No Place Like Home, page 1
Linh S. Nguyễn is a Vietnamese immigrant to Canada who straddles many intersecting worlds. Her stories revolve around home, liminality, and living between cultures. She graduated from the University of Toronto as an English major and went on to pursue her master’s in Arts, Creativity & Education at the University of Cambridge. She loves to ride horses, swim in the ocean, and design creative, community-engaged programming to foster opportunities for underrepresented artists. No Place Like Home is her debut novel.
LinhSNguyen.com
No Place Like Home
Linh S. Nguyễn
For Nicky, Mark, and Tim, my teachers who defined risk.
For my family, who defined home.
Contents
A Story Out Of Place
A Bargain Struck
What Longing Does
A Summer Storm
A Hero’s Test
Practice Makes...Potatoes?
Paint-Splattered Skies
The Tree Guardians
Proof of a Heart
The Cornfields
The Cognitor
Bigger Purpose
Into the Woods
The Creature in the Night
Let it Snow
The Riders
Ruse’s Hollow
Fate in Her Own Hands
Energy Creates Energy
The Full Moon
A Burst of Yellow
The Ride Out
The Brickside Inn
Asta
Operation Orchard
The Pomegranate
Tree Guardians (again)
Nebulo
Stray Witch in Silva
A Spell for Sol
Homeward
One Hundred Meters
Acknowledgments
A Story Out Of Place
On the morning of the annual book fair, Lan dragged her feet to class. She dragged them up the stairs of the basement where she lived with her dad, past the bright yellow dandelions blooming on the neighboring lawns, and along the wide sidewalk to her school’s decorated fence. She did not glance up, for she had memorized every step of the way. Besides, Lan was busy moping. Who could blame her? The annual book fair was reason enough to mope, even if it happened to be a beautiful May dawn.
In fact, the sun breaking through spring rains only made things worse. It reminded Lan that summer danced around the corner, which would’ve been good fun if she’d had any plans in store. Instead, a decidedly non-vacation awaited. No cottage. No trip abroad. Not even a glimpse of her faraway family back in Việt Nam.
“Do you listen to anything I say?”
Lan jumped at the voice and banged her elbow on the half-open double doors of Cordella Elementary.
A tall kid held it ajar for her, his big brown eyes inches away. He shook his head. Lan took several paces back, clutching her throbbing funny bone.
“I didn’t see you,” she said, gesturing awkwardly at the door she’d walked into. “Don’t take it personally, Manav.”
Manav sighed. He was the only kid in Lan’s sixth-grade class who wore button-down shirts and dress pants on a regular day, but no one questioned it. Being the fastest hundred-meter track runner had its perks. Manav waited for Lan to pass before following her up to their lockers.
“I was asking if you know what you want from the book fair at lunch,” he said. “That is, if you haven’t read every book on the shelves already.”
“Ha,” said Lan humorlessly. “What I want isn’t the problem.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means stuff at the fair costs money, Manav. Not that I’d expect you to know,” said Lan with a sniff, glancing over his polished shoes and ironed jacket. She was pretty sure her own shirt had cost four bucks from Chinatown. Its touristy maple leaf print was starting to peel. Manav looked offended.
“Just because my parents work hard—” he began.
“Oh, please, save it.” She slammed her locker shut with a bang, banishing the reflected version of herself scowling in the dollar-store mirror. Her long black hair, unkempt, shielded her round face and wide eyes. Lan grabbed her bag and turned away from Manav’s miffed expression—but not before she caught two girls in their class whispering, tossing their blond curls as they turned from her.
“Why do you always look like you’re half zombie?” whispered her seatmate, Segen, as Lan slid behind her own desk. Her gaze lingered on the retreating backs of the whispering girls. “You sure you’re alive in there?”
“Last I checked,” said Lan, glumly. “At least a zombie apocalypse would make for something new around here.”
Instead, she had to sit in class and listen to their teacher, Ms. McCrimmon, talk up the book fair as if Lan didn’t want to go with all her heart. All those new releases! But she would have to wait to get them at the library, or stumble across one on a neighbor’s lawn, or borrow from some kid who was already through with their copy. As if she weren’t enough of a loser in every part of her social life at this school.
“I’d have thought you’d be excited about today,” Segen continued. “Don’t you like to read? I mean, you must, right? It’s all you ever do.”
“I can’t get anything at the fair, anyway,” said Lan.
She remembered stepping into the school library for last year’s fair, months after she had joined Cordella Elementary. Of course, Lan loved the usual stacks of old books, their corners dog-eared and browned pages stained with thumbprints. Each mark seemed to change the story a tiny bit. New books, though, that was something else. Those covers shone, boastful. The pages were crisp. Reading a new book felt like it was meant just for her, and Lan hadn’t had much for herself lately, ever since she and her dad had moved to Toronto across the world from Hà Nội, the only home she’d ever known.
It was where her mother remained with their big family and Lan’s baby brother, Khôi. Their move to Canada kept getting delayed for some work reason. That was as much as Lan could understand. All she knew was that one day, her family had shrunk. An ocean expanded between the rest of her family and Lan and her dad. Her parents had told her, Rồi sẽ qua nhanh, but when a year passed, she stopped believing they would be reunited soon.
When she’d seen the books on display at the fair last May, Lan had wanted one so badly it almost made the homesickness disappear. But she knew better than to ask her dad. It didn’t matter what his reason was or how sad he looked when he refused her. After a year, Lan couldn’t bear to hear the word no any longer. The books were her favorite thing about her new school, but she’d save herself the disappointment this year by not going to the fair at all.
Without the refuge of the library to look forward to at lunch, morning crawled by. Through open windows, birds chirped and sunlight drifted into the warm room. The blue of the sky was so unlike the pale gray of Hà Nội, but there was something lovely about that gray. Lan wondered what her mother was doing back in their old flat, and whether her brother had stopped his teething. Leaving him had been the hardest part. He was too little to be separated from their mom and home, but they’d thought she could handle it. Lan wanted to prove them right, but most times, it felt easier to pretend she was elsewhere altogether.
Someone coughed loudly. Lan’s head snapped back to the board, where Ms. McCrimmon was talking about the order of operations. Lan had learned this stuff ages ago. Her mom had a habit of assigning extra homework to make sure she was ahead. It was hard to pay attention. Segen’s pencil tapped incessantly by her side. A glance at the clock showed a half hour to lunch break. Then she could sidle off on her own.
But as the lesson drew to an end twenty minutes before the bell, Ms. McCrimmon switched off the projector and waved her arms like a conductor, looking oddly chipper for a Friday. Her curls bounced, which either meant something very good was about to happen or quite the opposite...
“Look alive!” she said. “What do you say we call it a morning and put aside those math problems? Let’s take lunch early and go to the book fair as a class!”
“Are you kidding me?”
Lan’s groan was hardly audible above the cheers and scraping of chairs as her classmates stowed their books and rushed to form a line out the door. She should’ve guessed by that eager look that Ms. McCrimmon would make the fair a bonding activity! So much for Lan’s plan to stay away. Could anything go right? Before she could protest, Lan was shepherded downstairs and through the library doors, where a twelve-foot gold-and-silver balloon arch had been set up for the occasion, swaying ever so slightly in the open window’s breeze.
“It’s a little much, isn’t it?” said Lan, grimacing at the spectacle. Her school could be so extravagant sometimes.
“I think it’s sweet,” said Segen, and she hopped off to join her friends by the stationery display.
Lan didn’t move. She stood alone beneath the arch as her classmates dispersed, feeling the exact thing she’d dreaded: a deep familiar longing in the pit of her belly. Gleaming new releases winked at her from the shelves, teasing. She wanted them all. Tentatively, Lan took a book off the display and turned it around. The price was marked in bold, and the first digit alone made her shove it back in a rush. She glanced at the clock above the librarian’s desk. Fifteen minutes to the lunch bell, when she could leave—but was she supposed to look at the pens for that
The rest of her class faded into background noise. Lan walked, pausing at captivating titles. Well-known words whispered when she passed. Old characters waved. She saw familiar names and ran her hand along the neatly stacked spines, sighing contentedly. Libraries never failed to put Lan at ease. They struck that special balance between comfort and excitement that no other place managed to. No matter how much had changed in her life since the move, she could at least return to the stories she loved best.
Lan’s hand snagged on a strange book jutting out.
She doubled back and pulled it from the shelf. The plain cover was dark red with a single puffy dandelion shape printed in gold leaf. The book was heavier than most in the kids’ section. It must have been mis-shelved, for no colorful image marked the front, and not even a title or author name was embossed on the hardcover. It looked like an old adult book, though the pages were crisp as could be, untouched as though waiting for her. Lan ran her fingers along the sharp white edges, then opened the book to the first chapter. The cream-colored page was blotted with a brown stain, smelling faintly of chocolate. So much for brand-new, thought Lan, unimpressed. But as her eyes scanned the elegant font, her palms began to tingle. Words leaped at her—price, quest, witch, king, and the names Annabelle and Marlow. Lan began to read.
IN WHICH A GIRL TAKES FATE
INTO HER OWN HANDS
Once upon a time in Silva, the land of lost and found, a powerful king named his price of admission.
“Tell me what it would take,” Annabelle said. She leaned forward in her chair.
“Why?” her grandmother asked, tilting her head back to stare at the girl. “Planning to take on the king?”
“I just might.”
The old woman smiled and ran a hand through her graying hair. She lowered her voice conspiratorially.
“For that, you’ll need a heart,” she said.
“I have one,” Annabelle declared.
“But do you have proof? Easy to claim without proof.”
“It beats. I can feel it.”
“Many things beat, Annabelle—what makes you say it’s a heart? Can you prove how much it holds, how much it bleeds?”
“I can get proof,” said Annabelle. “Tell me what else.”
“Courage,” said her grandmother, “in large supply.”
“Is that all?”
“Not quite, but the last bit is easy—a good story.”
“Proof of a heart, courage in large supply, and a good story,” Annabelle repeated. “I can get them all. I’ll go to Asta and find this wizard king, Nebulo. He has to restore Sol to how it was before his curse ruined us. It’s the least he can do.”
“Careful, love. If it were that easy, we’d have sent one of our own ages ago.”
“Everyone is needed in Sol, except me,” said Annabelle. “It has to be me.”
The lady took a drink from the goblet before her, eyes closed and lips cracked. Her forehead was creased, but she did not protest. Annabelle looked beside her at Marlow, the fourteen-year-old nicknamed “golden boy” of the Border Academy. His blond hair fell over green eyes that held her steely gaze. Their features were complete opposites. Marlow’s light hair and built frame contrasted her sharp edges, deep brown hair, and eyes sunken into a bony face. His gaze was guarded, but their five-year friendship founded on secrets meant she could recognize his slightest frown. Marlow was worried, but he would go anywhere Annabelle asked. She knew that much.
“Lady Marya,” he said to the old woman.
She brushed aside the title. “None of that Silvan nonsense. Call me by my name, Marlow. That shows proper respect in my homeland of Sol.”
“Marya,” Marlow tried again. “Do you know anyone who has crossed the desert and made the journey on foot to Asta, let alone gained an audience with the king?”
“Not without a powerful witch. Few of those around these parts nowadays.”
“Where have they gone?”
“Fled the southern coast to Maare, I expect, or bartered their way to Asta years ago when the desert dried up our land. What’s left of our witches in Sol have their hands full keeping everyone alive.”
“Nothing’s going to change if we don’t do something about it, though, right?” said Annabelle. “Shouldn’t we take a risk? You always said our people are warriors.”
“So we are,” said Marya. “You most of all. How I’d love to bid you to go on your own quest, but you must remember why you live within these high walls and not under the open skies of home. The world has shifted with the careless magic of the Silvan king. The Border Academy keeps you safer, stronger than you would be in Sol.”
“Only because nothing ever happens in the middle of a desert,” said Annabelle. “Am I expected to stay here forever? I haven’t been home in five years.”
“A warrior understands patience, Annabelle. It will take time for us to rebuild.”
Marya pushed her chair back, wooden legs scraping the stone floor. She grasped her granddaughter’s hands and stood, tall and muscular despite her weathered face. She had come in her Solian armor, soft leather fitted over her brown skin, unlike the tough pads that everyone at the Border Academy wore. Annabelle hated how they made her slow and heavy in a fight. All that whacking and blundering around was ridiculous. Fighting was not so different from dancing: smooth and graceful. That’s what her grandma had taught her, before Annabelle was sent away.
“I will bring Daisy your love,” said Marya, cupping Annabelle’s cheek in goodbye. The ride back to Sol cost half a day, and the sun was already high.
“You can tell her I’ll see her soon enough,” said Annabelle.
Annabelle’s sister had been two years old when the Silvan king’s spell turned their coast into sweltering sands. Daisy couldn’t remember much from the times before, but Annabelle still saw the leaping turtles cresting the ocean’s waves of her homeland each time she closed her eyes. There’d been so many colors in Sol, a hundred shades of blue and green in the water alone. The smell of salt in the air would’ve been enough to lift her spirits now, but there was none of that at the Border Academy. In the heart of the enchanted desert, only dust and hunger reigned.
Annabelle’s stomach twisted when she tried to recall Daisy’s little face, her large eager eyes slipping from memory. She let out a gasp as her grandmother’s uneven nails dug into her wrist.
“Don’t do anything foolish, Annabelle,” said Marya. “Stories only go so far. Remember why we sent you here. You’ll come home when the coast is restored.”
Marya stood and drew her cloak up to cover her mouth. Marlow rose and offered his arm to walk her to the stables. Her grandmother took it, Annabelle suspected, to be polite. As if Marya, the greatest fighter of her generation, needed an escort. Marlow, as usual, drew longing stares from Academy recruits wherever he walked, his golden hair catching the sun. Annabelle trailed them, steps behind. Her mind raced. Her dark eyes focused as if sizing up an opponent before a fight. Her hand moved subconsciously to the black stone blade on her hip. Marlow glanced over his shoulder and shot her a look of warning—but it was too late. Her grandmother should have stayed quiet if she’d wanted Annabelle to stay put.
For now that Annabelle could see a path beyond the dreary halls of the Border Academy back to her family in Sol, she had to try. She would cross the desert, make her way to Asta, and give that stupid king they called Nebulo the items he wanted for his “price of admission”—what a pretentious idea, anyway! What kind of ruler charged his people to repair mistakes that he himself had made?
She could change that, thought Annabelle. She would ask him to return the Solian lands to how they were before, when generations of her people lived on the southwestern coast undisturbed. All she needed was proof of a heart, courage in large supply, a good story—and perhaps a witch.
A Bargain Struck
The loud buzzing of the lunch bell jolted Lan back to the library stacks. She gasped and nearly dropped the book. There were no other copies like it on the shelf. She turned it over again in her hands, riffling through the pages quickly and catching glimpses of characters like the tree guardians, the Cognitor, and King Nebulo. Lan frowned. The story seemed like a classic fantasy quest, which probably involved many trials on a long journey and eventually a happily-ever-after for Annabelle, Marlow, and Sol.
