The Land of Yesterday Read online

  A crack, smash, and a groan issued from the attic, followed by a dreadful silence.

  “Father?”

  No reply. Maybe her father had already escaped out the window.

  Or maybe Widdendream had knocked him out cold.

  A determined fire pulsed and blazed in her belly as she fought against her constraints. Widdendream snarled and held her tighter. In an explosion of speed, Cecelia’s blue hair ripped the armlike boards from the wall and snapped them in half. The house roared like dragons in battle. Debris sprayed up through the hole in the floor.

  Free from Widdendream’s grip, Cecelia lunged at the attic door, but it still wouldn’t open. She needed to get to the balloon.

  Cecelia spun around. She scanned the chasm before her. She would have to jump the break.

  Coughing on paper dust, Cecelia pictured her mother’s face. She could almost smell her perfume. Hear the voice she knew before she took her first breath. Cecelia thought of her father and the beat of his heart when she laid her head on his chest. This gave her the strength to jump.

  When she was halfway across the gorge, the house shifted. The rest of the landing gave way. Cecelia plummeted into the darkness.

  Quick as whips, her hair twined any available surface, giving Cecelia time to latch on. Below her, sour winds raged faster. Every muscle in Cecelia’s arms trembled with strain. Outside the house, something mechanical whirred in a loose gust of wind.

  Glancing down through the hole in the floor, Cecelia thought about what her father had said: about the hot-air balloon outside and that she had to trust him. If jumping downstairs was her only escape, then she was going to have to jump. She would figure out how to find Father and the balloon afterward.

  “Let go,” she told her hair.

  Her hair trusted her and let go.

  Cecelia dangled by five fingers, four fingers, three—then none, and plunged into the monster’s mouth.

  Chapter 8

  Through the Rabbit Hole

  Cecelia tumbled and banged as she fell, breaking through two parchment floors before hurtling into the basement. She passed shelves of glowing clocks, telescopes, sextants, buzzing gadgets, and mysterious maps (some made entirely of secret tunnels), when one of her books, Tales of Darkness and Light, opened a foot from her face. The left page showed a fearsome beast called the Caterwaul, Cat Guardian of the Land of Yesterday. The right displayed a weathered man in a yellow coat and hat known as Captain Shim, Guardian of the Sea of Tears—a body of water abloom with daisies on the flip side of Yesterday one couldn’t cross without falling off the edge of the world. He rowed a small white boat and stared boldly back at her. Cecelia swore she saw him wink.

  The next second, the book snapped shut and dived into the dim below, toward the quickly approaching floor.

  Hair whipping wildly, Cecelia searched for something to grab on to. The lever of an odd-looking machine, riddled with buttons, knobs, and lights, jutted from the wall to her right. No matter how many times she’d asked, her father wouldn’t tell her what the machine was for, yet had insisted she not touch it. Except now she had no choice.

  Cecelia grasped hold of the lever. She swung there for a moment, and even plotted climbing the shelves to the top, when the handle lowered, the machine clicked, and her hand slipped.

  “Oh souls,” Cecelia muttered as the basement floor fell away beneath her.

  In its place was a tunnel, a yard in diameter, that resembled a silver-gray covered slide. Cecelia slid down the chute twisting this way and that. Tiny, luminous, wiggly things poked from the misted channel walls. When she looked closer, she saw they were worms. This was a wormhole. Years ago, her father had attempted to create such a thing. He’d worked on it for years, but gave up, saying, “It’s more difficult than you might think. I can only get it to go to one place, and it’s nowhere I want to be.” That must be the machine he’d been working on in the basement since Celadon died.

  Exactly one scream later, Cecelia poured through the end of the tunnel and out the other side.

  Cecelia cartwheeled through a shimmering orange-red sky toward a purplish-goldish daisy-filled sea. A man wearing a yellow raincoat and hat, sitting in a small white rowboat, watched her fall. With a volcanic splash, Cecelia plunked into the boat, right side up on the seat. The vessel rocked; water sprayed her skin. The raincoat man smiled serenely from the bench in front of her. He had long white whiskers laced with purple lightning bolts. His eyebrows were so bushy Cecelia could have knit them into mittens. To match his rain gear, he wore galoshes to his knees. She recognized him immediately as Captain Shim, Guardian of the Sea of Tears on the flip side of Yesterday.

  Like from her book.

  Cecelia should have been horrified, startled at the very least, at plummeting through Widdendream into this netherworld via a wormhole in her basement. But here, now, in this calm, otherwhere place, for some reason, she merely felt curious about the Sea Captain. Maybe he knew the way back to her father and the balloon waiting for her.

  “Hello there, Cecelia.” Miniature bolts of lightning zapped through his beard. He took the oars and began to row.

  Since he didn’t speak in trumpets and honks, Cecelia concluded, the Sea Captain had lost loved ones, too.

  “Hello, Sea Captain.” She gazed across the daisy-coated sea; the small white flowers reminded her of her mother. Cecelia cleared the emotion from her throat and looked the Sea Captain in the eye. “May I ask how you know my name?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” he replied in a voice gruff as a storm. “I know everyone’s names. You’re the Daughter of Paper and Tears, and you’re headed for the Land of Yesterday.”

  That sounded about right. “You certainly know a lot of mysterious things.”

  “I do. But what I’m permitted to tell visitors is quite limited.”

  “How about this?” Cecelia asked, hair spooling around her in relaxed blue waves. “If you know me so well, are you also familiar with my father, Aubergine Illustrium Dahl? We were about to begin our journey together, when I dropped here through a wormhole in our basement. I don’t want to leave him behind.”

  “Good old Aubergine.” The Captain smiled and continued to row. “I’m aware of your family’s situation, sure, and of your father’s passageway. He’s traveled through it many times seeking someplace else.” He paused. “I am sorry you have to go through this confusing and crazy ordeal, Cecelia. Unfortunately, confusing and crazy ordeals are often the only way to get to the bottom of incomprehensible things.”

  Cecelia weighed the Guardian’s words. Though she didn’t want them to be true, she felt they were all the same. She couldn’t explain how exactly, other than to say things here and now seemed especially true.

  “However,” Captain Shim continued, “if you keep your eyes and ears open, I could help you find a way back to your family.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” When the Captain took his hands off the oars, the oars rowed on without him. This Captain was quite magical. “The only way to leave the Sea of Tears is to truly want to be in Today. Focus on where you wish to go, picture it clearly in your mind, and when you’re ready to leave, trust the sea to show you the way.”

  Cecelia smiled. The daisies bobbed happily upon the water. Everything here felt good. The Captain, the sea—it was all so peaceful. The more she calmed, the warmer her middle became. “One more question: Do you know anything about papering girls with cages and lanterns inside them, Captain Shim?”

  The oars stopped rowing. The Captain burst into laughter. “Well, sure I do! Every Guardian knows that.” He leaned closer as if to share a top-secret secret. “All I can tell you is this: only those who’ve been sad enough to write letters with their unhappiest tears can turn into paper and see such miracles. The trick is remembering what makes you shine. Although I have no doubt you’ll find your answer in time.”

  Cecelia furrowed her brow. “Do you know how long that will take, Sea Captain?”

  “You’ll
have to find that out for yourself.” Shim’s irises changed from blue to gold. The closer she looked at him, the more she saw. How his skin seemed to glow, ever so slightly, like the sun. How the daisies drew to him with absolute trust, how he radiated an infectious joy. “All I can say is that a lot of people are counting on you to make it through the Land of Yesterday and out the other side.”

  “Like Mother and Father, and Celadon?”

  Shim smiled dubiously.

  “Can you at least tell me if Father made it into the Aeronaut’s balloon?”

  “I’m afraid that’s for you to find out.”

  Daises flocked to Cecelia’s side of the boat. They formed the shape of a hand and waved her forward. Next, they rearranged into the figure of a child with long, excitable hair and dived into the depths of the sea.

  Cecelia looked to Captain Shim. His tangled eyebrows rose daringly.

  Like a challenge.

  Cecelia peered over the side of the rowboat. A single daisy rose from the place the others vanished. Cecelia reached out and stroked its petals. The instant she touched it, a flash of memory struck her—of the vase of daisies at the top of Widdendream’s second-floor landing. How her mother had filled it the day before Celadon died. How, when he fell, it fell with him, and daisies and water and death followed him down.

  Cecelia dropped the flower and folded her hands. She glanced at the other daisies spilling out across the horizon and pictured her father in the car this morning. How in his grief over her mother’s leaving, he’d yanked up a clump of Dahl daisies and set them on the car’s dash to remind him of her.

  Daisies. Daisies. Daisies.

  They almost felt like a clue.

  Maybe if she followed their trail, like bread crumbs through the dark woods, they would lead her back to where she belonged. But how could she dive into the water with paper skin? Wouldn’t the Sea of Tears rip her apart?

  To save her parents, it was worth a try.

  “Thank you for speaking with me, Captain Shim.” Cecelia smiled and buttoned her sweater. “I think I’ve figured out what to do.”

  “Anytime,” Captain Shim replied, grasping the oars.

  Cecelia closed her eyes and envisioned Hungrig. She remembered the mountains and sky, and her father and the hot-air balloon waiting for her at home, right now.

  And Cecelia dived into the sea, hair first.

  Chapter 9

  The Dröm Ballong and Two Very Curious Gnomes

  Cecelia screamed. As soon as she dived into the sea from Captain Shim’s boat, the water transformed into starlit space. She tumbled and sank past stars in a wet tangle of daisies and hair, no wormhole tunnel in sight.

  Cecelia stopped screaming to catch her breath.

  The mechanical whirring she’d heard earlier while inside Widdendream rose all around her as she fell through clouds and sky. The popping PSSH sound of forced air followed. The clouds cleared to reveal a miraculous sight below: a rainbow-striped hot-air balloon soaring up from the ground to meet her.

  Father! This had to be the balloon he said they’d escape in together. It looked just as she’d pictured it before plunging into Captain Shim’s sea. Surging with hope and joy, Cecelia dived toward the hot-air balloon, midnight-blue hair trailing her like a cape. Her father had to be in the basket waiting for her.

  The closer she got, the more she saw. Two petite men wearing bright vests and purplish-blue hats peered up at her from the basket’s edge. Cecelia drew in a fast breath.

  Oh souls. It really is them!

  Just that morning in class, Miss Podsnappery had insisted they were either little devils or didn’t exist, but Cecelia had always known better. The Gnomes of the Stratosphere of Now were real and kind and they had come to deliver Cecelia and her father to the Land of Yesterday.

  The Hungrig landscape grew closer and closer. Cecelia was almost on top of the balloon when the gnomes tossed a rope from the basket. Like a proper adventurer, Cecelia reached out as she passed, and caught it. She latched on and swung. The gnomes hoisted her up, and the hot-air balloon took to the sky.

  Dropping into the balloon, Cecelia declared happily, “Father, I’m—”

  Except her father wasn’t there.

  Cecelia rushed to the basket’s rim. Close enough to the ground to see every house in Hungrig, she stared frantically over the edge searching for Widdendream. But in the place her house used to be, she found only a gaping hole with a dark lamppost alongside it. Her home was gone. Widdendream was the last house in the galaxy Cecelia ever thought would leave, as some did when the going got tough. But it had. The question was: Had her father escaped, or did Widdendream take him with it?

  “Where’s my father?” Cecelia bellowed over the hiss of fuel and winds. The gnomes raced back and forth. They avoided her clenched fists and heated stares while adjusting flames, winding gears, pulling levers, and retying ropes.

  In a last-ditch effort to find Aubergine, Cecelia scanned the large basket’s floor. She checked under blankets and boxes, behind four large propane tanks and two small jet packs, beneath the tangled vines of daisies—

  Daisies?

  Her hope sank. If the flowers were clues pointing the way back to her family as she’d thought, her father should be here. The certainty she’d felt earlier wavered. What if the daisies weren’t clues at all, but more of evil Tuesday’s tricks leading her even farther from her parents?

  Cecelia cut a sly glare at the gnomes. What if they were evil like Miss Podsnappery said? What if they picked Father up after he escaped and brought him someplace she’d never find him? Except they didn’t look like tiny monsters from scary fairy tales; they were handsome in their small woolen hats, leather vests, linen pants, and strange shoes. And her instincts said she could trust them.

  But . . . could she trust herself, when so many decisions she’d made in the past six weeks had ended up disastrous? Either way, if she wanted answers, she had to be smart and stay calm.

  “Excuse me,” Cecelia implored the gnomes rushing past her. “My father told me he’d be in your balloon. Do you know what’s happened to him?”

  They ignored her.

  Cecelia’s hair tried flagging them down, but they ignored it, too.

  What was she going to do if she couldn’t find him? How would she bring back her mother by herself? This would generally be the moment she burst into tears, but again, no tears came. Cecelia forced a smile, clasped her hands at her chest, and tried to sound persuasive. “Please, I’m begging you. Has my father been here?”

  One of the gnomes—the one with smiling eyes and a big nose—paused for a beat and gave her the briefest nonchalant glance before attempting to sidle away.

  Cecelia threw her calmness overboard, grabbed him by the back of his coat, and whirled him around to face her. “Hello,” she said with a grin, hair writhing in the whipping wind. “My father, Aubergine Illustrium Dahl, have you seen him or not?”

  The gnomes shared a brief and suspicious look before shaking their heads no.

  Cecelia narrowed her eyes. They were definitely hiding something. Even the grumpy one with the long chin and impressive ears looked guilty.

  Unacceptable.

  “Okay, then, did you at least see my evil house pass by, or have any idea where it might have gone?” The kindly gnome nodded vigorously. Cecelia gasped with relief. “Oh, thank goodness! Can you tell me where you think it might be?”

  From a secret drawer in the sidewall of the basket, the gnome with the kind smile pulled out a map—one like none she’d ever seen. He held it up to the surly-faced gnome, who hadn’t stopped scowling since she’d come aboard. They appeared to agree on something and then showed her the map.

  Cecelia inhaled an awed breath. Across the top half of the page, planets really spun, stars truly glittered, and nebulas actually swirled, all within a backdrop of black. A mountain range she’d recognize anywhere, which included a labeled likeness of Hungrig set between several tall peaks, ran along the bottom edge. The
Stratosphere of Now—also labeled—comprised a glistening area right above the clouds, in the map’s center. There was even a tiny rainbow hot-air balloon rising over the landscape, with an arrow pointing to it that read You Are Here. Snaking haphazardly though it all, from the bottom to the top, were three ghostly tunnels of silver. One occupied the upper section, another twisted through the middle, the last followed the base. Yet all connected to a giant black mass of mist on the right half of the map. Neither the black mist nor the tunnels were labeled. However, Cecelia had a sneaking suspicion the unlabeled channels were wormholes, and hidden within the shadow of smoke was the land she was searching for.

  Cecelia regarded the curious gnomes, currently engrossed in scratching their ample behinds. “That giant black shadow on the map, that’s the Haunted Galaxy, isn’t it—the one said to hide the Land of Yesterday?”

  The grumpy one shifted uncomfortably, while the other nodded in answer to her question.

  “I knew it,” she said. The friendly gnome tapped the center of the black mist; lightning stuck where he touched it. “Is that where you think my house is heading, with or without my father?”

  The crotchety one twisted his lips and shook his head no. The sweeter one blinked up at her with sad eyes and seemed to want to say something.

  “Please,” Cecelia shouted at last, fists curled in frustration. “Would one of you just speak up and tell me what you know?”

  The gnomes clutched hands and squished closer together, wincing under her gaze, but she stood her ground. Finally, the more agreeable of the two opened his mouth to answer Cecelia before the other could stop him. A torrential gust of wind left his lips and almost knocked Cecelia down. She clung to the basket’s ropes, gaping at him with big eyes. The gnome clapped his hands over his mouth and the wind stopped at once.

  “What in the world was that?” Cecelia peeled herself from the basket’s back wall.

  The pleasanter gnome hung his head in shame. The surly one smirked.