Every Heart a Doorway Read Online Free

chases you? And you have scones and jam for dinner if it doesn’t catch you?” asked Nancy, bewildered.
    “Not usually,” said Sumi. “Not often . Okay, not ever, yet. But it could happen, if we wait long enough, and I don’t want to miss out when it does! Dinners are mostly dull, awful things, all meat and potatoes and things to build healthy minds and bodies. Boring . I bet your dinners with the dead people were a lot more fun.”
    “Sometimes,” admitted Nancy. There had been banquets, yes, feasts that lasted weeks, with the tables groaning under the weight of fruits and wines and dark, rich desserts. She had tasted unicorn at one of those feasts, and gone to her bed with a mouth that still tingled from the delicate venom of the horse-like creature’s sweetened flesh. But mostly, there had been the silver cups of pomegranate juice, and the feeling of an empty stomach adding weight to her stillness. Hunger had died quickly in the Underworld. It was unnecessary, and a small price to pay for the quiet, and the peace, and the dances; for everything she’d so fervently enjoyed.
    “See? Then you understand the importance of a good dinner,” Sumi started walking again, keeping her steps short in deference to Nancy’s slower stride. “Kade will get you fixed right up, right as rain, right as rabbits, you’ll see. Kade knows where the best things are.”
    “Who is Kade? Please, you have to slow down.” Nancy felt like she was running for her life as she tried to keep up with Sumi. The smaller girl’s motions were too fast, too constant for Nancy’s Underworld-adapted eyes to track them properly. It was like following a large hummingbird toward some unknown destination, and she was already exhausted.
    “Kade has been here a very-very long time. Kade’s parents don’t want him back.” Sumi looked over her shoulder and twinkled at Nancy. There was no other word to describe her expression, which was a strange combination of wrinkling her nose and tightening the skin around her eyes, all without visibly smiling. “My parents didn’t want me back either, not unless I was willing to be their good little girl again and put all this nonsense about Nonsense aside. They sent me here, and then they died, and now they’ll never want me at all. I’m going to live here always, until Ely-Eleanor has to let me have the attic for my own. I’ll pull taffy in the rafters and give riddles to all the new girls.”
    They had reached a flight of stairs. Sumi began bounding up them. Nancy followed more sedately.
    “Wouldn’t you get spiders and splinters and stuff in the candy?” she asked.
    Sumi rewarded her with a burst of laughter and an actual smile. “ Spi ders and splin ters and stu ff!” she crowed. “You’re alliterating already! Oh, maybe we will be friends, ghostie girl, and this won’t be completely dreadful after all. Now come on. We’ve much to do, and time does insist on being linear here, because it’s awful.”
    The flight of stairs ended with a landing and another flight of stairs, which Sumi promptly started up, leaving Nancy no choice but to follow. All those days of stillness had made her muscles strong, accustomed to supporting her weight for hours at a time. Some people thought only motion bred strength. Those people were wrong. The mountain was as powerful as the tide, just … in a different way. Nancy felt like a mountain as she chased Sumi higher and higher into the house, until her heart was thundering in her chest and her breath was catching in her throat, until she feared that she would choke on it.
    Sumi stopped in front of a plain white door marked only with a small, almost polite sign reading KEEP OUT . Grinning, she said, “If he meant that, he wouldn’t say it. He knows that for anyone who’s spent any time at all in Nonsense that, really, he’s issuing an invitation.”
    “Why do people around here keep using that word like it’s a place?” asked Nancy. She was starting to feel