Thresholds (9 page)

“Five minutes, in the solar room,” the cat said. Or something said it from the picture. The voice was midrange and could have belonged to a man or a woman. The cat’s eyes stopped glowing. Rowan dropped his hand from the painting. “How long is Travis out for?” he asked.

“At least another hour,” said Gwenda. “Probably an hour and a half.”

“Let’s go.” He turned, then paused in the doorway to the living room, a frown furrowing his forehead.

Gwenda grabbed the battered book and took Maya’s hand. No spark this time. “Come on, Maya. It’ll be okay.”

“I’ve heard that already today, and it wasn’t true.”

“Come anyway,” Benjamin said. “You have to.”

Maya stood and studied Rowan. His hair had fallen over half his face. His mouth was in a straight line.

She glanced past him, toward the outside. She could run, but they knew where she lived. Besides, they knew something about her egg. She didn’t know who else to ask.

“My pack,” she said. She pointed to her pack, still on Travis’s shoulders. Whatever happened, she’d feel better if she could sketch it.

Benjamin eased her pack off Travis’s back and slipped the straps over his own shoulders. Travis’s gentle snores hitched, then continued.

Gwenda tugged her hand, and Maya followed her and Rowan into the hall.

Rowan led them left,
away from the front doors, past the wide staircase, and down the corridor toward the center of the building. They passed a pair of glass doors etched with delicate spirals and filigree curlicues. Smoked sunlight shone from the other side, and beyond were dimly visible shapes.

Farther down the hallway, Rowan stopped at a door on the left and knocked.

“Enter,” said a voice beyond the door.

Rowan opened the door and stepped through.

The room had a curved, frosted glass ceiling that led to a glass wall at the back. Maya could see blue sky, green lawn, and distant buildings through it, planes of color and shadow, no details discernible.

Maya realized she’d seen the outside of this bubble-like room from her window.

Large, jungly potted plants lined the walls. In the center of the room, three people sat on tufted cushions. The person in the middle was old and tiny, with bushy white hair, black eyebrows, tan skin, and many wrinkles. Maya couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, only that it liked orange. It was wrapped in a shimmering orange robe.

On either side of Orange Person rested a person in more subdued colors.

“Come in and be seated,” Orange Person said. The voice was light as a floating feather.

They entered and thumped down beside each other on the carpet, Benjamin to Maya’s left, Gwenda to her right. Rowan closed the door and sat near Gwenda.

“Rowan?” said Orange Person.

Rowan bowed his head. “Great-Uncle Harper.”

“Who is your visitor? Why have you called this meeting?”

Maya tugged at her pack. Benjamin eased it off his shoulders and handed it to her.

“This is a neighbor, Maya Andersen, Uncle,” Rowan said, “and something portalwise has happened to her.”

Maya slid out her pencil and sketchbook. She flipped to a blank page.

“Please be more specific,” Harper said.

Harper had drawn her gaze as soon as she entered the room. When someone or something was so eyecatching she had trouble looking away from it, she always wondered what else was near it that people normally wouldn’t notice.

She checked the other people hiding in Harper’s light.

On either side of Harper sat a tall, caramel-skinned woman. The two could have been sisters. They wore dark velvet dresses, green melting into brown melting into black. Their gray hair hung in gentle waves around their shoulders. They sat so still birds might land on them, mistaking them for trees.

As she waited for Rowan to answer Harper’s question, she quick-sketched the Tree Sisters. Drawing soothed the flutters in her stomach. She didn’t know what was going to happen to her, but whatever it was, she could make pictures of it.

“Stranger?” said Harper.

The sisters had widow’s peaks. Their light-colored eyes tilted up at the outer edges. Maya drew their faces side by side. One’s nose was a little longer. She wore a pendant with a moon that had small, shiny metal triangles dangling from it. The other wore silver star earrings.

Rowan leaned past Gwenda. “What are you doing?” he whispered. Maya glanced at him. He looked even madder than usual.

“What I always do,” Maya whispered back.

“Well, stop it! No pictures!”

Maya stilled her pencil and glanced toward him. No pictures? That wasn’t going to work—

One of the Tree Sisters leaned closer to Harper and murmured something in his ear. He glanced at her.

Benjamin nudged her. “Maya.”

“What?”

“Uncle asked you a question.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip and looked up. “He was talking to
me
? What’d he say?”

Harper held up a hand. “First, we must attend to something. Rowan, who stands outside the door?”

“What? What else could go wrong?” Rowan scrambled to his feet, then went to the door and opened it.

“What are you doing here?” Rowan asked.

“Following you,” said Travis’s voice.

“Come in,” Rowan said, his voice grouchy. Travis shambled into the room and Rowan shut the door behind him. “Uncle, this is Travis Finnegan.”

“I see. It’s a day for visitors. How interesting he found his way here.” Harper’s voice was dry, maybe sarcastic.

Gwenda jumped to her feet. “How come you’re awake?”

Travis smiled and shrugged. “I’ve been put to sleep by you people before, so I didn’t drink very much this time.” He flopped to the floor near Maya.

Behind them, Rowan knuckled Gwenda’s arm. “Another mistake,” he whispered with a frown. “You didn’t spell the drink hard enough.”

“Stop it,” she whispered, pushing his hand away.

“Shh,” Benjamin hissed at them both.

“You’ve been put to sleep by us before, child?” Harper asked.

“Yeah,” said Travis. “Oma—my grandmother—is friends with Miss Elia, in apartment 6, and she brought me over here a few times to visit, when she could still get around. Miss Elia was always nice to me. She taught me weird games and gave me ginger cookies. One time I was playing hide-and-seek with the kids in the neighborhood, and I ran inside the building without being invited, and a woman found me and took me into Benjamin’s apartment and gave me some chocolate milk. I woke up on the front porch after dark, and I got in lots of trouble for coming home late.”

“What is your grandmother’s name?” a Tree Sister asked. Her voice was soft and gentle.

“Heidi Orgelbauer.”

“I remember her,” said the Tree Sister. “She is one of our
giri
.”

“What’s
giri
?” Maya whispered to Benjamin.

“Humans who help us,” he answered almost without moving his lips.

“You have
giri
blood?” Harper said to Travis. “That explains why our wards are weak against you. Where is your grandmother now?”

“At home.” Travis’s answer was abrupt.

“Hmm,” said Harper. “Well, you’re on our ground and must abide by our decisions. We’ll decide about you later. Now I want to focus on the reason Rowan called this meeting. Girl, what portalwise thing has happened to you?” Harper asked. “Tell me.”

Maya didn’t want to answer, but she couldn’t stop the story flowing out of her as easily as air. “Last night a fairy flew into my room and slept on me,” she said. She glanced at Travis, who lifted his eyebrows but didn’t say anything.

Maya’s mouth kept talking even when she looked away from Harper. She told how the fairy left magic dust on her, how the dust attracted not only Janus House kids but some other boy—she drew a picture and showed it to Harper—and how the boy stuck this egg on her.

“This boy,” Harper said. “We already have an alert out on him. We have searchers looking for him now.”

“Maya drew us a picture at lunch,” Gwenda said. “Twyla brought it home to show to Aunt Columba. That boy said
‘chikuvny’
to Maya.”

“Ah,” said Harper. His bushy brows lowered. “Show us the egg, please.”

Maya held out her left wrist. The shallow alien dome there glowed with beautiful colors: peacock blue and spring green, scarlet and sulfur yellow. As she stared at it, she thought,
What did Harper just do to me? How could I spill all these details to strangers? I don’t like this!

A red streak flowed across the egg, then a black streak, which spread in swirls to cover the egg; then a flower of red and orange bloomed and faded against the darkness. She felt heat in the egg. Was it hatching?

Travis focused on the egg’s changes, too. “Could that thing
be
any weirder?” he muttered.

“Don’t ask,” Maya whispered.

Gwenda raised her hand. “It’s a baby
sissimi
.” She held up the book. “There’s an entry.”

“A
sissimi
!” said a Tree Sister. “The message traffic has been full of news of this! The young
sissimi
are carefully kept, carefully guarded, yet three are missing, and no one knows how. It’s a story that took time to get here, Uncle, five portals away. No portal on the
sissimi
world lets unbonded infant
sissimi
through. How could one be here?”

Maya glanced at Gwenda. She hadn’t gotten the Janus House kids to define “portal” for her yet, but she knew this: portals were ways to other worlds. Other worlds, Chikuvny Boy, an alien life-form on her arm . . . and people were talking to each other about it. She turned to Travis, wondering how much of their earlier discussion he had overheard. If he had slept through it, this must be even more confusing to him.

He leaned back on his arms, his hands flat on the carpet. He yawned and didn’t cover his mouth. How could he be bored?

Harper lifted a steel orb about the size of a tennis ball from the floor. His fingers danced over it, and then he spoke to it. “Who’s on communications? Nydia? We need to send out an alert to the general council. More evidence of rogue portals. We have found one of the missing
sissimi
.”

“I’ll contact them,” said a small, clear voice from the orb.

They were broadcasting this to who-knows-where, using a tennis ball–shaped cell phone, talking about Maya’s egg as though it were theirs. She hugged the egg to her chest.

Harper set down the steel ball. “Did the boy tell you anything about how he got it, child?”

“He stole her. Some Krithi people told him—”

“Krithi!” cried everybody else in the room in horrified voices.

Ominous silence closed down behind the word.

“Krithi,” said Benjamin. He shook her shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell us before?” He sounded mad.

“Huh? But I don’t know what a Krithi is.”

“How could she,
kleek
?” Gwenda knocked Benjamin’s hand off Maya’s shoulder. “Get some sense.”

“Maya,” said Harper, “tell us what the boy said.”

It happened again. She opened her mouth and words fell out, this time not her own words, but those Chikuvny Boy had said to her. “‘I stole her. The Krithi told me how. They said she would be my perfect friend. They told me what
sissimi
grow into. Companions. Collectors. Protectors. The Krithi said I could raise her here, far from her home. Then none of her masters can find me. I didn’t know she needs a local host, or she doesn’t get the right—’”

Even her voice sounded a little like Chikuvny Boy’s, mimicking his slightly odd accent. At first she was surprised that she could remember what he had said word for word. Then she was mad because Harper, tiny Orange Person, was giving her orders, and she didn’t have a chance to say no.

Her left wrist burned. She glanced down. The egg was dark, glowing red, with black spots.

She forgot where she was. Worried, she cupped her hand over the egg. Was it dying again?

The egg cooled immediately. When she lifted her hand, the egg was grass green, spotted with yellow colorbursts.

“What are you doing?” she whispered to it. “Are you okay?”

Mad
? A tiny voice spoke in her brain.

Astonished, she pressed the egg to her cheek. “Did you say something?” she whispered.

My Other
?

“This is much worse than we thought. The Krithi are traveling again,” Harper said. He lifted the steel ball and spoke into it.

“It will take
some time to set up a full council meeting,” Harper said when he had finished muttering to the ball. “In the meantime, we should decide what to do about your problem, Maya, and the problem presented by Travis.”

“My problem? ” She was still struggling with surprise that her egg could talk to her.

“We are sorry that you were drawn into this, through no fault of your own.” Harper turned his gaze to Gwenda, who chewed her lip and stared at the floor. “When we make mistakes, we do everything in our power to correct them. There is a chance we can repair the damage and let you get back to your normal life.”

“Repair the damage?” Maya said.

“Free you from the
sissimi
, clear the troubling memories from your mind, send you home. Ease you back into the world you know.”

“But Uncle—” Gwenda began.

“No. No. No!” Maya jumped up, hugging the egg to her chest. He wanted to take back the magic? He wanted to take away her
egg
? She had lost Stephanie already. She wasn’t going to let anyone take this. “You can’t have my memories. You can’t have my egg. No!”

“The
sissimi
was stolen.”

She shook her head. “Not by me. But it’s mine now. You can’t have it.”

“She’s right, Uncle,” Gwenda said. She held up the big book. “The book says
sissimi
bond for life. The bond is set soon before they hatch. It’s Maya’s now.”