Meeting (6 page)

Maya raised her hand.

“Maya?” Ms. Caras said, surprised.

“Can you tell us more about ghosts? I mean, I’ve seen them on TV and in movies and books, but there are a lot of different kinds, and it seems like they can do different things. What are the ghost rules?”

“This is fiction, Maya, so you can make your own rules. There are lots of resources in the library and online if you want to learn more. I don’t think there’s one set of ghost rules. If you find one, could you bring it in to share with the class?”

Maya sat back, frustrated.

“So. Suspense. It’s all about the details. . . .”

“Field trip after
school today,” Benjamin told the kids at the Janus House table during lunch.

Maya had started out school sitting with the Janus House kids for lunch, and she still did, since they were most of the people she saw every day. She looked over at Helen’s table. Helen was sitting with two other girls Maya had seen but didn’t know. No, one of them was that girl Sibyl from homeroom. Sibyl had some kind of diet drink she was sipping, and she didn’t seem to be talking much. Once in a while she looked over at Maya and narrowed her eyes. What was that about?

Travis sat with the Janus House kids some of the time, but today he was over with his eighth-grade buddies. He had flunked seventh grade, but they still liked him.

“Where are we going this time?” Benjamin’s older sister Twyla asked.

“Sviv,” said Benjamin.

“Again?” Twyla made a face. “The air tastes terrible there. It gives me a sore throat.”

“Uncle Dylan arranged for medical tutors to meet us,” Benjamin said.

“Are you guys going through the portal?” Maya asked. She had seen the portal operate a number of times, but she hadn’t seen any of the kids go through it. Mostly she’d seen otherworld travelers come and go. She liked watching them when she had a sketchbook and pencils in hand. Those were the sketchbooks she had to leave at Janus House.

“Yep,” Benjamin said. “The Elders want us to meet teachers and get experience on other worlds. This is a short trip, just a few hours. Want to come? You’ve got to come sometime.”

NO!
Rimi thought.
No!

Ow, my head,
Maya thought, and aloud she said, “I think Rimi is allergic to portals.”

“There’d better be some way to get her over that,” Rowan said, scowling as usual. “If you’re going to be one of us, you have to travel.”

No, no, no!
Rimi yelled, softer this time, but still emphatic.

“Maybe not this time,” Benjamin said. “Twyla’s right. Sviv isn’t the funnest place to go on your first trip through the portal. Talk to Aunt Sarutha. She’ll help you find a good place. Your first time should be great. Maybe she can track the trade missions and send you on one of those; you see the coolest things in the marketplaces.”

A sketching tour, Maya thought. More pictures she wouldn’t be able to take home, but seeing things and capturing them on paper carried its own reward. It was Maya’s kind of magic.

No portals,
Rimi said.

What if we could go back to your home planet? The growing house where you were on a vine?
Maya had images of Rimi’s home planet from when she had shared Bikos’s memories. The thick, muscular
sissimi
vines had twisted through a hot, humid, glass-enclosed place, with glowing fruit hanging among the hand-shaped blue and purple leaves.
Find your relatives? Wouldn’t you like that?

Rimi thought of her seedhood in that warm place, where she and the other seeds were thinking together with the conscious parts of the vines and leaves that bore them and fed them. They stretched out under the ground with the rootnet, and reached toward light above them, and they had many, many thoughts. Some shared memories of ancient vines who had lived out under the open skies, those who had made first contact with otherworlders. Some remembered legends and myths, and others held memories of bonds the seeds had made with many offworlders. Rimi knew many things rested in the root minds, to be shared when the time came, and she knew she had left too soon, before she had learned all of them.

She shifted against Maya’s skin, agitated.
I want to go home
, she said,
but not through a portal
.

I don’t think there’s any other way
.
You’ve been through Krithi portals. We’ve seen the one at Janus House, and that one looks different. Maybe it feels different, too.

I’ll think about it
, Rimi thought.

“We’re not going through a portal today,” Maya said.

Gwenda said, “I think they’re planning something else for you today anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Benjamin asked her.

“Aunt Sarutha was talking about inviting a new
sissimi
pair to visit and talk with Maya and Rimi.”

“Oh!” Maya said.
Rimi! Someone to see you!

Good,
thought Rimi.
They will see how beautiful and perfect I am.
She had a smile in her thoughts.

Yes, they will,
Maya thought.

“is Travis going
on the field trip?” Maya asked when school let out and all the Janus House kids, plus Maya, Rimi, and Travis, headed for the apartment building.

“I don’t think he’s ready,” said Benjamin.

Rowan said, “He can go if he can pass the tests.”

“What field trip?” Travis asked.

“They’re going on a field trip through the portal,” said Maya. “Today.”

“We do it about once a month,” Benjamin said. “You should probably come on one soon.”

“Field trip! To another planet! How cool is that? How long does it take?”

“It’s a pretty big energy expenditure to open a portal. We try to make every trip worth it,” said Benjamin. “We’ll probably stay on Sviv about five T-hours. We’ll get medical training, and our guardians and the little kids will collect
sva
nuts.”

“Five hours,” Travis said in a disappointed voice. “I’ve got maybe an hour and a half, max, before I have to head home. Next time tell me further in advance. Maybe I can arrange some help for Oma and go. Maya, are you going?”

“No. I’m going to meet someone else with a
sissimi
bond.”

“Whoa.” Travis walked in silence. “Whoa,” he said again. “I’d like to see that.”

 

 

 

Inside the front door of Janus House, Rowan said, “You lot, gear up and head down to the portal. Benjamin, when are we scheduled to leave?”

“Three fifteen.”

Maya checked her watch. Ten minutes to three.

“Get going,” said Rowan in his bossiest voice, and the cousins scattered, including Rowan.

Maya and Travis stood alone in the front hall.

A stocky, dark-haired woman in an ochre smock and blue jeans opened the door to the apartment on the right. Her skin was a warm suede brown, and her face had a lived-in look. Her hair was short and straight. Maya knew she had seen this woman at Saturday Music Night, but she didn’t remember her name.

“Maya? Travis?” she said.

“Yes?” Maya said, and Travis said, “Ma’am?”

“Both your teachers are guardians on today’s field trip. Did you hear about that?”

“Yes,” said Maya.

“I’m Columba Janus. I’m supposed to look after you two this afternoon until Maya’s company arrives, which is weird for me. I have an apprentice I’m training, and I work security. They don’t generally ask me to entertain. It’s not one of my skills.” She frowned, then shook her head. “It’s going to be a little while until you can meet your visitors, Maya, because the field trip has to use the portal to get to Sviv before your visitors can use it to come here. Travis, you could head home now.”

“I don’t like to go home before I have to,” he said. “Could I meet Maya’s visitors, too?”

Columba thought, then said, “I don’t see why not, but I’ll ask someone who knows more. Come on in.”

They followed her into an apartment that was different from the others Maya had seen in the building. Columba’s apartment had big windows that looked out into a forest of potted plants on the verandah. Beyond the plants and the porch railings there was a stretch of the lawn that surrounded Janus House on all sides, and beyond that was Passage Street.

Yellow and white curtains framed the windows. The light coming in was green, filtered by the porch plants’ leaves. One of the windows was open a couple of inches.

Columba had a green and black zebra-striped couch, an entertainment unit, a desk with a computer on it, and more plants inside her living room. Some looked rain-forest exotic, with leaves like hands or palm fronds or platters with holes in them, and the flowers looked like insects or butterflies or the heads of dragons. The air smelled like vanilla and cinnamon and hot candle wax.

Through an archway was a kitchen with red counters, wooden cupboards, more windows that faced the porch, and a door that led outside. A pale tan table with two chairs beside it stood in front of one of the windows. Warm daylight gilded the sink and stove.

Maya liked this apartment the best of any she’d been inside in Janus House.

“Have a seat,” Columba said, waving toward the green and black couch. Travis and Maya slid out of their backpacks and settled on the couch. Maya got her sketch pad out. The feel of the pencil between her fingers and the smooth paper under the heel of her palm reassured her. She opened to an empty page and sketched Columba’s apartment. She got out a second pencil and let Rimi fill in details. Travis leaned back, relaxed almost to sleep, his usual response to any available wait time, and watched the drawing appear.

Columba went to a small round picture on the kitchen wall that showed a flower Maya knew was called a bird of paradise, only it was white instead of orange and blue.

Is that power picture ugly?
Maya whisper-thought to Rimi. As a design, it matched the house furnishings better than most.

Not as ugly as most of them,
Rimi thought.

Columba touched the flower and spoke in Kerlinqua.

A familiar voice from the picture answered her. Either Nola Noona or Namdi Sarutha, Maya thought.

Columba cocked her head, then said another phrase. None of the words were ones Maya had learned yet.

Then Columba and whoever was on the other end said, “
Sesstra
,” which Maya did understand: good-bye.

Columba turned to them. “Aunt Noona says you can stay to meet the travelers, Travis, but then Maya and Rimi have to have alone time with them.”

“Excellent,” said Travis.

“So in the meantime, would you like some tea?”

“Got any water?” Travis asked. “Some without knockout drugs in it? I would purely appreciate it.”

Columba grinned. “I think I can manage that. Maya?”

“Water would be good.”

I wonder if she has anything to eat. You’re hungry
, Rimi thought, and Maya’s stomach growled. Maya wondered if Rimi had made her stomach do that. What if Rimi could make her burp or fart?

Rimi laughed.
I’m not doing anything except noticing what signals your body sends
, she thought.

Maya burped, startling herself. “Excuse me!”

“Nice one,” said Travis.

You didn’t make me do that
? Maya asked Rimi.

Uh
, thought Rimi.

Wait! You
did
make me do that?

I didn’t know I could do anything like that, but when you thought about it, I wondered. So I
—
well, I
—

Maya felt a burp building again, this time a big one. She managed to shape the words
all right!
around the burp as it came out.

“Stellar!” said Travis. Columba frowned at Maya.

Okay,
thought Rimi.
I wonder what happens if I
—

Don’t do it!
Maya thought.
At least, not here and now. Don’t. Okay?

All right,
Rimi thought with a mental sigh.
Ask Columba for food, or I’ll go find some for you.

“Do you have any snacks?” Maya asked quickly. “Please?”

“What did you have in mind?” said Columba.

“Cookies. Crackers. Fruit. Bread. Anything like that.”

“Sapphira cooked up a batch of spice bread last night. Wait here and I’ll get you a loaf,” said Columba. She left the apartment.

“What’s with the burps?” Travis asked when the door had closed behind Columba. “That’s my department.”

“Rimi made me!” Maya said.

“Whoa. Weird. How does that work?”

“I don’t know.”

It is gas teased in a particular direction
, Rimi thought.

“Eww!” said Maya.

“What? What did she say?”

Maya told him.

“She can tease gas? Who knew gas had self-esteem problems?” Travis said, and then Columba was back with something the size of a loaf of bread, wrapped in cloth.

“All right,” she said. She went to the kitchen, unwrapped the bread, and sliced it on the bread board, then brought out a plate and some cloth napkins. The slices were rich, moist, and dark brown, and they smelled like ginger and cloves and nutmeg.

“Thank you,” Maya said as Columba set them on the table in front of her. Now she felt her own hunger.

“You’re welcome. I could use a snack myself.” Columba grabbed a slice and bit into it. Maya and Travis helped themselves.

“Have you been to Sviv?” Maya asked Columba.

Columba made a face. “It’s on my list of least favorite places to visit. That’s why I volunteered to host you two today. Much less evil.”

“What’s a
sva
nut?” asked Travis.

“The only thing that makes Sviv worth going to. They’re these nuts as big as your hand. You can slice them like you slice bread, and they’re these big, delicious, nutritious, buttery-tasting slices of, well, they’re kind of like macadamia nuts in texture and a little in taste. They’re like elite travel rations. One nut can keep you alive a week.”