The Door at the End of the World

by Caroline Carlson

  I looked out into the lobby, where the scene was messier than ever. Mrs. Bracknell was right: it wasn’t likely that anyone would have noticed the Gatekeeper and Mr. Wilson falling into nowhere, and even if they had, they wouldn’t understand what they’d seen. It had all happened so quickly.

  “You think we won’t talk?” Zenna looked incredulous.

  “You’re smugglers,” said Mrs. Bracknell. “Who would trust a smuggler’s word? Or a farmer’s? Or a . . .” She turned to the royal sentries, who looked more than a little uncomfortable. “Well, I don’t know who you are, but it doesn’t matter. You’ve entered Southeast illegally, which means you’ve committed a crime. I’ll have you brought to trial in the House of Governors. And you, Chief Admiral, can keep your mouth shut or I’ll seal that door to North right back up again.” She put the gatecutters back in her pocket and brushed her hands on her jacket, as though she’d solved a particularly thorny problem. “There’s no point in any of you making trouble. My officers will vouch for me.”

  I looked over at the travel officers, who had reassembled themselves into a long, gray-suited line. Their faces were grim. One woman clasped and unclasped her fingers nervously. “Is that true?” I asked them. “You won’t tell anyone what Mrs. Bracknell just did?”

  They stood there in infuriating silence: Celeste, Kip, Michael, even JEANNE. And as for Thomas—

  “It’s not true.” Thomas took a step out of line. He’d turned almost as gray as his suit, but he wasn’t swaying from side to side anymore; he was standing firm, and for a moment I filled up with pride. Then I remembered he’d tried to dispatch me, and the weight of the memory made me deflate.

  But Thomas kept speaking. “I’ve had enough,” he said. “I can’t vouch for you anymore, Mrs. Bracknell. The House of Governors will want to know what happened here, and I’m going to tell them the truth.”

  Mrs. Bracknell gave him a long stare. “The truth won’t be kind to us,” she said. “To any of us.”

  “I know that, ma’am.” Thomas didn’t meet Mrs. Bracknell’s eyes. Instead, he looked straight at me. “It seems to me that I should be at least half as brave as my sister has been.”

  After all that had happened between us, I wasn’t sure whether to cheer or scream. “Oh, you Eberslees!” Rosemary whispered to me. “You just love to be noble!”

  “All right, Thomas.” Mrs. Bracknell’s hands were in her pockets again, and her voice was still calm. “If you must, you must. Now, if you’ll all excuse me . . .”

  To her credit, Mrs. Bracknell was quick. By the time I saw the glint of metal in her hand, it was already too late: she ran up half a flight of stairs, snipped the gatecutters through the air, and disappeared into whatever was beyond.

  We all ran toward the hole in the world. Huggins, who was closest, got to it first. He peered through it, which—for a horrifying moment—made him look as though he’d lost his head. “She’s off and running,” he said, pulling himself back from the hole.

  I pushed my way to the front of the crowd. “In the space beyond the worlds?”

  “No, no. That was over there”—Huggins pointed to the spot where the Gatekeeper had disappeared—“and this is over here. Looks like she’s headed toward another world. She’s slicing through all that fabric as she goes.” He took another look through the hole. “Wouldn’t have expected her to be so fast!”

  Michael had uncapped his pink tube of repair-all glue again, but as he ran toward the hole in the world, Rosemary stuck out her foot and tripped him. “Oh, no you don’t!” she said, snatching the glue out of his hands and tossing it halfway across the lobby. “Mrs. Bracknell’s not getting away that easily. We’re going after her.”

  “We are?” Arthur gave me a nervous look. Rosemary was looking at me, too, as though she was waiting for my answer before she went anywhere.

  “Of course we are!” I didn’t have time to think about it. “But if we don’t hurry, we’ll lose her.”

  Rosemary didn’t need to be told twice. She dove through the makeshift worldgate and started running across the tattered fabric of space and time, with Arthur right behind her.

  VENGEANCE!

  cried the bees as they swarmed through the hole.

  The royal sentries hesitated, as though they weren’t sure what was expected of them in such an unusual situation. “Stay here, please,” I told them, “and stop those travel officers from chasing us, if you can.” I thought of glancing over my shoulder to see what Thomas was up to—would he try to stop me?—but then I thought better of it. I ran into the other world without looking back once.

  32

  The first thing I noticed was the scent. Everything smelled green and growing, like a permanent springtime. Thousand-year-old trees formed a canopy above me, and their roots sprang up under my feet, making me lose my balance more than once as I clambered after Rosemary and Arthur. Not far ahead of us was Mrs. Bracknell, a gray-suited curiosity in the leafy forest. She’d been wearing businesslike black shoes, but when she saw us chasing after her, she kicked them off. Huggins had been right: she was fast.

  We’d only been running for a minute or two before Rosemary slowed to a stop. “We’ll never catch her if we don’t unload,” she said, dumping her bag on the ground. Then she reached inside it and pulled out her InterCom. “Just in case. You both still have yours?”

  Arthur nodded, and I fished my own InterCom out of my rucksack. I grabbed my passport, too, and stuffed both things into my pocket. I felt a pang in my stomach as I left the rest behind—my books, my clothes, everything I’d brought with me from the end of the world, all lying in a heap somewhere in an otherworld forest.

  We were in Northwest, or at least I thought we were. Other worlds had forests of their own, but none had quite so many baffled-looking campers looking up from their cook fires as we thundered past. Waterfalls rumbled pleasantly in the near distance, and the air was full of birdsong, faint music, and the constant whoops of tourists swinging through the Ungoverned Wilderness on vines. “I’ve always wanted . . . to come here . . . ,” I said between breaths, “but I’m not sure . . . I can really . . . enjoy it. Duck!” A vine-swinging tourist had missed us by mere inches.

  Rosemary watched the tourist as he swooped away. “Now that’s how to get around,” she said. We were coming to the crest of a hill, and when we reached the top, she grabbed a vine of her own and sailed out into the air. “Come on!” she hollered. “It’s faster this way!”

  “I’ve never traveled by vine before,” Arthur said skeptically. “How do you steer it?”

  I tugged at the vine next to Rosemary’s; it seemed sturdy enough. “I don’t think you do steer it,” I called back to Arthur as I ran down the hill. “I think you just . . . go!” I hadn’t even finished my sentence before my feet were off the ground and the green-scented wind was in my hair. Arthur was right behind me, and for once, the bees had to hurry to keep up.

  The vines were Northwest’s idea of public transportation, I realized; when you reached the end of one, there was always another hanging just a few feet ahead. In a matter of minutes, we’d nearly caught up to Mrs. Bracknell. We’d entered a busier part of the forest, though, and it was getting harder to weave through the growing groups of hikers and birdwatchers. “Coming through!” Arthur hollered as we swung over a pack of children who looked as if they were on a school trip. “Could someone down there lend us a hand and stop that woman?”

  The kids didn’t need to be asked twice: they took off after Mrs. Bracknell like a yellow-winged wailer after a lightning bolt. When she looked over her shoulder and saw the whole lot of us coming after her, her eyes went wide. She reached for a vine, then hesitated and reached into her pocket instead. I jumped to the ground and ran after her, but I wasn’t fast enough: before I’d gotten close enough to reach her, she’d cut a hole in the world and disappeared through it.

  The schoolchildren gathered around the hole, poking at its unraveling edges and sticking their heads through it until thei
r teacher pulled them away. “Don’t yank those threads!” I shouted to them as we ran past. I had no idea what was on the other side of the hole, but I barely had time to wonder where it might take us before I was diving through it.

  33

  Tall grass stretched for miles all around us. Blue sky stretched for days above us. Mrs. Bracknell was only a few strides in front of us.

  “I don’t think those bulls are happy to see us,” Rosemary said, pointing.

  BULLS? said the bees.

  The bulls charged.

  “Oh, worlds!” said Mrs. Bracknell. She bent down, snipped the gatecutters along the grass, and jumped through. . . .

  34

  I was falling, but not for long. Then my eyes stung fiercely, the air went out of my lungs, and my limbs felt heavy and cold. The sea was in my mouth; it was everywhere. I paddled to the surface and gasped for breath.

  Arthur was there, clinging to a log. His glasses were splattered with water, and the bees formed a cloud just above his head. “Where’s Rosemary?” I asked him.

  “Here!” called Rosemary as she sailed through the hole in the sky and landed in the sea. She sputtered and shook the water from her ears. “Are you both all right? Do you know how to swim?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but so does Mrs. Bracknell.” She was treading water a few strokes ahead of us, reaching up with the gatecutters. As she snipped at the air, a hole between the worlds opened just above the surface of the waves.

  We started swimming toward it. In front of us, Mrs. Bracknell grabbed on to the edge of the hole and pulled herself out of the water. Behind us, a bull careened through the air and landed with a splash. Somewhere close—too close!—a cannon went off. . . .

  35

  We were running through a city in the wind and rain. Brightly colored electric signs blinked on and off in a language I didn’t recognize, screens flashed everywhere, and lights shone down on us from buildings that stood taller than any forest tree. People rushed toward us and away from us across the pavement, and I almost lost Mrs. Bracknell in the crowd. . . .

  36

  We were running on hard-packed sand in a place where nothing grew. The air shimmered with heat, and the ground began to shake. Cracks were opening up in the ground below us. . . .

  37

  We were running across a narrow rope bridge that swung dangerously from side to side with every step we took. The bees whirred with delight. Far below us, something vast and purple glowed in the darkness. I thought it might have been a lake, but it looked as though it was breathing. Behind me, I heard Arthur shout. . . .

  38

  I tumbled through the hole in the world and landed hard on my back.

  The sky was bundled up in low gray clouds, and for more than a minute, all I could do was stare up at them. They made me think of the Gatekeeper’s hair, the color of it, and how it had billowed around her face as she’d fallen into the space beyond the worlds.

  Then my breath came back to me, and my head stopped spinning, and I could hear Rosemary coughing on the ground next to me. I forced myself to sit up. “Are you all right?” I asked her.

  “Perfect,” said Rosemary. She didn’t sound perfect. “Just choked on some road dust.” She coughed again. “I don’t suppose there’s anyplace near here where I could get a glass of water?”

  I looked around. We were by the side of a narrow, empty road that someone had carved through a stand of trees. I wasn’t sure which world we were in by now; we could have been anywhere. The ground here was beginning to tremble, too, the way it had done in the hot, sandy world. The wind was picking up, making me shiver in my damp clothes. And we’d lost Mrs. Bracknell. She must have run around the bend in the road or slipped into the trees while we’d been staring up at the sky.

  “Where’s Arthur?” Rosemary asked, and the breath went right out of me again. I stood up and looked all around us, but Arthur wasn’t there. A hole in the air behind us glowed faintly purple, and the bees hovered around it making faint, worried hums.

  “He was behind me on the bridge,” I said. “I heard him shout, but I didn’t see why. Do you think he fell?”

  Rosemary drew in her breath. “It was a long way down.”

  We both scrambled back to the hole in the air and looked through it.

  There, on the other side of the ragged world-fabric, was the rickety bridge swaying back and forth. Arthur was lying on the planks. He didn’t look up when we shouted his name, or when the bees buzzed in his ears. His legs were dangling over the side of the bridge, and one of his shoes had fallen off. “Grab his left arm,” I told Rosemary. “I’ll take his right, and we’ll pull him through.”

  Rosemary nodded, and both of us pulled. At the end of the world, I’d never lifted anything much heavier than the boxes of old books the Gatekeeper stored in her attic, but I couldn’t leave Arthur to fall into whatever that pulsing purple thing might have been. The fabric of space and time made a horrible tearing sound as we dragged him across it, and I worried we might all tumble back through the hole together, but Rosemary and I gave one last good tug, and Arthur flopped facedown on the ground in front of us.

  We stared down at him, hoping.

  “Ow,” he said faintly into the pavement. Then, slowly, he rolled over and blinked up at us. “You could have put me on my back, you know. I am a prince.”

  “Oh, thank the worlds.” Rosemary started to pull him to his feet, but Arthur shook his head.

  “I don’t think I’m quite ready for that,” he said, “if it’s all the same to you.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “Where are your glasses?”

  Arthur sighed. “Someone bumped into me in that city—the rainy one, with the lights—and they fell off. I was all right for a while, but it was so dark in that last world, and I couldn’t quite see, and I tripped.” He squinted up at us. “Did I miss everything? Have you caught Mrs. Bracknell yet?”

  SHE ESCAPED, said the bees. FOR NOW.

  “We’re not sure where she’s gone,” I said. “Rosemary and I fell, too.”

  “I would have stayed upright if it weren’t for this ridiculous ground,” Rosemary added. “It’s moving all over the place. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

  I hadn’t, either. We’d had occasional earthquakes at the end of the world before, but this felt different, as though the ground beneath our feet were being tugged in a hundred different directions. The wind was stronger than ever, too; it seemed to be coming from the hole in the world. Above us, the clouds were darkening, and the sky behind them was turning an eerie shade of green. If we were anywhere in West, there was sure to be a flock of yellow-winged wailers somewhere nearby. “It’s all the holes in the worlds,” I said, “all the worldgates Mrs. Bracknell is opening so close to each other. She’s made at least six.”

  “Didn’t she say something about insulation?” Arthur sat up slowly. “To stop all these side effects?”

  “That’s what all those quilts back at Interworld Travel were for, but she doesn’t have any insulation now.” There was a loud rumble, and the ground seemed to tilt below us. Behind us, the worldgate we’d pulled Arthur through was growing wider by the minute as its edges unraveled. “Mrs. Bracknell’s been slicing the fabric of space and time to shreds,” I said. “The more holes she cuts, the worse things will get.”

  “Then we’d better go and stop her,” said Rosemary. “At least, we’ve got to try. Come on.” She helped Arthur to his feet, and we walked around the bend in the road.

  The ground was even shakier here; tree branches were snapping in the wind, and the sky had turned from green to mustard yellow. I put a hand in my pocket: my passport had disappeared. Rosemary’s bandanna vanished off her head even as I stared at her. The bees flew down the road a few feet, then pulled back with a start and spelled one word, over and over: DANGER. DANGER. DANGER.

  “Look.” I pointed past the bees. Above the road, three worldgates gaped open: one leading left, one leading right, and one leading strai
ght ahead.

  “Three?” Rosemary swore. “No wonder the sky is yellow.”

  “And there’s no way to tell where Mrs. Bracknell’s gone?” Arthur asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “We don’t even know for sure that she went through any of them at all.”

  We stared at the gates without saying a word.

  “We’ll just take them one at a time,” Arthur said at last. “Maybe we’ll choose the right one the first time around.”

  “Or maybe we won’t.” The wind whipped my hair into my eyes, and I couldn’t see much more clearly than Arthur could. “I think we should each go through one of the gates. We still have our InterComs, right?” Arthur and Rosemary both said that they did. “One of us will find Mrs. Bracknell, and that person will tell the others where she is. And the bees—”

  WE’LL STAY HERE, the bees said quickly.

  “Splitting up?” said Arthur. “Are you sure we should?”

  “Lucy’s right. It makes sense.” Rosemary looked down at her feet. “Mathematically, I mean.”

  “And it won’t be for long,” I said, hoping I was right. “If none of us finds anything in the next ten minutes, we’ll all meet back here.” I ducked as a tree limb flew by overhead. “Assuming here still exists.”

  “All right,” said Arthur. He walked over to the gate leading right, and Rosemary walked to the one leading left. I stood in front of the one leading straight ahead. Then the ground jolted beneath us, and all three of us jumped.

  39

  I was in the hot, sandy world again. I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked around me: no Mrs. Bracknell, at least not that I could see. The ground was still shaking here, too, and sand was sliding down from the dunes on either side of me. I started walking fast, heading for higher ground.