Archivist’ because it would be an insult to call me by my name. But I was here first, and I will be here last, and the Market lives because I am its heart. I loved you so much. I truly did.”
“I don’t . . .”
“I asked you to remember the curfew, and you did, you did, but you didn’t give me fair value for it, because you forgot Mockery.” The Archivist—the Market—seemed to shimmer, and for a moment she was a girl with white feathers tangled in her hair, a sign of the swan she could have been, if she had lived, if she had been given time enough to grow. “You forgot that sometimes, fair value comes from change, and death, and sacrifice. You can’t have everything and give fair value. You can’t stop your clock and expect to stay a part of the world. You’ve followed the rules, my love, my little Lundy, but you’ve betrayed them at the same time, and your punishment is the punishment that has awaited all rulebreakers, for a broken rule pains us all. Banishment. Go.”
Lundy’s eyes went wide. “How will I get the potion to start me aging again?”
The Market smiled, heartbroken. “You don’t.”
She closed the door.
Lundy tried to reach for it, and found she couldn’t move; couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do anything but stand there, struggling against the air, until she turned on her heel and fled, running back the way she had come.
None of the people she passed would look her in the eye. Vincent’s stall was shuttered; Moon was nowhere to be seen. Lundy ran on, fighting against the ache in her lungs, the rejection she could feel from every side, until the door was there, slamming open to admit her.
There was no release even in the passage, which pressed down against her like it was trying to force her out. She stumbled to the final door, tumbled out into the dust, and fell to her hands and knees, gasping.
When she had her breath back, she looked behind herself. The door was gone.
“I was sure,” she whispered, and all was silence.
EPILOGUE
Come Buy, Come Buy
1990
THE WOMAN, who appeared to be in her early fifties, and was dressed like she had never met a color she didn’t feel compelled to keep somewhere on her person, stepped out of her car and considered the house. It looked perfectly ordinary in every possible way, as did the town around it. She knew better. She paid attention, which was sometimes the dearest coin of all, and she had heard the rumors, the stories of a little girl who aged, not forward as children are intended to do, but in reverse, slow as the hands of a clock running backward.
(One of those rumors had come in the form of a letter from the girl’s younger sister turned older and wiser and sadder. “My sister disappeared when she was a child,” the woman had written. “Now my son has done the same, and I think it’s happening again, and she still needs someone to save her . . .”)
“Well,” she said, and started up the walk. The doorbell was in good repair; the sound it made rang out clearly. Settling on her heels, she waited.
The door opened, just a crack, several minutes later. “My parents aren’t home,” said the girl on the other side, who couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old, but who had the eyes of a woman grown and condemned.
“I know, dear,” said the woman. She smiled, clearly trying to be engaging. “My name is Eleanor West. I’ve been looking for you for quite some time, Miss Lundy. I think we’re going to be very good friends, you and I.”
Slowly, Lundy pulled the door open and looked at Eleanor. Neither said a word.
It was not, perhaps, a happy ending. But it was what they had, and so we shall leave them to it as we head on, ever on, toward the next, patiently waiting door.
ALSO BY SEANAN MCGUIRE
Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day
Sparrow Hill Road
Deadlands: Boneyard
THE WAYWARD CHILDREN SERIES
Every Heart a Doorway
Down Among the Sticks and Bones
Beneath the Sugar Sky
THE OCTOBER DAYE SERIES
Rosemary and Rue
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Night
Late Eclipses
One Salt Sea
Ashes of Honor
Chimes at Midnight
The Winter Long
A Red-Rose Chain
Once Broken Faith
The Brightest Fell
Night and Silence
THE INCRYPTID SERIES
Discount Armageddon
Midnight Blue-Light Special
Half-Off Ragnarok
Pocket Apocalypse
Chaos Choreography
Magic for Nothing
Tricks for Free
That Ain’t Witchcraft
THE INDEXING SERIES
Indexing
Indexing: Reflections
AS MIRA GRANT
THE NEWSFLESH SERIES
Feed
Deadline
Blackout
Feedback
Rise: The Complete Newsflesh Collection (short stories)
THE PARASITOLOGY SERIES
Parasite
Symbiont
Chimera
Rolling in the Deep
Into the Drowning Deep
Final Girls
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Seanan lives with her cats, a vast collection of creepy dolls, and horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard.
She was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot. You can sign up for email updates here .
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Part I: What We Would Reap
1. A Very Ordinary Garden
2. When Is a Door Not a Door?
3. Rules are Rules, No Exceptions, No Appeal
4. Fair Value
5. A Beginning Ends
Part II: We First Must Sow
6. Back Through the Impossible Door
7. Fly Away, Fly Away Home
8. By the Fire
9. With Ribbons for Her Hair
Part III: Where We Would Be
10. In Which a Quest Begins and Ends
11. In Air as Clear as Crystal
12. On Wings So Wide
Part IV: We First Must Go
13. One More Door
14. Promises and Paperwork
15. Fair Value
Epilogue
Also by Seanan McGuire
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
IN AN ABSENT DREAM
Copyright © 2019 by Seanan McGuire
All rights reserved.
Interior illustrations by Rovina Cai
Cover photo illustration by Sean Rodwell
Cover design by FORT
Edited by Lee Harris
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-9929-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9928-1 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765399281
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected] .
First Edition: January 2019