Eleanor was inside, a paintbrush in her hand, layering oil paint onto a canvas that looked like it had already been subjected to more than a few layers. Kade was there as well, sitting in the window seat, a coffee mug cupped between his hands. Both of them looked at the open door, Eleanor with delight, Kade with slow confusion.

“Cora!” she said. “Have you come to paint with me, dear? And Christopher. It’s wonderful to see you making friends, after everything.”

Christopher grimaced. “Yes, Miss Eleanor,” he said. “We’re not actually here for an art class. There’s someone in the turtle pond.”

“Is it Nadya?” asked Kade.

“Not this time,” said Cora. “She fell out of the sky, and she has black hair, and her dress fell apart when it got wet, and she says—” She stopped, reaching a degree of impossibility past which even she, who had once fought the Serpent of Frozen Tears, could not proceed.

Luckily, Christopher had no such boundaries. “She says Sumi’s her mother. Can someone please come to the turtle pond and figure out what the hell is going on?”

Kade sat up straight. “I’ll go,” he said.

“Go,” said Eleanor. “I’ll clean up here. Bring her to the office when you’re finished.”

Kade nodded and slid off his seat, leaving his mug behind as he hurried to collect Cora and Christopher and usher them both out the door. Eleanor watched the three of them go, silent. When the door was closed behind them, she put her head down in her hands.

Sumi’s world, Confection, had been a Nonsense world, untethered to the normal laws that governed the order of things. There had been a prophecy of some sort, saying that Sumi would one day return, and overthrow the armies of the Queen of Cakes, establishing her own benevolent monarchy in its place. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that the future had felt comfortable going about its business, once there was a prophecy. And now Sumi was dead, and the future, whatever it had once been, was falling apart.

Everything did, if left long enough to its own devices. Futures, pasts, it didn’t matter. Everything fell apart.

3. Dead Woman’s Daughter

3
DEAD WOMAN’S DAUGHTER

THE STRANGER WAS NO longer in the turtle pond. That was an improvement, of a sort, but only of a sort: without the water and the turtles to drape her, the stranger had no clothes remaining at all. She was standing naked in the mud, arms crossed, glowering at Nadya, who was trying to look at anything but her.

Christopher whistled as he came over the rise, walking to the left of Kade. Cora, who was on Kade’s right, blushed red and turned her eyes away.