Boundarylands

by Clayton Smith

  In other words, the world was freaking out, just as Willy had said.

  “That’s why the map changes,” Cole said, more to himself than to his classmates. “It shows what’s where at every given when.”

  The Stranger nodded. “’Bout the size of it,” he said.

  “We’re going out there?” Polly asked doubtfully. The landscape changed to a land of ash, with tall gray towers reaching up into a gloomy sky.

  “We have to,” Cole said, watching the ash give way to the ocean floor. “Broken is out there somewhere.”

  “Maybe we should wait here for him to cycle past,” Etherie suggested. Cole, dismayed at the sight of infinite worlds swiping past the doorway, actually found himself hoping the Stranger would take this unlikely plan and tweak it to make it work.

  But instead, the cowboy snorted. “We could wait for centuries,” he said, pulling a new cigar from his back pocket. The ocean slid away and became a nighttime desert landscape crawling with life-sized, melting plastic soldiers. Polly yelped and clung to Emma, and even Willy looked like he might take the opportunity to faint. But the Stranger ignored them all. “No telling which ‘when’ your friend’ll spin by in. No telling which land he’s even in.”

  Cole furrowed his brow. “Isn’t that why we have the map?”

  The Stranger stuck the cheroot between his lips. “Nope.”

  Cole waited for the cowboy to elaborate. “It’s not?” he finally asked.

  The Stranger shook his head and sighed. His breath came out like the bone-dry rattle of the desert. “All right…gather ‘round. We’ll go through this once.” He squatted down, and the children formed a half-circle before him. He unrolled the map and laid it flat on the marble floor. “This is a map of the Boundarylands; it ain’t the whole Boundarylands, but it’s near as anyone can get on paper. The whole world...” He paused and tried to figure the best way to explain it. “The world exists sort of on top of itself. This here’s the main floor, but it changes.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the big glass doors. Now, outside, it was morning on a farm. “Your friend, Broken—he’s out there somewhere. No idea what floor he’s on, and without his blood, there ain’t no way of finding out by using the map.”

  “Then how do we find him?” Cole asked, trying not to sound desperate. But the last thing he wanted after traveling between dimensions was to feel like the trip was a waste.

  “We go to the Pinch.” The cowboy stabbed a leathery finger at the center of the map.

  “What’s a pinch?” Polly asked.

  Willy reached over, clamped his fingers over a bit of skin on her arm, and twisted. “That’s a pinch!” he said, jumping up and down excitedly.

  “Ow!” Polly glowered and rubbed her arm.

  “The Pinch is the center of the kingdom,” said the Stranger. “Right smack in the middle. It’s where we’ll find the Royal.” Something passed over the Stranger’s eyes, a dark cloud of sorts.

  Cole wondered what their guide was thinking about.

  Nothing good, he thought. That’s for sure.

  “The Royal’s got certain powers. Can pinpoint anyone in the realm. First we head to the Pinch, then, if we’re lucky, he tells us where to find your friend. It’s gonna be a long trip. And it ain’t bound to be easy.”

  “This Royal, he’s like a king?” Cole asked. The Stranger nodded.

  “Is he a good king?” Polly chirped. Visions of a handsome young prince made her curl her arms together and coo.

  But the Stranger shook his head. “No,” he said flatly. “He is not.”

  “When do we go through?” Emma asked quietly, watching the spinning worlds and hugging the bag of éclairs tightly to her chest.

  “Right now!” Willy said as the space beyond the doors switched into a mammoth ball pit. He made a mad dash for the exit, but the Stranger caught him easily by the collar.

  “When we go, we go together,” the cowboy said. “No one crosses the lintel alone.”

  “What’s a lintel?” Polly asked.

  “The line between imaginations.” The Stranger grasped the handle of one of the doors. Red, blue, yellow, and green plastic balls were piled three feet high against the glass, but when the Stranger pulled the door open, the balls didn’t come tumbling into the station; they remained piled up, as if restrained by an invisible wall.

  The Stranger pointed down at the spot where the station floor met the plastic balls. A wide, black band of rubber was set into the floor and ran the length of the boundary between the Wellwhich Way Station and the imagination outside. “These are the Boundary’s boundaries. Aside from the station and the Pinch, they’re the only constants. Got it?”

  The children nodded. “Got it.”

  “When you cross a lintel, you cross it all the way. Got it?”

  They nodded again. “Got it.”

  “What happens if you don’t cross all the way?” Etherie asked. “What happens if the imagination changes while you’re stuck crossing over, half in, half out? If your back half doesn’t make the spatial journey?”

  “Then your back half goes off on its own journey without you,” said the Stranger, lighting his cigar.

  Cole gulped.

  The cowboy puffed on the cheroot and let the smoke seep out through his lips. “We cross the lintels together. Every time. On my say so. Together. And quickly, all the way.”

  “Got it,” they all said, unprompted.

  “Good. Now line up.” He held the door open, and the five children formed a straight line, their toes not quite touching the rubber lintel. The Stranger pulled open the next door and sidled up to their line. “Don’t go till I say.”

  Cole felt something crawling into his hand, and he jumped. When he looked down, he saw it was Emma’s fingers. And they were trembling. “I think we’ll be okay, Emma,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze. She didn’t look at him; her eyes were glued to the moonscape now before them. But she squeezed his hand back.

  The next imagination was a swamp filled with metal alligators. Pass, thought Cole. The one after that was a kingdom in the sky weathering a hectic lightning storm that singed the gray storm clouds a sooty black. Nope. Then came a little cottage, set right outside the doorway, with a werewolf crouching on its roof and howling furiously at the full moon above. Nuh-uh. Then a knight facing a monstrous dragon in a dirt ring, red-and-blue fire streaming from the beast’s jaws. No way. Then a normal-looking city street filled with normal-looking people passing normal-looking skyscrapers and darting between normal-looking cars at normal-looking crosswalks.

  “Now!” said the Stranger.

  Cole’s heart leapt in his throat. He slipped on his first step and nearly tumbled, but Emma held his hand firmly in her own. She yanked him across the lintel behind her. Cole cried out as he hit the pavement...but when he opened his eyes, all six of the travelers were safely on the city sidewalk, and every limb was accounted for. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the doors they’d jumped through belonged to an innocuous office building on this side of the lintel. Through the glass he could see the interior of the Wellwhich Way Station with its marble floor and tall chronological barometer…and then there was that streaking blur, and the space behind the doors became a snow-covered glacier dotted with little igloos.

  Cole climbed to his feet and dusted himself off. The six travelers looked around at the hustling crowds in this new cityscape. Every single man and woman speed walking along the sidewalk was dressed in a business suit. The streets were clean; the buildings sparkled; the trashcans were empty; the newspapers were stacked neatly in their bins. It was the cleanest, most organized city Cole had ever seen. Even the traffic moved in orderly fashion.

  “This way,” said the Stranger. He set off across the street, and the children hurried after him, struggling once again to keep pace with his long strides. Even though the group was dressed oddly fo
r this world—jeans and sneakers didn’t exactly fit in with the motif, and the Stranger’s cowboy duds threw the idea of blending in right out the window—none of the busy passersby seemed to notice. Each person was focused on his or her own path, and the ones who were talking did so quietly into wireless headsets. Not a single suspicious eye was cast toward the ragtag band of wanderers.

  A few blocks down, the Stranger made a hard left and led them along the edge of a park. They strode down to the end of the block, then turned right, and the park opened up to a towering skyscraper made of metal and blue glass. As they were passing this building, they encountered a woman in a smart black business skirt suit, with her dark brown hair swept up in a tight chignon. One hand carried an enormous smartphone; the other held a venti macchiato with soft red lipstick stains kissed onto the lid. Tucked under her arm was a tasteful leather handbag. A huge pair of Coach sunglasses hid her eyes. She didn’t seem to notice the children as she walked toward the building, but they certainly noticed her…or, to be more specific, they noticed the glittering diamond brooch that she wore pinned to her lapel. It was large, the size of a child’s fist, and it was in the shape of a crown.

  Polly stopped dead in her tracks. “A princess!” she gasped.

  The Stranger gestured for the woman to pass before the group, and she did so without any sort of acknowledgement. She slid into the building through its revolving doors as the Stranger resumed his quick gait down the sidewalk.

  It was another three blocks before they realized Polly was missing.

  Chapter 5:

  “When Life Gives You Layoffs, Make Layoffalafel.”

  Polly heaved against the revolving door with all her might, but it just wouldn’t budge. She put her hands directly on the glass—something her mother forbade her to ever do—and pushed with her legs, but her feet slid back on the slate entryway floor like she was on a treadmill. “Hmph,” she said, jamming her fists to her hips and frowning at the door. She could see the princess inside, heading for the elevators. Soon she’d be whisked away to some unseen floor, and Polly would never find her. She backed away from the door, all the way to the street, then planted her feet, took a deep breath, and sprinted at full speed toward the heavy glass. She stuck out her arms, wand clutched tightly in her hand, and gave a warrior’s cry as she charged. Just as she reached the door, a man arrived at the other side, on his way out. He pushed the door easily, and it spun the instant Polly was safely between two panels. The door rotated, and she ran straight through, clearing the revolver and screeching to a halt on the polished lobby floor.

  She smiled proudly.

  That particular mission had gone very well.

  The princess pushed the call button by the elevator bank on the other end of the lobby. Polly lowered her head and ran, ducking beneath the electronic security gate. “Hey!” cried a man in a blue wool suit as she slammed into him with her shoulder and barreled on past.

  She arrived panting at the elevators just as the door slid open. The princess stepped into the lift, still lost in her phone screen, and Polly hurried in after her. The princess pushed the button for the 116th floor, the very top of the building. “The penthouse,” Polly’s mother would have said. The doors slid closed, and they began to rise.

  “Unbelievable misery,” the woman murmured, scrolling frantically through her screen. She stood as still and as straight as a statue, not one hair out of place, not a single wrinkle in her suit. She had removed her sunglasses, and even her eyes looked orderly and rational, but Polly thought maybe they were really what her dad sometimes called “crazy-calm.” Polly’s mother’s eyes got crazy-calm sometimes, usually on the nights her dad slept on the couch. She wondered if this princess’s prince had said nasty things about the princess’s mother, or if he’d accidentally spilled a gallon of gasoline on the grass in the front lawn. Those were the sorts of things that usually made her mother’s eyes go crazy-calm.

  The woman’s pointer finger moved like lightning over her phone screen—side to side, up and down, pinching, scrolling, tapping, sliding. Her finger was an angry blur…until they reached the 32nd floor, and she lost reception. “Argh! Technology!” she wailed at no one in particular.

  And it was at no one in particular because she still hadn’t registered the presence of another human being in the elevator, despite Polly’s labored breathing. The poor girl wasn’t out of breath so much from running—she was first in her age group in swimming lessons—but because she was standing just two feet away from a real, live princess. Of course, she wasn’t wearing a flowing pink gown like most princesses do, but she had a beautiful jeweled crown, and that was really all it took. It was the most important part. You might just be another pretty rich girl until you put on the crown. Then you were a princess, and the commoners knew it.

  The pin sparkled in the elevator’s blue LED lights. There must have been a hundred diamonds set into its face—maybe even two hundred. The light shot through them, ricocheting from one facet to the next, and the brooch seemed to radiate with its own crystal blue glow. A pin like that must be worth a bajillion dollars, Polly thought. And that was just the crown pin! How wonderful the actual crown must be!

  The elevator slowed in its ascent and finally slid to a smooth stop at the 116th floor. The doors opened, and the princess hurried out, walking with purpose and mumbling under her breath.

  Polly peeked her head out of the elevator and gazed across the penthouse. It was full of people—busy people, bustling people, all dressed in business suits and all saying things like, “Have you prepared the P&E statement yet?” and, “If we don’t find a way to augment our EBIT, we’re sunk!” They ran to and fro, some with papers in their hands, most with tablets, not exactly looking where they were going, but not running into each other, either.

  Polly hopped out of the elevator and started off after the crazy-calm princess. But she only made it a few feet.

  “Ahem,” said a nasally voice to her right. She raised her head and saw an impossibly thin man sitting behind an impossibly large computer screen at an impossibly clean desk. The desk was attached to a long, turquoise counter, and on the front of that counter hung a big sign that said “Princess Lemon’s” in sparkly yellow letters. The words arced gracefully over a cutout replica of the princess’s crown pin. The crown on the sign wasn’t quite as dazzling; it only had sequins, not diamonds. But it looked pretty all the same.

  This must be her castle, Polly thought, and this person is her manservant.

  “Can I help you?” the manservant asked, sneering down at her.

  “No, I do not require anything,” Polly said with a regal air.

  “And where do you think you’re going?” he asked, crossing his arms.

  “I go wherever I want.”

  “Not up here, you don’t.”

  “Oh, yes I do,” she said. “And if you lay one finger on me, I’ll have you thrown to the alligators.”

  The Servant leaned in close and whispered, “Sweetheart, if you haven’t noticed, these are the alligators.” He gestured with his eyes to the men and women racing around the office. Polly wasn’t sure quite what he meant. They all looked perfectly human to her. Still, it was best not to show confusion in front of the servants.

  “Of course I’ve noticed,” she said. “Now go...polish the silver.”

  The Servant closed his eyes and massaged his temples. “Oooh, don’t you push me, Rainbow Brite. I am one expense report away from a nuclear meltdown.”

  “If you melt on the floor, make sure someone cleans it up,” Polly commanded. She turned down the hall and caught sight of the older princess sweeping into a big, glass meeting room at the far end. But before she could take another step, the servant reached around the desk and grabbed her by the arm.

  “You’re not allowed ba—” he began to say, but Polly swung her wand and clocked him in the temple. The servant gasped. “Well, I never!
” he cried. Then he threw up his hands in surrender. “Fine. By all means, have a blast. I hope someone puts you down the mail chute.” He huffed back into his chair and jabbed furiously at his keyboard.

  Polly rolled her eyes. Servants.

  Just then, the elevator doors behind her dinged and slid open. “Polly!” Emma cried, bounding out of the lift. The rest of the crew followed her. The Stranger looked particularly annoyed, but Polly didn’t have time to worry about that. “Come on,” she said, waving them forward with her hand. She turned to the servant. “They’re with me.”

  “Of course they are.”

  Polly ran down the hallway, followed closely by Emma and Willy, who bounced off the walls like a pinball, spinning and slamming his way down the corridor. Etherie, Cole, and the Stranger followed at a calmer pace. “We don’t have time for this,” the Stranger muttered after them. But if Polly heard, she didn’t let it show. She bounded to the end of the hall and pushed her way into the conference room at the end.