for you to clear any debts you acquire, because they don’t want you carrying them with you into the wider world.”
“Moon is the same age I am,” said Lundy. “Why isn’t she a summer person?”
“Moon was left here by her mother, who was once of ours, but who chose to leave us for a summer world, like yours,” said the Archivist. “I don’t know how she persuaded the door to open one last time. The door should not have opened. I have to believe she paid for it, somehow. But she left the child, and Moon took the oath of citizenship when she was barely higher than my knee. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been allowed to do so. Perhaps she should have stayed a tourist, at least until she was old enough to see if the door to her mother’s world would open for her. We were all she had. When she asked if we were going to send her away, what could we say but ‘no’ and ‘never’? The rules make no exemptions for age. Once a citizen of the Goblin Market, always a citizen, and you’ll pay as anyone else does. Everyone pays.”
Lundy worried her lip between her teeth as she watched the Archivist lay out a pallet on the floor in front of the fire, creating a rough but serviceable bed. Finally, she asked, “What’s the citizenship oath?”
“It is a promise you make to the Goblin Market, when you’re sure you want to stay. A promise you make to yourself.” The Archivist gave her a sidelong look. “Are you sure?”
Lundy—who had returned, despite the promise she’d already made, because she was angry and hurt and sad and couldn’t imagine spending one more minute among people who said one thing and meant another, who lied and cheated and looked down on her for not being gregarious, and soft, and kind, and all the things they believed a girl should be—shook her head, fast and fierce. “No,” she said. “I’m not sure. I didn’t think . . . when I left before, I thought I was leaving for always. I didn’t think I was coming back.”
“Because you were sad.”
“Because I was sad.” Lundy looked at the Archivist with a child’s innocent confusion, and asked, “Why did Mockery have to die?”
“All things die, child. It’s part of giving fair value. Eventually, even the Market will die, and this world will become one more piece of the great graveyard that fills the walls between worlds. Your friend was very brave, and very clever, and she was cheated when she died too soon. But you and Moon were able to slay the Wasp Queen, even though she was older and wiser and more powerful than you were, weren’t you?”
Lundy nodded silently, trying not to remember the way the brittle, terrible beast had screamed.
“That was the world trying to give fair value for something that shouldn’t have happened so terribly soon. In the world you come from, unfair things can happen without consequences. Here, as soon as the Wasp Queen slew an innocent, she was doomed to lose.”
“That doesn’t seem fair either,” said Lundy. “Mockery didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Sometimes ‘fair’ is bigger than just you,” said the Archivist. She handed Lundy a pillow. “Sometimes ‘fair’ has to think about what’s best for everyone. You don’t have to be sure yet, Lundy. Remember the curfew. You still have time.”
She turned and walked back to her own bed, lying down without undressing or brushing her teeth. That left Lundy unsure as to whether she should do those things, or whether the rules were different in the Goblin Market. She was older now. It seemed more important to have clean pajamas and a clean mouth before she went to sleep, like the Sandman—if he existed—might judge her for poor hygiene.
There was nothing to be done for it. She wasn’t going to stay long. She had only come because she’d been angrier than her lingering sorrow over the loss of Mockery; she’d been intending to run away for a little while, to cool down and calm down and go back to school apologetic, after Mr. Holmen had had time to learn his lesson about treating girls like they were less than boys were. But Moon needed her here, and she couldn’t run out on a friend, especially not a friend whose troubles were partially the result of Lundy’s own mistakes.
And it wouldn’t matter if Moon told her to go, anyway, because she couldn’t leave at all, not