"Yes," Nancy said slowly. "How did you … ?"
"Well, you're the only student we were expecting to receive today. There aren't as many of you as there once were. Either the doors are getting rarer, or you're all getting better about not coming back. Now, be quiet a moment, and let me look at you." Eleanor descended the last three steps and stopped in front of Nancy, studying her intently for a moment before she walked a slow circle around her. "Hmm. Tall, thin, and very pale. You must have been someplace with no sun-but no vampires either, I think, given the skin on your neck. Jack and Jill will be awfully pleased to meet you. They get tired of all the sunlight and sweetness people bring through here."
"Vampires?" said Nancy blankly. "Those aren't real."
"None of this is real, my dear. Not this house, not this conversation, not those shoes you're wearing-which are several years out of style if you're trying to reacclimatize yourself to the ways of your peers, and are not proper mourning shoes if you're trying to hold fast to your recent past-and not either one of us. ‘Real' is a four-letter word, and I'll thank you to use it as little as possible while you live under my roof." Eleanor stopped in front of Nancy again. "It's the hair that betrays you. Were you in an Underworld or a Netherworld? You can't have been in an Afterlife. No one comes back from those."
Nancy gaped at her, mouth moving silently as she tried to find her voice. The old woman said those things-those cruelly impossible things-so casually, like she was asking after nothing more important than Nancy's vaccination records.
Eleanor's expression transformed, turning soft and apologetic. "Oh, I see I've upset you. I'm afraid I have a tendency to do that. I went to a Nonsense world, you see, six times before I turned sixteen, and while I eventually had to stop crossing over, I never quite learned to rein my tongue back in. You must be tired from your journey, and curious about what's to happen here. Is that so? I can show you to your room as soon as I know where you fall on the compass. I'm afraid that really does matter for things like housing; you can't put a Nonsense traveler in with someone who went walking through Logic, not unless you feel like explaining a remarkable amount of violence to the local police. They do check up on us here, even if we can usually get them to look the other way. It's all part of our remaining accredited as a school, although I suppose we're more of a sanitarium, of sorts. I do like that word, don't you? ‘Sanitarium.' It sounds so official, while meaning absolutely nothing at all."
"I don't understand anything you're saying right now," said Nancy. She was ashamed to hear her voice come out in a tinny squeak, even as she was proud of herself for finding it at all.
Eleanor's face softened further. "You don't have to pretend anymore, Nancy. I know what you've been going through-where you've been. I went through something a long time ago, when I came back from my own voyages. This isn't a place for lies or pretending everything is all right. We know everything is not all right. If it were, you wouldn't be here. Now. Where did you go?"
"I don't … "
"Forget about words like ‘Nonsense' and ‘Logic.' We can work out those details later. Just answer. Where did you go?"
"I went to the Halls of the Dead." Saying the words aloud was an almost painful relief. Nancy froze again, staring into space as if she could see her voice hanging there, shining garnet-dark and perfect in the air. Then she swallowed, still not chasing away the dryness, and said, "It was … I was looking for a bucket in the cellar of our house, and I found this door I'd never seen before. When I went through, I was in a grove of pomegranate trees. I thought I'd fallen and hit my head. I kept going because … because … "
Because the air had smelled so sweet, and the sky had been black velvet, spangled with points of diamond light that didn't flicker at all, only burned constant and cold. Because the grass had been wet with dew, and the trees had been heavy with fruit. Because she had wanted to know what was at the end of the long path between the trees, and because she hadn't wanted to turn back before she understood everything. Because for the first time in forever, she'd felt like she was going home, and that feeling had been enough to move her feet, slowly at first, and then faster, and faster, until she had been running through the clean night air, and nothing else had mattered, or would ever matter again-
"How long were you gone?"
The question was meaningless. Nancy shook her head. "Forever. Years … I was there for years. I didn't want to come back. Ever."
"I know, dear." Eleanor's hand was gentle on Nancy's elbow, guiding her toward the door behind the stairs. The old woman's perfume smelled of dandelions and gingersnaps, a combination as nonsensical as everything else about her. "Come with me. I have the perfect room for you."
* * *
ELEANOR'S "PERFECT ROOM" was on the first floor, in the shadow of a great old elm that blocked almost all the light that would otherwise have come in through the single window. It was eternal twilight in that room, and Nancy felt the weight drop from her shoulders as she stepped inside and looked around. One half of the room-the half with the window-was a jumble of clothing, books, and knickknacks. A fiddle was tossed carelessly on the bed, and the associated bow was balanced on the edge of the bookshelf, ready to fall at the slightest provocation. The air smelled of mint and mud.
The other half of the room was as neutral as a hotel. There was a bed, a small dresser, a bookshelf, and a desk, all in pale, unvarnished wood. The walls were blank. Nancy looked to Eleanor long enough to receive the nod of approval before walking over and placing her suitcase primly in the middle of what would be her bed.
"Thank you," she said. "I'm sure this will be fine."
"I admit, I'm not as confident," said Eleanor, frowning at Nancy's suitcase. It had been placed so precisely. … "Anyplace called ‘the Halls of the Dead' is going to have been an Underworld, and most of those fall more under the banner of Nonsense than Logic. It seems like yours may have been more regimented. Well, no matter. We can always move you if you and Sumi prove ill-suited. Who knows? You might provide her with some of the grounding she currently lacks. And if you can't do that, well, hopefully you won't actually kill one another."
"Sumi?"
"Your roommate." Eleanor picked her way through the mess on the floor until she reached the window. Pushing it open, she leaned out and scanned the branches of the elm tree until she found what she was looking for. "One and two and three, I see you, Sumi. Come inside and meet your roommate."
"Roommate?" The voice was female, young, and annoyed.
"I warned you," said Eleanor as she pulled her head back inside and returned to the center of the room. She moved with remarkable assurance, especially given how cluttered the floor was; Nancy kept expecting her to fall, and somehow, she didn't. "I told you a new student was arriving this week, and that if it was a girl from a compatible background, she would be taking the spare bed. Do you remember any of this?"
"I thought you were just talking to hear yourself talk. You do that. Everyone does that." A head appeared in the window, upside down, its owner apparently hanging from the elm tree. She looked to be about Nancy's age, of Japanese descent, with long black hair tied into two childish pigtails, one above each ear. She looked at Nancy with unconcealed suspicion before asking, "Are you a servant of the Queen of Cakes, here to punish me for my transgressions against the Countess of Candy Floss? Because I don't feel like going to war right now."
"No," said Nancy blankly. "I'm Nancy."
"That's a boring name. How can you be here with such a boring name?" Sumi flipped around and dropped out of the tree, vanishing for a moment before she popped back up, leaned on the windowsill, and asked, "Eleanor-Ely, are you sure? I mean, sure-sure? She doesn't look like she's supposed to be here at all. Maybe when you looked at her records, you saw what wasn't there again and really she's supposed to be in a school for juvenile victims of bad dye jobs."
"I don't dye my hair!" Nancy's protest was heated. Sumi stopped talking and blinked at her. Eleanor turned to look at her. Nancy's cheeks grew hot as the blood rose in her face, but she stood her ground, somehow keeping herself from reaching up to stroke her hair as she said, "It used to be all black, like my mother's. When I danced with the Lord of the Dead for the first time, he said it was beautiful, and he ran his fingers through it. All the hair turned white around them, out of jealousy. That's why I only have five black streaks left. Those are the parts he touched."