The Door at the End of the World

by Caroline Carlson

  It wouldn’t budge.

  I jostled, jiggled, cajoled, and tugged. The key swiveled in the lock, and the knob turned on its spindle, but the door wouldn’t open no matter how hard I pulled. “It’s stuck,” I said to the bees, trying to keep my voice low enough that Arthur couldn’t overhear me. As a rule, it’s not a good idea to give travelers any reason to panic.

  “Stuck?” said Arthur. (I groaned.) “May I try?” Before I could explain any of the reasons why he shouldn’t, Arthur strode past me, grabbed the gatekey, and twisted it hard. Then there was a sharp snap, and he stepped back from the door, holding the key in his hand. Or, rather, half the key.

  “Hmm,” said Arthur. “That’s too bad. I think I might have broken it.”

  I stared at him in horror. “You think you might have?”

  “I can fix it, though!” Arthur said quickly. “I’m sure I can!” He went back to the door, fiddled with the lock, peered at it, took his glasses off, put them back on again, wiggled the doorknob up and down, said “Ah!” a few times, and turned back to me.

  “It doesn’t look fixed,” I pointed out.

  Arthur looked uncomfortable. “I can’t quite see the problem,” he admitted, “but I don’t think you’ll be getting this door open again anytime soon.”

  I could see the problem, and he was standing right in front of me. “You don’t understand,” I said. “I have to get the door open. It can’t be stuck for good.”

  “Don’t worry.” Arthur smiled and handed me the useless half of the spare gatekey. “I’ll just take the long way around.”

  I’d like you to know that I always try to be professional, even in a crisis. A few months earlier, the Gatekeeper had caught a woman trying to smuggle bags full of Eastern spices through the worldgate, and I was the one who typed out the whole incident report for Interworld Travel while the Gatekeeper shouted and waved her cane in all sorts of directions I’d never known about before. This time, though, I couldn’t stay calm. “It’s not as simple as that!” I snapped. “You’ve traveled into another world, and now you’re stuck in it, and the Gatekeeper’s stuck over in your world somewhere, and worst of all, I’m stuck here with you. Do you know what the punishment is for breaking the door between the worlds?”

  “Um,” said Arthur. He wasn’t smiling any longer. “No?”

  “That’s because no one has done it before! It’s not possible! But you’ve managed to figure it out somehow, and we’ll probably both be arrested before the day is out, and I’ll never find the Gatekeeper, and it’s all thanks to you!”

  Arthur stared at me. Without blinking, he leaned against the wall and slid down it until he was sitting on the grass. “That’s a lot to take in, Miss Eberslee,” he said at last. “May I call you Lucy?”

  I glared at him.

  “All right. Miss Eberslee.” Arthur plucked a handful of clover from the ground and held the little plants up to his face, one at a time. “Four leaves,” he said quietly. “They’ve all got four leaves.”

  “Of course they do.” I knew I shouldn’t have shouted; I’d managed to make Arthur even more useless than he’d already been. “All clovers have four leaves.”

  “Not in my world.” Arthur let the stems fall back to the ground. I could see his hands weren’t entirely steady. “You’re serious, aren’t you? If this isn’t my world, what is it?”

  The Gatekeeper had told me that most ordinary Easterners didn’t know much about the worlds beyond their own, but I hadn’t realized exactly how serious the situation was until now. I sighed and sat down next to Arthur. We were going to have to start at the very beginning. “You’re in the world next door to yours,” I said. “This world is called Southeast. Your world is called East.”

  “It is?” Arthur frowned. “And East is just on the other side of that wall?”

  “Sort of. Not really. It’s complicated.” If I started trying to explain the fabric of time and space to an Easterner, we’d both be sitting there until we were ninety. “If you climbed over the wall, you wouldn’t see anything but fields. The only opening between our two worlds is right behind the door. At least, that’s where it was. Now there aren’t any openings at all.”

  “Because I broke the door?”

  “Well, yes.”

  Arthur looked so alarmed at this that I actually felt a little sorry for him. “To be fair, though,” I added, “you wouldn’t have broken the door if I hadn’t opened it. And I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I apologize for that.” I stood up and brushed the dirt off my hands. “Anyway, I’m sure you have lots of questions, but they’re going to have to wait. We’re both in trouble up to our ears right now. You’re not allowed to be here, I wasn’t allowed to open that door in the first place, and the Gatekeeper, who is allowed to open it, is lost somewhere on the other side of it. If you didn’t see her in your world, I have no idea where she might be, and now I’ve got no way to find out, and for all I know she’s stuck over there permanently.” I took a long breath. “Honestly, I’m not sure what to do next. What would you do if you were over in East and a person went missing?”

  “I suppose,” said Arthur, getting to his feet, “I’d call the authorities.”

  I shook my head. “That’s no good. I am the authorities!”

  Arthur squinted at me. “But you’re a child.”

  “I’m thirteen,” I corrected him. “I finished school last year, and I’m in charge here when the Gatekeeper’s away.”

  “Well, I’m sixteen,” said Arthur, “or I will be in a few months, and in my world, neither of us would be old enough to be in charge of anything. You’re the Gatekeeper’s deputy, and the Gatekeeper is missing?”

  I nodded.

  “Who’s in charge of the Gatekeeper, then?”

  I tried to imagine someone telling the Gatekeeper what to do. The idea of it was so preposterous that I almost laughed. “She’d probably tell you no one is,” I said, “but we both work for the Southeastern Interworld Travel Commission. That’s a government agency,” I added when Arthur stared at me blankly. “Anyway, Interworld Travel can’t find out what we’ve done. Their rules are the ones we’ve broken! Remember what I told you about getting arrested?”

  “Right,” said Arthur, but he sounded distracted. He scratched his mouse-brown hair and gazed past me. “Who’s Florence?”

  I blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Or where is Florence? I suppose it could be a place instead of a person. In my world, it’s a place in Italy. Do you have Italy here?”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. “Florence,” I said, “is a person. An awfully important person, as a matter of fact. Why do you ask?”

  Arthur pointed out into the garden beyond us. “The bees,” he said. “They seem to have something to say about her.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Did you know your bees can spell?”

  Arthur was right. I’d been too distracted to notice, but at that very moment, the bees were spelling out FLORENCE and getting more and more agitated about it; they didn’t like being ignored. “You don’t need to whisper,” I told Arthur. “They know they’re talented.” Truthfully, they could be a little conceited about it sometimes. “They were a gift to the Gatekeeper from the next world over.”

  “Are you sure about that?” he said. “We don’t have spelling bees in my world.” He paused, frowning. “I mean, actually, we do have spelling bees, but . . . they’re very different.”

  “Oh, the bees aren’t from your world.” I kept forgetting how much Arthur had to learn. Even his tutor hadn’t managed to teach him a simple otherworld geography lesson. “Southeast has two ends. The near end, where we are now, is connected to East. And the far end is connected to the next world over on the other side.”

  Arthur looked dubious. “A world with magical bees?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “That world’s called South. They’ve got lots of other magical things in South, too, but when they want to send a diplomatic gift of goodwill, it’s usually bees. I’
m not exactly sure why.” I glanced back at our own colony. A few more bees had flown over to lend their assistance, and now they said, FLORENCE!!!!! After what had happened with the spare key, I wasn’t exactly keen to take their advice again, but they were right: we needed help from an expert.

  “Is there a door leading into South, too?” Arthur wanted to know. “A door like the one that’s here?”

  “Of course,” I said. “And that door has a gatekeeper.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Her name is Florence.”

  3

  I’d asked Arthur to wait in the front room while I packed for our journey to the other end of the world. He kept popping his head through my bedroom doorway, though, and each time he had a new question to ask. “I can see you don’t have telephones here,” he said, “but can’t you send Florence a letter? Do we really have to go all the way to her house?”

  There is postal service at the end of the world, but it’s not reliable: In a place where things tend to go missing, the thing that tends to go missing most of all is the mail. A courier from Interworld Travel stops by the gatehouse once a month to pick up our paperwork, and the Gatekeeper had sent me out a few times to deliver her most important messages by hand. “We really do have to see Florence in person,” I told Arthur as I stuffed my clothes into a rucksack. “I do, at least, and there’s no way I’m leaving you here by yourself.”

  Arthur nodded and disappeared into the hallway. He was back three minutes later, though, brandishing one of the folded-up maps I always kept on hand for travelers on their first trips out of Southeast. It was a glossy, touristy thing decorated with illustrations of strange animals, historical figures, and famous otherworld sights. In fancy boldface type across the front, it said A VISITOR’S GUIDE TO ALL THE WORLDS.

  “Miss Eberslee?” said Arthur. “How many worlds are there?”

  I sighed. At this rate, I’d never finish packing. “There are eight.”

  “Eight!”

  I set down the towel I’d been folding, unfolded the map, and held it up so he could see the eight circles, all different colors and sizes, arranged around the wrinkled fabric of time and space like points on a compass. “Yes,” I said, handing him the map and turning back to my rucksack. “Eight.”

  The map stopped Arthur from asking questions, but only for a minute. “Who’s the woman holding a pair of scissors?” he wanted to know. “Why is there a giraffe?”

  “We can talk about it later,” I said. “In the meantime, since you can’t wait quietly, could you at least make yourself useful? You can go into the kitchen and pack up some food from the cupboard.” I’d never traveled from one end of the world to the other before, but it seemed like a good idea to bring snacks.

  “Of course.” Arthur nodded. “Sorry.” He folded up the map and disappeared again.

  It wasn’t poor Arthur’s fault he was stuck in this world, I reminded myself. He might not have been the traveling companion I’d have picked if I’d had a choice, but I would have to try to be more charitable toward him. At least he looked right at me instead of gazing over the top of my head. I didn’t have many clothes that would fit him, but after a few minutes of searching, I dug out an old cardigan that might do in a pinch and a waterproof jacket that had been a hand-me-down from my older brother, Thomas. I tossed them both into my rucksack, along with a thick scarf the Gatekeeper had knitted for me—even in springtime, who knew what the weather would be like at the other end of the world?—and went to the kitchen to tell Arthur I was sorry for snapping at him.

  He wasn’t alone. A tall man with a graying beard sat in the kitchen chair, casting his eyes around the room while Arthur rummaged through the cupboard. The man was dressed in explorer’s gear: the usual protective canvas pants, red-and-white-checked button-down shirt, and belt fitted out with compasses and map pouches and all sorts of other gadgets. “And the Gatekeeper,” he was saying in a low, serious voice. “Is she on this side of the broken door, or on the other one?”

  “The other one.” Arthur stuck his head out of the cupboard and tossed three pears cheerfully into a picnic hamper before burrowing back inside. “At least, I think that’s right. Miss Eberslee says she’s missing, but I’m not sure where she—”

  “Arthur!” I said as loudly as I could without shouting.

  The man turned to look at me, and Arthur pulled his head out of the cupboard again. “Oh, hello, Miss Eberslee! I was just telling this gentleman about our troubles.” Arthur pointed to the man with a stick of the Gatekeeper’s favorite barley candy. “He says he wants to travel to another world.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible today.” I glared at Arthur. He obviously didn’t know who the bearded man was, but I recognized him from his dozens of trips through the gatehouse, and from his portrait in my old school textbooks, and from the commemorative postage stamp. “Arthur, this is Henry Tallard. He’s a famous explorer.”

  Tallard grinned. “Discoverer of five Northern islands, mapper of the Ungoverned Wilderness, the first to take a dip in the cool blue waters of Lake Henry—I named it myself—and direct descendant of Arabella Tallard.”

  And inconsiderate and nosy, I thought. The Gatekeeper had been right about Henry Tallard, as far as I was concerned, but I didn’t dare say it out loud. He was very famous.

  “This end of the world is temporarily closed for business,” I told him instead. “I’m sorry I didn’t hear you knock on the door. You shouldn’t have been let in.” (I sent another glare toward Arthur.)

  “Oh, I let myself in.” Tallard leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs, taking up most of the space in the kitchen. “I could see a small hailstorm springing up down by the wall, and the gatehouse door was standing open, so I thought . . . why not? Then I wandered around and found Arthur here. We’ve been having a fascinating conversation, Miss . . .” He scratched his beard and frowned at me as if he were waiting for my name to present itself in his mind. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t.

  “That’s Miss Eberslee,” Arthur told him. “I just mentioned her to you, remember?”

  “Of course. The assistant.” Tallard smiled at a spot somewhere over my left shoulder. “Eberslee, eh? Any relation to—”

  “I’m not an assistant,” I said. I wasn’t sure which member of my family Tallard was going to ask about, but it didn’t matter; I wasn’t interested in talking about any of them. “I’m the Gatekeeper’s deputy. As I was saying, you can’t travel through the door today. Why don’t you come back in a week or two? I’m sure the Gatekeeper will be happy to assist you.” If I hadn’t managed to bring her home by then, I’d have problems much bigger than Henry Tallard to worry about.

  “So the Gatekeeper isn’t trapped in another world?” Tallard asked. He looked over at Arthur, who he must have decided was the authority on these matters. “Or lost?”

  “She went to East to make some routine repairs to the worldgate,” I said firmly, “and I’m afraid I can’t let anyone through the door until she’s back from her trip.” All strictly true, and all as much as any explorer needed to know. I put on my sweetest smile and the voice I reserved for our most difficult travelers. “Let me show you out, Mr. Tallard. I’m so sorry about the inconvenience.”

  He started to protest, but I happen to be very good at steering people to the exit. I opened the gatehouse door and propelled him through it. “If you ever do run into any trouble at the end of the world,” he said as he went, “I’d be happy to offer my assistance.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Tallard,” I said, still sweetly. Then I closed the door between us and bolted it shut.

  Arthur was still in the kitchen when I got back. “What was that all about?”

  “I’d like to know that myself.” Little balls of ice started to ping on the roof; the hailstorm Tallard had mentioned must have made its way over from the garden at last. So, he hadn’t lied about everything. I was absolutely sure I hadn’t left the gatehouse door open even a crack, though, and I hadn’t heard anyone knock. Why had Henr
y Tallard been poking around the worldgate for the second time in a month? The bees didn’t trust him, and neither did I. “Are you sure you didn’t let him in?” I asked.

  Arthur nodded. “He startled me when he came up behind me in the kitchen. Made me spill the jam.” He pointed to a pinkish splatter on the floor. “Raspberry,” he added helpfully.

  “And how much did you tell him about our problems with the door?”

  “Just about everything.” At least Arthur had enough sense to look worried as he closed up the picnic hamper. “I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but he seemed so interested.”

  “I’ll bet he did.” I sank down in the kitchen chair myself. “Don’t you remember what I said? That we could be arrested?”

  “I did remember that!” said Arthur. “That’s why I didn’t tell him we broke the door! I just mentioned that it broke somehow.” He took a white handkerchief from the pocket of his pants and swiped it across his forehead, as though that would improve our situation. “I’m sorry, Miss Eberslee. I wasn’t prepared, and he asked where the Gatekeeper was, and I couldn’t think of a decent lie. I don’t know enough about this world to lie! And then, with the jam and everything . . .” He swiped his handkerchief in the opposite direction. “But I didn’t tell him we were going to see Florence.”

  That was lucky. The door to East might have been stuck, but I already felt nervous about leaving it unguarded. The last thing I needed was for Henry Tallard to test the lock for himself or, worse, to run off and find twenty of his explorer friends to help him do it. The bees would have trouble fending all of them off. “Did you tell him you were from East?” I asked.

  Arthur shook his head. “It didn’t come up. He never asked about that, and it seemed like an awkward way to introduce myself—Hello, I’m Arthur and I’m from another world—so I didn’t mention it.”