“Okay, but what if there’s danger on the other side?” He didn’t sound like he was going to say no. He was staring at the portal as if he wanted to walk through and just needed reassurance that it wasn’t a terrible mistake.
She couldn’t promise it wasn’t, but she’d already stepped through this doorway once before and survived fine. “We’ll stick together,” Calisa said, “and if you feel uncomfortable or there’s any sign of trouble—”
“We run? Like frightened rabbits.”
“Like rabbits,” she promised. Tentatively, she added, “Your father…”
“I know,” Jack said. “We need to find Auntie Zee. For a whole lot of reasons.” He hesitated one more minute, and then he took her hand.
She liked the way his hand felt in hers—it fit, warm and comforting. She could feel the calluses from all the work he did, and she wondered if he could feel her newer ones, or if he was paying nearly as much attention to the feel of her hand as she was to his.
Calisa opened the closet door, and the gold swirled through the black. “Brave heroes,” she said, “venturing into the unknown, ready to flee.”
“I’ve never wanted to be called brave.”
“What would you rather be called?” Calisa said.
“I’d settle for not stupid,” he said.
She wasn’t sure if he was saying this idea was stupid or if he just meant in general, but either way she—
Before she could finish the thought, Jack stepped forward into the portal. It swallowed his body, and she followed quickly, still holding his hand. Coolness wrapped around her, and she couldn’t feel anything but his fingers closed around hers.
A second later, they stepped out of the closet and into another world. Jack released his grip. She wanted to grab his hand back, but there was no rational reason.
It was night again. Or still? It was literally called the Night Market, according to Auntie Zee’s notes. It could be perpetual night. She looked up. The moon was higher in the sky thanbefore, blanching the blackness around it. The stars looked like jewels strewn across the sky, disappearing then reappearing as clouds shifted over them. Below, the Night Market was just as active and lively as before—rows of tents with customers strolling between them, alone and in groups.
This is another realm.
She let the words wash over her, and she felt her heart beat faster. A smile tugged at her lips, and she felt like laughing out loud.
“Any clue where we start?” Jack asked.
She’d memorized the relevant parts of Auntie Zee’s logbook. “ ‘Good prices from Rin, third stall in the fifth row,’ ” she recited. Good prices for what, she didn’t know, but she hoped it meant this Rin person would be friendly. “He’s mentioned often. I think we start with him, ask if he’s seen her, and see what he says.”
Together they walked down the slope to the Night Market. Voices welled up around them—shoppers and vendors—and music, unfamiliar music from instruments that Calisa didn’t recognize, blended in a cacophony of sounds. The smells too rolled over them: spices and meats and fruits and breads, sweet and savory, so thick in the air that Calisa’s mouth watered. They walked past a stall that sold stalks that looked like grasses, each a different shade of blue, with tufts of hay at the top. Another sold birds in cages—each bird was jewel-colored, with beaks that curled and feathers spread behind them with zigzags and swirls in patterns that Calisa had never seen on any bird she knew. A third was what she guessed was perfumes: tiny bottlesthat the customers sniffed. She caught a scent of the ocean, and then it was replaced by a heavy, fruit-like scent that she couldn’t name.
She took Jack’s hand again as the crowd pushed around them.
“If this is another realm, why are they all speaking English?” Calisa whispered to Jack.
“Portal magic,” Jack whispered back. “It translates…well, it does this thing with our brains so it translates whatever we speak and hear.”
“Convenient.”
“Necessary.” He paused. “Just don’t, like, concentrate too hard on the syllables you’re hearing. Let it wash over you.”
She immediately started listening to the words around her, and they clashed as the syllables her ears heard overlapped with the words she understood. She winced and focused on the sound of the night breeze through the tents instead until the voices stopped warring inside her.
Despite the fact that most of the market’s customers were dressed in draped fabrics while she and Jack were in shorts and T-shirts, no one stared at them. There was enough variation in the shoppers and the vendors that their differences were unremarkable: skin colors from blue to coal-black to pink to bronze to metallic silver. A few shoppers were covered in fur. One woman sported beige-colored wings. She had on a necklace of bird bones that fell down to her stomach. Another had talons instead of hands. He clicked them together in rhythm with his footsteps. Calisa could have wandered through the stalls forever, filling her eyes with all the impossible people and the beautiful oddities on display.
“This is the fifth row,” Jack said. “Which stall did you say?”
“Third stall. Rin.”
It didn’t take them long to find the right one. If they hadn’t seen it, they would have smelled it. It smelled like heaven—and looked it too.
Gorgeous, shiny, decadent baked goods filled the tables of Rin’s stall. Honey-colored loaves were stacked in a pyramid. Rolls dotted with fruit filled a basket. Cookies and crackers were piled high. An elaborate wreath of bread laden with strawberries was the centerpiece, displayed on white linen. She inhaled the luscious fresh bread smell before noticing the seller behind the table. Once she spotted him, she couldn’t stop gawking.
