Thresholds

by Kiriki Hoffman, Nina

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  Books by NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN

  Unmasking

  Child of an Ancient City (with Tad Williams)

  The Thread That Binds the Bones

  The Silent Strength of Stones

  A Red Heart of Memories

  Past the Size of Dreaming

  A Fistful of Sky

  A Stir of Bones

  Time Travelers, Ghosts, and Other Visitors (short stories)

  Catalyst: A Novel of Alien Contact

  Spirits That Walk in Shadow

  Fall of Light

  Thresholds

  VIKING

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the U.S.A. by Viking, a member of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2010

  Copyright © Nina Kiriki Hoffman, 2010

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  eISBN : 978-1-101-44238-8

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Liberty HS and Marga G—thanks for talking to me about your middle school experiences. To Amanda D and Aerin L—thanks for being inspirational twelve-year-olds (yeah, I know you’re not twelve anymore). To Ashton M, wizard, ghoul, and archaeologist: always an inspiration. To Emily M and Flora W and their writing dreams: See you in print! ☺

  ONE

  It was Maya’s second week in the new house. She woke a couple of hours after she had gone to sleep, wondering what had alerted her. A sound? A movement?

  A rush of wings?

  She stared up at the new ceiling, with its splash of orange light from the streetlamp outside. A light breeze shifted the curtains in the open window, changing the shape of the light: a tyrannosaurus head, an island, an angel.

  Dad planned to get screens for the upstairs windows, but with all the furniture shuffling, box unpacking, and registering three kids in new schools, screens hadn’t happened yet.

  Had something come into her room?

  Her new window faced the huge apartment house next door, with its mix of architectural styles. It was about four stories tall, as near as she could tell; there were lots of roof bits sticking up that might contain another story’s worth of assorted attics.

  A porch wrapped around the ground floor, and balconies interrupted different levels of the upstairs. A variety of doors opened onto the porch; some parts of the porch hosted wicker furniture; some, bench swings; some, jungly assortments of plants.

  Lawn covered the ground between the Janus House Apartments and Maya’s house, with no fence or hedge to interrupt it.

  The new neighbors fascinated Maya. Their clothes didn’t come from any catalog or store she knew about. Some of them looked like they had stepped out of the past, some as though they came from an unimagined future, and some as though they came from some European country where people cobbled outfits together from things found in attics.

  Sometimes people came out of the building and sat on the porch or the lawn. Older kids played games that involved nets and feathered things and rackets, or balls and mallets. Sometimes they and the younger children played hide-and-seek. From her upstairs room, in the shadow of her curtain, Maya watched, seeing where the hidden were, and how the searchers searched.

  One night, a bunch of the people brought out chairs and musical instruments and played a concert, with some singing, though the words were lost over the short distance between the houses. She could tell they were excellent harmonizers. The music was unlike anything Maya had heard on the radio or online or in her living room on Saturday night Music Night, though she could tell some of the instruments were stringed, some wind, some percussion. She sat at her desk, looked out the window, and sketched people and their instruments, none of which seemed entirely normal. One of the melodies stuck in her brain for days.

  Maya was going to start the first day of seventh grade in a new school in the morning, and she wondered if any of the neighbor kids would be in her class. Her whole family was starting over: her older sister, Candra, was heading to high school, along with their father, who taught history; her little brother, Peter, and their mother would go to the elementary school, where their mother taught fourth grade.

  The Andersens had moved from a small town in Idaho to Spores Ferry, Oregon, so everybody could get a new start, especially Maya. Maya’s best friend, Stephanie, had died in the spring.

  Everybody had loved freckled, ginger-haired Stephanie, who had been stocky and strong, ready for adventure, and always anticipating wonders. The illness that ate her up made them all mad. Where was the superhero with the antidote, the genie with the wish, the good fairy with the magic ointment to make it go away? None of them had showed up, though Stephanie had been telling Maya stories about them all since she learned to talk.

  The doctors put Stephanie through radiation and chemotherapy, and that still hadn’t killed the cancer before it killed her.

  Everything about the Andersens’ house in Idaho had reminded Maya of Stephanie; they had hidden together
in that closet, slid down that banister and fallen in a laughing heap at the bottom, sung Christmas carols around that piano with the rest of Maya’s family. They had known each other all their lives.

  Stephanie had always been sure something surprising and wonderful would arrive soon, and even though it seldom did, Maya loved the anticipation Stephanie was so good at drumming up. Stephanie had hoped for a miracle almost up until the end, so Maya had hoped, too.

  That was one of the things that made Maya maddest, after Steph died.

  Maya missed Stephanie’s stories. Stephanie found fairies in the fields, dragons in the ditches, ghosts in clouds and closets and attics, witches in the hedges. Stephanie had spun stories as she walked through the world, and Maya had illustrated them.

  After Stephanie died, Maya had spent a melancholy spring and summer. Some days she couldn’t even get out of bed. Her parents sent her to a counselor, and that had helped, but sadness still overwhelmed her now and then. Anything could trigger a memory.

  She searched for Stephanie’s ghost in all their old haunts—at the swimming pool and the mall and even at the elementary school, where they had gone to shoot baskets after school was out, and penciled charms and curses in secret code on the backs of some of the rocks at the edge of the playground. Stephanie was everywhere and nowhere.

  Without Stephanie, nothing was bright. Nothing was funny. Nothing mattered.

  Budget cuts at the Idaho high school where Maya’s father taught meant he’d have to take a big pay cut to stay there, so he had begun job hunting even before Stephanie died. He and Mom both found good jobs in Spores Ferry that summer, provided they could move right away. Mom said the family was ready for a change after spending seventeen years in the same place, but Candra was sure angry about the move—she had a lot of friends she was leaving behind.

  Maya hadn’t wanted to leave Catspaw, either. At the same time, she didn’t want to stay there. Everything and everywhere in Catspaw reminded her of Stephanie, and sometimes she liked that, but mostly it meant she was sad all the time.

  Maya stared up at the orange blotch of shifting light on her new ceiling, wondering about wings. Again she heard a faint flutter and a faraway jingle.

  After Stephanie died, Maya had drawn through sketchbook after sketchbook, mostly pictures of Stephanie. The curve of Stephanie’s freckled cheek, her kinky hair like a perpetual explosion around her head, her uneven smile, her lowered lashes as she looked down at something in her hands, a baby bird or a rabbit or a lizard, her long fingers gently cupped around something alive. The dome of Stephanie’s bald head after chemo made her hair fall out—how much brighter her eyes had been then, even on the days when she was so sick . . . Maya crosshatched and charcoaled and penciled, making Stephanie shapes rise from the page by darkening the space around them.

  Since the move, Dad had challenged Maya to draw other things. He took her out sketching. They sat at outdoor tables at coffee shops, Dad with his sketchpad, Maya with hers. They drew passersby and people sitting at other tables. They went to museums and art galleries to look at other people’s art. He took her to parks and hiking trails, along with her brother and sister, who went on ahead while Dad and Maya stopped to sketch, though Maya was more interested in drawing people than places.

  To draw the worlds Stephanie had made up, Maya had needed trees and plants—sometimes flowers and leaves, sometimes a ragged line of forest across a meadow. She still drew things that would have come in handy if Stephanie were with her, inventing.

  Sometimes the sketch trips worked. Sometimes Maya tuned in to the nearby world and forgot the past. Sometimes when she was in the middle of capturing the world around her, she thought about how useful this was going to be when she and Stephanie got together to make up another world. Then she remembered Stephanie was gone, and she felt guilty for not remembering it all the time.

  She felt guilty being in a new place, too. Stephanie was nowhere in this new/old house, except in the photographs Maya had put on her dresser, in a few sketches Maya had tacked to the wall, and in the celadon pottery bowl on the desk, full of rough garnets Maya and Stephanie had found in a creek in northern Idaho on a camping trip.

  Maya felt herself letting go of Stephanie sometimes. Mom said that was a good thing, but it felt like a betrayal.

  “If no one remembers her, it’ll be like she was never here,” Maya told her mother.

  “You’re not going to forget, and neither are we. Neither is her family. She won’t be erased, honey.” Mom had hugged Maya.

  Sometimes Maya believed her.

  The curtains fluttered. A winged shadow flickered across the orange patch, the largest moth Maya had ever seen.

  Or was it a moth? Maya heard a hummingbird hum of wings, and tiny, distant jingling noises, like glass wind chimes. She smelled a spicy cinnamon/carnation scent.

  Not a moth.

  A fairy.

  It hovered, gilded in orange light, its wings a blur of motion. It came to rest on the dresser next to the picture of Maya and Stephanie at five, riding ponies at the county fair. It was about eight inches tall, dark skinned, slender, and smooth, an elongated human shape with bunches of wings fanning out from its back. The wings didn’t look like angels’ or dragon-flies’ or bats’—more like feather dusters.

  Maya closed her eyes, wondering if she was dreaming the strange small shadowy shape, its face and form half lit by the streetlamp, iridescence blurring its wings. She opened her eyes quickly, afraid the vision would be gone. Who cared if it was a dream? She could study it. She could draw it. Her hand edged toward the sketchpad she kept on her bedside table.

  If only Stephanie were here to see. All their lives they had longed for magic, and finally, when it was too late, here it was. Maya’s throat tightened.

  She could draw it, the way she had been drawing everything—keeping a record for someone who would never see it. But what if she startled the fairy, and it left? She stilled.

  The fairy turned its face toward her, sliding into shadow. Its eyes had a faint orange-yellow glow. It blinked. Maya held her breath.

  It made a small purring sound that ended in a question mark.

  Its wings beat faster. It lifted from the dresser and came toward the bed.

  Maya froze. The spicy scent grew stronger, and the windchimey sounds. She heard the fluttering beat of its wings.

  It landed on her bed with a less-than-graceful thump, then stalked across the bumpy chenille bedspread toward her, its head turning, its large glowing eyes scanning Maya’s sideways form under the blanket, a mountain range to something the size of a fairy, or at least a chain of hills.

  Maya couldn’t hold her breath any longer. She let it out slowly and opened her mouth to suck in more spicy-tasting air, even though she was afraid she’d scare the fairy away.

  It paused. She heard a sniffing sound. Its wings rustled.

  Then it stepped closer and leaned against her stomach. It groomed its wings, settled them so they were folded tight like collapsed fans against its back, knelt, turned around three times with muffled jingling, and curled into a ball. It sighed a tiny sigh and went to sleep.

  It made a small warm weight against her stomach. Maya stared and stared, telling her hands to remember the sights her eyes collected. Nothing else happened.

  Trapped by her desire to keep the fairy near her, afraid to move, Maya lay tense, but eventually she couldn’t keep her body locked up any longer. She relaxed. The fairy stayed still.

  Maya fell asleep.

  TWO

  Maya woke with a start. Sunlight spotted the floor, and her alarm was about to go off.

  She sat up, switched off the alarm, and searched for the fairy. It was gone. A glittering imprint on the fuzzy chenille bedspread was all that was left.

  Maya grabbed her pad and pencil and went to work, outlining as many views of the fairy as she could remember: It hovered in the air, its wings quick scattered strokes. It stood in half-light by the photos on the dresser. It curled lik
e a kitten against her stomach.

  After she had four pages of fairy sketches, she pressed her hand against the golden dust on her bedspread. Her palm tingled. She lifted it and looked at the pale glow. Proof that she hadn’t dreamed it? Or just dust?

  She rubbed her palms against each other and stared down at her gleaming, tingling hands. Nobody would believe this. Her seventeen-year-old sister Candra was too logical. Ten-year-old Peter . . . he might believe, but what would he do about it? He loved catching things—tadpoles, frogs, lizards, snakes, grasshoppers—anything he could put in a jar with airholes punched through the top. He might haunt her room, hoping for another fairy visit. No. She wasn’t ready to share such an awesome secret with Peter the Pest.

  Her practical parents? Forget it. They’d been telling her and Stephanie “There’s no such thing as . . .” since she was three.

  Stephanie would have understood. Maya went to her dresser and looked at the most recent photo of Stephanie she had, Steph’s last school picture before she got sick. That freckled smile, so wide. “Guess what,” Maya whispered. Stephanie’s smile didn’t change.

  A flash of anger shot through Maya. She turned away. This was a secret she could hug to herself, a charm to carry through the day ahead.

  She went back to the bed and sat beside the gold-dusted spot on the bedspread. She touched one hand to the hollow of her throat, transferring the skin-buzzing sensation there. Then she wiped both hands through the remaining dust on the bedspread and brushed one hand across the best page she’d drawn. The dust tinted her images of the fairy with gold. She lifted the book to her nose and sniffed. That spicy cinnamon/carnation scent. Was fairy dust the fairy equivalent of human sweat? Much more fun to play with, anyway, and definitely better smelling.

  Knocks sounded on her door. “Maya!” cried Peter. “Mom sent me to wake you up! Why can’t you use an alarm clock like everybody else? We’re almost done with breakfast!” He opened the door and came in. “Oh, good. You’re awake. Get up!”