Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children, #8)

by Seanan McGuire

FOR THE CHILD I WAS. I WILL SPEND MY ENTIRE LIFE TRYING TO MAKE UP FOR THE FACT THAT WHEN I WAS YOU, I DIDN’T RUN SOON ENOUGH. I’M SORRY.

I just want to offer you this reassurance: Antsy runs. Before anything can actually happen, Antsy runs.

That was the fourth thing she lost: the belief that if something made her unhappy or uncomfortable, she could tell an adult who loved her and they would make everything better.

When Antsy made the lists of things she’d lost, to justify being Lost herself, she didn’t include her belief that adults could be trusted. That thing, out of everything, had been so small and fundamental that she couldn’t even see that it was gone.

Somewhere in the time between her father’s collapse and now, she realized, she had lost the belief that her mother would always protect her, and somehow that burned the worst of all.

Antsy couldn’t bring herself to look at it directly, which seemed to please Vineta; none of the villagers looked directly at the castle, either, and staring would only have attracted attention. They had been there a few hours, no more, when two girls who looked several years older than Antsy appeared, identical and opposite as sunrise and sunset. Both had golden hair and pale, pinched faces, but one was dressed like a princess out of a fairy tale, while the other was dressed like the world’s youngest funeral director. The strange pair made for the stalls, and Vineta’s hand clamped down on Antsy’s shoulder. “We’ll be leaving now,” she said, voice a quick hiss. “Come along, Antoinette.” “Are we done shopping?” she asked.

Omg is this jack and jill

Who could possibly have used a sword made of candy glass, so brittle it would shatter as soon as someone swung it, breaking without doing any real damage? Or a harp made of bones? That one was unsettling.

She should have had time. It was hers, and she had never agreed to give it away.

I am thus sure of what it costs to play at being a key to another world: two full days of time.

“No,” she said. “Not today. Maybe not tomorrow, either. I’m willing to pay the toll, but not the way I have been; I’m not giving up weeks every day because you want perfect peaches or more shiny stickers for your calendar. You will be patient. You will be the adults you should have been all along. We’ll go through the yard, we’ll sort the things already here, and we’ll travel when we don’t have any other options. Do you understand me?”