They ran, five students and two teachers, across the field behind the institute, into the borders of the wood. Regan was waiting for them there, leaning against a tree with a blissful expression on her face, arms laden with owls and feet surrounded by raccoons. She opened her eyes at the sound of footsteps, straightening, gently shaking her woodland companions away.
“Did you find it?” demanded Cora.
Regan nodded.
They ran on.
At the edge of the wood, where the wall cut the Whitethorn Institute off from the rest of the world, was a deadfall, branches and fallen trees piled together by the wind and the weather until they reached a point almost as high as the wall itself.
“We’ll have to jump,” said Regan apologetically. “I tried to explain to the stag who led me here that humans aren’t that good at jumping, but he didn’t understand.”
“It’s fine,” said Cora. “All those laps around the athletic field had to be good for something.”
“I don’t understand,” said Miss Lennox.
“He doesn’t just take away names,” said Sumi, beginning to climb the deadfall. She moved quickly and efficiently, seemingly without fear. “All the doors want is for us to be sure. They want us to know where we belong. This many students, in this small a space, with this many rules and regulations designed to make us miserable? Half of them must know they don’t belong here. So where are the doors? They’re being kept out, that’s where.”
“There’s no magic in this world,” said Emily.
“Of course there’s magic. Look at Cora’s hair. The magic’s smaller, and sometimes it’s borrowed, but it’s here. The headmaster has magic. He takes names and he somehow keeps the doors at bay, and if you hit the magic number without being sure this world is where you belong, he keeps you on campus, where your door can’t ever reach you. Once we break the boundary of the grounds, we’ll see what happens then.”
“And if no door comes?” asked Stephanie.
“We find a pay phone and I call Eleanor-Elly and tell her she needs to send a bus.” Sumi laughed, wild and bright and utterly delighted with herself. “We’re leaving. One way or another, we’re leaving.”
She reached the top of the deadfall and leapt, landing light as a leaf atop the wall. She danced experimentally, then beamed at the group.
“No electricity,” she said. “Come on!”
One by one they climbed, even Cora, until Rowena was alone on the ground, looking up at them. The nameless girl waved impatiently.
“Come on,” she said. “Come with us.”
“No,” said Rowena. She grabbed one of the biggest branches from the deadfall and began to yank, trying to pull it free. “Run. All of you, run. Go far, far away, and don’t look back.”
“Rowena,” whispered the nameless girl.
Rowena smiled. It was wavering and small and brave, all at the same time. “Run,” she repeated. “Go find your name. Find your door. When you see Bright again, tell her you knew me. Tell her I was cool.”
“You were,” said the nameless girl.
“Time to go,” said Sumi, and the group turned away, sliding down the far side of the wall to land with a thump in the brush on the other side. Sumi was the last to move. She met Rowena’s eyes, and nodded, and then she was gone, and Rowena was alone.
She set herself to dismantling the deadfall with all the strength she possessed, ripping it out one branch at a time, making it harder and harder for anyone to follow. When she heard footsteps running through the wood she stopped, looking down at her chapped, torn-up hands, and didn’t turn. Whatever was behind her, she didn’t want to see.
“Where did they go?” demanded a half-familiar voice. She thought it might be one of the janitors.
“Why do you lock the doors?” Rowena asked.
“This world has magic,” he said. “It would have more if it wasn’t lured away, carried in the hands of foolish children. We lock the doors and we preserve our natural resources. We keep what’s meant to be ours. Where did they go?”
“Away from you,” said Rowena. She closed her eyes. “They got away from you.”
When his hands landed on her shoulders, she didn’t scream.
She was proud of that.
Then she wasn’t proud of anything at all.
EPILOGUE
GINGERBREAD AND BONE
THE DOOR OPENED OUT of nowhere and disgorged its contents onto the driveway in a pile of limbs and bodies, tangled together like puppies. A short, slightly pudgy teenage girl stepped out last, right onto the bodies of her traveling companions, not seeming to notice when she stepped on their heads or hands. She was dressed in a patchwork vest of countless colors, laced shut with a rope of licorice, over pink leggings that looked to have been knitted out of candy floss. Her hair was pulled into two pigtails and studded with sugar candies. She smiled as she gazed at the house in front of them, which was large and sprawling in the way of homes that had been less “designed” and more simply constructed.
“Is everyone all right?” she asked, before pulling a gumdrop out of her hair and popping it casually into her mouth. “No broken bones?”
“You’re standing on my hair,” said Cora.
Sumi skipped lightly down from the pile of shifting, groaning bodies, turning to offer her hand to the nearest of them. “We’re safe now. Or, if not safe, at least less unsafe. Eleanor-Elly will be thrilled to meet you all.”
Julia Lennox, who had snapped fully back to herself while crossing a gingerbread plain studded with carbonation geysers, pushed herself to her feet. “Even us?” she asked, gesturing to Carrie, who was helping Emily up.
“Even you,” said Sumi firmly. “Like you said, years are only numbers. They don’t matter here, unless we let them, and I don’t think I want to let them anymore.”
The nameless girl took Sumi’s hand. She was taller now; had grown almost six full inches in the week and a half since they’d fled the school for the forest, and then through the door to Confection that Sumi had seen tangled in a twist of ivy clinging to an old oak. Of the lot of them, her absolute conviction that Confection would never let her go had apparently been the strongest, capable of moving mountains, capable of changing worlds.
Stephanie’s door had appeared two days later, in the middle of a forest where the trees had cookies for leaves, spreading so wide they almost blocked out the sun. She’d looked back long enough to shout a quick farewell and then she’d been gone, diving through into a world of lush greenness, the sound of prehistoric reptiles echoing on the wind. The rest of them had kept on walking, kept on searching for something none of them had ever expected to be searching for: a door back to the world where they’d started.
Cora’s door hadn’t appeared, but her hair was full of rainbows, and she wasn’t worried. The Trenches would take her home when it was time.
The nameless girl paused, eyes bright with unshed tears. She looked at Sumi, still holding her hands, and said, “Your door’s closing.”
“Eh.” Sumi shrugged. “I’m not ready to be a wife and a mother and a story for the historians yet, so it’s not my time to go back to stay. I know I go home. I can spend a little more time here before that happens.”