The Land of Yesterday

by K. A. Reynolds

  Excitement bounced through her cage like a bell that would echo forever.

  Under the howl of the wind, Cecelia heard clothing flapping behind her—the snap of a velour jacket Cecelia would recognize anywhere.

  Chapter 12

  He Loved His Sister Most of All

  Cecelia sprang up and spun around so fast, she nearly tripped and fell on her face.

  Wavering before her, wearing ghostly sneakers and a weary expression, was her brother, dead but not all-the-way gone.

  “Celadon?” Cecelia cried. “Oh souls! What’s happened to you?” He looked terrible. He’d become so transparent, she could barely see him.

  Swaying like a slow pendulum, Celadon reached for his sister with misty green hands. He gasped, “Help me,” and slipped silent as a cloud to the cold dead earth.

  Cecelia bent over to help him. Her cage swung open with a shrill creak, spilling bright lemon-colored shadows everywhere. She slapped the stupid door shut, but it wouldn’t stay closed. “Why are you here and not in Yesterday?”

  Celadon parted his eyelids. His pupils glowed. Each word looked painful to speak. “I tried. Didn’t make it. I passed here while being dragged back to Yesterday. Heard Father shouting . . . saw Widdendream, and fought to get away.”

  Cecelia clenched into a knot.

  Widdendream.

  He wheezed, “I’d gotten so thin the pull of Yesterday couldn’t hold me. It dropped me, and I landed here.” A pale-green tear rolled down Celadon’s cheek like a miniature crystal ball. Cecelia wiped it away. “I followed Father’s voice, in case I could help him escape. But my energy was too drained. I stayed away too long, and I was too weak to help him.” He looked away, ashamed. “Now I’m too weak to help you. I’ve failed you. I’m sorry, Cee-Cee.”

  “Celadon, no. None of this is your fault.” Cecelia cupped his face in her palms. A sudden tingling numbness swept up her left arm. A warning bell chimed in her head, which Cecelia promptly ignored. “Don’t worry. I’m going to save you. We’ll escape this nightmare together, you’ll see.”

  He may have been barely visible, but Cecelia could still see him smiling. “I always knew you were a hero. Glad you’re finally starting to see it.” Celadon choked; his eyes bulged as he gasped for air. “I might know a way out of here . . . a secret passageway to the entrance to Yesterday.” Wheezing, he glanced sideways into the thickening mist. “It’s buried, over there . . . at the root of my own worst nightmare.” Cecelia tracked his gaze, but all she saw were dead trees, wastelands, and mist.

  Dueling winds bombarded them from all sides. Cecelia’s cage crashed open and shut, tearing her apart once more.

  “You’ll never make it with that broken cage,” her brother whispered. Celadon reached into the wind with the palest green hands and used the last of his strength to fix her. Cage relocked, he collapsed with exhaustion. “Good as new.”

  With the broken door of herself closed, her paper section of dress was finally able to seal. Chin trembling, Cecelia found a sad smile and gave it to him. “Thank you, little brother. Now I demand you stop fading this instant so I can get you out of here.”

  Cecelia moved to scoop him up.

  “It’s too late. I’m almost gone. Once I disappear all the way, I won’t even stay alive as a ghost.”

  The air quieted. Every crinkle of Cecelia’s paperness amplified. Mist rolled in from all sides, thick as water ready to drown the world.

  “I won’t let that happen.” Hair flying high, Cecelia lifted her brother’s body of pale-green mist as easily as if he were made of feathers. “I’m getting you out of here—now.”

  Her fading brother made no reply.

  Cecelia ran. Soft and sultry mist curled her ankles like long pale-blue cats. The very air seemed to purr. She searched for the secret passageway that, moments ago, Celadon had told her was buried at the root of his worst nightmare. She recalled his old night terrors from when he was alive: darkness, blue moon, monster, a shove from behind, falling and not waking up.

  Her steps faltered. She’d forgotten that part of his dream. “Something pushes me and then I fall,” he’d said. Strange, how that was so like the way he’d actually died.

  Head buzzing, arm numb, the ghost of her brother blinking in and out of sight in her arms, a familiar iron fence poked out of the mist. Her breath turned to granite in her lungs. She moved through the graveyard gate knowing all too well what she’d find: a replica of the cemetery where her brother was buried—his worst nightmare as well as her own.

  The blue moon dimmed. Foul winds whistled through the bones of giant deceased trees. Tombs, old and moldy, rose from the fog like ancient broken teeth. Unlike the real cemetery in Hungrig, each gravestone in this haunted place bore the same words:

  HERE LIES THE LAST PAPER DAHL.

  “Oh souls, that can’t be good.”

  Black clouds closed the moon in sudden darkness. Ribbons of dreadful green mists rose from the earth between graves and assumed a girl’s shape.

  “Celadon, wake up.”

  Hundreds of ghosts, each wearing Cecelia’s face, reached for her with icy hands, clawing her dress, trying to drag her into the earth with them.

  “Celadon.”

  Cecelia hurried to find the hidden entrance to Yesterday, but she wasn’t sure where to look.

  “Celadon, wake up!”

  It was so dark, and her brother so sheer, she could barely see him at all. His eyes remained closed, their glow gone. Cecelia was running out of time.

  Ghouls with long, writhing hair ripped at her skirt, sweater, and boots. She ran faster, and thought harder about the clues Celadon gave her. He said the entrance sprang from his worst nightmare. And if this was a replica of his cemetery, and he said the entrance was here, then maybe his worst nightmare was dying.

  If it was, then she needed to find Celadon’s grave.

  The instant she thought this, more than half of the specters pawing at her body burst into balls of light and vanished. Those that remained came on even stronger, howling and growling, whispering things as she passed.

  “Nobody likes you, Cecelia.”

  “Not even you likes you.”

  “You’re terrible!”

  “Selfish.”

  “Worthless—”

  “Go AWAY!” Cecelia kicked the nasty liars until they smashed into fizzling dots of light.

  “Cee-Cee,” her brother wheezed, and cracked open his eyes. “I’m going . . .”

  “Hang on,” Cecelia cried, entering the last row of graves. “Almost there!”

  Blood pumping wildly, Cecelia sprinted up the aisle. The faster she went the quicker the ghouls on her heels exploded like hideous gems. At the very last grave, Cecelia skidded in her tracks. The sight of it sent a familiar icicle through her heart.

  “Oh, Celadon,” she whispered. “It’s yours.”

  Cecelia knelt before the finely carved cross, so beautiful and horrible she wanted to cry. Her knees sank into the loosely piled soil beneath her. Dead vines and daisies twined the stone.

  Follow the daisies.

  This had to be it.

  Gently, she placed Celadon’s ghost beside her. He appeared sheer as a mirage, only a glimmer in the corner of her eye. She pushed the vines aside to reveal writing hidden on the cross beneath.

  HERE LIES

  THE BODY OF

  CELADON IGNATIUS DAHL.

  BORN HAPPY,

  DIED WITH

  NO REGRETS.

  LOVED

  HIS SISTER

  MOST OF ALL

  Celadon’s funeral came rushing back. She remembered how it had occurred on a Tuesday that wept gray tears from heaven. How storm clouds chilled Hungrig to the bone and the preacher wore a cassock, black as her heart. That no one in attendance used an umbrella. How Father said it was because they were rejoicing in their ability to still feel rain. How her little brother had been buried with his favorite things: a plush cat he carried everywhere, two carved wooden dogs, and two
paper dolls—one pale green like his eyes, and another midnight blue like Cecelia’s. She laid them both on his chest before they lowered him into the cold hard ground.

  And now here he lay, fading into oblivion, and here she was again, hovering over his ghost. You’re the only one with the power to help him, so do it.

  Cecelia raced to put together the clues that would lead to the Land of Yesterday:

  1. The entrance was hidden.

  2. It was buried at the root of Celadon’s worst nightmare.

  She glanced down at the fresh earth beneath her. If his worst nightmare was his death, the root had to be—

  That’s it.

  Using her hands, Cecelia dug deep into the soft soil until she hit open air.

  “Celadon!” She dug faster and faster until the rabbit-hole duct lay exposed. “I found it!”

  Ugly green fog had covered Celadon’s body while she’d been digging. Cecelia reached in to scoop him up. But she couldn’t feel him.

  “Celadon?”

  Fear gripping her bones, Cecelia ran her palms over the ground, but couldn’t find him.

  “CELADON!”

  A wild wind rose: parting the clouds, returning the moon, and clearing the mist.

  Horror struck as Cecelia lowered her eyes. A green paper doll, almost identical to the one she’d placed in Celadon’s coffin during his funeral, lay in his body’s place. She lifted the paper doll and held it under the moon’s light. “Celadon?”

  I’m so sorry. Forgive me. . . . Then her gaze dropped onto her hands.

  She rolled up her left set of sleeves. Her arm had turned to midnight-blue paper, same as the skin of her abdomen and sides.

  Cecelia held her paper brother over her heart and screamed into the wicked black wind—for her parents and her brother and herself.

  From deep within the dark woods, Widdendream laughed, cutting her cries short.

  Cecelia gritted her teeth. “You.”

  Blood on fire, lips curled into a sneer, lantern blazing through her paperness, Cecelia faced the forest. Her hair flying upward in a rogue gale, she held Celadon’s paper body high, and shouted into the moonlight, “I WILL TAKE YOU DOWN, WIDDENDREAM, IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO!”

  And from the darkness came a burst of light.

  Chapter 13

  The Haunted Galaxy

  From the center of the dark woods came an explosion of light. Cecelia swung around, caught in Widdendream’s glow. The monstrous house leaped skyward from the skeletal trees. With the flaming jets of a rocket, it blasted into the atmosphere. The higher it rose, the more it tilted and bucked like a mad bull. It struggled, gas burners sputtering, yet managed to set itself straight. Widdendream’s laughter echoed and died in the cradle of stars as it finally dipped out of sight.

  Cecelia glanced down at her brother, reduced to a paper doll. Jaw clenched, hair thrashing in the sideways wind, she fought against her anger. Darkness fell upon her, crashing down in shards of black glass.

  But Cecelia would not shatter with it.

  Dropping to her knees before Celadon’s grave, Cecelia steadied her breathing. Bit by bit, her jaw unclenched and pulse slowed. She opened the doors above her navel with her free hand and unlocked the clasp of her cage. Then Cecelia tucked Celadon safely inside, alongside her heart.

  His Celadonness radiated through her—his scent, spirit, laughter, and his unique fingerprint of life. Her lantern flared with a brighter, more brilliant shine. “I’m never all-the-way gone, Cee-Cee,” he had told her when he first returned from Yesterday. “No matter where I am, I’m never far from you.” She hadn’t fully grasped his meaning at first, but now she understood.

  Cecelia closed her cage. Thanks to him it was as good as new. Her paper skin and dress threaded back together and sealed instantly. “I’ll see you again, Celadon. I promise.” Without looking back, Cecelia slid her boots into the secret passageway beneath her brother’s grave, wriggled inside, and let go.

  The drop wasn’t far. She landed on her feet inside a dimly lit tunnel. The hole closed over her head. Cecelia inhaled slowly with awe and followed the trail of light to the end.

  The short cylindrical passageway resembled a giant drainpipe that ended abruptly in the center of space. Emptiness below and above her, Cecelia stood at the tunnel’s edge. Pearled cobwebs hung from star to star in gauzy nets. The air wailed like possessed souls. Cecelia patted her shivering hair while tarnished watches frozen in time, wedding rings with bony fingers still attached, and swarms of lost baby teeth drifted by. This space seemed hidden from the rest of the cosmos, and felt haunted, forgotten. Sad.

  Cecelia leaned out of the drainpipe tunnel and called into the black jar of stars, “Hello?”

  Not a single thing answered back.

  At her voice, a metallic sign materialized before her. In misted script, it read:

  To all those living, BEWARE.

  Go no farther. Turn back now.

  For this is the way of the lost,

  of death, and wandering ghosts.

  Leave Yesterday in the past, Traveler,

  lest ye become a lost thing yourself.

  Now she knew what this lost space was. She’d read all about it. This was the Haunted Galaxy surrounding the Land of Yesterday; this was the shadowy glob riddled with wormholes on Trystyng and Phantasmagoria’s map! After everything she’d been through, she was almost there.

  No time to worry about any posted sign’s ominous warning, she needed to figure out how to get from the end of this tunnel into Yesterday.

  She wished the gnomes were here.

  Dangling her legs over the precipice of everywhere and nowhere at all, the Dröm Ballong’s rules sprang to mind: If passengers of Intergalactic Taxi number nineteen should find themselves stranded in space without a hope in the galaxy of being rescued, said passengers would do well to remember this riddle and employ its answer forthwith:

  What is an instrument of metal, man, and wind, and music to an Aeronaut’s ears?

  The riddle.

  That’s it!

  But what was the answer? Cecelia’s hair scratched her head. If she didn’t solve that riddle, she was sure to end up a paper doll like her brother, an autumn leaf tossed about in a whistling wind, and who would save—

  Wait.

  Wind was part of the riddle. What was an instrument of metal, man, and wind, and music to an Aeronaut’s ears? She pondered and thought for seconds and minutes and what felt like numerous eternities until the answer appeared.

  Whistling! A whistle is an instrument of metal, man, and wind. Taxi drivers did seem to enjoy whistling, didn’t they? She wasn’t sure if a whistle would be music to an Aeronaut’s ears, but she would soon find out.

  Perched on the precipice between now and Yesterday, Cecelia dug her miraculous pen from her pocket and carefully took it apart. She placed each section of her pen, except for the outer canister, back into her sweater pocket, then allowed herself a smile. Next, Cecelia raised the hollow outer tube to her lips and blew the loudest whistle she’d ever created—so powerful, it echoed through space.

  Cecelia held her breath.

  She waited.

  The cobwebbed stars and ghosts and black nothingness quieted to dust. Celestial glitter whirled into the tunnel, glazing Cecelia in black and white specks of shimmer. Then finally, in the distance, a familiar hum filled each particle of matter in perpetual space.

  Could it be?

  A colossal shadow arose before her, lifting as fast as Cecelia’s triumph.

  It is!

  Inch by inch the silhouette drew higher until she was positively certain. Miracles upon miracles, she’d solved the Aeronauts’ riddle, and Trystyng and Phantasmagoria had heard her call. A new Dröm Ballong, identical to the other that crashed, appeared. Slathered in glitter and stardust, Cecelia screwed her pen back together, returned it to her pocket, and jumped into the Dröm Ballong’s basket.

  “Phantasmagoria!” Cecelia kissed his pink gnome cheeks.
/>
  “Trystyng!” She planted a smooch on his forehead, despite his resistance, and grinned when he blushed.

  “You have no idea how happy I am to see you.” Both were so coated in cobwebs, they looked like tubes of gray cotton candy, but Cecelia hugged them anyway.

  The Dröm Ballong rose into the cold casket of stars. She looked at them and asked earnestly, “You won’t leave me again, will you?” Phantasmagoria placed his hand over hers, patting reassuringly, and opened his mouth to speak.

  “No!” Cecelia splayed her hand in his face. “Never mind, I don’t need to be blown awa—”

  A small asteroid struck the basket and knocked Cecelia off balance. Without warning, her right leg went numb; a spark of worry lit as her leg folded beneath her. The gnomes jumped in and guided her safely to the floor.

  “Trystyng, Phantasmagoria?” The trio stared at her leg: it had become midnight-blue paper, same as her arm had. The closer she drew to the Land of Yesterday, the more of her flesh she seemed to lose. Not only that, but the whole of her black-and-gray dress had papered along the way, too. Her striped paper skirt ruffled in the breeze. With Trystyng and Phantasmagoria’s help, Cecelia pushed awkwardly to her feet.

  Holding steady to the basket’s rim like the Pirate Queen of the Haunted Galaxy, she proclaimed to the outer reaches of haunted space, “Tuesday remains treacherous and wicked. But we will not let that stop us, will we, boys?” Trystyng and Phantasmagoria shook their heads and broke into an impromptu jig.

  A snap later, they pulled Cecelia in with them.

  “Oh, now, wait just a minute—”

  The gnomes grabbed her hands. Holding her up, they spun her around the basket. Cloaked in webs of gray, glitter everywhere, they danced and shrieked with laughter. In that moment, despite her paper skin, Cecelia felt free. Trystyng and Phantasmagoria had become her friends. And she knew right then that, no matter what, they would never let her fall.

  Northern lights, otherwise known as aurora borealis, cracked through the hoary darkness before them. Phantasmagoria’s and Trystyng’s eyes bulged like grapes at the sight. They nodded to each other and passed Cecelia a vine-clustered rope to hang on to, then left her side.