Ninka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 4 of 29

Ninka wiped well water off her hands and looked at the sky. The sun was already tilting west. She had maybe five hours to reach her grandmother's house and warn her before dark. If her father found the deed, he would find the land, and the cabin, and Luna, and everything she had built. "I have to go," Ninka said. "He's asking about Gran's land. If he follows me, he wins." Luna stood up, brushing dirt off her skirt. Her crystal cat ears caught the light. "Roads are watched. I counted three cars yesterday on the ridge road that didn't belong. Two black, one gray. Same driver in two of them." Ninka stared at her. "You didn't tell me." "I'm telling you now. Don't take the road." "Then how do I get there before sunset? It's forty miles." Luna chewed her lip. She looked at the cabin, then at Ninka, then at the ground between her boots. "I have a door," she said. "My gran showed me once. I've drawn it forty-three times. I don't know if my drawings are right. But there's a way through. You come out where you want, if you hold the place in your head." "Wonderland." "Don't say it like that. It's not safe. Things watch you in there. But it's faster than any road." Ninka thought of her grandmother, alone in the small kitchen with the yellow curtains. She thought of her father's voice on a porch. "Open it." Luna knelt in the grass and drew a shape with her finger. She hummed something low. The air above the grass split open. A tall oval swirled purple and white, framed in teacups and mushrooms and playing cards. A gray cat's grin floated at the top and did not blink. "Hold Gran's kitchen in your head," Luna said. "The whole thing. Smell, floor, everything. Don't stop walking. Don't drink anything. Don't answer if someone asks your name." Ninka stepped through. The ground under her boots became checkerboard, then moss, then checkerboard again. Voices whispered from teacups on the path. She kept her grandmother's kitchen in her mind — the burnt-coffee smell, the crack in the tile by the stove. Something tall in a red dress turned its head toward her from a hedge. Ninka did not look back. She walked faster. She came out behind her grandmother's woodshed, dizzy, grass under her boots again. The sun was still up. She ran to the back door and pounded on it. Her grandmother opened it in her apron. "Child. What." "He's looking for your land. He doesn't have the address yet. Burn the deed copy. Move the mail. Don't sign anything today." Her grandmother's face went still. She nodded once and pulled Ninka inside. She shut the door and locked it. Ninka had beaten him. But now she had to get home, and the portal behind the woodshed was gone.