IF: Boundarylands

by Clayton Smith

  The old woman peeked her head into the little storefront from the shopkeeper’s exit in back. “Who’s there?” she asked. Dr. Mandrill didn’t respond, but simply stared at her over his glasses. The old woman came shuffling out of her hiding place, inspecting her visitor through her own half-moon spectacles. She wiped her hands nervously on her red and white paisley dress. “Is that the dentist?” she asked.

  He held up his hands, palms pointing toward the sky. “You’re looking right at me,” he said evenly. “You know that it’s me.”

  “Hmpf.” The old woman stopped fiddling with her dress and approached the counter. “I suppose you’d like to know why I called you.”

  “Yes, I would,” he sighed. “I’d like to know that very much.”

  “I want an assurance first,” she said, wagging her finger at him.

  Dr. Mandrill closed his eyes and tented his hands against his face so they covered his nose and mouth. “I don’t need to tell you what the journey here was like, Maude. I’m not in the mood for games. Show me what you have to show me so I can be on my way. I left a patient for this.”

  “Ah, and a fat lot of good he’ll do you!” she laughed.

  Mandrill tapped his knuckles on the counter twice. “Okay. I’ll send my nurse around next week.” He started to walk away.

  “Wait!” the old woman shrieked. Mandrill stopped, his back to the storefront, and smirked. “Wait, wait. Don’t let’s be hasty, dear. I just want an assurance, that’s all.”

  “So you said.” He turned back to the counter. He raised three fingers and crooked them bluntly. “Let’s have it.”

  “What I have is valuable. Very valuable. I want assurances that you’ll pay me what it’s worth, and that you’ll leave my shop in peace. And in one piece,” she added.

  Mandrill let a huge gust of wind blow out through his lips. “Maude, what have I ever done to make you think I’d do otherwise? Hmm?”

  “Left me a widow, for one thing,” she said, stabbing his forearm with one thin finger. Mandrill rolled his eyes. This was well-worn territory, and he was far too weary to get into it with her again.

  “You’ll be paid what it’s worth, if it’s worth anything. And you and your trinkets will go unharmed.” He ran a hand up along his bald scalp, another habit he’d picked up somewhere in the later portion of his life. The beard would be next, he mused, someday...but for now, that, at least, was lustrous and thick, albeit mostly gray.

  The old woman bit her lip and looked like she might call the whole thing off, which would have been a very poor decision on her part. But in the end, she turned and headed to the other end of the store, to the safe tucked back on the lowest shelf. “I’m doing this as a special favor to you,” she said as she lowered herself down and fiddled with the combination. “I could’ve called any number of people, but I knew you’d want it first, and I knew you’d be fair.” The lock clicked and the door fell open. Maude reached in and pulled out a small, gray bundle. She held it close to her chest and shuffled back over to the dentist.

  He looked down at the rag, unimpressed. “What is it?”

  Now the old woman smiled and set the rag down on the counter. She slowly pulled back the top of the rag and revealed the boy’s tooth.

  It was everything Dr. Mandrill could do not to snatch the thing up and run screaming through the station.

  “That’s not real,” he said, his voice high and tight. His right hand—his surgical hand—trembled. He stuffed it in the pocket of his white coat to get it out of sight.

  “Oh, it’s real all right, dearie.” Maude smiled smugly. “Saw it removed with my own eyes.”

  His other hand was trembling now. His knees, too. “Where?” he demanded.

  “Right here. Not three feet from where you’re standing. Right there.”

  His heart pumped with the power of a diesel engine. He forced his lungs to pull in three deep breaths before asking his next question: “When?”

  “Right before I called your office.” Her smile was one of pure triumph. She folded her arms across her chest and lifted her chin in the air. “They were still standing here when I rang. Five kids in all.” Mandrill instinctively turned and searched the station with his eyes, though of course whoever had been the donor was long gone by now. It had taken a fair bit of time for him to reach the Way Station, even with his advantages. “You won’t find them here, dearie,” she said, reinforcing what he already knew.

  He turned back to the little tooth resting on the rag. “May I?”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “Don’t go running off with it,” she warned.

  He waved her off, then reached down and gently, carefully, lifted it with his thumb and forefinger. He cupped his other hand below, in case he dropped it. An outsider would swear the man in the doctor’s coat was holding a bona fide sacred relic from a real-world saint. The tooth was a small bicuspid, the lower right, and had originated inside a child’s mouth. A real child. It held almost no weight, this little tooth, and it gleamed with a clear, unspoiled varnish of enamel. It was a little yellowed, and the root was still flecked with dry blood.

  It was a real tooth.

  “Where did they go?” he asked, working to keep his voice calm.

  Maude nodded toward the station doors. “They went out into the ’lands. They could be anywhere by now.”

  “But they came to you for a reason, hmm?” Dr. Mandrill carefully tucked the tooth back into the rag and folded it up into a tight bundle. “Not many reasons that I can think of for that to happen. They wanted a map? Or a compass?”

  “A map.”

  “And which did you give them?”

  Her face darkened, and she gritted her teeth. “A shifter.”

  Mandrill’s eyes widened in surprise. “A genuine shifter?” Maude nodded. “They weren’t traveling alone, then.”

  “No. They had a guide.”

  “A guide who knows his maps,” Mandrill mused.

  “An IF,” Maude said.

  Dr. Mandrill shook his head. Was there no end to this day’s surprises? “An IF? Are you sure?”

  “I saw the mark.”

  Mandrill placed the wrapped tooth in his coat pocket and rubbed at his bristly chin with the other hand. “He’ll be taking them to the Pinch,” he decided.

  Maude shrugged. “He didn’t tell me where he was going.”

  “There are only two destinations you can find with a shifting map. This station and the Pinch. Though I can’t fathom what would possess them to think an audience with the Royal would be worth the travels.”

  “That’s not my concern, dearie. And I get the feeling they won’t be reaching him anyway,” she said with a wink. Mandrill smiled gently. “Now how about we settle the matter of my payment?”

  Mandrill reached into his coat’s other pocket and pulled out a small brown sack. It was tied closed with a leather drawstring and bulged at the bottom. The dentist hefted the bag, approximating its weight. “Eight ounces covers it, I think.” He tossed it onto the countertop, where it fell with a heavy thunk. The old woman snatched it greedily and pulled open the drawstrings. She peered into the sack and smiled broadly. “I think that’ll do quite nicely,” she agreed.

  Dr. Mandrill slapped the counter with his palm. “Well, I’ll be off. Sorry to swoop and run, but I’ve got busy days ahead, Maude. Busy days ahead.” And he walked toward the Wellwhich Way Station doors, whistling a tune of no particular melody.

  Chapter 7:

  In Which We Examine the Possibility that Cole is Batty, Cracked, Derailed, Mental, Off His Rocker, Out of His Mind, Rabid, Raving, Screwy, Touched, and Plain Old Certifiably Insane

  By the time they left Princess Lemon’s and found the next lintel a few blocks away, the sun in that particular imaginary world was beginning to fall behind the wall of skyscrapers, though Cole noted with peculiar interest that desp
ite the amount of time that had passed since they’d arrived, and despite the lateness of the day, he didn’t feel the least bit drowsy.

  Emma was still glowing. After the company meeting at Princess Lemon’s, where Emma had gone on to suggest the best type of coconut cookie (macaroon) and the best varieties (chocolate, lemon drizzle, and white chocolate with crushed macadamia nuts, in that order), the woman with the pin had bestowed on her a small plastic card that entitled her to “NEARLY-UNLIMITED* FREE LEMONADE AT ANY PRINCESS LEMON LEMONADE STAND FOR LIFE (*valid for up to eleventy zillion uses).” Despite the severe unlikelihood of ever actually coming across a Princess Lemon lemonade stand, Emma clutched the little yellow and turquoise card like it was a ten-thousand-dollar bill. It was her new favorite thing—“better than cookies, even,” according to her—at least for now, and every few minutes she either waved it in the face of one of the other children or kissed it with a loud smack.

  “I think you might be in trouble for leaving us to go follow the lady with the princess pin,” Emma confided in Polly as they walked, “but I’m glad you did it.”

  Willy had gotten lost six times since they left the tall glass and metal building, but at least he was always easy to find. When Polly had wandered off, it had taken a little bit of effort to track her down; it was Cole who’d finally figured out where she’d gone, remembering how she’d seemed so taken with the woman’s princess pin. But when Willy broke ranks, it was to chase after a stray cat, to stomp in a puddle, or to kick over a metal trash can. He was always easy to find; they just followed the noise.

  The group turned the last corner, and the lintel was unmistakable. Even if the rubber strip itself were difficult to see in the fading light, there was just no missing the next world. This one wasn’t stored away behind a set of doors; it was out in the open, a mammoth wall of new reality with the city’s roads, sidewalks, and buildings dead-ending at its base.

  The imagination on the other side of this lintel was a towering jungle in the middle of a much brighter day. They could see harsh sunlight bursting between tree leaves overhead, though none of that light actually reached the city in which they stood. The sun on their side sank lower and lower, and what sun there was on the other side cutting through the branches seemed to grow brighter and brighter. Tall, twisting trees arched overhead, their wide, waxy leaves creating a dark green canvas a hundred feet above the jungle floor. The terrain was so thickly blanketed with trees that all Cole could see as he peered into it were the wide, brown stalks of the tree trunks. It was like someone had built an immense privacy fence out of whole trees. The floor of the jungle was carpeted with wild ferns, each one standing taller than the Stranger. Some of them had softball-sized berries clinging to them, red berries with blue dots. This expanse stretched to the right and left as far as the eye could see, all the way to both horizons.

  The six travelers wandered up to the lintel. The children looked on in awe, but the Stranger was more reserved, his eyes calculating their odds against some unseen variable.

  “Those ferns are impossibly large,” Cole said. “They can’t grow that big.”

  The Stranger looked at him askance, as if he’d just said he’d like to splash around naked in some mud. “Not in your world, they can’t,” he said.

  “Mother Nature has favored this place,” Etherie said, twirling a lock of her long hair. “She has made it bountiful. It’s a blessed place. We should go in.”

  She took a step toward the lintel, but the Stranger grabbed her shoulder. “Wait,” he said.

  They paused, and for a moment, nothing happened. Cole looked doubtfully from the Stranger to the jungle, and back again. All was still. But then some movement caught the corner of his eye. One of the treetops way off in the distance shook like a breeze had taken hold of it. Then the tree next to it, the one that was a little closer, shook as well. Then the next, and the next. Closer and closer, one by one, each of the towering trees shook and rattled.

  Something was coming through the jungle.

  Emma’s hand crept into Cole’s again, and he squeezed it. She reached into her pocket for her éclairs with her other hand, but it was holding the Princess Lemon card, and she couldn’t let it out of her grasp. She didn’t know what to do, so she stood, trembled a little, and watched the path of the moving thing as it pushed toward them.

  “What is it?” Polly asked, her voice lilting. She crept closer to the Stranger and clutched at his leg.

  “Not sure,” he admitted. “But whatever it is, it can’t get past the lintel.”

  “But we can go past the lintels,” Cole pointed out. “How do you know it can’t?”

  “Because it’s part of that imagination. It’s bound there.”

  Now the trees nearest the lintel were shaking, and despite the Stranger’s words, Cole felt his heart creeping into his throat. The entire jungle seemed to be vibrating now. Then something cut through the leaves, something barely visible, making a sound like a running chainsaw blade. Or beating wings, like those of insects...

  Cole’s mouth turned to sandpaper as six gargantuan legs descended from the branches, followed by a sticky-looking purple body the size of a school bus. The creature’s wings tore at the leaves, shredding them and raining organic green confetti down on the ferns below. It hovered lower, and its snout came into view, a long, hairy, serpentine thing with three rows of teeth set into its gnashing mouth. And just as its fragmented eyes broke into view, the imagination spun into a blur and whisked the terrifying insect with it.

  “Whoa!” Willy cried, standing stick-straight on his heels. “Cool!”

  The next imagination, which looked suspiciously like the surface of Mars, wasn’t much more hospitable. They let it whir by. “Line up,” the Stranger instructed. “We need to be ready to jump.” They passed on a world made entirely of flames; they passed on a series of hand-dug, underground tunnels; and they passed on a deserted island in the middle of an ocean of boiling tar.

  In the next world that flashed into view, it was nighttime, and across the lintel was the grassy yard of a large house in long-ago Japan. As they watched, a ninja clad in all black crept over the property wall and landed in a smooth roll on the grass. He reached into his belt and pulled out three gleaming throwing stars. He began to creep toward the teakwood structure with its curling roof corners when one of the temple’s heavy paper doors slid open, casting a rectangle of flickering firelight over the yard. The ninja rolled away from the light just in time and lay flat against the darkness of the fence. A tall man with white hair and a long, white beard stood in the doorway, peering out into the darkness. A lantern in his hand illuminated his tattered gray robes and the slender katana secured at his hip.

  Meanwhile, above him, three more ninjas crept over the crest of the roof and lowered themselves to the loosely fitted shingles just above the man’s head.

  Clearly, this was about to get messy.

  Cole relaxed a bit and waited for the scene to skip, but to his complete astonishment, the Stranger shouted, “Let’s go!” and leapt over the lintel, pulling Polly with him.

  “Yesssss!” Willy cried, jumping into the imagination. Emma let go of Cole’s hand and hurried after them.

  Cole couldn’t believe his eyes. They were going into that bloodbath?! But he didn’t have time to protest; the others were through, and if he didn’t move quickly, they’d be whisked away, and he’d be on his own. So with an exasperated cry, he jumped over the lintel and tumbled into the certain death awaiting them in feudal Japan.

  Every nerve in Cole’s body was on fire. They landed in the far corner of the yard, far enough away from the action to not be noticed. He knew he shouldn’t risk speaking; the ninja who had crept over the wall was only about 50 feet away, and who knew how many more were hiding in the shadows. But he was completely and utterly exasperated by the Stranger’s carelessness. “What are we doing here?” he hissed.

  Th
e cowboy stood and looked casually around the yard. “We’re making camp,” he said at his voice’s regular volume.

  Cole winced, and the blood drained from his face. He took a deep breath and waited for a throwing star to slice his head in two. But there was no throwing star. In fact, none of the ninjas seemed to have heard the Stranger speaking at all. Nor did they notice when Willy, untended by the group, bounded over to the koi pond and splashed his hands madly against the water.

  Cole stared at the ninjas in bewilderment. They remained focused on the old man, and the old man remained focused on the night and on the sword at his hip. None of them paid the visitors the slightest bit of attention.

  Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity. The three ninjas leapt from their perch and landed soundlessly before the old man, just outside the door. They screeched a trio of high-pitched war cries and raised their hands in preparation for battle.

  With a fluidity that belied his age, the old man crouched in the doorway, whisked his sword from its sheath, and held it up, the blade crossing horizontally in front of his eyes. “You disgrace your fathers,” he said in a ridiculous accent. “You dishonor yourselves.”

  And the fighting began.

  The sword flew like a maestro’s baton. Its clean silver blade flashed in the firelight, swirling and dipping and slicing and stabbing. The ninjas twisted from its deadly edge as if their bodies were made of water. Their hands moved with alarming quickness, their actions blurring into one long, fluid motion. But the swordsman stepped and ducked and deftly evaded every punch, slap, and chop.

  The old man kicked his way out into the yard, and the fight followed him. Whenever he did manage to land a devastating strike to one of his assailants, two more ninjas leapt in from out of nowhere to take the fallen man’s place. A ninja near the fence somersaulted into the fray, and at least a dozen more poured over the walls and joined in. They all attacked the old man with great ferocity, but his beard whirled and his sword flashed, and not one of them made contact.