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The Campbell family is sitting in the small living room of their apartment. Lizzie and her father are lying on the carpet, racing to complete a word search. Gregor is trying to catch up on the daunting pile of homework that he’s missed. Boots, for the tenth time today, flips through an ABC’s book, proudly naming each letter that she comes across.
“D is for dinosaur!” She chants. “D is for dog!”
Grace watches from the couch. She does that sometimes. Watches them. Lets her eyes wander from each person in the room, scared to miss even a moment, scared that they’ll all vanish whenever she dares to blink.
It’s been a week since they left the Underland. Not nearly long enough. And yet, Grace feels herself giving in, leaving behind her fears and losing herself in comfort’s embrace. Gregor tells her that it’s over, and she chooses to believe him. Is it really so wrong to hope that their troubles are behind them? Is it really so wrong to hope that they can be safe?
Nothing is normal anymore. Grace knows that nothing has been normal for a long time, but she has to hope that they can change that. She sees the pain in her son’s eyes, pain that has touched them all in some way, and her heart aches but continues to beat with the knowledge that this is not forever. It is a temporary type of pain. Their wounds are deep, but now is the time to heal.
Grace cannot bring herself to fear what comes next. She is so lucky that she still has a reason to be afraid, and so she is not very afraid at all. Her family is battered and bruised and exhausted, but they are home, and one day, that will be enough.
“E is for elephant!” Boots giggles, tripping over the word. “E is for eagle!”
Lizzie is racing her dad on a word search, and she’s winning. She’s starting to think that he only challenges her to these competitions to boost her ego. She’s winning, as usual, but it’s a little harder to stay focused today. The letters on the page are getting all jumbled in her brain, rearranging themselves into completely different words than the ones she’s supposed to be looking for. And then she’s back there, in that code room, analyzing countless intercepted messages, looking for the clue that will make everything clear. In the naming is the catching. In the naming is the catching. In the naming—
“You alright, Liz?” Her dad asks.
Lizzie nods. “Got stuck on a word.”
“Better hurry up and find it,” he tells her, winking. They both know that she’s still miles ahead of him.
It’s nice, being home. The Underland has never been a place for her. Not like it was for Gregor, or her dad, or even Boots. She was in her element in that room, though. Cracking the code, doing something she was good at, and being a hero for doing it. It’s nice, she thinks, to be someone worth prophecizing about. It’s nice to have a real purpose.
She would never tell her parents that. The Underland is not her place, and she’s okay with that, and she’s lucky to not have been hurt by it as directly as the rest of her family. She knows this. It was nice to be more than she is, if only for a moment. But more than that, it’s nice to be home.
“F is for flower!” Boots says. “F is for frog!”
The frog in her book is bright red. She drums her fingers on the page, humming a little song to herself. The jungle was fun. Boots misses the frogs. And Temp. She thinks she’ll ask to see Temp soon. Maybe he can give her a ride around the house.
No, she realizes, brows furrowing. That’s not right. Temp has never been to her house before. She’ll have to invite him. Grandma would probably like Temp.
Boots misses the Underland. She just doesn’t know it yet. One day, she’ll realize that she’s never going to go back. One day, she’ll realize that it was a dangerous place, and certainly no place for a small child. One day, she’ll realize that the Underland was never supposed to be a home for her, but against all odds, it became one anyway.
Boots flips the page. “G is for giraffe!” She says, then gasps, looking at her brother across the room. “G is for Gregor!”
He doesn’t answer. An odd silence fills the room.
“That’s right, Boots,” her dad tells her. “Very smart.”
She beams, bouncing up and down in her seat. Lee looks away from the word search that he’s been struggling to complete and looks his son up and down. Gregor is tapping a pencil against his chin, and it’s unlikely that he heard Boots speak at all. He’s been like that a lot since he came home. Distant.
Lee knows he will never understand what Gregor’s gone through, but he thinks he understands better than most. He, too, has suffered in the Underland, endured pain and hopelessness and fear. So, so much fear. But there’s a difference between being held captive by rats and being the hero of a story. The Warrior. Lee was nothing more than a victim. Gregor carried the weight of humanity on his shoulders, fighting not just for himself, but for everyone. Gregor became a part of their world, forging friendships and experiencing loss that would stay with him forever.
Nobody would ever understand. Lee would never understand. Because unlike Gregor, who became a part of their world, and who will always be a part of their world in one way or another, Lee couldn't be happier to be home. The Underland is a fascinating place, and one that he’d love to explore if things were different. But there is no part of him that is willing to take that risk. There is no part of him that would ever choose to return. For his son, it is not as simple.
The Overland is Lee’s home. He has to wonder if Gregor can say the same.
“H is for hat!” Boots continues. She yawns, resting her head on the arm of the couch. “H is for home!”
Home. Gregor is home. Sometimes, it doesn’t feel like it.
His family worries, and he can’t blame them. He worries, too. It’s not really anything new. For as long as he can remember, they’ve always been worrying about one another, and that’s a normal day in the life of the Campbells.
Normal. Gregor definitely doesn’t feel normal. He wonders if he’ll ever feel normal.
The strangest thing, he thinks, is that it was only a year. One year of his life in which the Underland was something that he had to worry about. Something that he was a part of. One year that would follow him forever.
It wasn’t all bad. There was so much that happened, so many things that Gregor can think about, and he isn’t quite sure what to focus on. He thinks of Ares. It hurts. He thinks of Luxa. That hurts, too. He thinks of Ripred and Hazard and Twitchtip and Howard and Temp and Hamnet. He thinks of everyone he met and everyone he loved and everyone he lost. Sometimes, he thinks that he shouldn’t think at all, because even if he focuses on the good, it always seems to hurt.
But then, sometimes, he thinks of Vikus. The old man who proved to Gregor, time and time again, that any battle can be won if one has hope.
Most of all, Gregor thinks that this is the hardest battle he’s ever faced. The recovery. The not knowing what comes next. The return home, a place that he isn’t even sure he belongs in anymore. He isn’t sure that he belongs anywhere. But he has a lot of time to figure it out, and so he thinks of Vikus, and he thinks of hope, and he hopes that one day, everything will be okay. One day, his house can be a home again, and he won’t think too much of the other home that he’s left behind. One day, he will think of everyone he met and everyone he loved and everyone he lost, and it won’t hurt as much. Gregor thinks of Ares, of Luxa, of Boots and Lizzie and his mom and dad, and he thinks of home.