Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children, #3)

That was a lie, but it was a necessary one. Of course someone here had done this before. This was Confection, land of the culinary art become miracle: land of lonely children whose hands itched for pie tins or rolling pins, for the comfortable predictability of timers and sugar scoops and heaping cups of flour. This was a land where perfectly measured ingredients created nonsensical towers of whimsy and wonder—and maybe that was why they could be here, logical creatures that they were, without feeling assaulted by the world around them. Kade remembered his aunt’s tales of her own Nonsense realm all too well, including the way it had turned against her once she was old enough to think as an adult did, rigidly and methodically. She would always be Nonsense-touched, but somewhere along the way, time had caught up with her enough to turn her mind against the realm that was her natural home.

Confection wasn’t like that. Confection was Nonsense with rules, where baking soda would always leaven your cake and yeast would always rise. Confection could be Nonsensical because it had rules, and so Logical people could survive there, could even thrive there, once they had accepted that things weren’t quite the same as they were in other worlds.

Layla reached over and carefully touched the first two fingers of her right hand to the curve of Sumi’s remade wrist. She smiled.

“She’s cool enough,” she said. “We can wake her up now.”

“How?” asked Christopher.

“Oh.” Layla looked at him, eyes wide and surprised. “I thought you knew.”

“I do,” said Rini. She walked toward the table, and the others stood aside, letting her pass, until she was standing in front of Sumi, looking down at her with her sole remaining eye. She rested the back of her hand against her mother’s cheek. Sumi didn’t move.

“I finally had an adventure, Mama, like you’re always saying I should,” said Rini softly. “I went to see the Wizard of Fondant. I had to trade him two seasons of my share of the harvest, but he gave me traveling beads so I could go and bring you back. I went to the world where you were born. I breathed the air.…”

On and on she went, describing everything that had happened since she’d fallen out of the sky as if it were the greatest adventure the universe had ever known. How she had argued with the Queen of Turtles and bantered with the Lord of the Dead, how she had been there for the cleverest defeat of the Queen of Cakes, when a Mermaid and a Goblin Prince had conquered her at last. It was all lords and ladies and grand, noble quests, and it was magical.

Quests were a lot like dogs, Cora thought. They were much more attractive when seen from a distance, and not barking in the middle of the night or pooping all over the house. She had been there for every terrible, wearying, bone-breaking moment of this quest, and it held no magic for her. She knew it too well. But Rini described it for Sumi like it was a storybook, like it was something to whisper in a child’s ear as they were drifting off to sleep, and it was beautiful. It was truly beautiful.

“… so I need you to wake up now, Mama, and go with your friends, so you can come back here, so you can marry Papa, so I can be born.” Rini leaned forward until her head was resting on Sumi’s chest, closing her eye. “I want you to meet me. You always said I was the best thing you’d ever done, and I want you to meet me so you can know it’s true. So wake up now, okay? Wake up, and leave, so you can come home.”

“Look,” whispered Kade.

Sumi’s hands, which had never once in her life been still, were twitching. As the others watched, she raised them off the table and began stroking Rini’s hair, her eyes still closed, her face still peaceful.

Rini sobbed and lifted her head, staring at her mother, both eyes wide and bright and filled with all the colors of a candy corn field in full harvest. Cora put her hands over her mouth to hide her gasp. Christopher grinned, and said nothing.

“Mama?” asked Rini.

Sumi opened her eyes and sat up, sending Rini stumbling back, away from the table. Sumi blinked at her. Then Sumi blinked down at her own naked, re-formed body.

“I was dead a second ago, and now I’m naked,” she announced. “Do I need to be concerned?”

Kade whooped, and Christopher laughed, and Rini sobbed, and everything was different, and everything was finally the same.





PART V

WHAT CAME AFTER





13

TIME TO GO

RINI HELD FAST TO her mother’s hands, squeezing until Sumi pulled away, taking a step backward.

“No and no and no again, girl who says she’s a daughter of mine, in the some bright day when I get to come home, instead of coming wherever and whenever this is: don’t damage the merchandise.” Sumi shook her hands like she was trying to shake Rini’s touch away before tucking them behind her back and shifting her sharp-eyed gaze to Layla. “The door you’ve baked, you’re sure of where it goes?”

“I told the oven what I wanted,” said Layla.

The door was gingerbread and hard candy, piped with frosting details that looked like golden filigree and dusted with a thin veneer of edible glitter. It looked like something that would open on another world. Nothing else entirely made sense.

“You’re the Baker.” Sumi shook her head. “Always thought you were a myth.”

“When you’re saving our world, I am. I come after you,” said Layla, and smiled, a little shyly. She turned to look at Kade. “Remember what I said. Don’t look for me. I need to find my door, and that means I need everything to go just the way I remember it going. Leave me alone.”

“I promise,” said Kade.