Dandelion Fire

  Also by N. D. Wilson

  Leepike Ridge

  100 Cupboardss

  For Heather Linn

  amo te mea nais

  is not easily impressed. It has seen houses fly and cattle soar. When funnel clouds walk through the wheat, big hail falls behind. As the biggest stones melt, turtles and mice and fish and even men can be seen frozen inside. And Kansas is not surprised.

  Henry York had seen things in Kansas, things he didn't think belonged in this world. Things that didn't. Kansas hadn't flinched.

  The soles of Henry's shoes were twenty feet off the ground. He had managed to slide open the heavy door in the barn loft, and after brushing the rust and flakes of red paint off his hands, he'd seated himself on the dust-covered planks and looked out over the ripening fields. Henry's feet dangled, but Kansas sprawled.

  Henry had changed in the short weeks since he'd stepped off the bus from Boston, been smothered by Aunt Dotty and taken to the old farmhouse, to the attic—to a new existence. He looked different, too, and it wasn't just the cut across the backs of his fingers. That was scarring worse than it needed to only because he couldn't stop himself from picking at it. The burns on his jaw were a lot more noticeable and had begun scarring as well. He didn't like touching them. But he had to. Especially the one below his ear. It was turning into a divot as wide as his fingertip.

  What had changed most about Henry York was inside his head. Things he had always known no longer seemed true. A world that had always felt like a slow and stable and even boring machine had suddenly come to life. And it was far from tame. He'd uncovered a wall of doors in his attic room, and now he didn't know who he was. He didn't know who his real parents were or whether he was even in the right world. He didn't really know anything. Strangely, that was more comfortable than thinking that he did.

  One month before, fresh off the bus from Boston, he would have been nervous sitting where he was, slowly bouncing his heels on the wall of the barn. One month before, he wouldn't have believed that he could hit a baseball. Something wheezed beside him, and Henry turned. One month before, the world was still normal, and creatures like this one didn't exist.

  The raggant sniffed loudly and settled onto his haunches. His wings were tucked back against his rough charcoal skin and his blunt horn was, as always, lifted in the air.

  Henry smiled. He always did when he looked at the animal. It was so proud and so very unaware of how it looked. At least Henry thought it had to be. Shaped like a small basset hound but wearing wings and a rhino's face and skin, it was far from beautiful, but that didn't stop it from being as proud and stubborn as a peacock. Like an otherworldly bloodhound, it had found Henry, cracking the plaster in the attic wall from inside a cupboard. The raggant had started everything. Whoever it was that had sent the raggant had started everything. Henry couldn't even imagine who that might be.

  “Do you know how strange you look?” Henry asked, and he reached over and grabbed the loose skin on the creature's neck. It felt like sand-based dough, and as he squeezed, the raggant closed its black eyes and a low moan sputtered in its chest.

  “I want to see you fly,” Henry said. “You know I will.” He glanced down at the ground and then back at the raggant. He could push it. Then it would have to fly. But it just might be proud enough not to, proud enough to tuck its wings tight and bounce in the tall grass. “Sometime,” Henry said.

  The afternoon sun was falling, and Henry knew it wouldn't be long before the barn's shadow stretched across acres. Worse, it wouldn't be long before the fields and the barn and all of Kansas became part of his past. His parents had been back from their ill-fated bicycle trip for a while, and he still hadn't heard from them. That wasn't too unusual. When they were just getting back from their photographed adventures, he rarely ever heard from them. The fact that they'd actually managed to get kidnapped this time would make their return crazier, would keep him safely off their minds for that much longer. But it couldn't last. If they'd had any say in the matter, he never would have been sent to stay with his cousins at all. Now that they'd returned, they wouldn't leave him in Kansas for school or even through the summer. He'd be back in Boston, on some new vitamin diet and meeting a new nanny, and then back to boarding school. Maybe a new one. His third.

  Parents. He still thought of them that way. Would they ever have told him that Grandfather had found him in the attic? Not likely. Henry didn't care that he'd been adopted. But it was hard not to care that his parents had never really been parents—not like Uncle Frank and Aunt Dotty were to his cousins. Henry had always known exactly where he was on his parents' list of priorities.

  Yesterday, he'd seen his parents on television. He'd been stirring his cereal and listening to his youngest cousin, Anastasia, complain about Richard when Uncle Frank called him. He'd hurried, and when he stepped into the room, Frank pointed. There, on a stiff couch in a television studio somewhere, sat Phillip and Ursula, smiling and nodding. They each had hands crossed on their knees. Ursula kept glancing at the camera. She looked like Henry's aunt Dotty, but with all her edges hardened. The two of them talked about their amazing endurance, the difficulty of bicycling through the Andes, how they had never given up hope of finishing their trek even after being abducted in Colombia, the size of their book deal, and their discussions with film agents.

  In a general way, Henry remembered all they had said. But there were two things that sat in the front of his mind, every syllable in concrete.

  “Are you closer now?” the woman had asked them. “After going through all of this together?”

  Ursula had leaned forward. Phillip had leaned back. “You know,” Ursula had said. “We've both changed a great deal during this whole process. We really need to get to know each other again. But first we need to get to know ourselves.”

  Phillip had nodded.

  Henry was pretty sure he knew what that meant.

  And then the woman had asked about him.

  “Now you all have a son? Is that right?”

  “That's right,” Phillip had said.

  Ursula had smiled. “Our little Henry.”

  “That must have been quite the reunion. What went through your minds when you saw him again?”

  “Oh, it was wonderful,” Ursula had said. “Elation. Pure maternal elation.”

  “Thrilling,” Phillip had said.

  It had been strange, watching his parents lie. Uncle Frank had slapped his shoulder afterward and Aunt Dotty had squeezed him. Anastasia had opened her mouth, but Penelope, the oldest, always the most concerned, had pinched her before she could say anything. Henrietta had tucked back her curls and stared at him. The two of them had opened the doors together, had knelt in the attic and stared into strange worlds, and still she always tested him, curious if he'd be weak. Henry knew she was waiting to see if he'd be sad. He hadn't been. Not then. Richard, always out of place, had stepped quickly out of the room.

  “What am I going to do?” Henry asked the raggant. “I won't get to stay here, and you can't come with me even if you try. You'd get sold to a zoo. Or a circus.”

  A hot breeze crawled through the fields, rolling the surface like thick liquid. The raggant didn't open its eyes, but its nostrils flared.

  “Richard is worse,” Henry said. The scrawny boy who'd followed him back through the cupboards into Kansas weighed on his mind a lot. “Unless he lives here forever, he'll have to go back through the cupboards. Maybe not home, but somewhere else. Unless Anastasia kills him first.”

  Below Henry, from the other side of the barn, came the sound of an old door rattling open.

  “Henry of York!” Uncle Frank yelled.

  Henry turned. “Yeah?” Footsteps crossed the plank floor below him. They stopped. Old ladder rungs sighed.
>
  Five feet from where Henry and the raggant sat, Uncle Frank's head emerged. Henry smiled at him, but Uncle Frank didn't smile back. He was looking past his nephew, out the open doorway and into the fields. When he'd pulled his thin body up, he scratched the raggant's chin and then sat down beside Henry. His eyes wandered across the sky and then down through the wheat sea.

  “Careful, Henry,” he said. “Place like this can get in your bones. Even if you don't care for it, leaving can hurt more than it needs to.”

  Henry looked into his uncle's face, lean and leathery, with his eyes hooded toward the horizon like a sailor looking for land he knows he'll never find. His face didn't really explain his words. It never did. His uncle had tumbled into Kansas as a teenager, another victim of the cupboards. Henry wondered how long it would be before he looked like Frank, until he looked like something borrowed and never returned, out of place but settled in and dusty. At least Uncle Frank had memories. He knew what he'd lost, though he didn't talk about it. Henry didn't even have that.

  Frank popped his knuckles and leaned back. “You can smell when the fields go green. And gold. Sound different, too. Green field rustles. Gold rattles.”

  “When's the harvest?” Henry asked.

  “Soon,” Frank said. “When the gold aims for white. You'll see the combines roll even if you don't see ‘em finish.”

  Henry watched the wind work. “I have to leave, don't I?”

  “Yep.”

  “I wish I didn't.”

  “Well,” Frank said. “If wishes were horses.”

  Henry looked at him. “Then what?” he asked.

  “Then I'd have a horse.”

  Henry almost smiled. He'd expected something like that. Beside him, the raggant snored. Still sitting up, its jaw hung open; its head sagged, nose no longer in the air. Henry eased it onto its side. “I wish I knew how long I have,” Henry said. “I don't even like being in the house. Every time the phone rings, I think someone's on their way to pick me up.”

  “July third,” Frank said. “Two weeks. Got a letter today.”

  “What?” Henry asked. “Why the third? Who sent the letter?”

  Frank straightened his leg and dug his hand into the pocket of his jeans. He dropped an envelope, warm and wrinkled, onto Henry's lap. “Came up here to tell you. It's from a lawyer. Phil and Urs are parting ways. They've got some sort of custody arranging to handle next week. They'll figure out which one gets you, and then you'll leave.”

  Henry opened the letter and stared at it. It was addressed to his aunt and uncle, and there wasn't anything more to it than Uncle Frank had already told him.

  “Two weeks,” Henry said. “I'll miss the fireworks.”

  “Could be shorter,” Frank said. “Moon goes halfway round the world in two weeks.”

  The two of them sat, and the raggant snored. After a while, Frank stood and stretched.

  “Anastasia will call for you when supper's set,” he said, and stepped toward the ladder.

  Henry nodded. He didn't watch his uncle leave.

  When Anastasia's voice reached him, Henry's legs still hung out the doorway, but he was on his back. He sat up and looked at the letter in his hand. He folded it up and slid it into the envelope.

  “Henry!” Anastasia yelled again.

  “Coming!” he said, and then flicked the envelope out onto the wind. He watched it spin as it dropped to the swaying tall grass beside the barn. “Go where you want,” he said, and he stood up.

  He left the raggant sleeping and climbed down the ladder. Anastasia had already gone back inside.

  The table was crowded, but only Anastasia seemed to want to talk. Henry and Richard sat on one side, facing Henry's three cousins. Richard was wearing a tight yellow sweatshirt with a cantering pony on the front, forcibly borrowed from Anastasia. He was picking at the blue cast on his wrist. Uncle Frank sat with eyes unfocused and fork frozen in his hand while Aunt Dotty spread a smile, scooped buttered noodles, and passed plates. Henry looked at Penelope. She pushed her long black hair out of her face and smiled at him with lips clamped tight. Beside her sat Henrietta, curls loose and chin on her hand. She was staring at Henry again, but when their eyes met, she looked down to where her plate would be as soon as her mother gave it back. Beside her, Anastasia, shortest in her chair, chattered cheerfully.

  “When Henry leaves, we'll have to keep the raggant, won't we? You should have named him a long time ago, Henry. I'll write you a letter and tell you what we name him. Do you want me to do that?”

  Henry looked at her and shrugged. She looked at Richard.

  “What are we going to do with Richard?” Anastasia asked. “He can't live here forever, wearing my clothes.”

  “Don't be rude,” Penelope said.

  Anastasia looked shocked. “I'm not being. Mom?”

  Dotty nodded. “Be polite.” Passing the last plate, she sat back in her chair and puffed stray, frizzing hairs off her forehead.

  “I'm not being rude,” Anastasia said. “I'm just being honest. We should send him back through the cupboards.”

  “Anastasia!” Dotty said.

  Richard looked up, his thin, blotchy face even blotchier above the yellow shirt. “If I am going to be discussed,” he said with eyebrows raised, “I would rather not be present.”

  “No,” Dotty said quickly.

  “I want my clothes back,” Anastasia muttered.

  “Frank?” Dotty asked. “Could you be here, please? In this world, with us. Just for now.”

  Frank took a deep breath, coming awake. “We couldn't send him back if we wanted. Not without the big cupboard in Grandfather's room, and that bedroom door is magicked right back to unbudgeable, isn't it? I'm not trying the chain saw again, and the attic cupboards are too small even if we folded him in thirds.”

  “I can't believe we're talking about this,” Dotty said. “Frank Willis, you promised to plaster over those cupboards, and no one was to even think about traveling through them. Do you want something to happen?”

  For a moment, Frank sat perfectly still, his jaw no longer chewing, his hand in the air above his plate. Then he spoke. “Doesn't matter. Don't have Grandfather's key.” And he spun himself another forkful of noodles.

  Henry was thinking the same thing. He had a wall of doors in his attic bedroom, none of them leading to Boston, one of them leading back to his birth-world and the world the raggant had come from. But it didn't matter. The cupboards up in his attic were like little windows, linking other places to this one, but they were no good to him unless they channeled through the cupboard in Grandfather's room, the one big enough for him to crawl through. He had Grandfather's journal with the combinations to connect each of his little doors to the bigger cupboard, but without Grandfather's key, there was no point.

  “Henrietta's got the key,” Anastasia said. “I've told you a hundred times, but you won't listen.”

  Henrietta banged her fork down onto the table and rolled her eyes. “I don't have anything.”

  “It's not in any of her normal hiding places,” Anastasia continued. “But I'll find it.”

  Henry stood up. “Do you mind if I go up to my room?” he asked his aunt. “I'm not real hungry.”

  Dotty looked in his face, her eyebrows lifted. “What are you going to do?”

  Henry halfway smiled. “Nothing,” he said. “I don't have Grandfather's key.”

  When he reached the big second-story landing, Henry stopped. Anastasia's voice was mixing with Henrietta's, but he pushed the noise out of his head. He was looking at Grandfather's knobless door. Chopped and chewed and even cursed, it was still shut tight, impossible to reopen without the key. Any hope of finding where he'd come from was behind that door.

  Henry walked around the railing and stood directly in front of the mutilated wood panels. With his toe, he prodded the tangled mess of carpet where Frank had dipped the chain saw. He'd lain right there with the hands of Nimiane of Endor around his neck. Her blood had burned his fa
ce like acid. His throat constricted at the memory, and his stomach queezed. Shivering, he hurried back around the landing to the steep attic stairs.

  There were worse things than going back to Boston.

  In the long, coved attic, Richard's sleeping bag and a small stack of borrowed clothes were piled against the wall beside Henry's closet room. Richard had wanted to sleep on the floor at the end of Henry's bed, but this arrangement was as close to room-sharing as Henry was willing to go.

  Once inside his room, Henry went through what had become his entrance ritual. He turned on his light and stood back to examine the wall of cupboard doors. Ninety-nine doors of all shapes and sizes looked back at him. His eyes were first drawn to the center, where the door with the two compass knobs ruled the wall. It wasn't the most ornate of the doors, but, with the right combination, it could channel any of the others through the larger cupboard downstairs in Grandfather's room. And it had been the raggant's entrance into Kansas.

  After letting his eyes run over the deep grains and bright inlay, flaking varnish and rusted hinges, the different colors, textures, and shapes, Henry next stepped to his bed. He pulled it away from the wall, where it hid half of the bottom two rows. He held his breath, forced himself to crouch at the foot, and looked directly at the black door on the bottom row with the gold knob in the center. Door number 8. The door to Endor.

  Henry finger-checked the four screws Uncle Frank had used to seal it, stood up quickly, and pushed his bed leg back against it. Then he breathed. He knew that Nimiane wasn't behind that door anymore. She was behind whichever door his cousins had randomly selected while he and the witch had been unconscious. He'd heard the story, the description of the bat hitting her head, her cold skin. Anastasia still insisted that they should have stabbed her in the neck. But they hadn't. Afraid she would wake up, they'd fished her through the big cupboard and into some unlucky world. She wasn't in Endor anymore, but Henry still found the screws reassuring.

  When Henry was breathing again, he found door number 56, the door to the place called Badon Hill, and opened it. He sat on his bed and waited for the air from that other place to drift in. It always did, and when the smell of moss and rain and a wind that had toppled breakers and poured through trees surrounded him, then Henry considered himself to actually be in his room.