The Children(3)
“You are fun,” he said, tapping the book against his leg. It was as fat as the submarine novels her dad used to read, and he was tapping it hard. “This has been very fun. One more question. Your mother wrote books. Your dad was an actor. Your brother, I don’t know, I’ve heard he’s an artist now? But you. When you’re not putting your name on a ghostwriter’s work, what the fuck do you do?”
Guin smiled at him, rubbing her fingers together. “Cash checks.”
* * *
The Ninth City series is a collection of children’s books written by author Edith Sharpe, centered on a pair of child protagonists named for and based on her own two children. Five books of a planned six were published between 2000 and 2005, the fifth released several months after the author’s death at thirty-one.
In each book intrepid siblings Ennis and Guinevere Sharpe find their way into the fantastic environs of the Ninth City. Per the series’ mythos, our universe is one realm in a twelve-layered multiverse. The earthly plane the children inhabit is known as the Fourth City, though the books never linger long in that messy, unmagical land.
The Ninth is a tidier place, bounded to the east by a pale green sea and to the west—Oz-like—by a blistering desert of pure white sand. Unlike the other eleven realms, it’s an actual city. But it’s never quite the same city. Its terrain changes so swiftly and extravagantly even its citizens don’t leave the house without their pocket maps: wonderful artifacts that change in tandem with the land and can be infinitely unfolded, revealing its topography with increasing fineness.
No alien child should stay too long in this marvelous place. Its entire architecture, each building and flower and tree, is plucked from the minds of its youthful visitors. From the moment they enter the City’s borders their dreams and memories are fair game, to be sifted, thieved, and scattered like dandelion clocks. These stolen notions—of structures half recalled, wholly invented, dreamed of or imagined—bloom into houses and shops and libraries, museums and plazas and gardens.
The Ninth City’s shapeshifting is overseen by a personage known as the Architect. An elusive figure of questionable morals, with an impeccable sense of both dress and theater, the Architect has no age, no name, no friends. They’re courteous enough, for a mind-walking thief, and whether they are enemy or ally remains unclear until the very end of the series’ five existing books.
Imagine: falling through the City’s cheesecloth borders. Wandering its streets in a fugue of enchantment. Sleeping and waking to a small raw feeling in your heart or head, knowing that somewhere close by is a place that once belonged only to you: a pink hotel full of shady bellhops and eccentric actresses. A tall thin brownstone with an ocean-deep swimming pool in its cellar. A walled garden where it’s always twilight, and music plays forever from a place out of sight.
The children who grew up on these books and reread them later often say the same thing: These are darker than I remember. Crueler, stranger, more haunted by longing and loss.
All good children’s books are.
Two
Guin met her publicist in the liminal space between backstage and set. Fern wore a high-necked dress that stopped mid-thigh, perched over her long legs like a wine float on a cocktail. Her mouth was a complementary blue, her brows microbladed into bossy parallelograms. She started talking before Guin was close enough to hear.
“. . . a little under four minutes. Samantha Brice doesn’t read, so keep it broad. And her audience loves it when guests cry. Be prepared for emotional manipulation.”
“Got it,” Guin said.
Fern the publicist was one nut she’d never been able to crack. Guin knew as much about her today as she did after their first meeting two years ago. Florida girl, Howard grad, eldest of four sisters. No, she wasn’t named for the girl in Charlotte’s Web.
Fern looked over her shoulder, then turned back and dropped her voice. “I want you to be on your guard with Brice. I wouldn’t have picked her for you, Regina insisted. Just . . . be warned. She’s nothing like she seems on TV.”
“They never are.”
“Uh-huh.” Fern stared vexedly at the open laptop she carried at all times, sometimes with a container of Sweetgreen balanced on its keyboard. “I briefed her team on the don’ts—nothing too direct about your parents’ death, nothing about your brother’s legal issues.”
Legal issues. That was one way to put it. “I don’t talk about Ennis at all,” Guin said. “Ever. I’m sure Regina’s told you that.” Regina was the head of publicity for Hart & Crane. Also, terrifying.
Fern’s expression was instantly strained, as if Guin had been dancing on her last nerve for a full hour. “He’s right there in the memoir,” she said. “The memoir about your family, that you’re here to promote.”
“The memoir is my story. By definition. And Edith is the draw. Please tell Samantha to keep the focus on Edith.”
“Right, well. Given his announcement, I think it’ll be more noticeable if you don’t talk about him.”
The dread that fell over Guin was instant. It was never too far away. “Announcement?”
“About his new exhibit. Installation. Whatever.” Click click click. Fern closed tabs with one powder-blue nail as she spoke. “He put out a press release this morning. Have you not checked your email? Regina sent it through with some suggestions on how to approach.”