The Door at the End of the World

by Caroline Carlson

  Rosemary kept reading off the InterCom. “‘Henry Tallard has been captured, but his three accomplices remain at large and are believed to be in hiding in another world. The House of Governors is currently working to alert all citizens to the danger posed by these individuals. Anyone suspected of assisting, harboring, or fraternizing with them will be brought in for questioning and possible arrest.’ In other words,” said Rosemary, looking up, “we’re fugitives.”

  “Oh, worlds,” I said. “Do you think my parents have seen this?”

  “It’s all over Southeast, apparently,” said Rosemary. “They’re offering a reward for our capture. Do you think we should turn ourselves in? I could sort of use the money.”

  “That’s not funny.” I couldn’t stop thinking of my mother and father at the breakfast table, unfolding the morning newspaper and nearly choking on their toast. I wondered whether it would horrify them more to read that I was an accused criminal on the run or that I was currently out of work. “Everyone will believe this, too. I was standing right next to the worldgate when it closed. Even I thought I’d broken it.”

  “And I am a notorious lawbreaker,” Rosemary said proudly. “I can’t deny it. It won’t look good for me at the trial.”

  “It won’t look good for any of us,” said Arthur. He must have realized that the life of a criminal mastermind had its downsides after all. “We ran away from Interworld Travel. We lied to Mrs. Bracknell’s secretary and conspired with Henry Tallard. We left Mrs. Bracknell to be attacked by enormous birds—though, in our defense, she did try to have us eaten. And now we’ve gone to ground in a smugglers’ den.”

  “You make it sound so scandalous!” Tam had come up behind us while none of us was looking. She was still smiling, though, so I guessed she hadn’t overheard too much. “I wanted to let you know that Zenna’s got some of that information you were asking for. I can’t say if it’ll be useful or not, but you ought to have it in any case.” She paused, studying our faces. “You three look a little shaky. Did one of those cannonballs land in the harbor again? It’s been happening so often lately that I hardly notice it anymore.”

  “No cannonballs,” said Rosemary. “Not yet, anyway. Thanks, Tam. We’ll come and take a look.”

  24

  Zenna, a woman about my mother’s age, was waiting for us at the kitchen table, along with half a dozen other smugglers. She gave us a wide, warm smile. “I’ve got a lot of friends in a lot of worlds,” she said, “and most of them owe me favors. I do my best to keep it that way. One of my friends happens to work in Southeast at the records bureau, so I asked him if he could send me Clara Bracknell’s address.” Her smile grew even wider. “He sent me five. That woman’s got more houses than she knows what to do with.”

  Rosemary whistled. “Must be nice to be in the House of Governors.”

  “Anyway, I wrote down the addresses for you.” Zenna handed us a piece of paper with five addresses scribbled in purple ink. Two of them were in Southeast—the Interworld Travel building, where I guessed Mrs. Bracknell kept an apartment, and a house close by in Centerbury. One of the addresses was in West. “We’ve been there already,” I said, picking up a pen from the table and making a little x next to the Western address. I made another one next to the entry for Interworld Travel. “Mrs. Bracknell might have the gatekeepers at her house in Centerbury,” I said, tapping the end of the pen against the second Southeastern address, “but it would be risky for her, and it would be even riskier for us if we tried to go there. We’d better look somewhere else first.”

  There were two more addresses on the list: one in Northeast and another in Northwest. “It’s too bad Mrs. Bracknell didn’t want to build a seaside home on a Northern island somewhere,” said Arthur, looking over my shoulder. “We’re going to have to go back through the worldgate. It doesn’t sound like they’ll be too happy to see us again at the Interworld Travel building.”

  The redheaded smuggler looked up from her InterCom. “There’s a Northwestern address on that list, isn’t there?” she asked. “I’m from Northwest, and I’ve just heard from a friend back home. He’s a ranger in the Ungoverned Wilderness, and he saw a large group of people wandering around near one of the worldgates last week, just before it closed. He assumed they were tourists back then, of course.”

  “But they might have been gatekeepers.” I put down the pen. “Did one of them have frizzy hair and a tendency to stomp?” The redheaded smuggler didn’t know. “We’d better check the Northwestern address first.”

  The promise of a trip to Northwest was enough to coax a smile out of Rosemary. I was excited, too; I’d been longing to visit Northwest ever since I was a little girl. True, none of us knew how we’d get past the travel officers who were bound to be waiting for us by the worldgate, and true, we had no idea how to sneak a group of hungry, irritable gatekeepers out of Mrs. Bracknell’s house once we’d found it, but it felt good to know where in the worlds we were going. In fact, everything felt good around the kitchen table that morning. Tam offered to cook us breakfast, Arthur made everyone laugh by telling them how he’d fallen out of a library into another world, and even the bees were feeling healthy enough to spell some of their favorite words, elaborate ones like PULCHRITUDINOUS and BOURGEOISIE. Tam’s bacon and Northquail eggs tasted even more delicious than they smelled, and I realized I hadn’t had a meal so good since the Gatekeeper had disappeared.

  “You three.” The smuggler in mud-crusted boots walked into the kitchen, pointing at Arthur and Rosemary and me. He held up an InterCom in his other hand. “You didn’t tell us there was a reward out for your capture. And you didn’t tell Tam that Southeast will throw us all in jail just for the crime of being in your company, did you?”

  Around the table, conversation stopped. Tam set down her spatula. My eggs went suddenly cold.

  “Oh dear,” said Arthur. “Word spreads fast in a smugglers’ den.”

  “Of course we don’t believe you did anything wrong,” Sarah said as she hustled us out the door, “and none of us minds breaking the law. We do plenty of that every day. But we try not to give Interworld Travel any extra reasons to notice us, and it’d be just awful if they shut Tam’s place down for good. I hope you understand.”

  Tam herself had wanted us to stay at least long enough to finish our meal, but none of the other smugglers had looked particularly happy about the idea. We could tell we’d overstayed our welcome when the man in boots started talking about all the things he’d do with his share of the reward money; Tam promised us he was only joking, but he’d looked awfully serious to me. After Sarah shooed us out of the smugglers’ den, we hurried back to the docks and squeezed on board an outbound ferry just before it weighed anchor.

  The trip back to Omegos seemed to take forever. Arthur kept looking backward to see if the smuggler in boots was chasing us, Rosemary kept looking forward to see if Mrs. Bracknell and her officers had tracked us down, and I kept watching the ships of the Northern worldwide navy preparing for war. Soon enough, the House of Governors’ statement would spread, and everyone in all eight worlds would believe we were criminals. If the Northern navy didn’t blast us off the map, someone else would certainly try to.

  I’d half expected a legion of Interworld Travel officers to meet us on Omegos, but no one in white jumpsuits was waiting to apprehend us at the ferry terminal or along the shore. There weren’t any officers waiting for us near the worldgate, either; the pier was empty. “Too empty,” Rosemary said as we walked down it. “I don’t like this. It doesn’t feel right.”

  “It feels good to me,” said Arthur, swinging his arms. The water below us was growing rougher as we got closer to the worldgate; every time a wave slammed against the pilings, it sent a little shiver through the pier. “We’ll be through the doors and off to Northwest before Mrs. Bracknell can do anything about it.”

  I hoped Arthur was right, but it was a lot easier for me to believe Rosemary. “There’s nobody here right now, but we don’t know who
’ll be waiting for us on the other side of the door,” I pointed out. “At least we’ve still got Rosemary’s defense ray.”

  Rosemary nodded and reached into her pockets. Then she frowned and started searching through her bag. “It’s not here,” she said. “I know I put it away, but now it’s missing. Ugh; that’s the end of the world for you.”

  We’d reached the end of the pier, where the thin outline of the worldgate was traced on the sky in front of us. Arthur stared up at it. “Are we still going to open the door?” he asked. “Do you have a plan, Lucy?”

  A large wave broke below us, and an even larger one followed right on its heels, sending salt spray into our faces and making our legs tremble. The Gatekeeper had told me once that she enjoyed all the mess and chaos at the end of the world; the challenge of it made her mind more nimble. Now, as I looked down into the rumbling sea, I wondered if mine had gotten nimbler, too. “Yes,” I said finally, wiping the salt from my eyes. “We’ll open the door. But we won’t go through it.”

  25

  This time, when I opened the door between the worlds, I found Michael on the other side of it. He looked just awful.

  “Hello,” I said. “That’s a terrible scratch you’ve got over your eye. Did a yellow-winged wailer give it to you?” I gave him an administrative smile. “You should have someone take a look at it before it gets infected.”

  Michael couldn’t help noticing me this time. “She’s here!” he shouted over his shoulder. “I’ve found her!”

  “I think it’s fairer to say that I found you,” I told him, “but you’ll take credit for anything, won’t you?”

  A squad of travel officers ran to Michael’s side. There were five in all—Kip and Celeste, plus three more I didn’t recognize, all decked out in protective gear and staring at me across the worldgate threshold. At least Thomas wasn’t anywhere in sight. Neither was Mrs. Bracknell.

  “I heard you all are supposed to arrest me,” I said. “You might as well try. I’m not looking forward to it, but it should make Mrs. Bracknell happy.” I took a step backward on the pier. “You’re not supposed to cross into another world without all your papers in order, but I promise I won’t mention it to anyone.”

  Michael scowled. “Why don’t you come here?”

  “I already told you I wasn’t looking forward to being arrested. Do you really think I’m going to make it easy for you?” I took another step backward and held up my hands. “If you’re as talented as you pretend to be, it shouldn’t take you long to round us up.”

  I guess Michael didn’t appreciate my jokes, because his scowl only grew deeper. “She’s talking nonsense,” he said to the travel officers. “Go and get her.”

  The travel officers nodded and ran through the doorway. They were all carrying huge nets, like something a kinder person might use to scoop up a butterfly. Celeste, who was first through the worldgate, raised her net over her head and started to swish it through the air toward me.

  Then Rosemary dashed out from behind the open door and grabbed Celeste by the ankles. They both fell to the pier in a mess of knees and elbows, and the net fell into the sea. Arthur, still behind the door, threw whatever he could grab from our open bags at the travel officers; shoes and books and balled-up sweaters whizzed through the air. So did the bees. They swarmed at the officers, who flinched behind their protective visors and waved their nets in self-defense. One lost her balance and slipped off the pier.

  I made my way through the tumult as quickly as I could, climbing over squirming travel officers, dodging flying nightgowns and undergarments. Kip scrambled after me. He reached out a hand to grab my ankle, but I pulled away just in time and he grabbed the frayed edge of the worldgate instead. Then I heard him swear. “We’ve got threads coming loose!” he shouted to the others. “Get out of the sea and find a maintenance kit!”

  I stumbled through the doorway, praying I wouldn’t trip on a loop of fabric and pull all the worlds down with me. Michael must have lost his nerve and run off somewhere, because the eighth floor of Interworld Travel was deserted. “Northwest,” I murmured to myself, looking up and down the row of doors. “Which one of you goes to Northwest?”

  It didn’t take me long to spot the door at the far end of the row, painted pale green and carved with a pattern of leaves and vines. It wasn’t locked, but the doorway was crisscrossed with strips of construction tape. I ran down the hall, ripped the tape away, undid the padlock, and turned the knob.

  Behind the door was a plain wooden wall.

  It wasn’t Northwest; it wasn’t any other world but our own. Mrs. Bracknell’s team had put up the doorframe, but they hadn’t yet snipped the gatecutters through the fabric of time and space, and I couldn’t exactly wait for them to do it. I kicked at the construction tape that lay balled up at my feet. If the gatekeepers were stuck in Northwest, I had no idea how we were going to reach them.

  “We’re here!” called Arthur, running into the hallway from North with Rosemary right behind him. Arthur had pieces of butterfly netting in his hair, and Rosemary was scraped and scratched from head to toe, but both of them were smiling, and the bees surrounded them in a triumphant halo. “We got all the travel officers into the sea!”

  “Except for Kip,” Rosemary corrected. “But he’s holding on to that worldgate to keep all the worlds from falling to pieces, so we decided we could spare him.”

  Arthur nodded. “You should have seen us, Lucy! One of the officers almost scooped me up, but her net had a hole in it and I scrambled right through.”

  “Then I knocked her off the pier,” said Rosemary. “It was glorious. I’m sure they’ll all come after us once they reach shore, but we’ll be far into Northwest before then.”

  “Not Northwest.” I pointed at the pale green door. “The worldgate’s not open yet. This door doesn’t go anywhere.”

  Rosemary made a face. “Honestly! We’ll have to go to Northeast, then. At least we know that worldgate works.”

  We started jogging down the hall toward the barn door at the other end. Before we got anywhere close, though, there was a rush of footsteps on the stairs, and Michael turned up at the end of the hall, breathing hard, with a crowd of travel officers behind him. He must have pulled them out of some sort of meeting, because they didn’t have nets, and they weren’t wearing visors. Instead, they all wore suits. One of them still had a marking pen clutched in his hand.

  “Don’t move!” Michael shouted at us. “I’m taking all of you to Mrs. Bracknell. The bees, too!”

  The travel officers raced toward us. We had no chance of reaching the Northeastern door; they’d catch us long before we could manage to get to the end of the hall. I lunged for the nearest door, the red one with a bronze knocker. In half a second I’d unlocked it, and the three of us tumbled through.

  26

  This time, the travel officers followed us.

  We were in a narrow, dirt-paved lane spotted with rainwater. High stone walls rose up on either side of us, and men and women in suits spilled through the worldgate behind us, blinking in the sudden sunlight. There was nowhere to run but forward.

  “We’ve got to get away from those officers!” I called to Rosemary and Arthur. Rosemary nodded and sprinted down the lane, but Arthur was the one I was worried about. Hadn’t he said just a few hours before that he wasn’t any good at running? What if the travel officers caught him? We couldn’t leave him behind; we’d have to go back. . . .

  “Sorry about the mud!” Arthur cried.

  He splashed through a mud puddle and blazed straight past me. In a matter of seconds, he was shoulder to shoulder with Rosemary, and I was the one who had to scramble to keep up. “I thought you didn’t have a knack for this,” I said between breaths.

  Arthur glanced over his shoulder at me. “I’ve never been running for my life before!” he called back. “It’s fantastic motivation. And anyway,” he said, leading us around a corner, “I know where we are.”

  “We’re in East?”
>
  Arthur nodded. “Not only that, we’re in my hometown. I’d know these lanes anywhere.”

  “Then for worlds’ sake,” said Rosemary, “stop chattering and take us somewhere safe!”

  The lane ended without warning, and we found ourselves in a busy street. Cars rolled by us, going much faster than the traveling contraption we’d borrowed from the Gatekeeper. The street was covered in hard gray pavement and lined with shops. Parents dragged children past bakery windows, street performers made music on strange stringed instruments, and colored electric lights hung on wires above us, flashing green and yellow and red.

  “Turn left!” called Arthur. We ran after him down the sidewalk. The travel officers thundered out of the alley behind us, and they turned left, too. We wove through the crowds, apologizing to people carrying shopping baskets or walking their dogs. “Excuse us!” Arthur kept saying. “Step aside, please! So sorry for the inconvenience!” By the time we’d run a few city blocks, traffic had slowed to a crawl, and everyone on the street was gawking at us.

  Some of the travel officers had fallen behind, but most of them were still too close for comfort. At the front of the pack was Michael himself. I hadn’t thought he’d be able to keep up with us, but he must have been fueled by sheer annoyance, because he was almost close enough to grab my arm. “This,” he shouted, “is not the sort of behavior I’d expect from an Eberslee!”

  “I wouldn’t expect it, either,” I called back, “but here we are!”

  I wove around a child teetering on a pink bicycle and narrowly missed a lamppost. Arthur had run into the middle of the street now, dodging automobiles left and right; I took a deep breath and plunged after him. The travel officers tried to follow, but they weren’t as familiar with otherworld traffic as Arthur was, and they started to fall behind. “Maybe it’s a parade,” I heard a woman say to her friend, “or a work of performance art.”