Thresholds (19 page)

“We both fell asleep,” Gwenda said. “I set my inner alarm for four thirty, though, so we can tidy things up before you go back to your regular life. Where’s the
sissimi
? Last time I saw it, it was on your back, but now—”

“Huh?” Maya reached behind her and felt her back. It felt flat and normal. “Huh? Rimi!”

Here
, thought Rimi, only Maya couldn’t tell where
here
was.
Here
felt like everywhere.

“Where are you?”

I am with you
.

Maya pushed back her nightgown sleeves, searching for signs of green. She felt the back of her neck. She got out of bed and looked in the mirror, lifted the gown and looked at her legs. No green anywhere. “Are you sure, Rimi? Where did you go?”

I finished my explorations and took my next form
, thought Rimi.

“What’s that?” Maya asked.

Something dark moved beside her. The bedside lamp threw her shadow across the floor and the dresser, and it looked like her shadow rose up, only it stayed where it was, too. Its twin rose to hover next to Maya, taking a more Mayalike shape, still attached at the soles of her feet.
Here
, said Rimi.
I can stay with you safely, and no one will notice. And if something bad comes—

The shadow swelled suddenly and surrounded her. It shimmered, cleared, and hardened. She felt like she was inside a giant, transparent pill capsule. She flattened her hand against the inside of the shell, which was smooth and slick. “Rimi! This is you?”

One way of being me
. The capsule melted and the shadow settled into the outline of her other shadow again.
I have others.

“Wow.” Maya plopped down on her bed, staring at her shadow. Companion. Collector. Protector.

Collector of what?
Shri
? Stealth and spying . . . she would worry about that later.

Friend. Friend who wasn’t going anywhere without her. “Wow,” said Gwenda. “Not like Kita. No wonder there weren’t any pictures in that darned book.”

“I can draw that,” Maya said.

Gwenda smiled. “Yes, you can.”

 

 

 

Gwenda undid the wards and packed up everything she had brought with her. “Call me the same way if you need any more help,” she said.

“Thank you so, so much,” said Maya.

“You’re welcome. This is a part of my work I enjoy. Congratulations on your new companion. I guess I should say that to both of you.”

Maya spoke Rimi’s words aloud, then said, “Rimi, how am I going to feed you now?”

“But you’ll be selective, right?”

I will only eat things that taste good
.

“Uh-oh.”

Saturday was a
day to work on cleaning, unpacking, and setting up the house more, Dad decreed. He went to Home Depot and bought screens for the upstairs windows, plus picture hangers and bookshelves. They went through the house, fixing one room at a time.

“Tonight we’re having Music Night,” Mom said midway through the morning, “so I’m going to bake now.”

“Music Night,” Candra said, and stuck out her tongue.

“If you honestly have better things to do, go and do them,” said Dad. “I’d rather have you absent than here and unpleasant.”

“I invited the neighbors,” Mom said. “Maya, if you want to practice, I’ll excuse you from cleaning duty.”

Maya put down her cleaning rag, washed her hands, and sat at the piano for the first time in the new house. She played “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain,” and she cried. (Stephanie had always sung, “She’ll be driving six white unicorns when she comes.”) She played “Long Black Veil,” and she cried, remembering it was Steph’s favorite. (“First-person ghost! How many songs are first-person ghost? How cool is that?”) She played “Wind and Rain,” about a girl whose jealous sister threw her in the river, and a fiddler found her corpse and made a fiddle out of her breastbone, and Maya didn’t cry, because before she got to the really sad part, Candra shoved her off the piano bench and said, “Stop it with the weeping!” and played “Papa’s on the Housetop” and “The City of New Orleans” and “Angelina Baker,” all happy or silly songs that Maya hadn’t heard since last winter. She found herself smiling, even though these were all songs Stephanie had loved, too.

Were you done with the crying part?
Rimi asked.
If you want more, we can move her.

We can?
Maya thought.
Oh, dear. I bet we can. Let’s not!
She went to the art supplies cupboard and took down another sketchbook.

“Didn’t you take one of those a couple days ago?” Dad asked.

“I used it all up.”

He opened his mouth, shut it. Opened it, shut it again. Finally he said, “May I see what you’ve been working on?”

She froze.

She couldn’t show him. The sketches were at Janus House, being studied. Harper had told her the people with the wing-hands were Krithi, all right, and somebody said the details (the steaming ponds, the clothing, the knobbly hair-vines, the floating trays of food) were all documented parts of Krithi home-planet culture. Other aspects of the pictures weren’t familiar to anyone, and they were all interested.

And Rowan had said—But Rowan wasn’t always right.

“I left most of them at Benjamin’s,” Maya said.

“Why?”

“His family loves my art.”

“So do we,” said her father. “Do you have anything you can show me?”

“I think—yes, I do.” She ran upstairs and brought down the color pictures she had done the night Gwenda came to dinner—the family dinner, the portal team summoning the gate, the sketches of her egg. She handed them to her father. He laid them all out on the living room floor.

Mom came from the kitchen and studied Maya’s pictures with Dad. Peter wandered from one to the next. Candra joined them.

“This one of the family is excellent,” said Dad. “What are these other pictures?”

“Are you telling another story?” asked Peter. “I miss the stories.”

He had been the biggest fan when Maya and Stephanie drew and wrote together. She had showed him those pictures and told him the stories Stephanie had told her. He loved them.

“Yes. It’s another story,” Maya said.

“Who are these guys?” He pointed to a picture of the portal, all rags and ribbons of color, with people, their arms outstretched, black silhouettes against the light.

“They’re dancing around a fire on another world,” Maya said.

“And then what happens?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to put it together.”

“What’s this one?” He pointed to a picture of the egg.

“Just pretty colors.”

“I think it’s an alien egg,” he said.

Maya startled, then smiled. Rimi feathered laughing touches around her ankles.

“Oh, Maya, they’re beautiful,” her mother said. “Honey, it’s great to see you doing something new.” She hugged Maya. Maya let herself melt into this feeling of being enveloped in uncomplicated love. Since Stephanie’s death, every hug from her parents had had a question in it:
Are you over it yet?

“What about this one?” Peter asked.

Mom released Maya, and both of them turned to look.

Lying on the floor was Maya’s pencil sketch of Bikos after he died.

“Where did you get that?” she demanded.

Peter hunched his shoulders. “In your backpack.”

“How many times have I told you—”

“I wanted to see more of the story,” he told the floor. “It doesn’t make sense yet.”

“Maya,” said her father, “who is this?”

She opened her mouth and nothing came out. A taste of licorice crossed her tongue. She remembered Harper striking silence into her.

“Is this boy sleeping?” her mother asked.

“He looks dead,” said Peter.

Maya used the silence to think. “Sometimes people die in stories,” she said. She turned the picture over. On the back was a picture of the three Krithi surrounding the boy.

“Wow,” said Dad. “What’s happening here?”

Even if she had wanted to tell them, she knew she couldn’t. “What does it look like?”

“Aliens,” said Peter, “and a human boy. And it’s raining. They have wings? Can they fly?”

“I don’t think so. I can’t tell the story,” Maya said, “not anymore. I needed Steph for that. I can’t tell it, but I can draw it.”

“Well, it’s terrific,” said her father. “Keep doing it, and take all the sketchbooks you want.” He kissed her cheek.

Maya took the new sketchbook upstairs and sat on the bed, thinking about silence. Harper had tapped her tongue, but he hadn’t touched her drawing hand. Maybe the wall of secrets didn’t have to be so high, even if her family didn’t know she was drawing her own story.

 

 

 

That night, Benjamin and Gwenda and Rowan and Twyla and Kallie and Bran and a lot of other people filed over from Janus House, most of them carrying their own chairs, some with instrument cases slung over their shoulders or strapped to their backs, some with plates of sliced fruit bread or cake, one with a pitcher of what looked like juice. “Good evening,” said Great-Uncle Harper when Mom opened the door to them. This time he was wearing a turquoise business suit. Maya wondered if that was his idea of normal dress. “We understand there’s music here tonight?”

“Yes, yes! Come in, come in!” Mom opened the door wide. “We’re so glad to have you!”

“We are delighted your family moved into the Spring House,” said Harper. “I’m Harper Janus, and these are my folk.”

Mom smiled wide. “I’m Liz Andersen, and these are
my
folk. I think you know Maya already. This is my son, Peter, and my husband—where is my husband? Drew, come meet the neighbors!”

Dad came down from upstairs, where he had been looking for the box they had packed their sheet music in. “Hoo, boy,” he said. “This is wonderful! I don’t know if the living room’s big enough.”

“Doesn’t matter. There’s lots of lawn,” said Harper. “Just open the windows so we can hear each other, and we’ll do fine.”

“Whoa,” said Candra, who had just come from the kitchen. Chocolate stained one corner of her mouth. She must have been taste-testing the brownies, Maya thought. She smiled. “Howdy, folks! I’m Candra!”

Gwenda joined Maya. “Do you know where Travis lives?” she whispered. “Maybe we could get him and his grandmother.”

“Don’t know yet,” said Maya. “Maybe next week.”

I can find him
, Rimi thought.

Not right now
, Maya thought.

“Hey, Bran,” Peter said. “Wanna meet my dog? He’s in the backyard.”

“Sure.”

“The big question now is, do we know any of the same songs?” Dad said. “We’re folk song enthusiasts. How about you?”

“Music is our life,” said Harper. “We embrace it all.”

“Let’s get set up. Take the refreshments on back to the kitchen, all right?”

People smiled and nodded, and other people put what chairs could fit in the living room, and the rest on the porch and the lawn. People took their instruments out of the cases and tuned them. Up close, some looked like normal fiddles and guitars, but others—

“What is that, please?” Maya asked a dark-haired boy.

“A balalaika,” he said.

“Maya,” said her father, when everyone had settled, “you pick the first song and let’s see what happens.”

“Let’s sing ‘I’ll Fly Away,’” she said.

She had never heard a choir more beautiful than the one she heard then. The voices were so rich and strong she wished she could dip a brush in them and paint the music. Harmony and counterpoint wove through the main melody. She felt knots inside her untie. The music carried sadness away.

Magic
, she thought, and she joined her voice to the others’.

NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN
is the author of a number of adult and YA novels, as well as hundreds of short stories. Her works have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Theodore Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and Endeavour Awards. Her first novel,
The Thread That Binds the Bones
, won a Stoker Award, and her short story “Trophy Wives” won a Nebula Award in 2009.

Nina does production work for
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
. She also works with teen writers. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, with several cats and many strange toys and imaginary friends.

You can learn more about her work at
www.ofearna.us/books/hoffman.html
.