In an Absent Dream - Seanan McGuire Page 0,17

naturally to them, after all.”

All the boys in class snickered. Even Johnny Wells, and she had been helping him with his math homework all the way since September.

Lundy stood so fast that her math book fell to the floor with a sound like a slap. Mr. Holmen blinked at her, nonplussed.

“I - need - to - go - to - the - bathroom,” she said, a single staccato string of syllables with no pauses between them. She didn’t wait to be given permission. She turned and fled, running out of the room as fast as she could, leaving her bookbag behind.

She stormed down the hall like it had personally offended her, and somehow it wasn’t a surprise when the door to the janitor’s closet—a door she walked past every day, several times—was gone. In its place was a tall oak door. A square made of graven fruit and flowers had been carved exactly at her eye level. BE SURE, read the words at its center, and in that moment, Lundy had never been more sure of anything.

“Only wait here a moment,” she said politely, eyes on the door. “I need to get my bag.” Then she spun on her heel and marched back to the classroom.

Mr. Holmen’s head jerked up when she stepped inside. “Detention,” he said. “You are not permitted to leave the room without permission.”

“I have vomited all over the girls’ bathroom,” Lundy replied calmly. Some of the other girls looked shocked by this admission. Most of the boys snickered. She didn’t care. The wonderful thing about not having any friends was not needing to care what other children thought of her. Let them think that she was crass or rude for being willing to talk about the things her body did—or in this case, didn’t do. She was leaving.

She was going home.

“I am going to the office. I will tell my father that I am unwell.” Lundy walked to her desk and retrieved her bookbag, watching carefully as Mr. Holmen’s cheeks flared red. He hated to be reminded that her father ran the school. Lundy didn’t get many special privileges from it—if anything, she was punished more than she was rewarded—but in situations like this one, there was no way to beat a child whose card in the hole was the principal.

“Do you need an escort?” he asked, the words heavy on his tongue, like stones. More of the class giggled, not at the vomiting, but at his loss of face.

“No, thank you,” said Lundy. She slung her bag over her shoulder and walked away.

Mr. Holmen would likely be fired when she disappeared, having left his classroom without a hall pass or a helper. Lundy found she didn’t care. He shouldn’t have treated her like she didn’t matter. He shouldn’t have treated her like his idea of a girl.

The door was still there when she returned to the hall. Lundy smiled, and walked a little faster, until the knob was in her hand and the scent of fresh oak was in her nostrils, and when she stepped through, she felt her anger peel away, shedding it like a snake sheds its skin. The door slammed shut behind her. She didn’t bother looking over her shoulder. It was already gone, and so was she.

* * *

ONCE AGAIN, the door to the Goblin Market had opened on a tunnel somehow carved into the living body of a tree, and once again, the tunnel ended with an unlocked door, where a single step could carry from the safety of the passage out into the better, brighter world she had tried so hard to convince herself had been a dream. The mingled odors of a hundred impossible things struck her, and she stopped, breathing in deeply, letting the sounds and sights of the Market surround her, strengthen her, renew her.

For her, it had been two years. It might have been twice as long for the Goblin Market, or it might have been no time at all, from all the changes she could see. Stalls had shifted. A few of the wagons were gone, while a few more had arrived. But the jumble of wares was as wild and unreadable as ever, and the people passing by were as strange as they’d been the first time. Lundy closed her eyes and kept breathing, filling her lungs with the Goblin Market, chasing all traces of school away.

Her stomach rumbled. Lundy opened her eyes, laughing, and dove into the Market, letting her feet lead