The World Between Blinks

by Ryan Graudin

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Name: Frost Fair

  Entry into WBB: February 5, 1814

  Notes: During the Little Ice Age (1300–1870), the river Thames froze over twenty-four times. Londoners set up vendor booths over the ice, which housed everything from coffee houses and souvenir shops to acrobats and sword swallowers. At the final Frost Fair in 1814, the ice was thick enough for an elephant to walk across it! How do we know? An elephant actually did!

  Name: Kaparunina/Thylacine/Tasmanian tiger

  Entry into WBB: September 7, 1936

  Notes: These carnivorous marsupials look (and act!) like a strange combination of tiger, wolf, and kangaroo. They yawn in the face of danger and make a variety of interesting sounds to communicate. The last Tasmanian tiger on Earth lived at the Hobart Zoo and was a female named Benjamin. (Exactly who is responsible for labeling back there?)

  Name: Glenn Miller

  Entry into WBB: December 15, 1944

  Notes: This bandleader produced more top hits during his career than Elvis or the Beatles! While flying over the English Channel to entertain US troops in France during World War II, Glenn’s plane entered the World Between Blinks. He didn’t let this stop his concert tour. Currently performing at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

  Name: The Globe Theatre

  Entry into WBB: June 29, 1613

  Notes: Built in London in 1599, this playhouse served as a performance venue for William Shakespeare’s plays. A large fire brought it to the World Between Blinks, where the Bard’s lost works (such as Love’s Labour’s Won and The History of Cardenio) are still performed.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Name: SS Baychimo

  Entry into WBB: Entries, actually. The “Ghost Ship of the Arctic” wouldn’t stay lost until 1969.

  Notes: This steel-hulled cargo steamer became trapped in packed ice in 1931. After the Baychimo’s crew abandoned the ship, it began drifting around the Unknown for decades, sighted in both Alaska and the World Between Blinks, refusing to anchor in either. Most vexing.

  Name: Megalodon

  Entry into WBB: 3.6 million years ago. Give or take.

  Notes: This mega shark can grow up to sixty feet long, with teeth that measure close to seven inches. KEEP OUT OF RESIDENTIAL ZONES AT ALL COSTS.

  Name: Bessie Hyde

  Entry into WBB: November 1928

  Notes: Bessie and her husband, Glen, went rafting down the Colorado River for their honeymoon, braving the Grand Canyon’s rapids before slipping through the Unknown. Their boat didn’t make the journey with them, and it was found downriver fully intact, supplies still inside. She currently crews the SS Baychimo.

  Name: MV Lyubov Orlova

  Entry into WBB: March 23, 2013

  Notes: After serving many years as a cruise ship in both the Arctic and Antarctic, the Lyubov Orlova was taken to a salvage yard. Its towing line broke on the journey, and the ship drifted free in international waters, causing panic in the United Kingdom due to a rumor that it was infested with cannibal rats. Unfortunately for us, that rumor was true. WARNING! DO NOT BOARD IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR FINGERS, NOSE, AND TOES!

  CHAPTER NINE

  Name: USS Seawolf (SS-197)

  Entry into WBB: October 4, 1944

  Notes: This Sargo-class submarine was deployed in the Pacific during World War II. The Americans believed it was sunk by friendly fire, but the truth is, many, many things get lost during war.

  Name: Kitezh

  Entry into WBB: Thirteenth century. Give or take.

  Notes: Quasi-mythical. This legendary city is said to have sunk beneath Lake Svetloyar in Central Russia. Known for its white-stoned, golden-domed churches, Kitezh was attacked by Tatars in 1238. Because the inhabitants had no battlements to protect them, they began to pray. Water miraculously burst out of the ground and swallowed the city. True or not, it ended up in the World Between Blinks.

  Name: Wanaku

  Entry into WBB: A thousand years ago. Give or take.

  Notes: This ancient, pre-Incan city was the home of the Tiwanaku people before being submerged in Lake Titicaca. Traces of the civilization still lie beneath the water in the old world, between Bolivia and Peru, including its temple. But we’ve got the best bits here.

  Name: The Great Barrier Reef

  Entry into WBB: Ongoing (1980–present)

  Notes: The largest reef system on Earth has started appearing in the World Between Blinks because oceans are getting too hot for the coral, bleaching them.

  Name: Kronosaurus

  Entry into WBB: 100 million years ago. Give or take.

  Notes: Not a dinosaur. Do not misclassify. This prehistoric sea beast is the largest of the pliosaurs with three-inch-long teeth and a thirty-six-foot-long body. KEEP OUT OF RESIDENTIAL ZONES TO AVOID MASS CHAOS AND INCIDENTAL PAPERWORK!

  Name: Tusoteuthis

  Entry into WBB: 72 million years ago. Give or take.

  Notes: This is a very, very, very big squid. Eleven-foot-long tentacles bring the creature’s complete length to thirty-six feet. Don’t even try and shake hands with it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Name: Port Royal

  Entry into WBB: 11:43am, June 7, 1692

  Notes: This city was (and still is) scalawag central! Pirates made Port Royal their port of call, and they were joined in the alehouses by flocks of wild parrots. Some even say Blackbeard befriended a howler monkey here. (They also say he named it Jefferson.) Two-thirds of the port was sucked into the ocean during an earthquake. Despite this, the pirates (and their parrots) have not stopped their revelries.

  Name: EML Kalev

  Entry into WBB: October 29, 1941

  Notes: This Estonian submarine was taken over by the Soviet Navy during World War II. It slipped through the Unknown during its second patrol.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Name: Portus

  Entry into WBB: Extended (fourth–fifth century, give or take)

  Notes: A major port of the ancient world, Portus had it all. A lighthouse, a canal linking it to nearby Ostia Antica (not that it’ll stay near Ostia, where we keep putting it, oh no), a magnificent sea wall, a safe harbor, and a direct road to Rome. If the river mouth hadn’t silted up, it might still be in the old world.

  Name: Neferneferuaten Nefertiti, Great of Praises, Lady of Grace, Sweet of Love, Most Powerful Queen in the Land of the Lost

  Entry into WBB: 1330 BC. Give or take.

  Notes: This queen was the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten, who established a new capital in Amarna and decreed that the Egyptians would worship only one god: Aten. When the pharaoh died, Amarna was abandoned and swallowed by the desert. Queen Nefertiti vanished from historical records, possibly to become a pharaoh herself? She remains tight-lipped on the matter. WARNING: CURATES HER OWN COLLECTIONS AND RESISTS ZONING PROPOSALS.

  Name: Gardens of the Old Summer Palace

  Entry into WBB: October 18, 1860

  Notes: Built for the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing dynasty in China, this “Garden of Gardens” is filled with lakes, bridges, pavilions, and other elegant structures. British troops burned it into the Unknown during the Second Opium War. Despite the fact that gardens cannot bloom in deserts, Queen Nefertiti insists on keeping this in Amarna, citing a royalty clause. Our last attempt at negotiating with her ended poorly. For us.

  Name: The Amber Room

  Entry into WBB: Extended (1941–1945)

  Notes: This room in Russia’s Catherine Palace was considered the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Its panels’ mosaics are made with over 350 shades of amber and many are backed with gold foil—radiating a warm glow when candles are lit. Looting Nazis took the Amber Room apart in 1941, and by the time World War II ended four years later, all trace of the treasure was lost.

  Name: The Ninth Roman Legion

  Entry into WBB: AD 120

  Notes: Known as the Legio IX Hispana, this legion fought in the Roman Army for over two hundred years, then vanished from historical records without exp
lanation.

  Name: The Army of Cambyses

  Entry into WBB: 524 BC

  Notes: Quasi-mythical. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Persian king Cambyses II sent an army of fifty thousand soldiers through the Sahara, but they didn’t reach their destination, nor did they ever return home. Legend has it that the desert swallowed them. They continue to march alongside the Ninth Roman Legion at Queen Nefertiti’s pleasure.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Name: Giovanni Nepomuceno Maria Annunziata Giuseppe Giovanni Batista Ferdinando Baldassare Luigi Gonzaga Pietro Alessandrino Zanobi Antonino (also known as Archduke Johann Salvator and/or John Orth)

  Entry into WBB: July 12, 1890

  Notes: This archduke had an impressive fifteen names, but shortened this to a much more manageable two when he renounced his title in 1889. Johann married an opera dancer named Ludmilla “Milli” Stubel, and the two sailed to South America in 1890. They vanished on the journey.

  Name: Alexander Helios

  Entry into WBB: 31 BC. Give or take.

  Notes: After his parents, Cleopatra and Mark Antony, were defeated by Octavian (later known as Caesar Augustus) in 31 BC, ten-year-old Alexander Helios was taken to Rome with his twin sister. He disappeared from historical records shortly after. Due to the boy’s youth and Egyptian affinities, Queen Nefertiti has taken a shine to him.

  Name: Harold Holt

  Entry into WBB: December 17, 1967

  Notes: The seventeenth prime minister of Australia loved the ocean and was a very strong swimmer, so it was considered strange when he vanished off the Victoria coast during a morning swim. Conspiracy theories abound: he was abducted by aliens, he boarded a Chinese submarine. None have correctly guessed that he ended up in the World Between Blinks.

  Name: The Great Mogul Diamond

  Entry into WBB: 1747

  Notes: As a raw stone, this diamond weighed in at 737 carats, the largest ever to be mined in India. Unfortunately, the lapidary who cut it did a poor job, reducing the jewel to 280 carats. It was looted by Nadir Shah when he invaded Delhi, then lost altogether after the Persian ruler was assassinated.

  Name: The Amazon Rainforest

  Entry into WBB: Ongoing (1960s–Present)

  Notes: Earth is losing the Amazon rainforest due to a number of factors: farming, cattle ranchers, fires, the demand for hardwood supplies, and even highways. It continues to appear in the World Between Blinks at an alarming rate. Cataloging a rainforest is no easy task!

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Name: Phoberomys Pattersoni

  Entry into WBB: 8 million years ago. Give or take.

  Notes: To the casual observer, this animal looks like a giant guinea pig. And we mean GIANT. It measures 9.8 ft (3 m) long, and weighs between 550 and 1,540 lbs (250–700 kg). It used to live in the Orinoco River delta in the old world’s South America, and still prefers to stay in the Amazon. THREAT LEVEL TO RESIDENTIAL ZONES IS LOW. (Unless it sits on you.)

  Name: Golden Toad

  Entry into WBB: May 15, 1989

  Notes: These brightly colored amphibians hail from Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. Their habitat there was tiny—only 1.5 sq miles (4 sq kms). They have much more room to hop in the World Between Blinks!

  Name: Titanoboa

  Entry into WBB: 58 million years ago. Give or take.

  Notes: These snakes grow up to 45 ft (12.8 m) long and weigh up to 2,500 lbs. (1,135 kg). They once lived in what is now northeastern Colombia, and still prefer the Amazon. Thank goodness. KEEP OUT OF RESIDENTIAL ZONES LEST THEY ACT AS LETHAL SCARVES.

  Name: The Lost City of Z

  Entry into WBB: Unknown. City constantly relocates, in defiance of all cataloging attempts. We are unclear when it first appeared in the World Between Blinks.

  Notes: Quasi-mythical. The legend is fueled by Manuscript 512 in Rio de Janeiro’s National Library, which claims that a Portuguese expedition stumbled upon a wondrous city in the jungle, one that Amazonian tribes described as “enormously rich in gold.” Since the early twentieth century, explorers have been searching for the Lost City of Z, though only a handful have succeeded in finding it inside the World Between Blinks, losing themselves in the process. See Colonel Percy Fawcett (and company).

  Name: Colonel Percy Fawcett (and company)

  Entry into WBB: May 29, 1925

  Notes: This English explorer spent much of his adult life searching for the Lost City of Z. His seventh and final attempt took place in 1925, when the fifty-seven-year-old traveled into the Amazon rainforest with his twenty-two-year-old son, Jack Fawcett, and Jack’s best friend, Raleigh Rimell.

  Name: Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt

  Entry into WBB: April 3, 1848

  Notes: This German naturalist and explorer frequently carved Ls into trees to mark his path. He was last seen setting off on his third expedition of Australia from the Darling Downs in Queensland. The journey took him into the World Between Blinks instead.

  Name: Uemura Naomi

  Entry into WBB: February 14, 1984

  Notes: This Japanese explorer became famous for his solo expeditions. He was the first person to reach the North Pole by himself, the first to raft alone down the Amazon, and the first to climb Denali without a team. He would have been the first Japanese man to summit Mount Everest, but he stepped aside to allow his elder that honor. The forty-three-year-old vanished while descending Denali during a winter storm.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Name: Public Record Office of Ireland

  Entry into WBB: June 30, 1922

  Notes: This building—along with most of the records inside—was lost in the Irish civil war. The Irish Republican Army used the record office as their munition block, and during the fires of the Battle of Dublin, the place exploded. Oops.

  Name: Library of Alexandria

  Entry into WBB: Extended (48 BC–AD 270)

  Notes: This was the largest library of the ancient world—any ships that passed through Alexandria’s port had to surrender their books so the library could copy them. At its height, the place held almost half a million scrolls. Alas, as we learned in the previous entry, wars and libraries don’t mix well. When Julius Caesar attacked Alexandria in 48 BC, he started one of the many fires that initiated the collection’s transition into the World Between Blinks.

  Name: Sir Terry Pratchett’s unfinished novels

  Entry into WBB: August 25, 2017

  Notes: Beloved and bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett wrote over seventy novels, but he left some unfinished at the time of his death. In accordance with his wishes, his computer’s hard drive was destroyed by means of being run over by a steamroller (which was called Lord Jericho). Those lost works now reside in the World Between Blinks, where residents are enjoying them very much, but rather wishing they had endings.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Name: Quagga

  Entry into WBB: August 12, 1883

  Notes: These beauties are a subspecies of zebra and have the stripes to show it! Their call is a kwa-ha sound, and despite the double G in their name, their name is pronounced the same way. Am making this note to help other Curators avoid looking foolish in social situations.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Name: Via Hadriana

  Entry into WBB: Ongoing

  Notes: This was an ancient Roman road built at the order of Emperor Hadrian in AD 137, running from the Nile River to the Red Sea. Time and sand have brought most of this highway through the Unknown, but some traces linger in its original location, making its entry “ongoing.”

  Acknowledgments

  Writing a book requires assistance and support from so many people, but this one in particular took an army of experts. A heartfelt gracias to Marcelo Contreras and Cara Strauss Contreras for lending us not only their names but their linguistic and cultural expertise. Their incredibly generous help in bringing Marisol’s branch of the family to life was irreplaceable, as was their assistance with navigating the n
uances of Bolivian Spanish. To those Spanish-speaking readers who might wonder why a turn of phrase seems unfamiliar, the colloquial variations found in Bolivian Spanish are the answer.

  Thank you to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre for assistance with and permission to use palawa kani, the language of Tasmanian Aborigines, as we added Oz the kaparunina to the World Between Blinks.

  Our other experts included Soraya Een Hajji, P. M. Freestone, and Yulin Zhuang—to these generous friends as well as others not named here, many, many thanks. To our friends who offered early critique, Megan Shepherd and Shannon Messenger, thank you! Any errors that remain, despite the best efforts of our advisers and readers, are of course our own.

  We are so grateful both to and for our amazing editor, Andrew Eliopulos. Your enthusiasm for the world we created has been unflagging. Your insightful and nuanced questions helped us gently draw out the best in this book and in the journey of holding on and letting go that Jake and Marisol take together. We are so grateful as well to Bria Ragin for her smarts, support, and editorial feedback; to Rosemary Brosnan for her leadership; to Jill Amack for patient and thoughtful fact-checking and copy editing (and for laughing at our jokes); to Kevin Keele for our gorgeous cover art and Cat San Juan for our cover design; to Jon Howard, our managing editor; to Robby Imfeld and his team in marketing and Andrea Pappenheimer and her team in sales. To Suzanne Murphy and Jean McGinley, thank you for making us a part of the family. We could go on forever with the Harper thank-yous—to the teams in sales, marketing, production, design, publicity, and more, we appreciate everything you do for us so very much. Many, many thanks also to the wonderful team at Harper Oz. We’d be . . . lost without you.

  This book began when our wonderful literary agent, Tracey Adams, told us about an island that had appeared overnight, the result of sand bars shifting with the tides. Soon it would be lost again, but just for a moment a new place full of driftwood and sharks’ teeth was there to explore. The idea of a lost place, a place that you could only see sometimes, took hold, and several months later we surprised her with a manuscript. Tracey—you are endlessly patient, good-humored, and supportive, and we love working with you. We’re so grateful to have you, Josh, Cathy, and Stephen on our side!