* * *
The corridors of the building were a maze. How can we live here if I can’t even find the elevator? Keziah thought.
He went around and around, finding only doors upon doors. So he followed the stairs, down, up, down, until he finally found steel-like double doors. service elevator, the sign said.
“Finally,” said Keziah, and pressed the button.
The machine creaked to a stop before him and dinged, and the doors opened. It was larger and darker than the one he had ridden in earlier. He got in and pressed a button—any button. The doors closed and he began to descend.
This elevator looked way older than the last. Hadn’t been cleaned in a long time, either. And those shiny colors that swirled as he went—was that a thing that elevators did?
The elevator suddenly let out a long groan. The shiny colors swirled, faster, faster. Keziah grew dizzy, so dizzy he found himself floating, weightless, falling. He screamed.
Then the elevator came to a creaking halt and Keziah passed out on the floor.
* * *
When Keziah awoke, someone was talking to him.
Wake up, get up, hey! someone was saying, but he couldn’t see who because the elevator lights had gone out.
“What happened?” He lifted his head, then slowly got to his feet. “Who’s there?”
Psst! Up here! the voice said. Keziah peered through the dimness and saw a lizard—a large red-spotted gecko—looking down at him.
“Are you…talking to me?” He paused. “In my head?”
Is there anyone else here with us? The lizard seemed to shake its head.
“No, no, I’m dreaming,” Keziah said. “This can’t be real. Lizards don’t talk.”
You better believe we do, the lizard said, scurrying down the wall and jumping into Keziah’s pants pocket. Now look alive, they’re coming.
Before Keziah could respond, the doors opened, and light streamed into the elevator.
At first, he thought the doors had opened into an old part of the apartment building, but the longer he looked at it, the more he became aware he was not even in an elevator, but some sort of cubicle. The large hall before him was ancient and dim, with rusting metal, dripping pipes, and flickering lights. Rows upon rows of cubicles lined the hallways, stacked one on top of the other, with glass fronts. Through those, he could see people—children, just like him, all dressed in the same white uniform. They were reading, sleeping, playing games—but they all seemed unhappy and they didn’t pay him any mind.
The woman standing in front of him—was she a woman? He couldn’t tell—held a long baton-like instrument. She was dressed in a uniform so prim and stood so straight that she could’ve been a sculpture. He wasn’t sure what to think of her face, but he knew two things: one, she was definitely an alien; and two, wherever she was from, did everyone else also look like a crocodile?
“All right, you,” she said curtly, her lips curling to reveal a row of pointy teeth. “Out and about, now.” She tapped her stick on her legs. “Your number is 1521. Be sure to remember it.”
“Number?” Keziah asked, but she prodded him out of the cubicle with her stick.
“Off with you, now, join in line,” she said. He stumbled forward and was hustled into an already moving throng of kids who were just as confused, some already weeping and asking for their parents. Their wails echoed off the curved steel walls.
What is happening? Keziah thought, fighting back the cold crawling up his spine. What is this place?
Just keep your head straight and look forward, said the lizard in his pocket, who he’d almost forgotten about.
Soon, he found himself in another large room that was covered in doors. Each door had a pair of children in front of it. Keziah was shoved forward toward a door on the left, next to a girl with glasses.
“Psst!” she said when the wardens had left them alone. “Do you know where we are?” Keziah simply shook his head.
“Step through, please,” a voice said over invisible speakers. The girl gave Keziah a questioning look, then pushed the door open.
As they stepped through the door, they found themselves in a narrow corridor. A row of lights lit up the darkness before them. A door at the end of the hallway before them slid open to another room just like the one before. This one had a table in the middle, with various shiny, glowing pieces of something scattered over it. Keziah ran over to it, momentarily forgetting about the strange girl and the even stranger place where they’d ended up. On closer examination, Keziah realized they were jigsaw pieces.
A puzzle! Keziah couldn’t believe his eyes. Finally, a familiar thing from his real world. It looked straightforward, except…
“Where’s the picture we need to solve it?” The strange girl next to him shrugged. He looked around for other clues, but there was nothing else on the table.
He heard a click and looked at the wall behind him. A countdown clock had started. Thirty minutes.
“Okay, what’s going on?” the girl asked.
It’s a trial, the lizard said.
“A what?” Keziah and the girl asked at the same time.
“Who said that?” the girl said, looking around.
Keziah’s eyes widened. “You can hear him, too?”
“Hear who?”
Keziah dipped his hand into his pocket, pulled out the lizard, and placed it down gently. “Him.”
The girl peered at the lizard and back at Keziah.
“We’re talking to a lizard?” A small frown played on her forehead. “Where did you find him?”
“He was here when I woke up in this place.”
Her eyes widened. “So you mean he’s from…here?” She knelt before the lizard. “Where are we?”
The Stonehound, came the reply.
“The what?” Keziah asked.
It’s a spaceship. Well, it was a spaceship once, but it malfunctioned during one of its flights, and it got stuck here. Now it has been converted to an intergalactic establishment where children throughout the universe are sent when they’ve lost their way. These trials are a shortcut—pass them, and a portal opens up and returns you home, just like the one that brought you here. But fail, and you remain here for a long, long time, just like others before you.
The girl looked like she was about to cry. “We’ll be stuck?”
Yes, the lizard said. Five thousand light-years from home.
The kids sat, dumbfounded.
“What did you do?” Keziah asked the girl. “I mean, to get sent here.”
“I—I ran away from home,” she said, sounding very small. “My best friend moved away from our building, and I was angry.”
“I’m actually moving away, too,” Keziah said. “To Willow Island. And my parents don’t seem to care that I don’t have any friends there.”
“Willow Island?” the girl said, a funny look on her face. “That’s where I’m from.” She extended a hand. “My name is Adanna.”
“I’m Keziah.” He tried thinking back to the lizard: What is your name?
I am the Critterling, came the reply. I have lived in this ship for ages. But you must hurry now and complete the trial before you.
“Argh, the puzzle!” Keziah and Adanna rushed to the table. But how were they supposed to put together a picture they hadn’t seen?
“What is it, even?” Adanna asked.
It is the Stonehound, the Critterling said. What it looks like from the outside.
“But we’ve never seen it,” Keziah said.
Then use your imagination.
“Can you imagine a spaceship?” Keziah asked Adanna.
She thought for a moment. “I can try?”
So they set to work. Keziah employed all the tricks he’d learned in solving jigsaws: start from the edges; group similar pieces by color, te
xture, shapes; look for clues to find where they match. Adanna grouped the pieces while he put the jigsaw together.
The Critterling was right. The edges were dark and cloudy like what Keziah imagined space would look like. The gray pieces were the body, the black was the tail, and the whites were the lights.
“I think…that’s it?” Adanna said. And she was right—they had finished the puzzle. Keziah knew they had done it correctly, too, because the counter went down, a green light buzzed, and a panel in the wall slid open for them to walk through.
Now listen very carefully, the Critterling said. This is the big trial. You must understand it will test every single aspect of your wits. No two children have ever been able to solve it.
“No one?” Keziah asked.
None—and I have followed many!
“We’ll try,” Adanna said.
“Yes,” Keziah said. “We’ll get home.”
* * *
When they went into the room for the final trial, the lights went out and the countdown started in a dim red light. One hour.
“What kind of puzzle is this?” Keziah asked. “I can’t even see anything!”
It is not one puzzle, but many. It is—
“A puzzlehunt!” Keziah screamed, then slapped a hand over his mouth.
Adanna raised an eyebrow at him, then giggled. “What’s a puzzlehunt?” she asked.
Keziah had learned about puzzlehunts from watching some of his favorite TV shows. In the shows, the kids would race against one another to solve a series of connected puzzles that revealed one final solution or prize. He explained it to Adanna in a rush.
A light lit up on the first puzzle and they sprinted over to it. There was a lone object sitting on the pedestal and a screen with an audio clip. Keziah pushed play.
“This is the black box of the Stonehound’s last moments before permanent malfunction,” a mechanical voice read. “Most of the data is corrupted. To determine what happened to the Stonehound, you must fill in the missing information.”
When the clip finished playing, the rest of the room lit up in five different spots, each with a clue material and an audio clip just like the others.
“I don’t know anything about flights,” Keziah said.
“I do,” Adanna said, grinning. “My mom is a pilot. She talks to me about flying all the time!” She walked about the room. “It’s like we’re looking for five missing pieces of the flight information: mission number, departure, destination, flight path, last known status. We need the first to begin anything.”
They headed to the first station, which was not a puzzle per se but a math equation where they were supposed to solve for a value.
“I don’t really…do math,” Keziah confessed. “I’m not so great at it.”
“Oh, that’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said. “I’m not great either, but we can try together.”
They worked their way through the puzzle slowly, sweating as they tackled numbers in their heads. When they figured out the answer to the equation, they punched it in, and the screen blinked green. They cheered.
The second, the Critterling said. Go, fast!
They went through the next three puzzles in the same manner. The second was a word puzzle whose answer offered the departure information of the Stonehound, a planet called Castle. The third was something similar to a Rubik’s cube, but the arranged letters spelled out the ship’s destination, a planet called Liew. The fourth was a pattern puzzle that showed the flight path once they deduced the repeating pattern.
When they came to the fifth and final puzzle, there were only ten minutes left. It was a string of letters with five missing. A message read: A part of your body that you can never hold with both hands.
“Your wrist?” Keziah said. He’d heard this riddle before.
“I’ve heard it’s your elbow,” Adanna said, peering at the message. “And look, we only get one try.”
“And both our solutions are five letters each!”
The countdown’s clicks were so loud now. Both kids were sweating.
“How sure are you about your answer?” Keziah asked.
“I don’t know,” Adanna said. “You?”
“Me neither,” he said.
They stared at one another.
“You know,” Adanna said. “My mother used to say we make mistakes and learn from them. Maybe making mistakes isn’t too bad after all. Getting the best out of them—like making a new friend—is what matters, right?”
Keziah nodded.
“Whatever happens after we choose,” he said, “can we still be friends?”
“Definitely,” Adanna said.
They turned back to the screen.
“I say we go with your elbow,” Adanna said. “It makes more sense. I can still touch my wrist with the same hand.” She bent her wrist all the way, laughing and reaching with her fingers.
Keziah grinned and nodded. “Let’s do it.” He punched the letters and waited, finger poised over the final button.
“Together,” Adanna said, and they pushed the button with a finger each.
They winced together, waiting for the red signal to go off. But a green signal went off instead, and the letters arranged to spell another word—BELOW—that completed the information for the ship’s last known location. All the puzzles in the room disappeared, the lights came back on, and a door opened into a cubicle.
“We did it!” They high-fived one another.
“Congratulations,” a voice said. “You may now exit the Stonehound. And may you never return.”
Keziah and Adanna stepped into the cubicle, the Critterling in Keziah’s pocket. The door shut, and darkness engulfed them.
* * *
When Keziah woke up, his parents and the estate agent were peering over him. Behind them stood two men dressed in work overalls.
“Are you all right?” Mom was asking, shaking his shoulders.
Keziah looked around. He was back in the elevator. Somehow, the men had forced open the doors.
“I—I—” Keziah was saying.
“Shh, shh,” Mom said. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Mom took Keziah to a nearby bench and sat with him, rubbing his head. While she fussed over him, Keziah looked in his pocket. The Critterling was still there.
Can you still speak? Keziah asked.
Yes, the Critterling responded.
We did it! We passed the trials! Keziah said.
Yes, the Critterling said. And for that, I must thank you. You said we would get home—and we did. Because of you.
And Adanna too.
Yes, the Critterling said. She, too, is home now.
Will I see her again soon? Keziah asked.
Oh yes. I hear this is a tiny island, even smaller than the Stonehound! You should run into each other soon. And as long as I am with you, she can always hear me, and will find you.
Keziah smiled for the first time since waking up.
“What are you smiling about?” Mom asked.
“Nothing,” Keziah said. “I’m just excited to be moving here.”
Mom arched an eyebrow. “Really? You were so worried you wouldn’t find friends here!”
Keziah’s smile widened.
“You know what? I think I already have.”
COPING
BY TOCHI ONYEBUCHI
For 2.7 seconds, CJ Walker could fly.
It felt like a lot longer. As the quarter-pipe ramp got smaller underneath him, it started to feel like he was just going to hang sideways in the air forever, fumbling for his skateboard, trying to keep it pressed to the soles of his feet. He was supposed to do other things. He was supposed to twist his body. Left. No! Right. No, he was supposed to curl into himself so that he could flip forward. No, he was supposed to be still. St
ock-still. No, wait, he was supposed to—
* * *
The first thing he noticed when he woke up: the ground was really soft. Too soft. It felt like…a mattress. And bedsheets and…oh. When his eyes opened fully, he saw he was in a hospital. Hovering over him like an asteroid about to crash into his face was Mom. He caught her expression just as it changed from genuine, tear-filled worry to “Just wait till we get home.”
A nurse went to the window and pulled the drapes wide. The sun blasted through. CJ tried to raise his arm to shield his eyes, and that’s when the pain shot through his whole upper body so fast and so sharp that he yelped. A cast enveloped his forearm.
“He wakes,” the nurse said with a chirpy voice. Mom still had that stern look on her face and said nothing, so the nurse leaned over CJ and smiled and said, “You were out for a bit.”
CJ’s gaze darted nervously between Mom and the nurse. “Where’s my board?” The only thing he could do without hurting was wriggle his fingers.
“Oooh, you’re lucky that I ain’t burn that thing in the backyard,” Mom growled. “I oughta snap that thing in half. What did I tell you about getting on that thing? You have any idea how worried I was when I got the call that you were at the hospital? You lucky I work here so I could get here so fast, but oooh when we get back home, you’re gonna wish you broke more than your arm, because I’m gonna—”
“Now, CJ, here’s your medication,” said the nurse, saving him from further berating. “You hit your head pretty hard.” To Mom, “We’re gonna keep him for a little longer just to make sure it’s only a concussion and not anything more serious.”
The sunlight was still too bright, but if CJ looked away from the window, he had to face Mom. He had to face the way she frowned at him, not just like he was in trouble and not just like she was disappointed in him. She looked scared.
So he turned back to the window and the sunlight so bright that he couldn’t even see what outside looked like.
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