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

by Seanan McGuire

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.

Antsy began to cry again, not quietly at all this time; no, she sobbed, huge braying sobs that shook her whole body and knocked more things off the shelf. The bird looked alarmed. “Please, please, miss, stop your crying! I don’t trade in the tears of children, the people who want to buy those type of things are never the sort of patrons I’m looking to attract, they bring the whole tenor of the place down, so you’re simply wasting them! Please, I’ll help you if I can and if you’ll let me, but I need you to stop crying!”

“Now, traveler child, what does your heart desire?” In that moment, in a strange market on a different world, contemplating an assortment of treats she’d never tasted before, about to be escorted through a market by a talking cat-person, Antsy’s heart desired nothing more than to stay here forever, and to never, never, ever go home. In that moment, she was finally sure.

“Will we see you here again?” “It’s always possible, if the Doors will it,” said Vineta. “Come, Antsy.”

“It was very nice to meet you.” “And you as well, child,” he said, whiskers pushed forward. “If you come this way again, seek me. You will always have food at my table, and when you tire of tolls and time, we would welcome you well.”

“I just wish it had been a surprise a little sooner than it was. I was fifteen and running from the marriage my parents had negotiated for me, and I got less than a year before the Doors stopped working when I tried to open them. What I wouldn’t give to have been nine. You have such adventures ahead of you, child.”

“My mother believed him because he was better than me, and believing me would have been believing a bad girl who told bad lies about good people.” “I don’t think that’s true, Antsy,” said Vineta. “You’re a child. If an adult hurt you, that’s on them, not on you. Being bruised doesn’t make you bad, unless you’re a peach, and even a bruised peach is good for making jam.”

Maybe running away wasn’t the best choice you could have made, but it was the choice you chose, and the Doors respected it.

“How did you get all that money?” “People lose money all the time,” said Hudson. “And money is interesting because it gets less valuable as it remains in circulation, but more valuable after it’s fallen out of circulation.”

All the Doors connect places where there are people, and people are essentially the same everywhere that we can go. They can look very, very different, like Hudson here doesn’t look like you, and you don’t look like me, but they’re still people, and being people means they’re going to approach some things in similar ways. The Doors don’t tend to open on worlds where people eat children who aren’t related to them, for example.”

“I’m too old for the Doors, or too settled; they leave you alone once your roots dig deep enough, as if they can tell when you’re not meant to be a traveler any longer. It’s not just adulthood, although we think adulthood plays a role in things—adults tend to be more set in their ways, and more inclined to think before they take big risks—but stability. You, on the other hand … the Doors know you, Antoinette called Antsy. They know you, and they wanted you, or they would never have come for you in the first place.”

“But I don’t even know where here is!” “This is the Shop Where the Lost Things Go,”

“And you both came through doors like I did?” “Not me,” said Hudson, puffing out his chest proudly. “This is where magpies come from.” “All magpies,” said Vineta. “They have magpies in almost every world where there are birds, because the doors open here so often, and sometimes magpies fly through them and don’t make it back before the doors swing shut again.”

Antsy straightened, feeling very mature and jaded as she watched the girl approach the counter. She’d been that new and impressed once. She’d been that awed by everything around her. She’d been a fool.

“Do you work here?” asked the girl, all innocence and excitement. “I … I live here,” said Antsy. The sentence was still unfamiliar in her mouth, like a new tooth too large for the space it had grown to fill. But like a new tooth, she knew, it would become familiar with time, until it was just a part of the shape of things, until she forgot what it was like to run her tongue over anything else. That’s one of the things about living in a body. It can change, but the ways it changes today will be the ways it has always been tomorrow. If the modification isn’t noted in the moment, then it can be all too easily dismissed. This will be important later. But it isn’t important now, and it wasn’t important then, as two girls and a bird moved deeper into the store.

“They know about the Doors where you come from?” was all she asked. “Of course,” said the girl, sounding stung. “We’re a civilized world.”

“How is this here? I should have seen it by now. Vineta should be asking me to clean cages every day. And is that a unicorn?” “It’s here because animals get lost sometimes, same as anything else, and you haven’t seen it because we didn’t need it, and so we lost track of it.”

“Children get lost too,” she said. “Is there an orphanage in here somewhere?” “No! That would be ridiculous.” Hudson fluffed out his feathers in annoyance. “Children get lost, but the only ones who wind up here are the ones like you, who the Doors already wanted to keep track of.”

The way Hudson and Vineta talked about the Doors, they were both alive and aware. They watched people without making themselves known, and they had opinions, and they wanted things. Why they wanted the things they did, or why some worlds knew about the doors while so many others didn’t, was less than clear, but all of them were somehow connected anyway. Antsy felt like there was a secret lurking just out of reach, and once she understood it, she would be able to go anywhere she wanted.

“So not all children need Doors?” Sometimes she asked questions that Hudson and Vineta treated as absolutely obvious, things that didn’t really need asking, but it was the only way to get them to explain anything. Left to their own devices, they would say things that overturned everything she thought she knew about the way the world—any of the worlds—worked and then just walk away like it was nothing. It wasn’t nothing. It was everything. Hudson gave her what she had come to recognize as the avian equivalent of a pitying look and said, “No. Only the ones who aren’t made right for the worlds where they started out need Doors. All children may want them—who doesn’t want a grand adventure? But needing and wanting aren’t the same, and the Doors can see the difference. Some children need to escape from places that will only hurt them, or grind them away until they’re nothing. And some children need to go somewhere else if they’re ever going to grow into the people they were meant to be. The Doors choose carefully.”

“So I’m special?” The idea was appealing. Who didn’t want to be special? So it was almost disappointing when Hudson ruffled his feathers and said, “Only as special as the kitten who gets picked first from a litter of twelve. It’s luck as much as anything. Our Door almost always looks like a door. If you hadn’t run away when you did, or if you hadn’t tried to use the door you did, you wouldn’t be here. The Doors have to choose you, but then you have to choose yourself. Luck and timing. Just looking for something lost doesn’t make you Lost yourself.”

Was that all you needed? You didn’t lose anything else?” “Just a shoe once, but that was when I was smaller, and it wouldn’t fit me now,” said the girl brightly. “I’m ready to go home.” Antsy, whose own answer would have been much longer and much more painful, felt a pang of jealousy. This girl could go home. This girl hadn’t lost anything worth looking for; nothing larger than a kitten, anyway. This girl didn’t know what it was to be lost herself, to feel like the world was set against her, to be hurt. This girl was innocent. And just like that, Antsy’s anger burst. This girl was innocent. This girl could go home. She could be safe and comfortable and cared for and unafraid. That mattered. That was something important, something worth taking care of and protecting. “I’ll walk you back to your Door,” said Antsy, and turned, starting back the way they had come, Hudson riding along on her arm.

The other Door led to a dark and gloomy world, with a single red moon hanging in the sky like the eye of a baleful giant, and they did their shopping at an outdoor market built in the shadow of a terrible, looming castle like something out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon. 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 Moors and the twins!

you mustn’t linger where the children of the Doors are already gathered. It isn’t safe.” “Why not?” “Because there aren’t many nexuses like ours,” said Vineta. “And most of the Door-touched want nothing more than they want to go home. They would change the world, if it meant they could go home. They’re as likely as not to think they’re on some sort of grand storybook adventure, and for them, saving the world and destroying it mean the same thing, as long as it comes to the same end.”

“But you said the Doors came for people who would be better on the other side than they were where they’d started.” “A thing being good for you doesn’t make it a thing you want,” said Vineta. “Did you like being told to eat your broccoli because it was good for you?” Antsy frowned but had to shake her head. “No, not at all.” “To some of these travelers, the worlds the Doors offer them are broccoli. They were sure enough to pass through, and remain sure enough to stay, but part of that certainty is the conviction that until they complete their quests, they don’t deserve to go home. Those girls might have ignored us as part of the scenery, or they might have recognized us as something that didn’t belong and refused to let us leave. They might have followed us back to our Door, and tried to take it for their own.”

Nothing comes free; ask them what it costs you.

Maybe it was a sock. Lost socks were incredibly common in the shop and could appear virtually anywhere, not just in the stock rooms in the back. It was like there were so many that the shop couldn’t channel them all the way it was supposed to. They disappeared just as quickly, popping in and out of view as people found them in the ordinary way.

She should have noticed. If she’d somehow … if she was that much bigger than she should have been, if she had grown up in the span between seconds, she should have known about it. She reached for the jar, grabbing it like it would somehow give her the answers she so desperately desired. Touching it was like sticking her finger into a live electrical socket. Static raced through her, painful and sharp and somehow cousin to the resistance she felt whenever she opened a door, and she saw. She saw two years of moments in an instant, two years that had somehow swallowed nine.

Everything since she’d arrived here had happened with remarkable speed. It hurt to think too hard about that now. Nothing comes free; ask them what it costs you.

She looked at Antsy with wise, weary eyes. “You must have known something similar, to find my door.” Antsy looked away, unable to face that searching gaze. “Similar enough,” she said. “He never hit me, but I don’t think he needed to.” “No. They don’t, always.”

It’s easy to go along with a system. It’s harder to create one. You have to choose it, over and over, when you’re building it.

Better to be devoured in the dark than to stay and be destroyed by a man who has every reason to love and care for me. He has no right to do as he has done. Let that be the crime for which I am finally convicted: my father is not a good man, and I will not pretend he is, will not praise him in ways he has not earned and never will.

“The black-and-white birds that fill the skies here have taken an interest in what I do. They say this is the Land Where the Lost Things Go, and that it is a nexus of worlds, of which there are a number beyond counting. It pulls all lost things to it, and that includes the doors, which would normally wander freely. They come here when they have no children to call to them, taking a time to rest and recover themselves.

Choosing the rightmost door, I made a cut along the back of my hand, opened the door, and walked through it with the wound still bleeding. When I arrived on the other side, it was with a cut scabbed over and clean as if it had been healing under ideal circumstance for two full days. A similar cut made before returning did not heal in the same fashion. I am thus sure of what it costs to play at being a key to another world: two full days of time. “It is a small thing, to forfeit two days for such wonders as I saw on the other side of that door, and the next one, and the next. Wonders and delights beyond all measure, beyond counting, beyond consideration. I will have my fill of all the universe, and perhaps a sufficiency of days may give my wings the time they need to straighten and heal. Perhaps I can have the sky again, if I take time enough.”

“I was a fool. “Two days is nothing. Two days is a bad bit of fish and a necessary lie-in. Two days is negligible. But when there are doors every day, new worlds to explore, and the fee is always the same … it adds up. It adds up so quickly. If you are reading this, if you are one of those who will come after me, please, believe me in this if you believe nothing else: it adds up, and what you pay will never be returned. This is the place where all things are found, but what is lost here is truly lost forever. “I have frittered away years in the course of months. Years. And those years are gone; they will not be recovered, not now, not ever, no matter how much I might wish that they could be.

“It is so hard, to stay away from the doors, even knowing what they represent. I find myself looking at them with longing every time I bruise my shin or jam my finger. They bring me wonders and glories and revelations beyond price, but there is a price, and I know how old my people can be before we fade and fall. I am already as aged as my grandmother was when she died of time’s weight. My own grave is not too far from me.

I want nothing more than to go through door after door until there is no more of me, to see the universe spread out before me like the fruits on a tree, each unique and each connected, part of the same whole. I cannot. I owe this place my service, for even as it has stolen my time away, I gave it freely, and the door that brought me here did so to save me. “Had I realized the cost sooner, I could have returned home, transformed enough to be a stranger, but also safe from my father’s wrath, for he would never have dared lay hands on a woman he was not related to, even one whose wings were broken in the same manner as his distaff daughter’s. This could have been a gift, had I only used it more wisely. That I did not is my burden, and not the fault of the doors.”

“I am a foolish old woman. It hurts me to say such things, but the truth is often a blade on which to cut yourself, and I have been cut deeply.

I understand now something I had not understood before: only the one who opens the door will pay the toll. Anyone else who passes through a door once opened will do so unaffected. I can still see the universe, so long as I do it upon Eider’s heels. I have spent my own reserves, but as long as he still travels, the worlds are not closed to me. This is dangerous knowledge. Novelty is addictive. I can see where one might be tempted to allow the next child to proceed in ignorance, to spend their days like they mean nothing, all for the sake of opening the universe to those whose time has already passed them by. “That must not be allowed to happen.

My kind live shorter lives than Eider’s; he wears the marks of his days much less openly than I wear mine, and I will leave him soon. I only plan to wait until I have so few days remaining that I can count them on the fingers of one hand, and then I will open a final door. “I will go through it, and I will rest. “It will be very nice, to rest.”

The toll thus paid, I followed her, and helped her into the shadow of a great tree, where she sat and closed her eyes and held my hand until her breath stopped, and she was over. The great tale of her being shall be extended no more; she is gone to the Library where all of us must one day be Returned, and she will pay no overdue fines on her soul.

HUDSON

“Elodina mentioned black-and-white birds,” she said. “She meant you and your people, didn’t she? The magpies who live here? Who come from this world? She knew you. Do you remember her? Do you have a counting rhyme about her, and Eider, and Anya, and all the other shopkeepers?” Hudson shivered. “We do,” he admitted, voice small. “Teach it to me.” Hudson huddled on his perch, feathers puffed out until he was almost a sphere, and said nothing. “You have a little rhyme for everything, you’re the accountant, so why can’t you teach me this rhyme, huh? What’s so different about it that it needs to be a secret? Unless it’s full of things you decided I didn’t need to know. When did you stop telling us? When did you decide that since we were already lost, it didn’t matter if you used us up and threw us away?

“She wasn’t told because it changed nothing,” said Hudson miserably. “For two hundred years we’ve been here, helping the curators, making sure the Doors are cared for, making sure the wayfarers who came through them seeking what they’d already lost were seen to and seen home in short order. Two hundred years. Ten generations of magpies have lived and died and seen hundreds of curators come through here, and when Elodina demanded her promise from Eider, we were exempt. She left us out of what she asked him. We were animals to her, inconsequential, even as we brought her everything she needed, even though we had watched over the Doors for generations before she came, even though we’ll be watching them long after the last curator is gone. But he told Anya, and Anya told Basia, and on, and on, and every one of them made the same choices, made the same decisions, ran through the Doors with the careless abandon of the first curator. But you know what did change? What did become different?” He hopped down from his perch, stalking toward the counter’s edge. Antsy couldn’t take her eyes off of him. “They were guilty. They felt like they were being punished. They used the Doors anyway, but because they understood the consequences, they suffered for what they did. And they stayed, and they traveled, and they suffered, because they knew.”

What bullshit. You didn't tell Antsy because you wanted to take advantage, not because she would feel bad.

“They needed to know because a choice you make without knowing the consequences isn’t any choice at all!”

“I worked,” she said, finally. “From the day I got here, I worked, and I never had a salary from you. I never got a penny for everything I did. And you were stealing from me. You were stealing my time—and you might be right, I might have given it freely, the same way Elodina did after she realized what was happening every time she used a door. We’ll never know now.”

“But—” “No buts. Unless you want to open the doors yourself. You told me you were fifteen when you came here. How long ago was that? Twenty years?” When Vineta cut her eyes away, Antsy scowled. “Less than twenty years to spend an entire lifetime, and you’d have let me do the same before you told me what it cost. You people don’t deserve this place.”

Vineta looked at her imperiously. “Go to your room.” Antsy barked a bitter laugh. “I’m not a little girl anymore, because of you. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

Promises are only binding if we agree to keep them.”

That seems like a good way to get yourself even more cursed than you already you, you old hag, but okay.

Abigail would grow up in a haunted house, surrounded by the ghost of a big sister who would never misbehave, never yell at her, never do anything wrong. It didn’t seem fair … but it was better than growing up with a father who thought little girls were for hurting. They weren’t. Abigail deserved to be protected. She deserved to be safe. She deserved to stay found.