Page 34 of Beneath the Sugar Sky

“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

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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.

“If you ever find yourself back in Brooklyn, give us a call,” said Christopher. “We take students throughout the year, and it’d be nice to know that you were going to where there were familiar faces.”

“I’ll keep you in mind,” said Layla, and flicked her hand toward the door, which swung lazily open, revealing nothing but a filmy pinkness beyond. “Now get out of here, so the timeline can stop getting tied into knots.”

“Wait!” said Rini. She darted forward, pulling Sumi into a rough hug. “I love you, Mama,” she whispered, before letting the younger woman go and turning away, wiping her eyes with her fully restored hand.

Sumi looked bemused. “I don’t love you,” she said. Rini stiffened. Sumi continued: “But I think I’m going to. See you in a few years, gumdrop.”

Turning, she started for the door, with her classmates tagging after her.

The last thing Layla and Rini heard before the door swung shut behind them was Sumi asking, “So why didn’t Nancy come?”

Then the door was closed, and the strangers were gone. Bit by bit, the door crumbled away, joining the debris that covered the ground. Layla looked at Rini and smiled.

“Well?” she asked. “What are you waiting for? You have about a day’s walk between here and home, and I bet your parents want to see you.”

The sound Rini made was half laugh, half sob, and then she was off and running, leaving the junkyard and the girl who only wanted to make cookies behind, racing into the bright Confection hills.

* * *

FOUR STUDENTS HAD LEFT and four students returned, even if they weren’t the same ones, stepping out of a door-shaped hole in the air and onto the dry brown grass of the front lawn. Eleanor was standing on the front porch, smiling wistfully—an expression that transformed into a gasp of open-mouthed delight when she saw Sumi.

“Sumi!” she cried, and started down the stairs, moving faster than such a frail-looking woman should have been able. “My darling girl, you’re home!”

“Eleanor-Ely!” cried Sumi, and threw herself into Eleanor’s arms, and held her tight.

Kade and Cora exchanged a glance. There would be time, soon enough, to tell Eleanor about everything that had happened: about leaving Nadya behind, about Layla, who might someday join them at the school, about the ways that Nonsense could be underpinned with Logic, and how this changed the Compass. There would be time for Kade to find Layla’s family, to seize the chance to watch someone—from a distance, never interfering—who was about to be chosen by a door. There would be time for so many, many things. But for right now …

For right now, the only thing that mattered was an old woman and a young girl, embracing in the grass, under a bright and cloudless autumn sky.

Everything else could wait.

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