Summer in Orcus

by T. Kingfisher

One day in spring, when she was playing in the back garden, a house walked into the alley.

Baba Yaga put her eye back to the gap in the hinge. “Open the gate, will you?” she said. “Whispering through cracks is all very good for foolish lovers and eloping brides, but you’re too young and I’m too old and have had far too many husbands besides.”

Summer’s mother believed that books were safe things that kept you inside, which only shows how little she knew about it, because books are one of the least safe things in the world.)

There is something very freeing about knowing that you are in the worst possible trouble that you can be in. No matter what you do, it cannot possibly get any worse.

It is difficult to walk across an enchanted desert and then be thrust into someone else’s sense of humor.

She felt a little like crying, despite having eaten, except that she thought the weasel might say something sarcastic if she did.

Grown-ups are strange creatures, and many of them are useless, but even the worst of them has authority.

“Magic is like rain,” said Glorious. “Dragons are like mountains. Or wolves. Magic may happen to a dragon, but mountains are not made of rain.”

There were hundreds of books, probably thousands. At least as many as there were in the school library. They smelled like leather and expensive words.

“It was Baba Yaga for sure. She sat in a chair made of bones, and she smelled like the wasting death of dreams.”

“I try,” said Summer, who had just discovered that when someone asks if you talk, you have a sudden desire not to talk. At least, not to them. She made a mental note to apologize to the weasel.

“Let them look,” said Glorious. “My hide is not so raw that another’s eyes can scar it.”