by Ryan Graudin
“She wasn’t lost. Not . . . that way.” It hurt, sitting like a hard ball in the center of his chest, but Jake made himself say the words. “She died.”
The crumpled-can look reappeared on his cousin’s face, and he took her hand.
“I’m sorry.” Christopher’s voice was quiet now. “I suppose we’d better focus our efforts on getting you home, rather than spend too much time wondering how you arrived. In fact . . .” He hesitated, then nodded. “Perhaps you can help me. I oughtn’t let you, because you’re not Curators. But desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“How can we help?” Jake asked.
“I have a theory,” said Christopher. “Everyone who arrives here is written down in a ledger. If your names were somehow put into the ledger, perhaps you could have been summoned that way, though I can’t think why.”
“So we need to check the ledgers,” Marisol said.
“Exactly.” Christopher nodded. “The problem we have is that if I’m right and we don’t erase your names quickly, we won’t be able to do so at all. And my fellow Curators are, ah . . . They can move a touch slowly at times. I think we may need to tackle this off the books. Er, with the books? Regardless, it’s better for us not to be seen.”
That was what Theodosia had said—that the Curators were always tangled up in red tape. If the window home was closing as fast as Christopher claimed, they couldn’t afford to go the official route. Mom’s face swam up in Jake’s mind again, and he looked across at Marisol. She nodded, her mouth set in a firm line.
“We’re in,” he promised. “Whatever it takes.”
5
Marisol
MARISOL HAD NEVER STOLEN ANYTHING IN HER LIFE.
Well, except for the family dinghy, but that didn’t count! Borrowing the Beruna boat was nothing like sneaking into a giant see-through castle and staying hidden long enough to find the book of names.
The task seemed impossible.
There were hundreds of thousands of books, for one thing. Shelves on shelves on shelves filled with large ledgers that looked as if they belonged in a church. Leather spines and gilded titles—all blending together. Marisol was in the garden outside with Jake and Christopher, hunched inconspicuously behind a row of bushes, but she knew the books wouldn’t be any easier to tell apart up close.
“Which one has our names in it?” she whispered, because the closer they got to the Crystal Palace, the quieter Christopher’s voice had become.
The Curator was currently peering between the branches of a bushy shrub as big as he was—dark green leaves jostled for space with yellow flowers shaped like tiny pom-poms. A fancy brass plaque on the ground beside it said:
ACACIA KINGIANA, WESTERN AUSTRALIA, 1950
Through the leaves, they watched a steady stream of Curators flow through the building’s entrance. Every single official walked with the same clipped step. Busy, busy, in and out.
“Are you sure the other Curators are as slow as you say?” Marisol asked.
“Trust me, when it comes to paperwork they make a snail seem like a racehorse,” said Christopher. “Now, the volume you want is in the farthest corner on the second-to-last shelf. There will be a number on the spine—341,069.512. It’s tucked in the last place you’d expect. That’s what’s supposed to stop accidents like this from happening.”
The other Curators didn’t look very accidental. Like Christopher Creaturo, they were dressed in sharp white outfits—three-piece suits and boxy dresses. They each wore a necklace. When a Curator stopped just on the other side of their bush, Marisol saw that the strand held a monocle identical to the one Theodosia had lent them. There were other charms strung alongside: a tiny scroll, a key, an hourglass, a fountain pen, a feather, and . . . was that a fish scale?
When she leaned in for a closer look, Christopher shook his head. The chain around his own neck glistened. Its pendants were tucked too far into his shirt for Marisol to see, so she studied their guide instead, watching him grow paler and paler. By the time the other Curator finally wandered off, Christopher was as white as his wardrobe.
“Phew! That was close.” He sighed. “Now remember, under no circumstances can you two be seen.”
“It’s a glass palace!” Jake pointed out. “Everyone can see everything!”
“That’s why I’ll be staying behind to provide a distraction. You two grab the book and meet me under the St. Helena olive tree by the Aral Sea. If I’m not there yet, you’ll know the tree because it will have a nameplate like this one. It’s on the other side of town. You’ll know you’ve reached it when you see the Loch Ness Monster. And yes, before you ask, Nessie is real.”
The Loch Ness Monster! It sounded like another fairy tale, but if it was here, then it must have been at home, once upon a time! Proof, thought Marisol, that the world was as weird and wondrous as Nana had claimed. Christopher even stated it with the same matter-of-fact tone their grandmother favored.
“Are you two ready?” Christopher asked.
Jake nodded, eager. Marisol’s yes was more cautious. Nerves wiggled like worms in her belly, but home was close enough to see—sitting on the second-to-last shelf in the farthest corner.
They could do this.
They had to.
“Wait here,” Christopher instructed. “I’ll release the decoy and distract the other Curators. That will be your signal to enter the Crystal Palace.”
“What’s the decoy?” Marisol asked, in case they missed their window.
“You’ll know when you see it.”
With a wink, Christopher Creaturo disappeared deeper into the bushes, and the cousins found themselves alone. Minutes passed. The worms in Marisol’s stomach turned into snakes. Jake seemed fidgety too, peering through the branches every few seconds. She wanted to apologize, to tell him she was sorry for dragging him here, for being foolish enough to believe they’d find Nana’s treasure when it turned out their grandmother hadn’t even been to the World Between Blinks. Marisol’s gift had never led her so astray before, but there was a first time for everything.
“Jake, there’s something I have to—”
Before she could admit anything further, there was an explosion. Well, not an explosion, exactly, as explosions tend to involve fire and this one was all water.
And tentacles.
A massive creature writhed in the harbor they’d just left. Not a fairy tale but a monster! One that looked as if it’d been ripped straight from an ancient map’s deep-ocean drawings. The animal’s limbs thrashed, suction cups pulsing as they began wrapping around nearby ships.
Marisol clasped her hands over her mouth.
“A kraken!” Jake was too excited to muffle his yell, but their hiding place remained intact.
Every Curator near the Crystal Palace’s entrance had paused to study the harbor, their blinks intensified by the monocles they each popped over their right eye.
“Oh dear,” one of them said. “There’s an unsorted arrival. Does anyone have a clipboard on hand?”
After a brief scuttle of suits, three clipboards appeared.
“We’ll need a customs form as well as permanent residency papers.” The Curator squinted as the kraken latched on to a battleship. “Toss in a damage claims packet as well. This will get messy.”
None of the Curators ran. Their pace stayed steady as they sorted the papers and proceeded in a straight line down to the harbor. This was exactly the point Christopher had been making—if they weren’t going to hurry for a kraken on a rampage, they certainly wouldn’t rush for two lost children.
The Crystal Palace was clear.
Marisol felt her heartbeat all over her body. It thrummed through her spine when she stood; it pounded the ground when she dashed for the door. It made her feel small and fluttery beneath the vaulting glass, like a butterfly inside a greenhouse.
The palace did look like a greenhouse: fountains bubbled in the central aisle and there were even trees stretching over the stacks. Limbs twisted al
ongside shelves three times taller than the cousins. The books themselves were arranged down to the decimal, and it gave Marisol a thrill to see these flowing, growing numbers. The Curators had clearly spent a lot of time cataloging this place.
“I hope Theodosia’s crew left already.” Jake glanced back at the harbor, where the monster’s tentacles had developed a taste for fine dining, rocking the yacht as if it were a bath toy. “Krakens are no joke. I wonder how Christopher found one.”
“I don’t know,” Marisol answered. There were a lot of things they didn’t know about Christopher Creaturo. . . .
“Hello?” A voice leaped from the stacks. “Who’s there?”
Someone was still in the building.
Marisol’s pulse stuttered, but Jake was fast on his feet, pulling her between some shelves just as the Curator emerged. They spotted the woman through a break in the books—her bun wound tight with a frown to match.
“Hello?” She paused.
It was quiet enough to hear dust falling, a silence that stretched and stretched until it became almost unbearable. Marisol’s skin prickled with the pressure of waiting.
Eventually, the Curator sighed. “Someone must have lost their voice . . . another entry for the laryngitis book.”
She stepped back into the stacks. Marisol watched the woman’s bright strip of clothing ghost over the ledgers. Back and forth, making the rounds—how were they supposed to reach the farthest shelf without getting caught?
Jake nudged her, nodding toward the nearest tree.
¡Claro! They could climb! Most people—adults especially—never looked up, because they were as tall as they were going to be, so why bother?
Marisol gave a thumbs-up and crept toward the trunk. Rough bark and sprawling branches made it easy to scale—much easier than the rock climbing she did with her dad—and they reached the shelf tops in no time. Laid out, these looked like a series of long wooden roads, the gaps between aisles bridged by tree limbs.
Now came the hard part.
The book they needed was a building’s length away—there were countless routes in between, and almost as many dead ends. Marisol and Jake didn’t have time to test them all. Every passing second made their entries in the book more permanent, closed the door back home to Mom and Dad and even Victor. . . .
Tranquilo con la ruta, her memory whispered. Be calm, be calm on the route.
The stomach snakes stopped slithering, though a few still hissed.
She and Jake crept along the shelves, keeping their feet light. The Curator walked below, humming a song that sounded unfinished. Just as Marisol had suspected, the woman didn’t look up, not even when the cousins shimmied across a branch directly overhead.
A hop, a crawl, a tiptoe, a skip . . . at last, they reached the farthest corner of the second-to-last shelf. Jake leaned over the edge and reached for their book: 341,069.512. His fingers strained for the golden numbers on its spine until it seemed as if he had an extra knuckle.
He caught the edge and tugged.
The ledger came free. But so did the neighboring book. Marisol watched in horror as 341,069.511’s shiny pages tumbled to the ground.
WHUMP.
The Curator stopped singing. The Crystal Palace held its breath, sunshine glittering with dust. Jake clutched his prize, eyes wide enough to sharpen each eyelash. Heels sounded against the floorboards: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
They had to run!
Marisol and Jake scrambled for the nearest tree. Because of the book, her cousin was slower, navigating the branches one-handed. They had a better chance of escaping on the ground, so she shimmied down the trunk and gestured for Jake to toss the ledger, so he could do the same.
Tap, tap, tap.
Marisol caught the book, pressing its cover to her chest to keep her heart from falling out. The Curator would appear any moment now. . . .
Jake showed up first, landing on catlike feet.
Together they ran for the entrance. Shelves blipped past, one holding an extra flash of white. Had the Curator seen them? Marisol couldn’t be sure, and she wasn’t about to pause and double-check.
She ran and ran and ran, stopping only when Jake did—well outside the Crystal Palace gardens.
“Phew!” Her primo panted. “That was a close one!”
Marisol nodded and studied the book she was holding. It was too big to fit into a pocket—about the size of Nana’s National Geographic Atlas. The binding was thicker than her arm, not to mention heavy. Hopefully Christopher would know which page their names were on.
Hopefully there was time to erase them.
Hopefully there was a way to get home.
The Aral Sea was exactly where Christopher Creaturo had promised it would be. So was he, lounging against the trunk of the St. Helena olive. Cobalt water tickled the shoreline, though several yards out its color stretched thin, giving way to the gliding green length of today’s second sea monster.
“I can’t wait to tell Victor that Nessie’s real,” Marisol said. “Then again, I’ve seen his laundry hamper. He probably already knows monsters exist.”
Christopher had spotted the cousins, and he started waving as though they were an aircraft coming in for a landing.
“Excellent job, you two!” he said, once they reached the spot of shade under the tree. “I hope things didn’t go too haywire on your end.”
“One of the Curators stayed behind,” Jake explained, “but we still took the book without getting caught.”
“May I?” Christopher nodded at Marisol.
She handed him the ledger, feeling relieved. Soon they’d be safe and this would be nothing more than a tall tale told over sweet tea on Nana’s screened porch. Centurions and krakens and Nessie, oh my! Getting in trouble for taking the boat didn’t seem nearly so bad anymore.
“How did something as big as the Loch Ness Monster get lost?” Jake watched Nessie’s neck periscoping out of the water.
The monster was awfully tall. And splashy. Spray from her fins misted over the trio, creating a rainbow that stopped right on top of the ledger. Marisol had never seen the end of one before. Maybe they all landed inside the World Between Blinks. . . .
“That’s a good question, Jake. A very good question.” Christopher waited until the shower subsided, then opened the book. “I suppose Nessie was never really found in the old world, and when people stopped believing in her in the 1940s the Unknown brought her here. That’s the Curators’ theory at least. They labeled her as quasi-mythical. See?”
Sure enough, he was pointing to the entry: Loch Ness Monster. December 10, 1944. Quasi-mythical.
Marisol frowned. Something wasn’t adding up. The dates especially . . . all of them were from the same time period, written in tidy chronological calligraphy. 1944. 1945. 1945 again. These numbers barely changed as Christopher flipped through the pages.
“Where are our names?” she asked.
“What?” Christopher looked up. For a second he seemed surprised to see the children still standing there. “Oh. We’ll get to them! Have patience!”
“I thought we were supposed to hurry.” Marisol crossed her arms. Now that the book was in Christopher’s hands, he didn’t look nearly as rushed.
“I’ve never actually sent anyone back to the other world before,” the Curator explained, “so it’s in everyone’s best interest if I perform a few test runs first. Now let’s see. . . .”
Christopher pulled a pen from his jacket. It was nothing like the elegant writing utensils the other Curators wore around their necks, and much closer to the ballpoints Marisol often rescued from the bottom of her backpack.
Why was it different? And why had Christopher sent them into the Crystal Palace to get a book he could’ve accessed with far less trouble? And why hadn’t he let Theodosia sign the delivery papers if they weren’t truly in a hurry? And why hadn’t he said we when he talked about the Curators categorizing Nessie?
Slowly but surely, she began to realize that all th
ese questions could only be solved by one answer. . . .
“You’re lying!” Marisol’s voice shook with the accusation. “You aren’t a Curator at all!”
“Mari!” Jake looked shocked.
Christopher, however, didn’t seem upset. He smiled—his chin dimple deepening, his eyes twinkling blue. “I should’ve known you’d see through my ruse.”
“Wait . . . Mari’s right?” Her cousin’s expression hardened. “Can you even send us home, or were you lying about that too?”
“Watch.” Christopher flipped to the previous page and pointed out at the Aral Sea, where the Loch Ness Monster kept splashing and swirling, stirring sky into waves with her tail.
Pen scratched across paper. A word was struck through.
Nessie vanished.
Ripples shuddered through the water, but the monster that caused them was nowhere to be seen. Christopher Creaturo gave a triumphant laugh and snapped the ledger shut. “It worked!”
But something strange was happening. . . .
Marisol’s vision flickered when she blinked. She swayed, fighting off the same dizziness she’d felt while climbing the lighthouse. The overlap, Theodosia had called it. Blinks in the other world reveal this one, and vice versa.
Only this time things didn’t look whole. A crack split through the Aral Sea, as jagged as a lightning strike. The water seemed to be pulling itself apart, and right in the center of the tear sat . . .
Their world.
There was a lake with a crumbling castle on its misty shore. Dozens of tourists crowded the edge, holding their cameras and phones up to the spot where the Loch Ness Monster splashed, just as playful she’d been a few seconds ago.
“Whoa!” Jake’s eyelashes fluttered. “Whoa! It’s gone!”
Marisol kept her own lids open as long as she could, but soon her eyeballs stung too much. The overlap vanished with her second blink and didn’t come back.
She turned toward Christopher, determined. “Now you need to send us home!”
“Yes! What about us?” pressed Jake.
“About that—” Christopher paused, glancing toward the town. “Oh, hot dog!”