Thresholds (10 page)

Harper held out a hand, and Gwenda put the book into it. He searched for the entry and read aloud quietly in their foreign language to the Tree Sisters. The only word Maya understood was
sissimi
.

While he read, Maya settled on the carpet and sketched everyone in the room, occasionally pressing the egg against her left cheek for the comfort of its warmth and purr. Rowan, Benjamin, and Gwenda sat and listened to Harper read, Gwenda fiddling with her charm bracelet. Travis looked asleep sitting up, but he wasn’t snoring.

Maya checked her watch. Mom and Peter were likely home already. They might be wondering where she was, although probably not worrying, because there was a five o’clock after-school curfew, and it wasn’t five yet.

She got out her cell phone to call and let them know she was visiting the neighbors.

She had no bars.

“That won’t work here,” Gwenda murmured. “We have a damper against all kinds of electronic signaling, in or out.”

Maya looked at the glass ceiling and wall. Was glass enough to interfere with cell transmission? Maybe they had other ways of suppressing things. “What about the steel tennis ball thingy he talked to?”

“Not, strictly speaking, electronic,” Benjamin whispered.

“I need to call my family,” muttered Maya. “They’re expecting me.”

“They will have to wait.” Harper put down the book and stared at Maya. “This entry does not tell us how to deal with this situation,” he said, while Maya thought about her family having to wait. That wasn’t fair. They would worry—

“You can’t take the
sissimi
away from her,” Benjamin said. “That part was clear.”

Harper frowned, thumped the book shut. “We need more information. We need to speak with Loostra.” He lifted the steel ball again and spoke into it.

“Who’s Loostra?” Maya whispered to Gwenda.

“She’s a specialist in world-mingling matters.”

If there was a specialist in world-mingling matters, it must mean . . .

This happened all the time.

Everybody in Gwenda and Benjamin’s family knew there were—what? Extraterrestrials? Supernatural creatures?

If only Steph was here! She would have loved this. Maya’s spirit soared, then fell. She blinked to clear her eyes, then noticed her left wrist was almost humming. She touched the egg to her ear and heard a soothing buzzing, an egg song of comfort; and she felt suddenly comforted.

Harper stood, and so did the Tree Sisters; Gwenda tugged Maya to her feet, and Benjamin and Rowan rose as well.

Maya was surprised that Harper was only about her height, five feet tall.

Rowan roughly shook Travis’s shoulder. Travis snorted and opened his eyes.

“Uncle, does Travis come with us?” Rowan asked.

Harper frowned and stared at Travis, who rolled to his feet. “I’m game,” said Travis, “whatever it is.”

“You could stay here and take a nap,” said Benjamin. “We’ll come back for you.”

“And miss out on the fun?”

Harper stared at Travis. “That raises a question. Do you consider this fun? We don’t usually recruit
giri
so young, but we will make an exception for you. Will you join the
giri
, or should we wash away your memories of this day?”

“Those are my choices? What the heck is a
giri
?”

“
Giri
are our helpers in the outside world. They know and keep our secrets, and they do us necessary services we can’t do for ourselves.”

Travis’s brows drew together. “What the heck could I do that you people can’t?”

“Travel outside the range of the portal,” Harper said.

“What’s the range of the portal?”

Harper exchanged glances with the Tree Sisters. “Perhaps thirty miles,” he said. “There is some individual variation. But not much.”

“Whoa,” said Travis. “Does that mean you guys can’t get away from here?”

“Not after we become adult and bond to our specialties,” Harper said after a pause. “It is a peculiarity of the Earth portals that they hold us tight. Though I can go through a portal to any place it leads, I cannot go far from it on this side or any other.”

Travis frowned. “What kind of special services do you need from—from
giri
?”

“Not as many as we used to, now that we have the Internet,” said a Tree Sister, “although we can’t use it in the house.”

“We could use some help with that,” said the other Tree Sister.

“Mostly it involves going somewhere to get us something,” Harper said, “or to check out a situation. These tasks will not be yours until you are older. For now, it would mean maintaining secrecy and protecting our affairs.”

“Well, good that it doesn’t involve more work for me right away. I’ve already got jobs after school that take up all my time, one of which”—he grabbed Maya’s right hand and tilted it so he could look at the face of her watch (no spark; Maya’s egg must have recognized Travis as a friend from his first touch)—“I’m totally missing right now, and I’ll catch holy hell when I get home. My oma really did stuff like that for you?”

“She did,” said the Tree Sister. “She loved to travel. Sometimes she tracked down strays for us, and sometimes she brought us special things we couldn’t get for ourselves.”

“Oh,” Travis said. “Strays? Like that fairy Maya talked about? That explains—the Doowah Box, maybe? Oh. Whoa. And that wand thing? Oma used to point it different directions, and sometimes it would light up. She never let me play with it, though. And she never took it out when Opa was home. Is that—?”

“A seeker,” said a Tree Sister. “It can detect
chikuvny
. Very few were made, and we have lost the technology. Does she use it still?”

“She doesn’t use much of anything still,” Travis said, his voice flat.

“My apologies.”

“So I can probably ask if she’ll let me return it to you.” His voice softened. “We still talk, anyway. About almost everything, except she’s never mentioned this secret life she used to lead. Cowabunga. You’re offering me a choice between a life where I know what you guys are doing versus a life where I don’t? I’m
so
much more wanting to know. I’ll go with the
giri
thing.”

“Good,” said Harper. “We have not welcomed a new
giri
in a long time. A young one will be good. There are some necessary steps to making you
giri
we will have to take, but right now, we must talk to Loostra about the
sissimi
matter. Come.” He strode toward the door. Rowan got there ahead of him and held it open for the Elders.

Maya put away her sketchpad and slipped her pack on. “Where are we going?” Maya whispered to Gwenda.

“To the portal,” Gwenda whispered back. “Loostra can’t come far from it.”

Rowan led them
farther into the building. The corridor turned right, and just past the turn, on the right-hand wall, there was a wide door with no knob. Rowan tapped his fingers against a small square in the center of the door, in a rhythm more complex than an ATM code, and the door opened with a whoosh.

Beyond the door was a landing, and then stairs that led down into a darkness interrupted by halos of multicolored light. Cool, spicy-smelling air rose up the stairwell toward them.

Gwenda took Maya’s right hand, and they followed Harper, Rowan, Benjamin, and the Tree Sisters down into darkness, Travis at their heels.

Down the rabbit hole
, Maya thought,
where everything works differently and strange is the new normal
. Maya wished Stephanie were here. Steph would have been dancing with excitement.
Why are you so slow, Maya? A new world is waiting!
Maya’s throat tightened with missing her.

Sudden anger flashed through her, too.
How could you leave me, Steph? Look at all the stuff you’re missing! How can I enjoy it without you?

The
sissimi
purred against her wrist.
I’m here
, it said.

“You’re here,” Maya whispered. She pressed the egg against her cheek. Warmth, a shifting movement under her skin, the silent vibration of comfort.

There was a dark maze beneath the Janus House Apartments. Other corridors branched off from the one they were walking. The air changed as they passed by. Sometimes warmer, sometimes colder, it carried scents of cooking, incense, roses, electricity, fire, and many things she’d never smelled before. Everywhere there was the scent of fairy dust.
Chikuvny
.

Rounded doorways opened off the corridor on either side, but most of them were curtained shut. Maya heard strange voices and unknown languages through some of the curtains, and felt heat radiating from others. One curtain was crusted with ice crystals. Another seemed woven of glass strips.

“What
is
all this?” Maya whispered to Gwenda.

“This is where we work. Most of us live upstairs, and the classrooms and kitchen are up there, too. Our real lives mostly happen down here.”

“Sunless,” Travis muttered from behind them. “Kinda creepy. Like mole rat colonies.”

“There’s light, but it comes from other places.”

Finally they passed a door where a curtain was parted. Maya paused to peek in, and Travis peered past her. Three people sat in darkness, studying windows in the walls. Or were they windows? They were a little like old-fashioned TV screens, or portholes. Maya had a brief shivery thought that they were in a landlocked submarine.

Different moving scenes showed in the portholes: forests of plants Maya had never seen before, spiky cities, mush-roomy cities, cities of giant flowers, where people who weren’t human flew or crawled or wandered. Skies over the strange landscapes ranged from lilac to lime to lemon, with clouds streaking across them like flotillas of cotton candy, ice crystal scarves, or dark, gritty trails of sand.

“You guys!” Gwenda dragged them away.

They came to another doorway. Harper lifted the curtain and spoke to whoever was on the other side. He said the word “Loostra.” Someone said something back. Harper nodded and dropped the curtain before Maya could see past him.

They came to a threshold at the end of the corridor and stopped.

The threshold was about a foot wide, ringed with colored lights. Beyond it was a cavern the size of a basketball court, with other light-ringed entrances around it. The entrances were different sizes. One was so small Maya wasn’t sure she could fit through it on her hands and knees. Another stretched up almost to the cavern’s ceiling, wide enough for elephants or maybe whales to go through.

“Is that the portal?” Maya whispered to Gwenda, pointing at the circle of lights before them.

Harper turned toward her. “No, child, this is not the portal. Step carefully.”

They crossed the threshold one at a time, starting with Harper, followed by the Tree Sisters. Gwenda went before Maya, then turned and looked back. “Be careful,” she said.

How could Maya be careful? Try not to trip?

She stepped into the opening. Before she could put her foot down on the other side, something swaddled her in clinging folds of invisible energy and lifted her above the ground, while
ziss
ing electric noises snapped in her ears. Her skin fizzed. Suspended midway between the threshold and the top of the doorway, she shivered and shook. She struggled, tried to move her arms and legs, but she was trapped tight, smashed between clear planes, as though she’d been laminated. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t even open her mouth.

The egg pulsed against the bones of her wrist, hot, cold, hot, cold, and then scorching.

Something shifted. A streak of heat shot up her arm from the egg, zoomed all through her and out to the tips of her fingers and toes.

The restraints that held her vanished. She fell through into the cavern. Gwenda caught her shoulders before she collapsed, and Travis and Benjamin were there, too, steadying her. “You’re all right,” Gwenda said gently. “You’re all right.”

Maya rubbed her eyes, scrubbed her cheeks. The shaking stopped, and she realized she actually felt okay. “What was that?” she said. Her voice came out too high.

Chikuvny
smell was very strong here.

“One of our safeguards,” said Gwenda.

Benjamin patted her back. “It’s kind of like customs, only without the questions. The trap ring activates when contraband comes through.”

The others gathered around them.

“So the
sissimi
didn’t come through our portal,” said the first Tree Sister thoughtfully. “Or it has changed since it arrived.”

“What does that mean?” Maya asked. Again, too high.

“Normal humans can walk through the ring without pause,” the Tree Sister said and nodded toward Travis. “Your egg snagged you, as it would have snagged anyone carrying it through the other way. Smugglers haven’t troubled us in a very long while.”

“What shifted?” Harper asked.

“What do you mean, Uncle?” asked the other Tree Sister. “Didn’t you shut the trap ring down and release her?”

“No. Something shifted to accommodate the tangle.”

They all stared at Maya’s wrist. She looked at her egg. It hadn’t changed, as far as she could tell. Pink pulsed across it, followed by grass green and Chinese red.

“Hmm. Possibly it did come through our portal.” Harper turned to the moon-pendant Tree Sister. “Sarutha, please get me the work logs from the last five days, and ask Nydia to query all other Earth portals for unusual activity in the past—Maya, when did the renegade come here?”

“Renegade?” Maya asked.

“The person who gave you the
sissimi
.”

“I don’t know,” she said.
Little one?
she thought.

Rrr
, the egg responded, a growl softening into a purr. How could the egg measure days, when it hadn’t even hatched yet? Maya shook her head.