Read Online The House of Discarded Dreams by Ekaterina Sedia - Free Book Online Page A

appears to be.”
    “Oh yes.” Peb sank underwater and spoke in small exhalations of bubbles. “I think it’s a plane of some sort too, but not a very nice one.”
    “What’s there?”
    “Find out yourself,” Peb said, suddenly petulant. “I am busy.”
    “You’re awfully cranky for a ghost,” Vimbai said.
    No answer came and she exited the bathroom, ducking just in case there was a tree suddenly growing outside the door. With no classes to go and not much else to do but to explore the house, Vimbai headed for Felix’s room.
    He let her in. He had changed the least of them all, Vimbai thought, and it was probably a good thing—any more weirdness added to Felix, and he would be closer in nature to the ghosts and Maya’s animals than to Vimbai and Maya. Maya, on the other hand . . . but that was something to consider later.
    “Felix,” Vimbai said, politely. “May I take a peek inside your hair?”
    His eyes rolled wildly, like those of a spooked horse. “Why would you want to do such a thing?”
    “Curiosity,” Vimbai said. “And considering that we are in a floating house that sprouts new rooms every day, I think there may be some insight gained.”
    Felix slumped, and shuffled over to his bed, to sit on it in a pose of defeat and remorse. “You’re blaming me,” he said. “I tried to tell you.”
    “No one is blaming you,” Vimbai said. “What was it that you tried to tell me?”
    “That there are forces in the world,” Felix answered. “Forces that run along invisible wires—like phone wires of the spirit, and sometimes you get trapped in them like Peb, and sometimes you stumble in the middle and get caught like a fly in a spider web…” He fell silent, shaking his head; the hair undulated along, with a barely noticeable delay—as if air provided too much resistance.
    “You’re telling me you know what’s going on.”
    Felix shook his head again, with greater vehemence. “I only know that there are forces, and we are crossing their conduits. And we probably shouldn’t. Like you shouldn’t look in my hair—there’s nothing there for you, nothing at all.”
    “I shouldn’t or you won’t let me?”
    Felix sighed. “I’ll let you but I do not think it’s a good idea. But go ahead, look, see what I care.”
    Vimbai felt a cold wave of hesitation rise in her stomach. “I’m not going all the way in,” she said to Felix as much as herself. “I’m just going to look, okay?”
    “Whatever,” Felix said and slumped some more.
    Vimbai approached him in small childish steps. The black mass undulated closer to her face, and in it she saw quiet seething, like the surface of a cauldron full of boiling pitch—or at least what Vimbai imagined one would look like. It took an enormous effort for her to stretch her neck until her face—her eyelashes, her nose, her lips—touched its surface. It felt like sinking her face into a basin full of cold water—she was shocked at how cold it was, at how it singed her skin with frost.
    She opened her eyes. It was dark at first, but as her pupils dilated and adjusted, she started to make out shapes at a distance—a mountain with a rounded top overgrown with what looked like trees bending in the wind and a faint white sickle (moon?) hanging above it.
    Then the mountain shuddered, and two white round windows opened inside it. Vimbai jerked back as she realized that in the dusk she had misjudged the distance badly, and what she thought was a mountain in reality was a human head just inches away from her face, and the white circles were its dead eyes.
    “Hello,” the head said. “You new?”
    “I’m . . . temporary,” Vimbai said, and her heart—outside of here, distant—thumped like mad. “I’m just looking in.”
    “Like all the legs,” the head said. “Funny, I see legs and hands and feet and only rarely—other heads.”
    Vimbai nodded. “I have a body too, only it’s outside,” she said. “I’m