“If you already knew you were going to go, why did you come to me?” asked Eleanor, in a voice that had grown very small.

“Because we love you, Eleanor-Ely,” said Sumi. “We didn’t want you to just turn around and find us all gone away. That would be cruel. I can be a lot of things, and some are good and some are bad, but I try not to be cruel when I don’t have to.”

Eleanor took a deep, shuddering breath. She turned to Alexis and said, in a perfectly polite tone, “Anything you need, Kade can help you find. He’s a good boy. He’ll set you right.”

Then she stood, reaching for her walking stick.

“I’m quite tired,” she said. “I think I’m going to go and have a nap. Please be as safe as you can, children; please do your best to come home to me.”

She turned, walking out of her own office, leaning on the stick a little more heavily than she had the day before. The door shut behind her. Alexis made an interrogative motion with her hands.

“The world gets heavy sometimes,” said Sumi sadly. “That’s all. She’s carrying it as best she can, but … the world gets heavy. I hope she’ll be able to put it down soon.”

“Everyone puts it down sooner or later,” said Kade. “The others should be ready for us by now.”

Alexis signed something. Sumi nodded.

“As soon as we get back to the others, we’re out of here,” she said agreeably. “I’ve never traveled by lightning before. This is going to be fun!”

She skipped out of the room. Alexis and Kade exchanged a look.

“Not the word I would have chosen,” said Kade. “Let’s go.”

Kade turned the office light off behind him, closing the door with a gentle click. It seemed like the least he could do.

6 LIKE LIGHTNING, BRIDGING THE SKY

JACK ADJUSTED HER cravat for the fifth time, considering her reflection. So much of what she saw in the mirror was simply, softly wrong, and virtually none of the people around her—people who, for the most part, thought they knew her, thought they were somehow equipped to understand her situation and the accompanying distress—could see it.

Oh, Alexis could, she was certain: Alexis knew every inch of her, even the ones she couldn’t see, like the small of her back and the nape of her neck. Alexis had spent a satisfying amount of time with a compass and pen, drawing a careful chart of the moles and freckles that Jack’s anatomy had conspired to conceal from her own eyes. With Alexis’s help, Jack was solving the mystery of her physical form an inch at a time.