The Door at the End of the World

by Caroline Carlson

  I looked down at him. “The gatekeepers. All the ones who went missing. Do you know where they are?”

  “Not exactly,” said Thomas, “not yet. But don’t worry; we’ll find out. Once Mrs. Bracknell was gone, I cornered that awful secretary of hers and made him tell me everything he knew. She’d apparently sent teams of travel officers out into the worlds. Each team was assigned to retrieve two or three gatekeepers and keep them out of the way until all the old worldgates were closed and the new ones were opened. Then they were all supposed to come back to Southeast to help run the Worldhub.”

  I imagined the Gatekeeper sitting at a little desk on the eighth floor of Interworld Travel, greeting tourists and handing out maps, and I couldn’t help grinning. “That would never have worked.”

  “I think Mrs. Bracknell was starting to realize that,” Thomas agreed. “She didn’t expect them to put up much of a fight. And she didn’t even consider the deputies.”

  “Not many people do.”

  “Anyway, Goose, I’m sorry. I could tell something at Interworld Travel wasn’t quite right, but instead of doing something about it, I ignored it and told myself everything was fine. That’s why I’m leaving. And I’m not going to be a governor or a diplomat. A friend of mine from school owns a bakery in Centerbury, and she needs someone to take the early morning shift.”

  “I don’t know about that.” I sat down next to Thomas. “No Eberslees in the Interworld Travel building or the House of Governors? What will our parents say?”

  Thomas laughed. “You know what, Goose? For once in my life, I don’t think I care.”

  Thomas wasn’t the only one leaving Interworld Travel. I woke up one morning to find the lobby full of former travel officers who’d been asked to depart. I recognized most of them as the people who’d chased us through the streets back in East: Kip and Celeste were in the crowd, and so was Michael, although he was making it clear to anyone who’d listen that he was by far the most important person Miss Harrison had fired. (The next morning, the lobby was full again, this time with people who’d heard the Interworld Travel Commission had plenty of jobs available.) Huggins and his cows eventually went back to their pasture, the smugglers snuck away in the night, and the chief admiral of North returned to his fleet after receiving a generous payment from the House of Governors. Even Henry Tallard wandered through the Interworld Travel building on his way back from West, though he was in a hurry to meet his biographer to write up the latest installment of his life’s adventures. Miss Harrison had promised to shut down Mrs. Bracknell’s Worldhub as soon as everything had been restored to normal, but for the moment, the eighth floor of Interworld Travel was bustling with travelers. One evening, without any warning, Florence and her deputy, Ophelia, came soaring through the Southern doorway on the back of a magic carpet. I was glad they were safe, of course, but I was even gladder when they’d flown back up to their gatehouse in the mountains. Every time I saw Florence’s black robes swishing around a corner, a gash of bright light ripped open somewhere inside me, and I had to look away.

  I didn’t stay much longer in Centerbury. We never did manage to retrieve the Gatekeeper’s car from the roadside, so Arthur and Rosemary and I took the train as far as we could, and then we went on foot. The Ungoverned Wilderness had swallowed up our old bags, but Miss Harrison had given us each a set of clothes and enough food for the journey, plus a new pair of glasses for Arthur. It was a shorter walk than I remembered, now that the door at the end of the world was sealed. Soon, through the trees, the roof of the gatehouse came into view. AHHH, said the bees, racing ahead of us. HOME.

  I hadn’t even been gone a month, but the garden was already overgrown, and a thin layer of dirt and dust had settled on the gatehouse windows. The door at the end of the world was just as Arthur and I had left it, though: jammed shut, with half a key wedged in its lock. Rosemary burst out laughing when she saw it. “I can see why you two thought this was all your fault,” she said. “It takes a lot of talent to break a lock that badly.”

  “Lucy thought it was all her fault,” Arthur corrected, grinning at me. “I felt sure we were unwitting victims of a vast interworld conspiracy.”

  “You’d better hope Rosemary can fix it,” I told him. “If she can’t, I’ll make you try, and then we’ll all be stuck here forever.”

  Arthur didn’t have to worry, though; Rosemary had wiggled the broken key out of the lock in under a minute. “You’ll need to get a new one made quickly,” she said, pressing the key into my hand, “so don’t lose it.”

  “I won’t.” I pulled out the little pair of scissors I’d been carrying all the way from Centerbury. “Are you ready?”

  “I suppose I am.” Arthur looked around the garden. “You know, I’m not sure Southeast is a pass-through after all. It may not have made a name for itself yet, but I think it will someday.” He sighed. “I’m going to miss it.”

  “You say that as though you’re not coming back in a month!” said Rosemary. “And as though I won’t be bothering you all the time we’re away.”

  “Well, a month is a long time,” said Arthur, “and anyway, I’ll miss Lucy.” After days of making his case to the Daves, Arthur had gotten himself appointed as East’s very first otherworld ambassador. He was going to spend most of his time traveling from now on, returning home occasionally to tell the people of East about how interesting it was to visit other worlds, and to have dinner at the palace.

  Rosemary was going to East, too, against Mr. Silos’s express wishes. He’d wanted her to take a few months off to recover from our adventures, but Rosemary had ignored him. “I may not be as sneaky as Tillie or as well connected as Sarah,” she’d told us on the train, “but I don’t see how I’ll get to be either of those things unless I keep working at it, and there’s an enormous stash of Eastern chocolate I’m dying to get my hands on. Everyone in Southeast goes wild for that stuff.”

  Rosemary and Arthur both stood back as I slipped my fingers into the gatecutters. The blades cut crisply through the places where the door had been glued shut. When I’d guided them around the final corner, I put them back in my pocket, and Rosemary picked the lock. (Much too easily, in my opinion. I’d have to warn Miss Harrison.) Slowly, holding my breath, I pulled open the door at the end of the world.

  “Oh! Hello again!” On the other side of the door, the librarian we’d met in East looked up from pushing her cart down the long, dim hallway. “You three were looking for Bernard the other day, weren’t you?”

  All of us blinked at her. We looked one way, into the sun-dappled gatehouse garden, and then the other, into the library. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to the sensation. “Yes,” I managed to say finally. “That’s right.”

  “Well,” said the librarian, “you’ll be pleased to know he’s just gotten back from his vacation. He should be back at work shortly. If you’ve already gotten into the special collection, though, I suppose you don’t need his help anymore.”

  “Oh, we do,” I told her. “I’m sure we’ll always need Bernard.”

  When the librarian had rolled her cart out of sight, Rosemary and Arthur stepped through the doorway, and the bees flew over to say goodbye. “We’ll see you soon,” Rosemary promised, “although now that you’ve got that new job, I’m sure you’ll be even busier than we are.”

  “Don’t open any illegal worldgates, Lucy,” said Arthur. “At least, not without us.”

  “I won’t.” I leaned over the threshold to hug them both. Then I watched as they walked down the library hallway, turned the corner, and disappeared.

  WHAT NOW? the bees asked.

  “I’m not quite sure.” I felt for the piece of key in my pocket. “I should probably find a locksmith.” I took one last look down the Eastern hallway, pushed the door shut, and—

  “Hold that door!” the Gatekeeper shouted. She barreled through the worldgate in a swirl of black robes, almost knocking me over. “You’re not going to keep me out of my own garden, Lucy Eberslee!
” She thumped her cane against the ground with relish, sniffed the air, and sighed. “The tomatoes are ripe already. I’ve been away too long.”

  The bees flew around her in a frenzy, and I couldn’t stop staring. “How did you get home?” I asked. “Are you all right? I thought you were . . . well, I don’t know what I thought you were, exactly, but it didn’t seem—”

  “I’m not dead,” said the Gatekeeper, “but I’ve been better. I never want to see another of those Eastern flying contraptions as long as I live. I wouldn’t have even set foot in one if Mr. Wilson hadn’t gotten me a ticket.”

  “Mr. Wilson’s back, too?” I put both my hands on the Gatekeeper’s shoulders. “You’ve really got to tell me how you made it back here.”

  “From the space beyond the worlds?” The Gatekeeper shuddered a little. “It wasn’t easy, Lucy; I’ll tell you that. I’m not sure how long we were wandering there. It was awfully bright, and horribly cold, and sometimes we were right side up and sometimes we were upside down, and Mr. Wilson kept complaining that his nose felt funny. Every so often, I thought I could hear the sea. Just when I thought I might be losing my mind, I looked up and saw another worldgate right there above our heads. I still don’t know how it got there.”

  I had some idea, but I kept it to myself, at least for now.

  “I made Mr. Wilson climb on my shoulders,” the Gatekeeper said, “and he poked at the thing with my cane. Eventually, we managed to pull ourselves through onto a rocky sort of beach. We were lucky, though. Some Interworld Travel fool was in the middle of gluing the worldgate shut! If we’d come along any later, we would have missed it.”

  “I’m awfully glad you didn’t.” I hesitated. “When you were in the space beyond the worlds, did you happen to see Mrs. Bracknell there?”

  The Gatekeeper raised her eyebrows. “Is that where she ended up? No, we didn’t see anyone else. We could barely see ourselves! And the worldgate’s shut now, anyway. I suppose there might be another way out, but if Mrs. Bracknell ever makes her way back from the space beyond the worlds, I suspect she’ll be a much different person for it.” She leaned on her cane. “But what about you, Lucy? What are you doing back at the gatehouse?”

  “Oh, I’m not here for long. I’m just supposed to watch the door until the new gatekeeper comes . . . although, now that you’re here, I think I’d better tell Interworld Travel not to send anyone.”

  “Please do,” said the Gatekeeper. “And after that? You won’t be my deputy anymore? No more pink forms and green forms and blue forms?”

  I shook my head. “Miss Harrison asked me to be in charge of the team that’s opening up all the worldgates again. There are going to be lots of us, people from South and West and everywhere. We’ll cut open the old doors and put up those insulating quilts Mrs. Bracknell invented so there won’t be so many side effects at the ends of the world. We might talk about building new doors, too—ones that all the worlds can agree on, made carefully so they won’t unravel. It’s going to be total chaos to organize,” I said, “but I think I’ll be good at it. And I don’t have to leave until next week.”

  “Thank the worlds for that,” said the Gatekeeper. “I’ve got hundreds of tomatoes to pick, from the smell of things, and I could use a helping hand. Come with me, Lucy, if you’d like.” She gave a little cackle and thumped off into the garden with a cloud of bees behind her. “We’d better get to work before the hailstorms blow in.”

  Acknowledgments

  A heap of gratitude, as always, to Toni Markiet, who believes in stories down to her bones and always knows just the right threads to tug in order to pull a book—or a universe—into shape.

  Thanks also to Megan Ilnitzki, to the rest of the remarkable publishing team at HarperCollins Children’s Books—including Amy Ryan, Kathryn Silsand, and Jacqueline Hornberger—and to Poly Bernatene for his brilliant artwork.

  Sarah Davies kept my own world from unraveling at least twice during the writing of this book. Enormous thanks to her and to everyone at Greenhouse and Rights People.

  A number of wonderful people gave me writing time when I needed it most: Maureen and Leo Pezzementi, Jane and Chris Carlson, Jonathan Carlson and Kelsey Hersh, and Kerry Jo Green. Nora Pezzementi gave me new stories to tell and a new love for telling them. And I owe all the thanks in all the worlds to Zach Pezzementi, without whom this book simply wouldn’t exist.

  To all the librarians, teachers, and booksellers who share stories with young readers, and to the kids who crawl into those new worlds reluctantly or dive in headfirst: this one’s for you.

  About the Author

  Photo credit Amy Rose Capetta

  CAROLINE CARLSON is also the author of the Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates series and The World’s Greatest Detective. She holds an MFA in writing for children from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives with her family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

  You can visit her online at www.carolinecarlsonbooks.com.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Books by Caroline Carlson

  The World’s Greatest Detective

  The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates series:

  Magic Marks the Spot

  The Terror of the Southlands

  The Buccaneers’ Code

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  Copyright

  THE DOOR AT THE END OF THE WORLD. Text copyright © 2019 by Caroline Carlson. Map art by Virginia Allyn. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.harpercollinschildrens.com

  Cover art © 2019 by Poly Bernatene

  Cover design by Joel Tippie

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018013449

  Digital Edition APRIL 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-236832-4

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-236830-0

  1920212223CG/LSCH10987654321

  FIRST EDITION

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