Page 27 of Beneath the Sugar Sky

“How do they not all die of malnutrition? How do they still have any teeth?”

“How did your skin not rot and fall off when you spent like, two years living in saltwater all the time?” Kade flashed her a quick, almost wry smile. “Every world gets to make its own rules. Sometimes those rules are going to be impossible. That doesn’t make them any less enforceable.”

Cora was silent for a moment. Finally, she said, “I want to go home.”

“Don’t we all?” asked Christopher mournfully, and that was that: there was nothing else to say. They walked toward Rini and her family, hoping for a miracle, hoping for a solution, while the fields of candy corn grew green all around them, reaching ever for the sun.

* * *

RINI WAITED UNTIL her friends—were they her friends now? Had they bonded sufficiently in adversity that they could use that label? She’d never really had friends before, she didn’t know the rules—were almost upon her before letting go of her father and stepping back, letting him see them, letting them see him.

He was tall. They’d been able to see that from a distance, along with the unnatural yellow of his hair. What they hadn’t been able to see was that his eyes were like Rini’s, candy corn somehow transformed into an eye color, or that his hands were large and calloused from a lifetime spent working in the fields, or that his face had been tanned by the sun until he was almost as dark as his daughter, although his undertones were different, warm where hers were cool, ruddy red and peach, not amber and honey. They looked nothing alike. They looked absolutely alike.

Kade, who had known Sumi better than either of his companions, looked at Rini, and looked at her father, and saw Sumi in the differences between them, the places where she had been added to the recipe that, when properly baked, had resulted in her daughter.

“Sir,” he said, with a very small bow. It seemed appropriate, somehow. “I’m Kade. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Thank you for bringing my daughter home,” said Rini’s father. “She tells me you’ve had quite the adventure. The Queen of Cakes is back to her old tricks, is she? Well, I suppose that was the only thing that could happen in a world where my Sumi never made it back to me.” He sounded less sad than simply resigned. This was the way he had always expected the world to go: snatching joy out of his hands for the sheer sake of doing it, and not because he, personally, had done anything to earn the loss. “My name is Ponder, and it’s a pleasure to have you on my farm.”

“This is no time for manners and moodiness, Daddy,” said Rini, with a little of her old imperiousness. Being near her father seemed to be bolstering her spirits, enough to remind her that, fading or not, she was still here; there was still time for her to fix this. “I found Mom. I found her bones in a world that didn’t know how to laugh, and I found her spirit in a world that didn’t know how to run, and now I need you to tell me how to find her heart, so I can stick them all back together again.”

Rini smiled at her father when she finished, guilelessly bright, like he was the answer to all her prayers: like he was going to make things right again.

Ponder sighed deeply before reaching over to touch her cheek—not the one with the emptiness where her eye had been, but the one that was still whole and sound, untouched by the nothingness that was eating her up from the inside.

“I don’t know, baby,” he said. “I told you when you went that I didn’t know. I’m just a candy corn farmer. My only part in this play was loving your mother and raising you, and I did both of them as well as I could, but that didn’t make me worldly, and it didn’t make me wise. It made me a man with a hero for a wife and a daughter who was going to do something great someday, and that was all I wanted to be. I never saved the day. I never challenged the gods. I was the person you could come home to when the quest was over, and I’d greet you with a warm fudge pie and a how was your day, and I’d never feel like I was being left out just because I was forever left behind.”

Rini made a small sound, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, and covered her face with what was left of her hands.

“The Lord of the Dead said that Sumi’s nonsense came home,” said Christopher abruptly. “Mr. Ponder, Rini told us about the Bakers. How they come and make Confection bigger and stranger in order to do what they need to do. Do you know where the oven is? Where they bake the world?”

“Of course,” said Ponder. “It’s a day’s journey from here.”

Christopher smiled wanly. “I guess it would have to be,” he said. “Can you show us the way?”

PART IV

THIS IS WHERE WE CHANGE THE WORLD

11

SUGAR AND SPICE AND PAYING THE PRICE

PONDER HAD GIVEN THEM each a bag of provisions and an item he thought they might find useful: a small sickle for Cora, a jar of honey for Kade, something that was either a white rock or a very hard egg for Christopher. What he had given Rini was less clear, since she walked side by side with her mother’s skeleton, hands empty, eyes fixed on the horizon.

Cora sidled over to her. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“My father gave us gifts because he had to, not because they’re going to help us in the here and now,” said Rini. “You can throw them away if you like.”

“I don’t know,” said Cora, who had never owned a sickle before. She thought it was pretty. “Maybe it’ll come in handy someday.”

“Maybe,” Rini agreed.

Cora frowned. “Okay, seriously. Are you all right?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I’ve never been to see the Baker,” said Rini. Her voice was low, even awed. “I always thought I’d do it someday, maybe, when I felt brave enough, but I haven’t done it yet, and I’m a little scared. What if she doesn’t like me? Or what if she likes me so much that she wants me to stay with her for always, to be her kitchen companion and kept thing? I would do it. For my mother, for my world, I would do it. But I’d die a little more inside every hour of every day, until I was just a candy shell filled with shadows.”

“Wait.” Cora glanced at Kade and Christopher, alarmed. The boys were talking quietly as they walked, Christopher’s fingers still tracing silent songs along the length of his flute. She looked back to Rini. “We’re not going to see the Baker. We’re going to see the oven the Baker used when she made the world. Big difference.”