The Land of Yesterday

by K. A. Reynolds

  “No, that’s not it!” Celadon drew away and lowered his voice. “It wasn’t me who caught your letter. Truth is, I’ve come to stop you.”

  Thunder moved across the horizon like a bowling ball down an endless lane.

  Cecelia narrowed her eyes. “What did you say?”

  “I’ve come to stop you from going to the Land of Yesterday. And when I leave here, you mustn’t follow.”

  “B-but,” Cecelia stammered, “I don’t understand—why?”

  He motioned to her middle; lantern light glowed softly through her paper doors. “For one thing, just getting to Yesterday is half the battle, and too dangerous, especially in your delicate condition. You’ll get yourself killed, or worse!”

  “Delicate . . . condition?” Cecelia may not have been as brave as she once was, but she still didn’t like being told what she could or could not do. “Listen to me, Celadon. I have to go to Yesterday. And since you know the way, you are going to take me.”

  He crossed his arms. “Out of the question.”

  “What about Mother? Aren’t you worried about her? Don’t you want her to come home?”

  Celadon skated over the floorboards in lazy figure eights through a haze of mist. “My worry about Mother isn’t the point. Right now, I’m worried about you.” He sighed. “I’ve already broken the Law of the Dead by escaping to warn you. If I brought you back with me, who knows what the Guardian of Yesterday would do.” Cecelia’s hair flailed, crowding her neck. She’d forgotten about the Guardian of Yesterday: a ferocious feline as big as a giant. “There is another reason I came—something else I needed to tell you.” Celadon paused his frantic pacing and tapped his chin. “Oh no, I’m forgetting again! The harder I try to remember what it is, the harder it is to remember. . . .”

  Cecelia’s lantern light flickered. “Does it have to do with the cage and lantern inside me? Or is it something to do with Widdendream being so angry?”

  A mist of motes fell from Celadon’s hair when he shook his head. “I’m not sure, exactly, but that’s the second time you’ve mentioned Widdendream. Come to think of it, this house doesn’t feel the nice way I remember it. It’s almost as if Widdendream’s haunted because—” He floated upward and thoughtfully touched the ceiling. A dreamlike expression crossed his face as he dragged his fingers along a deep, jagged crack. “Oh, that’s it! I remember what I needed to tell you. It was—”

  The walls shuddered and shook. Black mold flooded the floors. Whip-sharp vines clustered around them, ready to snap. Cecelia’s belongings flew from shelves toward Celadon, and blew right through him. Her strand of paper dolls ripped from the ceiling and fell at her feet. When Cecelia glanced down at them, the floor tore up in a wave and sent her cartwheeling through the air. Celadon rushed to catch her, but her hair beat him to it. Midnight-blue strands stretched to the ground like an extra set of arms. They flipped her right side up and then plopped her back on her feet. All the paper things not bolted down had piled before the dresser at Cecelia’s door: bed, bookshelves and books, sword case, swords, nightstands, and all Cecelia’s clothes and shoes. It was like Widdendream was trying to keep Celadon from telling her something.

  But what?

  “ENOUGH!” Widdendream bellowed, and pushed the siblings apart. Everything inside the room stilled. “Cecelia’s idea was sound,” the house growled. “She should go to the Land of Yesterday to pay for all she’s done, and to convince Mazarine to come home. So you, you meddlesome pest of a boy, need to leave. Return to Yesterday immediately!”

  Photographs of the Dahl family soared from shelves. They circled Cecelia, taunting her with the loveliness of days gone by. Cecelia snatched her mother’s letter and pen of tears off her desk, stuffed them into her pocket, and turned to her brother.

  “I’m sorry, Celadon. All of this is my fault. I never meant to hurt anyone. Not you, Mother and Father, or Widdendream.” Cecelia grabbed her brother’s shoulders and stared into his misty green eyes. “I haven’t even told you how sorry I am for what happened. How I never meant to—how I never wanted you to—”

  Celadon’s eyes jolted wide, his mouth opened in a silent scream.

  “Celadon?”

  Abruptly and unnaturally, her ghost brother’s body was thrust backward, as if dragged by a force beyond his control.

  Cecelia sped after him. “What’s wrong?”

  Celadon kicked and clawed for purchase, straining against the invisible hands heaving him toward the back wall. “Yesterday. It’s pulling me back.”

  “You can’t go,” Cecelia shouted. “You just got here!” Every time she reached for him, he got farther away.

  “I told you,” he groaned, trying to slither free, “Yesterday doesn’t like letting us go. Promise you won’t follow me.” Arms grappling air, legs desperate to grip the floor, Celadon met her eyes. “The Land of Yesterday is filled with dark magic, lost souls, and danger—for the living, and for the dead who disobey and escape.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cecelia said as she pushed against the invisible force trying to stop her from reaching her brother. “But I can’t promise that. I won’t break any more promises.” She didn’t want to argue with him; he’d died because of her, after all. But if the Land of Yesterday was so treacherous, then she needed to get her mother out of there, now. “I’m going to the Land of Yesterday to find Mother, and nobody, not even you, can stop me.”

  Celadon reached the wall and braced against it. “You always were stubborn,” he said with a ghost of a smile that vanished as fast as it came. “But Mother won’t be the same as you remember her; Yesterday changes the living, and not for the better.”

  The ceiling flexed angrily. A blockade of paper debris fell between them. The weight of Cecelia’s mistakes condensed around her like stone, and it seemed she’d never be free.

  “Cee-Cee.” Celadon reached his hands out to her as his misted torso sank deeper into the wall. “Promise you won’t go to Yesterday. Please, promise me!”

  The fact that she was losing her brother before her eyes hit her like a sack of bricks. She couldn’t let this happen, not again.

  Cecelia dived under the pile of ousted drawers, paper clothes, stuffed animals, and swords, and scrambled toward her brother. Whatever had ahold of him didn’t stop her this time. Cecelia clasped onto his misty hands. “I won’t let you go again.” Cecelia pulled him toward her as hard as she could. Her hair twined his wrists like vines. Cecelia laughed. “It’s working!”

  With a tentative smile, Celadon pushed off the wall with his elbows. Inch by inch, he moved deeper into the bedroom. “Yeah, you’re doing it, maybe—”

  A sharp BANG echoed from upstairs, trailed by a sharper cry.

  Father.

  Distracted, Cecelia lost her grip. Celadon’s fingers slipped through hers. Her hair couldn’t hold on.

  No.

  Cecelia stared at Celadon in horror. His body thinned to boy-shaped smoke and seeped farther into the wall. His hands still extended to her, he cried, “Cee-Ceeeee!”

  She lunged to latch on. But when she reached for him, her hand hit the bare wall. And once again, just like that, her brother was gone.

  Widdendream’s cruel laughter surrounded Cecelia like an echo, vanishing as quick as it came. The lantern within her, lit since Celadon arrived, dimmed to a flicker, barely visible through her paper center.

  “I couldn’t save him.” Cecelia rested her forehead on the area where her brother disappeared and banged her fists against it. “Why can I never save him?”

  Her hair fell limp. Her face went slack. Loneliness filled every molecule of space. Cecelia stared at her paper things piled up at her paper door and then down at her own paperness. Now even more of her middle felt numb. Carefully, Cecelia opened the parchment door of her dress, and the result was as she feared. Another small section of her skin had papered alongside her inner door. Cecelia shivered and shut herself tight. Once more, the papered fabric of her dress sealed straightaway.

  She wrappe
d her sweater around herself and hugged herself close.

  No matter what Cecelia did, no matter how right she thought her actions, somehow, she always made things worse.

  Chapter 7

  Into the Monster’s Mouth

  “Regret is a scared bird chained inside Yesterday,” her mother told her once. “Break the chains. Set it free. And I promise you, it will evolve into a bird of hope.”

  Whether Cecelia did as her ghost brother begged her or followed her heart to Yesterday, one thing had become clear: she needed to get away from Widdendream.

  Be the bird, Cecelia, she told herself. If you’re going to get out of here, you’ll have to break your own chains.

  “I thought he’d never leave,” Widdendream thundered. “Now it’s your turn to go.”

  “Cecelia!” her father cried out in alarm from somewhere upstairs.

  “Father!” The lantern inside her cage flickered with heat and blazed back to life. A soft glow shone through her paper skin and dress. Cecelia aimed her voice toward the ceiling. “Father, are you all right?”

  Shadows danced across her walls like marionettes, each one resembling her father being choked by shadowy hands. Upstairs, muffled words and angry shouts, followed by a crack, and a thud, thud, THUD prickled Cecelia cold.

  “Hold on,” Cecelia hollered. “I’m coming to you!”

  Shredded bits of paper shorn from Widdendream’s ceiling and walls fell fast and sharp and deepened in her room like snow. Paper drifts eclipsed the height of her cage and cut her as she plowed her way to the door.

  Almost there, Cecelia thought she was home free, when a rip and a pop echoed behind her. The floor in the center of her bedroom puckered from the weight of the shredded paper. Everything inside her room slid toward the hole, including her.

  “Cecelia?” her father shouted, sounding farther away and out of breath. He had to be in the attic. “What was that noi—” A wet thump cut him off.

  Cecelia struggled to hang on, grasping at bits of flooring, along with her hair. “Widdendream, stop this!” The section she grabbed tore away, but she quickly found another.

  “Mazarine was my heart,” Widdendream wailed. “A body can’t live without a heart! I’ll die without her, Cecelia, and eventually fall into the ground.” The back wall crunched into a face and sneered. “So, until you bring Mazarine back to me, Aubergine stays inside my walls.” Widdendream laughed. “He makes an awfully good insurance policy, don’t you think?”

  A fireball of terror blew up in Cecelia’s chest. Widdendream was trying to keep her from her father. Just like it was trying to keep Celadon from telling her certain things. But how could she save her family on her own?

  All at once, the room angled down like a funnel. A hot, vile wind blew up through the hole in the center of the bedroom. In a slippery whoosh, the paper snow and furniture hurried toward Cecelia.

  Determined to reach her father, she scaled her possessions like a leopard up a mountainside, refusing to look back. When she reached her door, she found it clear of debris. Cecelia grinned. Then, balancing on her trusty bookshelf, which had remained steadfast to the end, she broke open her door.

  But her victory didn’t last long.

  The hallway hung with ripped sheets of paper. The red-and-black Victorian wallpaper drooped, and the ceiling pitched wildly toward the floor. Thorny plants crawled toward her. One tripped her and Cecelia stumbled. Spiders hissed and scuttled away. She grabbed a loose paper sword and tried slashing the vine in two. She hit it again and again but it wouldn’t sever.

  Cecelia ditched the sword. She leaped over the vines instead, ducking and swerving and hurdling until, eventually, she slipped free.

  “You can’t have him, wicked girl!” Widdendream bellowed. Cecelia coughed out paper and dust as she sped to the stairs. “And, to make sure you follow through on this promise, unlike the promises you made me before, wherever you go, I will follow.” The hallway deflated and inflated like lungs. “I will be watching you.”

  She needed to figure out a way to distract Widdendream long enough to reach the attic and her father inside it.

  Eureka.

  Talking made an excellent distraction.

  “Widdendream,” Cecelia said, tiptoeing up the staircase toward the third floor, “do you remember when Celadon and I used to sneak out after dark to stare at the stars? You used to sing to our parents to keep them asleep.” Widdendream used to say the best magic happened when adults slept and kids were awake. Cecelia missed its gentle soul.

  Widdendream made retching noises from every point in the house. “That was before you and the boy outgrew me, and stopped spending time with me—before that first despicable Tuesday. Before you made me a monster!”

  Ignoring Widdendream’s nastiness, Cecelia crept up the attic stairs. “That’s not true, Widdendream. Celadon and I loved you. No matter what, we always came home to you.” She’d made it to the attic door. Ugly black vines coiled over the doorknob. She shoved them away and tried turning it; the door was locked from the inside. Cecelia frowned. “But now you’re acting like an evil house with a scar where your heart used to be.”

  Widdendream inhaled deeply and let its breath out in a growl. “You have never been more right.”

  The parchment lightbulb in the cramped stairwell surged with electricity and exploded. Sparks sprayed. Bits of paper smoldered to the floor. The vines scurried down the stairs for shelter.

  Widdendream said no more.

  “Cecelia?” her father called quietly through the door.

  “Yes,” she answered. “Are you okay?” Cecelia tried the knob again—still locked. Her hair slithered under the crack for a peek, and returned more anxious than ever.

  “The house has turned ugly,” Aubergine said quickly. “It’s locked me in. I can’t seem to find a way out. When I try, it—” Her father abruptly stopped speaking.

  Cecelia glared at the house. “Is Widdendream . . . hurting you?”

  “Something like that. What about you? Are you all right?”

  The question gave her hives. How could she tell him she’d found a cage with a lantern inside her? Or that she was covered in thorn pricks and cuts? Or that part of her was slowly turning to paper? She hated to do it, but she had to lie to protect him.

  “I’m perfectly fine,” Cecelia replied. “I’m going to try to open the door.”

  “Be careful. Widdendream’s lost its mind—” Her father stopped himself short.

  Violent shadows danced under the doorjamb. She thought she heard Widdendream whisper “Shut up,” and “Be still,” and “You lied. . . .”

  Cecelia’s hair trembled with fear. She patted it until it stilled. “What’s going on in there?” She kicked the door again and again. And then Cecelia smelled smoke.

  “Cecelia!” Aubergine shouted breathlessly. “I’m . . . Everything’s fine. Listen to me. You’re going to have to be especially brave now. Can you do that for me?”

  As she opened her mouth to answer, a curl of smoke rose between her feet. Cecelia glanced down. The sparks from the broken light had eaten a hole through the floor. Her stomach dropped. And a breath later, so did she.

  Grabbing onto a dangling section of flooring, Cecelia hung on. Part of her hair stretched up and dug into the floorboards like anchors, while another part extinguished the smoldering flames. Cecelia didn’t dare scream, not wanting to frighten her father.

  “Talk to me, Cecelia!” Aubergine banged on the wall beyond the door. “Let her go, you monster, or I swear—” His voice cut off midthreat.

  “Father, yes. I’m okay!” Cecelia answered. He had other things to worry about besides her dropping into a black void. “You’re going to have to be especially brave,” he had said. She spun his words into a mantra, setting them on a loop in her mind. Cecelia hadn’t been truly brave in so long, she wasn’t sure if she remembered how. But this was her father. She had to do something.

  Slowly and steadily, with the help of her faithful and daring
blue hair, Cecelia pulled herself up and over the hole. She climbed onto a thin strip of flooring in front of the attic’s entrance, found her balance, and heaved a huge sigh of relief.

  Behind her, a sheer drop opened into a black abyss, no sign of anything below. In front of her stood a door she couldn’t open with perhaps the last living person who loved her trapped on the other side.

  “Cecelia, listen closely.” Her father choked out the words as if in pain. “There’s a hot-air balloon outside heading toward us. You’ll recognize the drivers as Aeronauts, as discussed in our Unbelievable Encyclopedia of Otherwhere Travelers book.” Aeronauts. From the taxi service to Yesterday—here? “Your mother caught one like it earlier. Now that you’re here, I can . . . yes, I can try to make a break for the window. Then we can go after her together. Find a way onto that balloon, and I’ll do the same.” After a silence, he said, “Sweetheart, you’re going to have to trust me.”

  Cecelia trusted him unconditionally. “Yes, escape into the balloon. Got it.”

  But not before I try to get you out one last time.

  “Good girl.”

  The house cackled, evil as a sharp-toothed witch. Downstairs, furniture crashed and smashed against walls. Foul breezes blew up the stairwell. Cecelia’s hair curled against her neck a bit too tightly.

  “Cecelia,” Aubergine shouted. “Get out of here, now!”

  She gave the door one last shove, trying desperately to open it. Hard paper boards from inside the walls broke loose and grabbed Cecelia like arms, pinning her against the attic door. A vine wrapped her ankle; she crushed it under her boot and it skittered away. “Sorry, Cecelia,” Widdendream moaned on a hot snap of wind. “Aubergine stays with me.”

  The armlike boards that had pinned Cecelia bit into her sides.

  Cecelia wondered: if Widdendream had her father, what if he couldn’t get away?

  “Widdendream,” Aubergine pleaded. “Please, it doesn’t have to be this way—”