by Paige Britt
Don’t blink, don’t blink.
Penelope’s eyes started to water, but she kept her resolve. The black lines
had disappeared altogether and even the white seemed to fade into nothing.
Don’t blink, don’t blink.
Now the room disappeared. The only thing Penelope could see was the
paper, which didn’t even seem to be there anymore. Instead, a warm, white
nothing opened out in front of her. Penelope felt like she was tottering at the
edge of a pit. It made her feel queasy. So . . .
She blinked.
And in that brief moment of darkness, the pit rushed up. Or else she fell
down. Either way, Penelope heard a whooshing sound and felt a strong wind
press against her face. She opened her eyes and flung out her arms to brace
herself against the table. But there was no table.
A jolt of panic sent Penelope’s heart
racing. Then the nothing engulfed
her, and time slipped away into
the rush of air.
“Where did you come from?” said an unfamiliar voice.
Penelope turned her head in the direction of the sound. All she could see
were little black dots dancing against a backdrop of brilliant light.
“Miss Maddie?” she called out.
“Who in the world is Miss Maddie?” the voice demanded.
Penelope squinted and the black dots slowed their dance. A shape wavered
in front of her eyes, and she saw the outline of a face. She was lying on her back
and a man was standing above her. The man had his hands on his knees and was
inspecting her as if she were a beetle. He wore a pair of blue velvet pants and a
matching velvet jacket covered in pockets. He seemed unusually tall, with legs
as long as fence posts. His brilliant red hair stood straight up and should have
made him look silly, except it didn’t. Not quite. He looked old and wise and
young and foolish all at the same time.
“Wh-where am I?” asked Penelope.
“The Realm of Possibility,” the man answered matter-of-factly.
Penelope sat up. Her head was spinning and her back hurt. An uncomfort-
able lump in her pocket meant she’d landed on her notebook. “The realm of
what?” she asked.
chapter four
“The Realm of Possibility,” repeated the
man. “Used to be anything could happen here, but
these days it rarely does. That’s why you’re so
unusual. Bizarre. Highly irregular.” He gave her
arm a sharp poke, as if checking to see that she
was real.
“Ow!” cried Penelope and glared up at him.
“Looks like you’re here for good,” said the
man with a satisfied nod.
“But I can’t be here for good,” said Penelope,
scrambling to her feet. “I have to be some-
where else.”
“Impossible.”
Penelope gave the man a hard look. “What do you mean, ‘impossible’?”
“I mean, you can’t be somewhere else if you’re already here. It’s impossi-
ble. Inconceivable. Out of the question.”
Penelope felt woozy. Her mother was going to kill her. Not only had she
run away to Miss Maddie’s, somehow she’d left town altogether! Penelope took
a quick look around. She was standing on a small hill. Tall reeds swayed and
hummed in the breeze. A well-worn dirt road ran down the hill to meet a field
of stubby blue grass. To the right of the field, a forest of pine trees stood like
sentries. There was not one house or street sign to be found. The woozy feeling
moved from her stomach down to her knees.
Penelope turned back toward the man. “There must be a way out of here,”
she insisted.
But the man wasn’t listening. “Do you see that?” he asked suddenly, point-
ing at the sky above the forest.
Penelope scanned the sky. It was empty except for a dark cloud huddled
over the forest’s far horizon. “You mean that cloud?” she asked.
When she looked back, the man was running headlong down the hill. “It
looks like rain. I must be off!” he called over his shoulder. Once he reached the
bottom of the hill, he left the road behind and took a trail through the grass
heading straight for the forest.
“Wait!” Penelope shouted after him.
He stopped and turned around.
“I have to get back home! Can you please tell me where this road goes?”
“To the same place every day,” he yelled back.
“But where is that?”
“If you don’t know where you are, you can’t possibly care where you’re
going. Now then, I really must go. Pleased to meet you.”
“We haven’t met!” shouted Penelope. But it was too late. The man had
disappeared into the forest.
Penelope took a deep breath and tried to clear her head. All you have to
do is retrace your steps, she told herself. But that was just it. Penelope didn’t
remember any steps. She had a vague memory of falling, but from where?
Penelope looked up. The rain cloud she had noticed earlier was moving
swiftly across the sky. It didn’t drift or roll like a cloud. It spread like a stain,
smothering the sun and casting a gray light over the countryside. As the cloud
drew closer, the soft breeze died away and the reeds stood still. The birds
stopped singing and the bugs stopped twitching and a hush settled over the hill.
Penelope shuddered. Something didn’t seem quite right about the cloud.
In fact, something felt dreadful, though she couldn’t tell what. Penelope’s heart
started to race and the next thing she knew she was running headlong down the
hill in the same direction as the man.
As Penelope ran, she remembered all her mother’s warnings about
strangers. She considered her situation and decided that while the man
certainly seemed strange in one way, he wasn’t really the kind of stranger she
was meant to avoid. Even so, the sooner she introduced herself the better.
Then she would ask him for help. What choice did she have? There was no
one else around.
Once Penelope reached the bottom of the hill, she veered off the road and
onto the trail the man had followed into the forest. She plunged into the woods
and the daylight immediately vanished under a thick canopy of shade. Trees
crowded around her and tangled branches pressed in on every side. Penelope
tried to push her way through the thick undergrowth, but soon lost the trail
and with it, her sense of direction.
She heard humming up ahead and followed the sound, scanning the dim
woods for a hint of red hair or a flash of blue suit. The humming sounded
tantalizingly close, but the man was nowhere to be seen. Soon she was leaping
over logs and brushing aside wisps of draping moss. And then, just like that, the
humming stopped.
Penelope stood very still as the silence of the forest settled around her. She
closed her eyes and held her breath, listening for some clue to the peculiar man’s
whereabouts. After a moment she heard a soft rustling sound like a mouse
making its home. Penelope turned around in a slow circle, scanning the woods.
That’s when she saw it — a bit of red hair poking out from behind a tree. The
man had left the path and was bending over a rotten stump
, searching through
a pile of decaying leaves.
“Hello?” called Penelope.
The man stood up immediately. “Mushrooms!”
“Wh-what?”
“Mushrooms!” he repeated, making his way toward her. He held out his
hand. Two small, unassuming mushrooms sat on his palm. “You do like mush-
rooms, don’t you?”
“They’re . . . uh . . . they’re very interesting,” said Penelope, wishing she
could say something intelligent based on what she’d learned at science camp.
The man beamed at her. “I couldn’t agree with you more.” He slipped the
mushrooms into one of his many pockets. “That’s settled, then. There’s one for
me and one for you. Of course, we’ll have to wait until dinner.”
“B-but I can’t stay for dinner,” stammered Penelope.
“Well, I suppose we could have them for an afternoon snack.” He reached
back into his pocket.
“You don’t understand,” she interrupted. “I don’t have time to eat.” Just
then Penelope remembered her resolve to introduce herself. “My name is
Penelope,” she said, sticking out her hand. “And I’m from the Spicewood Estates.”
“I’m Dill,” he said with a quick shake.
“Like the pickle?” Penelope bit her lip. What a rude thing to say! She knew
her mother wouldn’t approve, but Dill didn’t seem to mind. He smiled as if
Penelope had compared him to someone famous.
“Exactly! Like the pickle.”
Relieved, Penelope moved on to her request. “I was hoping you could help
me. Do you know the way out of this Realm? I know you said it was impossible
to leave, but if there’s a way in, there must be a way out.”
“I never said it was impossible to leave,” replied Dill. “I said that if you’re
here, it’s impossible to be anywhere else.”
“Oh. So it is possible to leave?”
“Of course it’s possible,” said Dill.
Penelope went slack with relief. “Thank goodness.”
“But highly unlikely,” he continued.
Penelope suddenly felt very tired. They were going around and around
and getting nowhere. She decided to change her approach. “Do you know anyone
who knows the way out?”
The man frowned. “I suppose Chronos knows.”
“Who?”
“Chronos.” Dill fixed Penelope with a stare. “Ever heard of him?”
Penelope shook her head.
“Lucky you. He’s unfriendly. Unpleasant. Actually” — his voice dropped
to a whisper — “he’s downright wicked.”
“Wicked?” said Penelope, taking a step back. “I don’t want to meet him.”
“Indeed, you don’t. It’s best you stick with me for the time being. Now, I’d
better get dinner started,” he said, patting the pocket where he’d put the mush-
rooms. “These won’t stay fresh for long.”
Dill set off down the trail humming and Penelope hurried after so as not
to be left behind. It sounded like she was stuck here, at least until she could
figure out how to get home. Except she wasn’t much good at figuring things out
these days. Not with all her ideas dried up. She thought about poor Miss Maddie,
who was probably trying to explain things to her mother at this very moment.
Would her mother even care that Penelope was gone or would she just be upset
that her schedule had been interrupted?
After walking for some time, they came to a clearing in the woods where
a tiny sunlit meadow sat. The meadow was ringed by tall trees and topped
with a bright blue sky.
“We’re almost there!” Dill said and rushed ahead.
Penelope ran after him until — bam! — her foot hit something hard and
she tumbled to the ground. She got to her feet, expecting Dill to reappear from
around a tree or pop up from behind her. But he didn’t. She looked left, then
right. She looked up, then down. That’s when she noticed what had tripped
her — a stovepipe sticking up out of the dirt. A stovepipe meant there was a
stove and a stove meant there was a kitchen and a kitchen meant . . . aha!
There it was. A few feet from where she’d fallen was a door level with the
ground. The door was open and Penelope peered through it down a deep hole
to a pool of light below. Drifting up from the hole was the sound of banging
cabinets and slamming drawers.
Penelope followed the noise down a ladder and soon arrived in a large
open room fashioned from a cavern. The room had none of the dark dampness
associated with caves. It was warm and brightly lit, with a living room on one
end and a dining room on the other. The kitchen, where Dill was vigorously
stirring something with a wire whisk, sat in the middle.
“Welcome! Greetings! Warmest salutations!” he called out to Penelope
and nodded toward the living room. “Make yourself at home.”
Penelope picked out a comfy-looking chair facing the kitchen and
plopped down. The chair was carved out of a log and had pillows made from
grape-colored moss. “Now then,” said Dill, once Penelope was settled. “I’m
dying to hear about these Spicewood Estates . . .”
“It’s just a neighborhood,” said Penelope with a shrug. “Lots of people
live there.”
“And there are spice woods?” he asked eagerly.
Penelope had often wondered about this. “No, there aren’t any woods.
Maybe there were at one time, but they’re gone now. Mostly it’s just houses.”
“But these houses,” pressed Dill, “they’re beautiful estates with grounds
and gardens?”
“It’s not like that,” Penelope insisted. “All the houses are the same with
small yards.”
Dill stopped stirring for a moment. “And you want to go back?”
“I have to go back,” she explained. “I have a schedule to keep. Things I
have to do. The longer I’m away, the farther behind I fall.”
“I see.” Dill resumed stirring. “I guess they’re everywhere,” he muttered.
Penelope sat up. “Who’s everywhere?”
“I’d rather not say. There’s no use ruining our appetite.” Dill poured
whatever he was making into a dish and slipped it into the oven. “I’ll be right
back. Just have to wash up a bit,” he said and disappeared down the hall.
Penelope sat back in her chair and thought about Dill’s question. Did she
want to go back? She had no idea how she had gotten here, so she had no idea
how to return. Maybe Dill would let her stay with him until she could come up
with a plan. She couldn’t help but wonder what she would be going back to
anyway. By now her mother had probably thrown away all of Penelope’s
notebooks and was preparing to turn her room into an office.
Penelope got up from her chair to look around. The living room had two
chairs and a long couch, each with the same grape-colored moss pillows. The
pillows matched the wallpaper, which was every shade of purple imaginable —
lavender, mauve, lilac, violet, plum, and wine. The most striking thing about
the wallpaper wasn’t the color, though. It was the texture. It was bumpy.
On closer inspection, Penelope realized the wallpaper wasn’t wallpaper
at all — it was mushrooms. Huge, spongy, purple mushrooms. Ebon and the
&
nbsp; other Mad Scientists would flip for these! Penelope reached out to touch one.
Her fingertip disappeared in its fleshy exterior and then sprang back.
Bloop.
She couldn’t resist doing it again.
Bloop. Bloop.
“Stop that!”
Penelope spun around, hands behind her back. Dill was striding toward
her, his wild hair standing up even higher than usual. “Those mushrooms are
very sensitive! They only grow under the most delicate conditions. You can’t go
around poking them!”
“I’m sorry,” explained Penelope. “I didn’t mean to hurt them.”
Dill’s eyes softened. “All right, then. They are hard to resist. They’re
awfully springy. Bouncy. Downright squishy.”
“But what are they for?” asked Penelope.
“Eating, of course! Now then, if you please . . .” Dill escorted Penelope to
the dining room and sat her at the head of the table, which was made from an
enormous tree stump. He then retrieved a white dish from the kitchen. Spilling
over the top of the dish was a gigantic lavender-colored soufflé. “Bon appétit,” he
said in a hushed tone before placing it gently on the table.
“It looks delicious,” said Penelope, who wasn’t quite sure it did.
“Shh! You mustn’t disturb it.”
“Sorry,” she whispered.
Dill rolled up his sleeves, took a large flat serving spoon, and approached
the soufflé as if it were alive. He adjusted his angle several times before darting
forward and swiftly tapping the soufflé along one of the many delicate creases
across its top. When he did so, a puff of purple steam rose up and settled several
feet above the dinner table.
Dill jumped on his chair and began to shovel bits of steam into his mouth
with the serving spoon. “Quick! Grab your spoon!” he urged Penelope.
Penelope picked up her spoon and looked hesitantly at the purple cloud.
“You’ll have to stand on your chair,” said Dill, puffs of purple air escaping
his mouth.
Penelope couldn’t resist the idea of eating dinner standing on a chair, so