Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3)

PLACES OF THE LIVING, PLACES OF THE DEAD

THE SIX OF THEM—five living, one dead—walked through the velvety grass, making no attempt to disguise their gawking. Christopher kept his bone flute in his hand, fingers tracing silent arpeggios. Sumi stayed close to her daughter, bones clacking faintly, like the distant whisper of wind through the branches of a tree. Rini tried her best not to look back. Every time she caught a glimpse of Sumi she shuddered and bit her lip before looking away again.

Nadya reached up with her single hand and traced the outline of a pomegranate with her fingers, biting her lip and staring at the fruit like it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

“Nancy said she spent most of her time as a statue in the Lady’s hall,” said Kade, pushing forward until he was in the lead. No one questioned him. It was good to have someone willing to be the leader. “I suppose that means she might be there now.”

“Is the Lord of the Dead going to be happy to see us?” asked Nadya, finally taking her hand away from the pomegranate.

“Maybe,” said Kade. “He’s got doors. He’s got to be used to people stumbling in without an invitation.”

“But you only find doors you’re suited to,” said Cora. “We didn’t find this one. We made it. Won’t he be upset about that?”

“Only one way to find out,” said Kade, and started walking.

“Why do people always say that?” muttered Cora, trailing along at the rear of the group. “There’s always more than one way to find something out. People only say there’s only one way when they want an excuse to do something incredibly stupid without getting called on it. There are lots of ways to find out, and some of them even involve not pissing off a man who goes by ‘the Lord of the Dead.’”

“Yeah, but they wouldn’t be as much fun, now would they?”

Cora glanced to the side. Christopher had dropped back to walk beside her. He was grinning, looking more at ease than she had ever seen him.

“Why are you so happy?” she asked. “Everything here is dead people.”

“That’s why I’m so happy,” he said. “Everything here is dead people.”

Somehow, when he said it, it wasn’t a complaint, or even an observation: it was virtually a prayer, packed with hope and homecoming. This wasn’t his world, wasn’t Mariposa, and the only skeleton who danced here was poor Sumi. But it was closer than he had been in a long, long time, and she could see the joy coming back into his body with every step he took.

“Do you really want to be a skeleton?” she blurted.

Christopher shrugged. “Everybody’s a skeleton someday. You die, and the soft parts drop away, and what’s left behind is all beautiful bone. I just want to go back to a place where I don’t have to die to be beautiful.”

“But you’re not fat!” Cora couldn’t keep the horror from her voice. She didn’t even try. Growing up fat had meant an endless succession of diets suggested by “helpful” relatives, and even more “helpful” suggestions from her classmates, ones that suggested starvation or learning to vomit on command. She’d managed to dodge an eating disorder through luck, and because the swim team had needed her to stay in good shape: if her school hadn’t offered endurance swimming as well as speed, if she’d been expected to slim down to be allowed into the water, she would probably have joined the girls behind the gym, the ones who died slowly on a diet of ice chips, black coffee, and cigarettes.

“It’s not about fat or thin,” said Christopher. “It’s not … oh, fuck. You probably think this is about dieting, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for her to reply before he continued: “It’s not. It’s really not. Mariposa is a land of skeletons. As long as I have skin, as long as I’m like this, they can make me leave. Once the Skeleton Girl and I marry, once she cuts my humanity away, I can stay forever. That’s all I want.”

“That’s all any of us want,” admitted Cora.

“You were a mermaid, weren’t you? That’s what Nadya said.”

“I still am,” said Cora. “I just have my scales under my skin for now.”

Christopher smiled, a little lopsided. “Funny. That’s where I keep my bones.”

The pomegranate grove was coming to an end around them, the trees growing less frequent as they approached a high marble wall. There was a door there, tall and imposing, the sort of door that belonged on a cathedral or a palace; the sort of door that said “keep out” far more loudly than it would ever dream of saying “come in.” But it was standing open, and when they drew nearer, no one appeared to warn them off. Kade glanced back at the others, shrugged, and kept walking, leaving them no choice but to follow.

And then, with so little warning that Cora thought the people who lived here—who existed here—would be fully within their rights to be angry, they were in the Halls of the Dead.

The architecture was exactly what a thousand movies had told her to expect: marble pillars holding up impossible ceilings, white stone walls softened with friezes and with watercolor paintings of flowering meadows. The colors were muted, whites and pastel greens and grayish pines. They somehow managed not to become twee, but to project an air of solemnity and silence instead. The only sounds were their feet tapping against the stone floor, and the clacking of Sumi’s bones.

“You were not invited, and none of Our doors have opened, nor closed, in this last day,” said a woman from behind them: she was between them and the doorway that might have led them back to the pomegranate grove. Her voice was low and husky, like blackberry brandy given a throat. “Who are you? How are you here?”

Cheeks burning, feeling like a child who’d been caught sneaking to the kitchen for a midnight snack, Cora turned, and beheld the Lady of the Dead.

She was short and curvy, with skin the color of polished cypress and hair that fell down her back in a cascade of inky curls, stopping just below her waist. Her eyes were like pomegranate seeds, deep red and as impossible as Rini’s candy corn irises, yet just as undeniably real. Her gown was the same color, some loosely draped Grecian style that complimented every curve she had, and made Cora yearn for a fashion as forgiving.

“Well?” asked the Lady. “Have you all been struck silent by My presence? Or are you thinking of excuses? I suggest you not lie to Me. My husband has little patience for those who offer trespass and insult both in the same hour.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said Kade, pushing his way forward. The relief from the rest of the group was almost palpable. Let someone else take the blame, if there was blame to take. “I know we came uninvited, but we weren’t sure how to ring the bell.”