Where Futures End by Parker Peevyhouse Page A

you.”
    The air seemed to bend around her as though she accepted obeisance even from molecules. Her eyes were blue as ice. Dylan wondered briefly if they changed color when she was warm, if there was as much magic to her as he remembered.
    She crept closer, as though afraid to scare a skittish animal. “Do you know where you are?”
    It was cold out in the wood. Frigid mud seeped into his sneakers. There wasn’t the rain-and-salt smell of Seattle. “The Other Place.”
How can it be true? How did I get here?
He had about a million more Impossible Questions, toomany to ask.
    Her vorpal was all shifting puzzle pieces. “The . . . ?”
    â€œI’m too old,” Dylan blurted. “I shouldn’t have been able to come back. I’m too . . .”
    He’d forgiven Hunter. In his own way—by taking the bracelet. That was why he’d been able to come. Some rotten core had lifted out of his heart.
    â€œWill they let me stay?” His voice was plaintive, like a child’s.
Can’t I come live with you?
An Impossible Question, but she didn’t seem to mind.
    â€œNo one can make you leave,” she said, and gripped his hand as if to anchor him. Her vorpal was strong, and he felt a ripple of sadness pass from it into his skin when she spoke again: “Do you remember me?”
    She thought he’d forgotten. “I’ve been looking for you, trying to get back here,” he said.
    She threw her arms around his shoulders. “And I’ve looked for you. The same way we once looked for gold in river gravel, for something we never expected to find. But now you’ve finally come again.”
    She’d learned so many new words since he’d last seen her, when he’d taught her his language in bits and pieces.
How did she learn to say all of that?
    She stepped back and her vorpal was a wave of brightening air. “Others from here have gone to your world, but they never saw you. I would have gone if I could have. They’ve been to your world many times.”
    â€œWhen? I didn’t know it worked that way.”
    â€œBefore you ever came here,” she explained. “Yearsbefore. We discovered . . . a leak. Where our two worlds press together, energy flows from your world into ours. It led us to you.”
    He shook his head, unable to take it all in. “But why would you want to leave a magical kingdom for sidewalks and trash cans?”
    She laughed and pulled him by the hand through the trees. “Because we are curious about your world. Like you were about ours when you were a boy.”
    She led him along the bank of the stream. A map unfurled in his mind: The stream led to a river, to a sunlit cave where he’d seen treasures stored. It fed other streams that ribboned through the forest, through secret glades where he’d once built forts out of fallen logs. Farther along were the marshes covered with boardwalk mazes intricate enough to leave any adventurer as dizzy as Dylan felt now.
    â€œDo you remember
everything
?” she asked him. “The den we carved in the bank of the stream? Eating berries there until the rain brought our mud ceiling down around us?”
    She laughed again, then stopped and turned to him. “You’re the first from your world to come here. You’re the first to learn how to use such an ability.”
    â€œAbility?”
    â€œThat allows you to find another universe.”
    â€œUniverse?”
    She frowned. “Is it the right word?”
    â€œI—I don’t know.” He thought of his conversation with Chess the night before—alternate universes and fairy-talelands
.
    The Girl Queen had brought him to where he could get a better look at the palace through the trees. It wasn’t as big as he remembered. Just a house, really. Tall flashing windows, a rooftop gilded with yellow-gold leaves. A palace to a young boy desperate for