Thresholds (11 page)

Harper said, “That picture we have of him. You drew it?”

Maya glanced at Benjamin, who nodded.

“I did,” she said.

“He looked haggard.”

“He was really sick by the time he put the egg on my arm. Much sicker than when I met him in the morning. The sketch is from the morning.”

“If local conditions made him sick, five days’ backsearch ought to be long enough,” Harper said, and he nodded to the Tree Sister, who slipped out through the light-ringed doorway they had just come in.

“Gwenda, call the portal team,” Harper said.

“You okay?” Gwenda whispered to Maya.

“I guess.” Maya still felt shaky from being trapped by the door. Now Gwenda was leaving. Benjamin stood beside her, though, and he looked reassuring. Travis was a tall presence on her other side, and Rowan stood nearby, though whether that was good or bad, Maya wasn’t sure.

“I’ll be right back.” Gwenda squeezed Maya’s shoulder, then ran through one of the other doorways.

She returned followed by six people, three men and three women, different shapes and sizes and hair colors, dressed in varied clothes. They spread out near the center of the cavern in a ragged circle.

“Is Loostra ready to come through?” Harper asked.

Gwenda nodded, then stood beside Maya. She gripped her own elbows and hunched her shoulders.

The newcomers spread their arms wide. A low hum sounded, making the ground thrum under their feet. The people sang, softly at first, a melody that almost repeated but didn’t quite, each time a variation on the time before. They started in unison, and then they split into a multistrand harmony, and the song grew louder. The hum under their feet rose, louder and a little higher, and a streak of fluttering, glowing red appeared in the air in the center of the cavern, within the circle of the portal team. A sheet of green shimmered into sight, followed by a panel of lavender, then orange, blue, yellow-green, scarves and scoops of glowing colored light, weaving around each other, growing denser, curtains and waterfalls and skies of color.

Reflected light danced over the walls. Pale spirals and circles glinted in the smooth, glassy surface of the floor. The air smelled like the scent after a lightning strike, and, inexplicably, like violets, but most strongly of carnation and cinnamon.

Maya slid her pack off and grabbed her notebook and a pencil, then just stood there. This was the most amazing thing she had ever seen, but what could she do about it?
Oh, Steph, if only—

No way could she capture this without colors. She leaned forward and set her mind on Memorize.

“What is that?” she murmured.

“
This
is the portal,” Benjamin whispered.

The hum rose again, the song reached a high chord, all the colored light brightened toward white, and then—

Something long, pale, and jointed scuttled from the center of the ragged rip in the air.

One end of
it rose up. It had hundreds of small jointed legs fringing its sides. It was flatter than a snake, and it had many body segments. It looked more like a humongous centipede than anything else.

“Wha—wha—wha—” Travis gasped.

Maya clutched Gwenda’s arm and tried to drag her toward the door.

Gwenda didn’t budge. “Wait,” she said.

The top of the thing’s body waved in the air. It had six longer limbs at that end, each jointed three times, below a bulging, rounded head. The longer legs curled and unfurled as the portal faded behind it.

A moment later, the cavern was just a cavern again. Plus a giant centipede.

The six people who had conjured up the portal lowered their arms.

Nobody was running away.

The centipede’s six long limbs wove gracefully through the air until they all pointed toward Maya. Then they stopped.

“Fetch it,” said the centipede. It sounded female.

“Child,” said Harper. “Come.”

“You’re—what? You’re—” She didn’t even know what to ask. A crazy image of Peter trying to find a jar big enough to hold this creature flashed through her mind.

“Come,” Harper said again, in that creepy voice that made her obey, and she walked unwillingly toward the enormous centipede, fear knotting her stomach. Was it going to eat her? Was that how they solved their problems?

“Just a danged minute,” said Travis. He came up behind Maya, put his arms around her chest, and lifted her off the ground. Her feet kept walking on air, her heels knocking into his shins. “Somebody tell us this thing is safe!”

“I will not harm you,” the centipede said. Its voice sounded warm and comforting, like the best mother in the world. “On the lives of my three hundred children I swear it.”

Gwenda said, “It’s Loostra,” as though that explained everything. “She never hurts people.”

“Take the whammy off Maya anyway, and let her get there by herself,” said Travis.

There was heat at Maya’s left wrist. A shiver ran through her, and her legs stopped kicking. Travis set her down and she stood, uncertain. She twisted toward the door they had come in through, then back toward the center of the cavern, where the giant pale segmented bug from outer space waited, its forelegs curling and uncurling in her direction.

No danger
, thought Maya’s egg.

“All right,” Maya said. She walked toward Loostra, and so did everyone else. Travis stayed even with her, and she glanced up at him and mouthed,
Thanks.

As they got closer, Maya smelled Loostra: vinegar, damp dirt, a hint of rank, crushed grass.

“This is Loostra,” Harper said. “Loostra, this is Maya.”

Maya tried to slow her heartbeat; it was shuffling in her ears, and it pulsed through the egg.

Everybody else seemed calm, even Travis, as though he ran into giant talking centipedes every day. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Maya,” said Harper, “and a
sissimi
.”

The centipede had a hard round head with six dark velvety spots on it. “Ah,” she said, but Maya couldn’t tell where she spoke from. “Show me.” She sounded like the best mother in the world again, asking to see a scraped knee so she could put a Band-Aid on it.

Maya calmed.

Benjamin nudged her.

“Don’t hurt it,” Maya said, pressing the egg against her chest and shielding it with her right hand. “Don’t take it off.”

“What have they told you about me, Maya?” asked the centipede. “Whatever it is, it is wrong. I only ever look at things. I study them. I decide and inform, but I do not
do
.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Maya edged three steps closer to it. Its vinegar scent was almost overwhelming. She held out her wrist.

It lowered its front end. The six longer limbs reached out and hovered above Maya’s egg, then wove through the air around it. “Ahhh,” it said. “Beautiful. Ahhh. Rarely have I seen one of these so close.” It made soothing, wordless, musical murmurs. “A new variant. Of course. With every new host, a new variant. What an elegant creature it is.”

“What do we do with it?” asked Harper.

“Leave it alone.” Loostra almost sang her answer.

“But the child is not a traveler,” said Harper. “She didn’t step into this risk with knowledge. This pairing is wrong.”

“Leave it alone,” Loostra sang. “There is nothing you can do. They are bonded now, and nothing can change that.” Its head turned, aiming its eye spots toward her wrist, one at a time. “Child, may I touch it?”

“You won’t hurt it?”

“I won’t hurt it.”

Maya lifted her wrist higher. One hard-shelled limb drifted down until the very tip touched her so lightly she couldn’t feel it. Lemon yellow color formed on the egg and rayed out across all the other colors. Maya felt a weird click under her skin.

Loostra gasped and jerked her leg away.

“Of course it can already defend itself and its host. I should have known,” she said. “Thank you, Maya.” She turned to Harper. “This answers one part of a complicated question.”

Harper nodded. “One
sissimi
we have found. Two more are still lost. And this invasion and theft was orchestrated by the Krithi, or so we believe.”

Loostra hissed. “So I had heard—it travels on the info web—but I had hoped the rumor was wrong.”

Harper nodded to Maya. “You heard the boy say ‘Krithi’?” he asked.

“You know I did,” Maya said. He was the one who had forced her to repeat Chikuvny Boy’s words.

“It’s the first we’ve heard of them escaping the interdict,” Harper said.

“The monitors are checking the nurseries for evidence, and the Force has been alerted,” said Loostra. “You will tell us when you learn more. For now, I am ready to go home.”

“How do we handle this situation?” Harper asked, waving toward Maya.

“With reason. With friendship. With family.” She dropped her front end and coiled into a spiral. “Thank you for showing me your friend,” she said to Maya.

“Have you seen one before?” Maya asked.

“Never in its embryo state.”

“What is its other state? What happens when it hatches?” Maya cupped her right hand over the egg.

“It is always different. You will be the first to know.”

“Oh,” said Maya. “Thanks.”
Thanks a lot. Very helpful
.

Loostra uncoiled and clattered back into the center of the circle of six, the portal team. “Farewell.”

The team lifted their arms. The hum started again, low and drumming under their feet, and the colors danced in the air. Maya watched, entranced, snapping one mental picture after another.

The colors brightened, then faded, and Loostra was gone.

They wound their
way back up to the solar room. Harper took the central cushion again, flanked by the Tree Sisters. He gestured to the five young people, who dropped to the carpet in front of him.

Maya unpacked her sketchpad, thinking about Loostra and how to draw her, then checked her watch. Past five o’clock. “Excuse me,” she said. “I know things are still messy, but I have to go home now.”

“That is not possible,” said Harper.

“What? ” Maya jumped up, panicked. She grabbed her pack and turned toward the door.

Rowan caught her shoulders. “He doesn’t mean you can’t
ever
go home,” he said.

Heat gathered at Maya’s left wrist, arrowed up her arm, cloaked her shoulders. Something crackled. Rowan cried out and released her. His palms were bright red. “Ow! Ow! Ow!”

Maya, ready to run, glanced at her wrist. The egg had gone dark again, with red streaks across it. It was almost growling, an agitation under her skin like water boiling.

“Shh, shh, shh,” she whispered, and pressed it against her cheek, her eyes closed. It felt hotter than before, but as she crooned to it, the bubbling against her cheek subsided.

Gwenda had jumped up. She clasped one hand with the other, maybe to stop herself from trying to touch Maya the way Rowan had. “Maya. Tell the
sissimi
we’re not threatening you. What the Elder means is we can’t let you go until we explain a little more. You’ll get home soon. I promise.”

Maya lowered her hand and studied her egg bump. The color had softened to a dark, velvety blue, with no red streaks. “We’re listening.”

Harper sighed, and glanced at the Tree Sisters. They nodded. “Maya,” he said quietly, “if we cannot return you to your normal life, we have another way to help. Will you let us make you part of our family?”

“But I have a family already.” She thought longingly of them, remembered how everybody had been at breakfast. Harried, together, irritated, used to each other. It all seemed so far away now, oddly precious.

“You have new problems now, things your other family won’t know how to handle.”

“I don’t even know you. All I know is you keep ordering me around, and I don’t like it.”

Gwenda touched Maya’s sleeve. “Let us make you part of our family. Then we can tell you everything.”

“Let us make you part of our family,” Benjamin said. “Then you can
travel
.” He glanced toward the floor as though he could see all the way down to the portal cavern.

“But I just got here,” she said. She had just been uprooted from the place she had spent her entire life and moved to Spores Ferry, which was proving more different from Catspaw, Idaho, than she had ever imagined. She felt totally unready to leave anybody she loved. She just wanted to hold on to her family tighter, stop them from slipping away the way Stephanie had. “I don’t
want
to travel.”

Although . . . to go through the light—the portal—to other places? Places where skies came in other colors, cities grew spikes, and things that weren’t human locomoted over strange streets.

So much to draw.

“You don’t have to go anywhere until you’re ready,” said the moon-pendant Tree Sister. She had a beautiful smile.

Maya stared at her feet, moved them back and forth on the carpet. The shushing noises helped her think. She would have more family, these Janus House people, if they adopted her. She might not make friends with the other kids at school, but she could travel in the JH pack.

She glanced at Rowan, a guy she wasn’t sure she’d want for a cousin after seeing the way he treated his family. She didn’t think he’d want her for a cousin, either, so she was surprised when he said, “Let us make you part of our family. You’re gifted.” He nodded toward her sketchpad, which she’d dropped when she jumped to her feet. “We can use that.”

Her breath caught in her throat. Rowan sounded grumpy, but he also sounded sincere.

“Though you have to leave those sketches here, the stuff that shows our secret side.”

“What?” she said.

“You have to help us keep our secrets. That’s what family does.”

“If we make you part of our family, it doesn’t mean you lose your own family,” said the moon-pendant Tree Sister. “It only means you add ours.”