The Land of Yesterday Read online

  “It’s my mother’s Joan of Arc action figure! I have one just like it. At least I did, until my house left with it, too. Thank you for keeping it for me.”

  Maybe Mother does still love me, Cecelia thought as her hair and heart danced for joy. She expected tears, but again, none came.

  “You’re welcome,” the boy answered with a tinge of sadness, as if he’d just remembered the face of a dearly loved friend. “I lost someone once, a fellow adventurer who knew me better than anyone.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Cecelia replied. “Do you know where your someone went?”

  The boy stared longingly upward, past the wind, sand, and stars. “I don’t know. He flew away in his airplane one day and never came back. I’ve been watching the skies for him ever since.”

  Cecelia rested her hand on his. “I hope you find him, as I hope to find my parents. I’ll keep my eyes open for him on my journey, if you like.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” the boy replied, back to his cheerful self.

  Turning Mother’s Joan action figure over in her hand, Cecelia thought of the day her mother found it. They’d been shopping in a tiny store in Hungrig called Myths of Milk, Honey, and Swords. Mazarine handed Cecelia a Joan figurine of her own and told her, “Remember this always: one girl can be fiercer than a thousand men and their king, the only one able to save them all.”

  Cecelia hoped her mother was right.

  “You didn’t happen to see which direction my evil house went, did you?” Cecelia asked the boy.

  He hunkered back down beside his discombobulated motorbike and removed a rusted screw. “It went that way.” He nudged his chin upward. Cecelia followed his gaze to a foreboding black planet with a blue moon. Something about it seemed familiar.

  “What is that place?” Cecelia’s hair thrashed like a wildcat in a trap. She stroked her panicking tresses, which refused to calm.

  The boy dropped the broken screw with a clank and wiped his hands on a dirty cloth. His expression turned dark as the orb itself. “You don’t want to know, trust me.” The boy was a little too dismissive for Cecelia’s liking.

  “Oh, please, I insist.”

  He passed the sheep a handful of daisies. “Suit yourself. That’s the Planet of Nightmares. It lures you to it by projecting the thing you want most. But when you land, it extracts your worst nightmares and then brings them to life.” Cecelia’s hair jumped onto her face like a flailing octopus. She pulled it free and tied it into a knot. The boy angled away from his sheep as if he didn’t want it to overhear. “And, if you’re not careful, the bad dreams root inside you and never let go.”

  “Who’d ever stop there if it’s such a horrible place?”

  “More than you’d think. Oftentimes, it’s the ones who are saddest of all.”

  Cecelia faced the ominous orb. A white cloud passed close to its black surface and formed a perfect likeness of her mother, smiling and waving Cecelia forward. A feeling too strong to ignore overtook her—the feeling of absolute certainty.

  What if her mother never actually made it to the Land of Yesterday? What if after giving the boy her Joan of Arc, the planet showed her Celadon and drew her in? What if Cecelia went all the way to the Land of Yesterday and her mother wasn’t there but trapped in her worst nightmare, and Cecelia had passed her by?

  Even if it meant jumping into her worst nightmare, she had to know for sure.

  When Cecelia looked next, her mother’s image had turned into her brother. His misty persona looked so real.

  “Thank you for the warning, and for everything,” she told the boy and his sheep. “I wish there was some way to properly thank you before I go.”

  A dry, gritty wind barreled toward them faster than they could run. It howled and whipped sand into the air, ripping daisies up by the roots. Cecelia and the boy covered their faces with their arms; the sheep buried its face in the sand. When the gust passed, it took most of the daisies with it.

  The boy dusted himself off and shrugged. “You don’t happen to have a miracle’s worth of daisies, do you?” He laughed and dusted his sheep.

  A miracle.

  I wonder . . .

  Cecelia caught sight of the gnomes. They waved frantically at her and then tapped their watches urgently. She gave them the signal for I’ll be right there.

  Then she removed her pen from her pocket while the boy watched with a half-cocked grin that reminded her of Celadon. Holding her pen high like a magician performing a trick, Cecelia unscrewed the cap, pointed it downward as if to write, and flicked it up and down three times. A few tears fell from the tip and melted into the desert. Wherever a teardrop landed, a patch of daisies bloomed.

  “Will this do?” Cecelia smiled at the boy with a clever playfulness she hadn’t felt since Celadon died.

  “Yes!” The boy exploded with laughter and applause. An instant later, the question mark over the sheep’s head disappeared. “See? You understand my sheep after all. This is exactly what he wanted. More daisies, he always says, and here you are, bringing him daisies!” The boy wrapped an arm around Cecelia and walked her back to the balloon. “I’m really glad you found us,” he said. “I’ve done my share of traveling, and along the way I’ve found that unexpected miracles are what the journey’s all about.”

  The gnomes appeared at her side, the balloon fired and ready.

  “Guess it’s time to go,” Cecelia told the boy, who seemed like an old friend. “I hope one day we’ll meet again.”

  The boy waved.

  His sheep grunted what almost sounded like bye-bye.

  “You know where to find us,” the boy said. “Come back anytime!”

  “I will.” About to step into the balloon’s basket, Cecelia turned to face him. “Wait, I never got your name.”

  “You know, it’s been so long, I don’t remember it. All that matters is that I am your friend,” he shouted over the wind. “And that I will always remember you!”

  As Cecelia and the gnomes stepped into the Dröm Ballong, she shook an extra helping of tears from her pen. Daisies spread across the desert like a wildfire.

  Cecelia heard the boy laughing as the balloon climbed into space.

  Chapter 11

  The Planet of Nightmares

  “Trystyng, Phantasmagoria,” Cecelia commanded, “I need you to land on that planet.”

  The gnomes frowned. When they craned their necks to see what planet she was pointing at, their eyes nearly popped from their knobby skulls. They tapped their watches and shook their heads with a hearty no.

  Cecelia glared. “What do you mean, no? You’re a taxi service, aren’t you?”

  Trystyng shrugged. Phantasmagoria rubbed his cheek and mulled something over. Struck with an idea, he gestured passionately at a pile of junk in the corner—spare fuel tanks, gnome-sized dinner jackets, books on dogs, way too many wheels of cheese, et cetera, then poked Trystyng, who twisted his lips into a scowl. After a brief deliberation, Trystyng reluctantly conceded to Cecelia’s plan.

  “Good. Then it’s settled.”

  The gnomes shared another fussy glance and tapped their watches harder.

  “I think I understand. You’re on some type of schedule. I’ll be as quick as I can, don’t worry.” She patted their shoulders, trying to look reassuring, even though her insides bubbled like hot sour soup. “Like my father says: pretending to be courageous is the first step on the road to actual bravery.” She smiled with hope. “Maybe we can learn to be brave together.”

  The Planet of Nightmares hung as still as death in an infinite coffin of stars. And the closer they drew toward it, the rougher the cosmic seas became.

  The winds howled and thrashed; Cecelia’s paperness rippled in reply. The gnomes rushed to strap on their jet packs yet had none for Cecelia. Instead, they wrestled her into the only parachute left that hadn’t blown overboard, which was two sizes too large. Comets shot at the balloon as if trying to push it back into space, like the heavens didn’t want them to go. All t
he while, hurricane gusts attacked from all sides.

  Cecelia’s hold slipped. Half her hair wrapped around the overhead bars, securing her before she blew away; the other half cocooned her head. Her parachute slid off in the fray. Unable to see anything but hair, Cecelia groped wildly. Finally, she latched onto a vine of daisies. But by the time she’d escaped her terrified tresses, the Dröm Ballong was spinning out of control and the gnomes were struggling to hold on.

  “Trystyng! Phantasmagoriaaaaa!”

  Cecelia propelled toward them, using the vine as an anchor. Her fingertips just brushed Phantasmagoria’s, but he couldn’t latch on. Trystyng gave her a look that said goodbye. A second later, her friends were sucked into space and she was left alone.

  Cecelia barely had time to register their jet packs’ flare to life in the distance before the Dröm Ballong hurtled toward the dark globe, and crashed with an echoing

  BOOM.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  Cecelia regained consciousness to her hair slapping her silly. She brushed it away and opened her eyes. A huge dead tree loomed over Cecelia like a monster’s claw. It was night. Dim blue light covered everything. Cecelia experienced no physical pain, just a crushing resurgence of fear when she realized that the gnomes were really gone. Trystyng and Phantasmagoria hadn’t wanted to come to this planet, but she’d insisted. Now they might be lost in space because of her.

  Cecelia hugged herself tight. The gnomes were her friends. Not to mention her only way home.

  In a panic, Cecelia checked her pocket: pen, letter, Mother’s Joan of Arc—all still accounted for. She removed her Joan, held it before her, and whispered, “Please help me be strong,” and then boldly scanned her surroundings.

  She saw no sign of Widdendream or her mother. What if the planet had tricked Cecelia, but her mother hadn’t been fooled? Still, the lantern flickered brightly within her. Something was here, waiting for her to find it.

  Not far away, the Dröm Ballong lay tipped on its side. Its deflated rainbow corpse poked through low-lying mist. Leafless trees rose around her like the bones of dead witches’ fingers. A dark forest loomed to her right. Blackened leaves and grass whipped from the left, making the same sounds her paper skin made when it crinkled.

  When Cecelia opened her sweater to check her parchment middle for damage, she found her paperness had started inching toward her back.

  Surprisingly, that wasn’t her main concern.

  A watchful blue moon hung low, illuminating the rolling mists and dreadful silence. A chill of ice ran up her spine. Everything looked familiar in a very bad way.

  “I know this place.”

  Her scalp tingled and breath seized.

  “No.”

  The sour scent of rotting and dampness and newly dug graves licked her skin.

  “Anywhere but here . . .”

  In the months before Celadon’s passing, he used to wake in the middle of the night and tiptoe into Cecelia’s bedroom. After his nightmares of broken houses and falling and not waking up, he would lift her covers and crawl into bed beside her. Cecelia would stir when his arctic toes poked at her legs. Still, she never kicked him out. He helped keep her warm on especially cold nights, which Cecelia found quite useful. And, though she would never admit it, she also found it comforting. Then evil Tuesday came and he was gone and her own nightmares began.

  Now here she was in the graveyard from her bad dreams, with no one to comfort her but herself.

  Cecelia sprang up and ran for the forest. Hair trailing in a widow’s veil, she leaped over scattered bones and dead stumps with roots that tried to grab her. Restless spirits seeped out of the ground, calling to her as she passed:

  “It’s so nice down below, Cecelia.”

  “No murderous houses here!”

  “Come, paper girl, I know just what to do with you.”

  Out of breath, Cecelia paused at the edge of the forest. Everything had gotten too loud and ugly too fast. She needed to think. But how could she, surrounded by all this death? While racking her brain trying to figure out what to do, the terrible stench of rancid greenery draped her like a wet sheet. One heart pound later, a sound wound out of the woods.

  Bang, Bang, BANG.

  Thud, Thud, THUD.

  Widdendream.

  Footsteps like dynamite sped toward her. Trees uprooted and flung for the moon. Her evil house barreled out of the woods on tree trunk legs and splaying root feet. Its arms of broken boards and walls swung at its sides, while its horrible candlelit attic eyes flickered in anger. It shook the planet off its axis with each thundering step.

  The monster stopped in front of her.

  Cecelia looked it dead in the eyes.

  “CECELIA DAHL,” Widdendream hollered, so loud she had to cover her ears. “You should not have come without Mazarine. Until you bring her to me, your father is mine!” The second-floor balcony curved into a black-toothed grin. “And because of your insolence, I must do something else to hurt him. Or maybe I’ll just hurt you instead.”

  Whip fast, Widdendream’s huge, hard paper arms reached back and uprooted a large dead oak, then hurled the tree at Cecelia. She dashed sideways. The tree crashed into the mist and shook the black earth. Cecelia coughed on splinters and dust. Her heart flapped in her chest like a rabid bat, but she held her ground. “I didn’t come here for you, Widdendream. But now that I’m here, I demand to know if Father’s all right, and to warn you that if you don’t stop hurting him, I won’t do as you’ve asked.” She raised her chin and puffed her chest. “I’ll even tell Mother what you’ve done to him. Then she’ll never want to come home to you!”

  Widdendream shook like a rain-wet dog. “You wouldn’t dare.” Moths and dust, old photos of Mother, and paper snowflakes belched out with Widdendream’s fury.

  She grinned. “Watch me.”

  Widdendream paused. Its face fell in confusion. Cecelia thought she glimpsed something else (regret? shame?) in its expression. But a second later, it was back to its arrogant and malicious self, stomping the ground with a savage roar. Bits of its brokenness spewed out between its cracks, showering Cecelia in debris.

  “Run!” Aubergine shouted from the attic. “Leave this place while you still can.” The sound of her father pounding the walls ripped Cecelia’s spirit in two.

  “Widdendream, stop!” Cecelia yelled.

  “No,” her house sneered, more ruthless than ever.

  A few old photos of her mother lay strewn on the ground. In each, she looked so happy. Now her father was kidnapped and her mother may be in trouble. Cecelia wanted her family back, more than anything.

  Blood boiling with rage, Cecelia rushed at the house, kicking and punching Widdendream’s door. “Leave him alone! My father never did anything to you. It’s me you want to punish, so punish me and let him go!”

  The front door burst outward and threw Cecelia straight back. Black vines rolled out like a tongue. She landed hard and skidded on her behind.

  “Leave here. Bring Mazarine back to me. Fail this task,” Widdendream roared through the open door, “and you will never see your father again!”

  The sudden sound of rustling wings filled the air. Red-eyed bats by the thousands flew out the front door in a gust. They smacked her face and tangled in her hair. They dived under her sweater and squirmed. She unbuttoned her sweater, flipped onto her belly, and crawled out from under the swarm, until she and her hair had room to fight back. Tresses and fists flying, Cecelia and her hair chased the demonic bats into the night.

  Hunched over and gasping, Cecelia could still feel leathery wings and bladed claws scraping her neck. Her hair wouldn’t stop shaking. Yet, unlike in her nightmare, when the bats defeated her, this time she’d conquered them. Cecelia couldn’t help feeling proud. She may not have been successful in rescuing her father—yet—but if she could beat the bats, maybe that meant she could beat Widdendream, too.

  Cecelia shouted toward the attic, “I’ll get you out, Father. I swear
it!”

  Widdendream straightened its slumped shoulders and drew up to its full height. “Hurry, paper girl, before I do something you’ll regret. And remember,” it growled, “I’ll be watching you.” The drapes in the attic windows pushed shut. Its black tongue of vines drew in. The forest dimmed. Her house lumbered back into the woods, with her father still trapped inside. Widdendream may have won this round, but Cecelia vowed she would save her parents or succumb to full paperness trying.

  Cecelia hurried toward the balloon. If she was going to leave this nightmare, she needed to get the Dröm Ballong operational. When she was younger, she’d spent countless hours in the Dahl basement assisting her father with his fantastic array of inventions—gadgets that ticked and whirred, buzzed and flew, exploded and blasted off, though she’d never tinkered with any on her own. Still, she had Joan. And if Joan of Arc, a farm girl from a small town in a big world, could ask King Charles VII for an army and get it, then she, Cecelia, from the small town of Hungrig in an equally big world, could gather the courage and determination needed to fix this broken balloon.

  Cecelia worked for what felt like hours, trying everything she could think of to fix it: setting it straight, maneuvering the rainbow silk, pulling this lever, twisting that gear, turning gas valves left and then right, re-and-rechecking fuel levels (the tanks were still half full). After flipping the basket over for the hundredth time, something popped on her paper skin, like a button flying off a sweater.

  Oh souls.

  Faint light spilled from her middle. She looked down. The rusted door of her cage had broken through her paper doors, leaving Cecelia open and frayed at the edges. A sudden wind roared up like a monster, whipping sand hard enough to sting. Each time her dress began stitching itself back together, her cage door caught in a gust and ripped her open once more.

  Frustrated with every last thing, Cecelia squeezed her eyes tight, threw her arms and head back, and screamed into the wind, “If this is a nightmare, I’m ready to wake up!”

  Swift heat burst forth from her middle. It spread through her body by degrees, along with a powerful uprising of light. The last time her lantern had burned so clear and bright, Celadon had appeared.