Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children) by Seanan McGuire

Author:Seanan McGuire [McGuire, Seanan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2018-01-09T05:00:00+00:00

8

THE TALLEST TOWER

“SOMEPLACE NICE,” IN THE castle of the Queen of Cakes, was a large, empty room with gingerbread walls and heaps of gummy fruit on the floor, presumably to serve as bedding for the prisoners. There had been no effort to chain the four of them up or keep them apart; the guards had simply dragged them up the stairs until they reached the top of what felt like the tallest tower in the world. The only window was almost too high for Cora to reach, and looking out of it revealed a rocky chocolate quarry, studded with the jagged edges of giant almonds. Oh, yes. They were stuck. Unless they could open the door, they weren’t going anywhere.

Rini was slumped against the wall, eyes closed, the slope of one shoulder gone to whatever sucking nothingness was stealing her away one fragment at a time. Alarmingly, she wasn’t the one in the worst condition. That dubious honor belonged to Christopher, who was curled into a ball next to the door, shaking uncontrollably.

“He needs his flute,” said Kade, laying the back of one hand against Christopher’s forehead and frowning. “He’s freezing.”

“Is it really made from one of his bones?” Cora dropped back to the flats of her feet and turned to face the pair.

Kade nodded grimly. “It was part of saving Mariposa, for him. He told me when I was updating the record of the world.”

In addition to his duties as the school tailor, Kade was an amateur historian and mapmaker rolled into one, recording the stories of all the children who came through the school. He said it was because he was trying to accurately map the Compass that defined Nonsense and Logic, Virtue and Wickedness, all of the other cardinal directions of the worlds on the other side of their doors. Cora thought that was probably true, but she also thought he liked the excuse to talk to people about their shared differences, which became their shared similarities when held up to the right light. They had all survived something. The fact that they had survived different somethings didn’t change the fact that they would always be, in certain ways, the same.

“Can it be put back?”

Christopher shook his head, and muttered weakly, “Wouldn’t want it. There was something wrong inside. A dark thing. The doctors said it was a tumor. But the Skeleton Girl piped it away and freed me. Owe her … everything.”

“But…”

“It’s still mine.” There was a flicker of fierceness in Christopher’s voice, there and gone in an instant, like it had never existed in the first place.

Kade sighed, patting Christopher on the shoulder before he rose and walked over to stand next to Cora at the window. Dropping his voice to a low murmur, he said, “This doesn’t happen as much as it used to—I guess the universe figured out it was an asshole move—but it’s happened before. Kids who went through doors and came back with some magical item or other that still worked in our world, where there isn’t supposed to be much magic at all.

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