The Door at the End of the World

by Caroline Carlson

  My InterCom flashed: it was Arthur. Any luck?

  Not yet, I wrote back, but I’m still looking around.

  I’m on an oslamd! said Arthur.

  I frowned. Oslamd?

  Island, he said. Sorry. Can’t see very well. Wush I had my flasses.

  Rosemary didn’t say anything.

  From the top of the dune, I could see the world around me: tall machines off in the distance, sand stretching to the horizon, and cracks spiderwebbing across the ground. Not far away, a dark spot blotted out a piece of the horizon. It was the worldgate we’d run through earlier, the one that led to the swaying bridge where Arthur had fallen. Mrs. Bracknell’s not here, I wrote on my InterCom. She might have run into another world. I don’t know for sure.

  She ism’t here euther, said Arthur. But lots of coconuts! There was a pause while he typed out another message. Where is Tosemury?

  I’d been wondering that, too. Rosemary? Are you okay?

  The cracks in the ground were growing larger now, especially near the worldgates. I started running back the way I’d come. Just as I reached the bottom of the dune, my InterCom flashed again.

  I’m fine, said Rosemary. I found her. Come here now!

  40

  The world where Rosemary had gone was dim and full of noise. At first I couldn’t see well enough to tell where the noise was coming from. It sounded like the thrumming engine of an otherworld car, or like the beating heart of a storm. Then the world came into focus, and I could see waves breaking on a rocky shore. There were rocks beneath my feet, too, damp and slippery ones that made it difficult to walk. Something dark and shimmering stretched above us, and I wondered if it was the sky, or if this place was cocooned somehow in the fabric of space and time. “Rosemary?” I called.

  Straight ahead! she wrote on the InterCom. Hurry!

  I did my best to make my way over the rocks, but I slipped twice, and there were other obstacles, too: the wind, the trembling ground, the piles of strange objects the waves had brought in and left to dry on the shore. Mixed in with the usual kelp and sea glass were pencil stubs and inkwells, eyeglasses and key chains, crumpled-up school assignments, mismatched mittens, and singleton socks. I nearly tripped over a box full of pink customs declarations, each page printed with the Interworld Travel logo. If I searched long enough, I wondered, would I find everything I’d ever lost at the end of the world washed up on these rocks?

  Arthur appeared through the worldgate behind me. He was holding a coconut, but he didn’t say why. “It’s windy out there,” he said instead, squinting at me. “Windy in here, too. I think the sky is shaking.”

  He was right. That thrumming, rumbling noise wasn’t from the waves alone, I’d realized; thin cracks of light were unspooling across the darkness above us, and the darkness was trembling. “Rosemary’s that way,” I told Arthur, pointing.

  He set down his coconut, and we walked forward together. The land grew narrower around us, as if it was about to run out altogether, and mist rising up from the water clouded our view. “If I didn’t know better,” said Arthur quietly, “I’d think this place was the end of the world.” Then he stopped and grabbed my shoulder. “Is that Rosemary?”

  I stopped, too. “Oh, worlds.”

  It was Rosemary standing in front of us, with her jaw set firmly and her shoulders squared. Behind her, with one hand gripped on Rosemary’s collar and the other hand on Rosemary’s InterCom, was Mrs. Bracknell. And in front of them both, illuminating the place, was a gash of bright light in the ground—a hole into the space beyond the worlds.

  “I’m sorry,” said Rosemary miserably. “She grabbed me as soon as I got here. She cut that awful hole in the ground and said if I tried to warn you to stay away, she’d push me through it.” Rosemary kicked at a pebble, which rolled into the gash of light and disappeared.

  Mrs. Bracknell looked exhausted. Her clothes were damp and torn, and there was a streak of mud across her forehead and a long red welt on her arm. She was strong enough to keep Rosemary from moving, though. I shouldn’t have been surprised: anyone who could keep a thistle-backed thrunt under control and fight off a pack of yellow-winged wailers wasn’t likely to be weak. If she’d ever felt guilty about sending the Gatekeeper and Mr. Wilson into the space beyond the worlds, the sting of her conscience had long since worn off.

  “Lucy. Your Highness. I’m glad you’re here,” Mrs. Bracknell said crisply, as though she were addressing her travel officers. “I don’t know where here is, exactly, but that’s beside the point right now. Rosemary tells me you both have these smugglers’ devices?” She waved the InterCom in our direction. “You must, since you responded to my messages so promptly.”

  I nodded. So did Arthur.

  “Excellent,” said Mrs. Bracknell. “Drop them through the hole, please.”

  Arthur took a step back. “We can’t. Rosemary said her pa would sell our ears on the black market.”

  “That sounds gruesome,” Mrs. Bracknell admitted, “and likely to be very painful. I’m sure you won’t enjoy it. Drop the devices, please.” She tightened her grip on Rosemary’s collar, and Rosemary yelped. I glared at Mrs. Bracknell, but I let go of my InterCom. So did Arthur.

  “Thank you.” Mrs. Bracknell’s knuckles relaxed a fraction of an inch. There was a rumble above us, a sound more dangerous than thunder, as if the whole sky was about to tear itself loose. “Now, here’s what we’ll do. The three of you will stay perfectly still. If you try to leave”—she was looking at me and Arthur now—“I’ll send Rosemary out beyond the worlds. Do you understand?”

  We nodded again.

  “In the meantime,” said Mrs. Bracknell, “I’m going to send a note to Rosemary’s father. Mr. Silos, isn’t that right? Do you think he can get a message to the House of Governors?”

  Rosemary narrowed her eyes. “That depends on the message.”

  “Oh, it’s going to be persuasive. It has to be persuasive. The other governors didn’t ask too many questions when I told them about my Worldhub—they prefer not to know things, really—but now, with the Gatekeeper gone, and poor Mr. Wilson, too, they’ll feel obliged to investigate. It won’t look good for me. The head of Interworld Travel stealing magical tools, making gatekeepers disappear, sending an old woman to goodness-knows-where . . .” Mrs. Bracknell shook the thought out of her head. “No. I can’t allow it. There would be a trial; there would be a sentence. I’d be banished to the fire pits of Pitfire, most likely. It would be horrible for everyone.”

  I stared at her. “It’s already horrible for the Gatekeeper!”

  “And for me,” said Rosemary. “I’m not especially enjoying myself.”

  “Don’t be selfish,” Mrs. Bracknell told her. “I’m going to explain to the House of Governors that I’ve got the three of you here with me. I won’t ask for much. If they agree to let me come home quietly, without any legal fuss or publicity, I’ll bring you safely back to Southeast. If they won’t agree . . .” Mrs. Bracknell looked contemplatively into the gash of light. “No, they will agree. The governors won’t risk losing you. Your families would be furious.”

  Rosemary laughed. “If you mean you’re holding us hostage, you’ve made a bad miscalculation. The three of us aren’t worth a thing!”

  “She’s right!” Arthur beamed. “Princes are valuable captives in most situations, but you won’t get very far with my family. They might not even notice I’m gone!”

  “And I’m not a very good smuggler,” Rosemary confessed. “I’m always being too bold. The whole smuggling community will probably be relieved once I’m out of the way.”

  “My parents will be disappointed when they hear I’ve lost my job,” I said. “Who knows? They might send me out of the worlds themselves. I’m just an inconvenience.” I met Mrs. Bracknell’s gaze. “You think so yourself, don’t you?”

  Mrs. Bracknell looked impatient. “There’s no point in trying to convince me the three of you are useless,” she said. “You’ve given me nothing bu
t trouble for days—especially you, Lucy Eberslee. Thomas swore you wouldn’t cause problems, but look what you’ve done! As soon as you asked me if I knew where the gatecutters were, I knew you had to go. But you got past my best officers somehow, and you refused to be eaten.” The ground rolled beneath us, and the sky trembled. Mrs. Bracknell frowned up at it. “I’d better write that message. We need to finish our business here before the worlds fall apart.”

  I hoped for all our sakes that they wouldn’t. “When we go home,” I said, “if you’re not banished to a fiery pit, will you close your new doors between the worlds?”

  Mrs. Bracknell barely looked up from the InterCom. “Close the Worldhub? Oh, no.”

  “But the other worlds are furious!”

  “Of course they are. I always expected they would be. They’ll learn to appreciate the new system, though, and if they don’t”—she shrugged—“well, I’m not sure there’s anything they can do. They’re not the ones with the gatecutters, are they?” She tucked the InterCom under her arm and patted her pocket.

  Then she frowned. “The gatecutters,” she said. “They were here just a minute ago. Where are they?” She turned Rosemary around and pulled her close. “Did you take them?”

  “Of course not.” Rosemary held up her empty hands. “I would have loved to, but I was too busy trying not to fall through that awful glowing hole you made.”

  “People do often lose things at the end of the world,” Arthur said helpfully.

  “You think I don’t know that?” Mrs. Bracknell snapped. She was rummaging through her pockets again. I looked around, too, but I couldn’t see anything glinting from the cracks between the rocks. If she hadn’t dropped the gatecutters, then they’d probably disappeared all on their own, just like the socks and gloves and spare change that tended to go missing near the worldgates.

  And if that was the case, then I knew where they’d gone.

  Generally speaking, of course. There were more little piles of objects on the shore than I could count. The mist made it hard to see most of them clearly, and some of the objects fell back into the water each time the ground shook. I took a few cautious steps toward the closest pile and knelt down to sort through it: some soggy unopened letters, a postcard from somewhere called Nairobi, three pearl-drop earrings, and a crab that scuttled over my fingers on its way to the sea.

  “What are you doing?” said Mrs. Bracknell.

  “Yes, Lucy,” said Rosemary, “what are you doing?” Mrs. Bracknell was holding her closer than ever to the hole in the world, and her voice was tense.

  “I’m organizing.” I sorted the letters into a neat stack and the earrings into another, but there wasn’t anything more underneath them. “At the end of the world, it’s important to be organized.”

  Rosemary gaped at me. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “People do often lose things at the end of the world,” Arthur said again. This time, though, he sounded worried.

  “I don’t have time for this!” Mrs. Bracknell turned back to the InterCom. “I’m sending that message now.”

  It’s hard to keep things sorted neatly near a worldgate in the best of circumstances. In this place, though, it was practically impossible. The wind kept blowing over my stacks of objects, mixing everything together and burying half of what I’d uncovered. But I didn’t look up. I moved from pile to pile, pulling out ribbons and bits of string, thumbtacks and thimbles, keys missing their locks, locks missing their keys. I put pink customs declarations to the left, green returnee reports to the right, and blue applications for otherworld travel straight ahead. If she’d been there to see it, the Gatekeeper would have been thrilled.

  “Um, Lucy?” said Arthur. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m sure.” I placed three lone socks in a bundle together. “I was the Gatekeeper’s deputy. I’ve gotten very good at this sort of thing.”

  “I’m sure you have,” said Arthur, “but—”

  Something that had been hiding underneath the socks shone up at me through the mist. I wrapped my hands around it: a gleaming pair of scissors, small and sharp.

  I stood up carefully, trying not to slip on the rocks as I made my way back to the others. The gatecutters shuddered in my fist, as though they were intent on getting lost again. “I’ve found them!” I called over the roar of the waves. I walked up to the edge of the gash of light and held up the gatecutters for Mrs. Bracknell to see. Underneath my feet, the ground began to rumble.

  Mrs. Bracknell stared hard at the gatecutters. “Give those to me, Lucy,” she said. “That’s an order.”

  “I don’t work for you anymore.” I dangled the gatecutters over the gash of light. “And I don’t think you should be opening any more doors between the worlds. You’ve done enough damage already.”

  “You wouldn’t drop them,” said Mrs. Bracknell. She let go of Rosemary. “You can’t!” She scrambled across the ground and reached across the gash of light. Her fingertips brushed the gatecutters’ handles.

  The House of Governors never could figure out exactly what happened next. Arthur says Mrs. Bracknell slipped on the rocks, and Rosemary says the ground jolted under us. Neither of them will say I pulled my hand away from Mrs. Bracknell’s, but that’s how I remember it. What I know for sure is that first she was standing across from me, and then she was falling, and then she was gone, swallowed up in the space beyond the worlds.

  I looked into the light until my eyes hurt. Arthur came up behind me and took the gatecutters from my fist. Rosemary put a hand on my shoulder.

  “We’d better go home,” she said. “The bees will be worried sick.”

  None of us wanted to use the gatecutters, so we went back the way we’d come, down the empty road, across the bridge, through the sand and the city and the sea, past the bulls and the wide-eyed campers in the Ungoverned Wilderness. All along our path, the wind blew, the ground rumbled, and the sky shook. By the time we finally stepped out of the forest into the Interworld Travel building, dark clouds had formed up near the lobby ceiling, and it was starting to snow on the gathered crowd. The first face I saw was Thomas’s.

  “Goose!” he cried.

  “Do you have any Southern repair-all glue?” I asked him. “We’ve got a lot of damage to fix.”

  41

  The House of Governors didn’t like to do anything quickly if it could help it, but when the governors saw the size of the mess Mrs. Bracknell had made across all the worlds, even they agreed it had to be cleaned up at once. They appointed a new head of Interworld Travel, an energetic young governor named Miss Harrison, who wasted no time in clearing the snow out of the lobby and the cows out of the revolving doors. Most of the travel officers were sent out to seal the holes Mrs. Bracknell had snipped so carelessly in the worlds, carrying tubes of repair-all glue and bolts of thick fabric to patch up the gaps. One officer, however, stayed in Southeast: Miss Harrison had taken quick stock of Michael and given him the special task of removing every last trace of cow dung from the Interworld Travel building. Rosemary, Arthur, and I all agreed that we liked Miss Harrison a lot.

  She’d asked the three of us to lend the travel officers a hand with their repairs, which is how I found myself, later that week, in a Northeastern meadow with Thomas. Once we’d penned off the area to keep out the roaming bulls, I cut out squares of fabric and Thomas glued them in place. These patches would be weak, but at least they’d keep the worlds from coming apart until scientists and magicians could find a more permanent solution.

  “I’ve been looking for you in the Travelers’ Wing,” Thomas said as we worked. I knew he had; I’d been ducking through doorways and slipping around corners every time I’d seen him coming. I’d had a feeling he wanted to talk, and that was the last thing I was interested in doing. “I wanted to tell you that Miss Harrison invited me to stay on as an officer, but I’m not going to do it. I’m leaving Interworld Travel at the end of the month.”

  I set down the fabric I’d been cutting.
Thomas had always worked for Interworld Travel! I couldn’t imagine him doing anything else. “I guess you’ll run for a governorship, then,” I said, “or would you rather be a diplomat? I think either job would suit you.” I should have stopped there, but I wasn’t much good at biting my tongue anymore. “Both are perfect for a bald-faced liar.”

  Thomas was so startled that he almost dropped his glue. “When did I lie to you, Goose?”

  I counted on my fingers. “You pretended you hadn’t asked Interworld Travel to hire me. After the thrunt tried to eat us, you acted like you didn’t know anything about it. And you said you were sending me to the mountains to keep me safe, when all you really wanted to do was help Mrs. Bracknell get me out of the way. She wanted to kill me, and you didn’t even care!”

  “Oh, Lucy.” Thomas looked horrified. “You really thought . . . No wonder you haven’t wanted to see me!” He put down his tube of repair-all glue. Then he pulled off his crisp gray suit jacket, laid it on the grass, and sat down on top of it. “I knew about Mrs. Bracknell’s project. Most of the senior staff did. She told us she’d come up with a way to make going between the worlds simpler and faster, and better for Southeast. Better for everyone, Mrs. Bracknell said. It had to be a secret, of course. We knew the heads of the other Interworld Travel offices wouldn’t be pleased. But there were parts of the project I didn’t know about, too. I didn’t realize she was planning to close the other worldgates until you showed up. She was rattled that afternoon, Lucy, after she spoke with you. I thought it was because someone was going around closing the doors between the worlds, but now I think it was really because she hadn’t expected anyone to raise the alarm so quickly. She had to find someone to blame it on.”

  “Henry Tallard.”

  “That’s right. It was lucky for her that you’d seen him skulking around. He’d been giving her trouble for months. I didn’t realize she was going to lock him up, though. And I didn’t know anything about the thrunt.” Thomas cringed a little. “I kept thinking about it—how it had to have come from West, and how only someone who worked for us could have known how to get there. By the time the bees were poisoned, I was sure someone at Interworld Travel was responsible, but I didn’t know who. I thought if I could get you out of the building, away from the worldgates, you’d be safe.” He shook his head. “You didn’t need my help, of course. I should have realized that years ago.”