“Okay, so how does it work? The portals, I mean. How do the doors become portals? How do they connect to other realms?” Was it a wormhole? A magic spell? Were they special doors, or had something special been done to them? Did each door connect to a specific realm, or could they open to different ones? Could Auntie Zee control which realm she reached? How did she “take care” of the doors? What did that mean? Did shecontrol them somehow? Program them? “How does Auntie Zee doit?”
Coming into the kitchen, Auntie Zee asked, “How does Auntie Zee do what?”
Calisa saw panic cross Jack’s face. He stopped breathing, and his entire body went rigid. “Ahh…” She tried to think fast. “How does Auntie Zee find so many flavors of maple syrup?”
Auntie Zee narrowed her eyes.
“I’ve only had plain pancake syrup before,” Calisa said.
With a disdainful sniff, Auntie Zee said, “Corn syrup.”
“Yeah, um,” Jack said. “I was about to tell Calisa that there’s a local maple syrup farm that specializes in different flavors.” To Calisa, he said, “You need to try gingerbread maple syrup. Apple-cinnamon maple syrup. Rhubarb-flavored, which is a lot better than it sounds.”
“Wow,” Calisa said. Inwardly, she winced at herself.Wow?
But Auntie Zee didn’t question it. Instead she turned to Jack. “There’s a light on the second floor that’s flickering, and it’s not the bulb. I need you to look at the wiring.”
“Sure, yeah, right away.”
“I’ll show you.” After a glare at Calisa, as if to blame her for the faulty lighting, Auntie Zee led the way out of the kitchen.
Following, Jack mouthed at Calisa,“Thank you.”
She shrugged as if to say it was fine, even though it was absolutely not fine. All the questions were burning inside her. And if she couldn’t ask Auntie Zee…Maybe there’s someone else I could ask instead.
Leaving the nearly finished cake, she marched outside through the kitchen door.
And she took a deep breath.
The backyard of the inn overlooked the mountains, and the sun bathed them in amber. She tilted her head to feel the ordinary sunlight on her cheeks. An ordinary breeze wrapped around her. It smelled of flowers, but familiar flowers. By the greenhouse she spotted the statue.
She crossed to it, to her.
The statue was facing the mountains. She looked as if she’d just emerged from the greenhouse. She was frozen mid-stride, one hand still on the door handle.
“Hi,” Calisa said. “I’m Calisa, Auntie Zee’s grandniece, and I know you aren’t going to move or talk to me while I’m looking at you, so I’m thinking that I’ll ask you a question and then turn my back and then you can move or whatever, if you want to answer me, okay?” The words spilled out of her—she could hear her own nervousness threaded through her voice, but she couldn’t help it. She still knew so very little about what was going on and whether any of it was safe, or whether it would have been smarter to run screaming back to Brooklyn. She tried to pick a yes-or-no question, ideally the most important one, but which was the most important one? What did she really want to know?
Everything. I want to know everything.
She ran through a list of questions in her head and then settled on one: “Do you need help?”
Calisa turned her back to the statue and looked at the inn.Prickles crept up her spine as she wondered what the statue was doing, if she really moved when no one was watching, what she wanted, why she was here, and whether she was dangerous. A few seconds later, she turned around.
The statue had moved her head to the left, gazing at the forest.
“No? Okay, good.” The statue didn’t need help, which was excellent news, since Calisa didn’t know what she’d have done if the statue had said yes. Had she been born a statue? That was probably too personal a question to ask, and it wasn’t really at the heart of what Calisa wanted to know. “Are you from here? From Vermont? From this world?” She turned her back and counted to five.
When she spun around again, the statue was looking in the opposite direction.
Another no.
Not from this world.
Calisa swallowed hard. She was actually communicating with a statue. “Do you want to be here? Are you here willingly?” Again, Calisa turned away and waited a few seconds.
This time, the statue’s head was lowered, her chin near her neck—a frozen nod.
That was good to know. She wasn’t from here, but she wanted to be here. Calisa considered what to ask next. It had to be yes or no.
