back in this world after her travels, so please be gentle with her for the first few days, even as all of us were gentle with you, once upon a time.” There was a thin line of steel in Eleanor’s words. “When she’s ready to join in with the hurly-burly and the cheerful malice, she’ll let you know. Now, eat up, all of you, even though you may not want to. We are in a material place. Blood flows in your veins. Try to keep it there.” She stepped away from Nancy, leaving her anchorless as she walked away.
Dinner was set up buffet-style along one wall. Nancy drifted over to it, recoiling from the braising dishes of meat and baked vegetables. They would sit like stones in her stomach, too heavy and unforgiving to tolerate. In the end, she filled a plate with grapes, slices of melon, and a scoop of cottage cheese. Picking up a glass of cranberry juice, she turned to consider the tables.
She’d been good at this, once. She’d never been one of the most popular girls in her high school, but she’d understood the game enough to play it, and play it well, to read the temperature of a room and find the safe shallows, where the currents of mean-girl intensity wouldn’t wash her away, but where she wouldn’t risk drowning in the brackish tide pools of the outcasts and the unwanted. She remembered a time when it had mattered so much. Sometimes she wished she knew how to get back to the girl who’d cared about such things. Other times, she was grateful beyond words that she couldn’t.
The boys, except for Kade, were all sitting together, blowing bubbles in their milk and laughing. No; not them. One group had formed around a girl who was so dazzlingly beautiful that Nancy’s eyes refused to focus on her face; another had formed around a punch bowl filled with candy-pink liquid from which they all furtively sipped. Neither looked welcoming. Nancy looked around until she found the only safe harbor she was likely to see, and started in that direction.
Sumi was sitting across from a pair of girls who couldn’t have looked more different—or more alike. Her plate was piled high with no concern for what touched what. Gravy-covered melon slices cascaded into roast beef coated in jam. The sight of it made Nancy’s stomach flip, but she still put her plate down next to Sumi’s, cleared her throat, and asked the ritual question:
“Is this seat taken?”
“Sumi was just explaining how you’re the most boring cardboard parody of a girl ever to walk this world or any other, and we should all feel sorry for you,” said one of the strangers, adjusting her glasses as she turned to look at Nancy. “That makes you sound like my kind of person. Please, sit, and relieve some of the tedium of our table.”
“Thank you,” said Nancy, and settled.
The strangers wore the same face in remarkably different ways. It was amazing how a little eyeliner and a downcast expression, or a pair of wire-framed glasses and a steely gaze could transform what should have been identical into something distinct and individual. They both had long blonde hair, freckles across the bridges of their noses, and narrow shoulders. One was dressed in a white button-down shirt, jeans, and a black vest that managed to come across as old-fashioned and fashion-forward at the same time; her hair was tied back, no-nonsense and no frills. Her only adornment was a bow tie patterned with tiny biohazard symbols. The other wore a flowing pink dress with a low-cut bodice and a truly astonishing number of lace flourishes. Her hair hung in loose curls the size of soup cans, gathered at the back with a single pink ribbon. A matching ribbon was tied around her neck, like a makeshift choker. Both appeared to be in their late teens, with eyes that were much older.
“I’m Jack, short for Jacqueline,” said the one in the glasses. She pointed to the one in pink. “This is Jill, short for Jillian, because our parents should never have been allowed to name their own children. You’re Nancy.”
“Yes,” said Nancy, unsure of how else she was expected to respond. “It’s nice to meet you both.”
Jill, who otherwise had neither moved nor spoken since Nancy approached the table, turned her eyes toward Nancy’s plate and said, “You aren’t eating much. Are you on a diet?”
“No, not really. I just…” Nancy hesitated before shaking her head and saying, “My stomach’s upset from the trip and the stress and everything.”
“Am I the stress, or am I everything?” asked Sumi, picking up a jam-sticky piece of meat and popping it in her mouth. Around it, she continued, “I guess I could be both. I’m flexible.”
“I’m on a diet,” said Jill proudly. Her plate contained nothing but the rarest strips of roast, some of them so red and bloody that they were virtually raw. “I eat meat every other day and spinach the rest of the time. My blood is so iron-rich you could set a compass by it.”
“That’s, um, very nice,” said Nancy, looking to Sumi for help. She’d known girls on diets her entire life. Iron-rich blood had rarely, if ever, been their goal. Most of them had been looking for smaller waists, clearer
complexions, and richer boyfriends, spurred on by a deeply ingrained self-loathing that had been manufactured for them before they were old enough to understand the kind of quicksand they were sinking in.
Sumi swallowed. “Jack and Jill went up the hill, to watch a bit of slaughter, Jack fell down and broke her crown, and Jill came tumbling after.”
Jack looked long-suffering. “I hate that rhyme.”
“And that’s not what happened at all,” said Jill. She turned to beam at Nancy. “We went to a very nice place, where we met very nice people who loved us very much. But there was a little problem with the local constabulary, and we had to come back to this world for a while, for our own safety.”
“What have I told you about abusing the word ‘very’?” asked Jack. She sounded tired.
“Jack and Jill are more stupid, stupid girls,” said Sumi. She stabbed a slice of melon with her fork, splashing gravy on the table. “They think they’re going back, but they’re not. Those doors are closed now. Can’t go high Logic, high Wicked if you’re not innocent. The Wicked doesn’t want people it can’t spoil.”
“I don’t understand anything you people say,” said Nancy. “Logic? Nonsense? Wicked? What do those things even mean?”
“They’re directions, or the next best thing,” said Jack. She leaned forward, dragging her index finger through the wet ring left by the base of a glass and using the moisture to draw a cross on the table. “Here in the so-called ‘real world,’ you have north, south, east, and west, right? Those don’t work for most of the portal worlds we’ve been able to catalog. So we use other words. Nonsense, Logic, Wickedness, and Virtue. There are smaller subdirections, little branches that may or may not go anywhere, but those four are the big ones. Most worlds are either high Nonsense or high Logic, and then they have some degree of Wickedness or Virtue built into their foundations from there. A surprising number of Nonsense worlds are Virtuous. It’s like they can’t work up the attention span necessary for anything more vicious than a little mild naughtiness.”