Limits of the World

Samuel and Hope journey through the Realms in search of the Sage.

The scent of approaching rain met Samuel’s nose as he stepped after Hope through the portal between realms, the instant shift in temperature, pressure, and humidity becoming less of a shock each time. Smooth stone beneath his feet and above his head curved to meet on either side. Before him, a dirt road led through the woods until a gentle curve took it out of sight.

He turned out of habit when the electric sound of the portal disappeared, and noted the snowflake-like road map symbol of Rome carved into the stone wall. Like the torch symbols that led them forward, the snowflake would lead them back. All they had to do was look at the symbol, and the portal would open at their mental command.

When he stepped onto the road, his foot sank into a bed of fine-grained dust, the kind that would turn into a foot of shoe-stealing mud after a good downpour. Glancing up at the cloudy sky, he grimaced as if to say, “don’t you dare.”

In front of him, Hope stood, holding the guidebook she’d taken from the library at Rome. Before they had set off, Belle had explained that anything they carried on their persons when they left the Realms would vanish and reappear in their possession when they returned. It was the same reason they kept their clothes, she had said. Now, Hope gazed thoughtfully at a stone post a little taller than she, the book hanging unconsciously at her side. A ball perched on top of the statue like a fist, and had an eye sculpted into it. Another mirrored it on the opposite side of the path.

“Do you think it’s a clue to this realm’s torch?” Samuel said.

“Hm?” Hope replied. “Oh, maybe. I was just wondering why someone would carve something like this. Maybe it’s because whoever lives here is suspicious of strangers, and wants to make us feel like we’re being watched, so that we don’t cause trouble.”

“It does give off that vibe,” Samuel said. He gave it a quick look-around, but nothing else stood out. “Let’s make a note that these are here, just in case. Now we had better get going if we don’t want to get caught in the rain.”

As they walked, Samuel found his gaze falling on the tufts of grass encroaching on the edges of the path. He flexed his right hand, curling his fingers one at a time into a fist, and then back out again. By now, the mottled black rot of Corruption had spread over his last two fingers, and was creeping down his wrist. Every day, new portions of his skin throbbed with its sting, making him all the more anxious to finish the journey and obtain the cure.

Looking up, Samuel saw that the trees ended about forty yards ahead at a clay cliff wall. Something about it didn’t seem right, though, and he squinted. Was it the color? Or maybe the lighting? Then, as he got closer, the end of the path seemed to extend, and something in his brain clicked. The cliff was not up against the trees, but the far side of a chasm, which was spanned by a narrow bridge leading to a cleft on the other side. It had seemed so strange because the context clue of where the ground met the base of the cliff was not there, throwing his perception out of whack. It reminded him of a time he had been confounded by the squares on a window screen, only for his vision to reset and show him he had been looking at them cross-eyed.

“Oh no,” Hope said, her gait faltering. “Don’t tell me . . .”

Nearing the chasm, Samuel judged it to be well over a hundred feet across. He approached the edge on his hands and knees to gauge how deep it was, but the dizzying sight might as well have been an abyss.

“The torch is gonna be over there, isn’t it?” Hope said.

“I’d bet,” Samuel replied, standing. The bridge was narrow, only four feet wide, with no railings. He turned to face her and put his left hand on her shoulder. “If you start to fall,” he said, pointing at his forehead, “tap out of here right away.” At least the stomach-dropping depth of the chasm meant they had plenty of time to touch the invisible eyes in the middle of their foreheads and wake up in Shelley Hall at the university, where their physical bodies lay. They would lose all of the progress they had made since the last beacon they had passed, but finding out the hard way what dying in the Realms would do to them was not a risk Samuel wanted to take.

With a deep breath, he took the first steps across the bridge, a deadly plummet only a few feet away on either side. He thanked the sky for holding back the rain. At least they would not have to cross while the bridge was wet. A hand gripped his shoulder, startling him, and he turned his head to see Hope’s short, glossy fingernails. It was unexpected, but Samuel understood. After all, even though he hated to admit it, he felt a little fear himself.

The middle of the bridge widened into a circle. Another eye statue stood at the center, gazing to the far side of the chasm. Samuel placed his hand on the pillar just below the eyeball for balance as he rounded it. Hope took her hand off his shoulder to do the same. Samuel looked at her. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” she said quietly, her face expressionless and her eyes aimed away from his.

Samuel considered his response for a moment, noting that being fine seemed to take a lot of her concentration. “That’s good,” he said. “We don’t have far to go.”

Hope grabbed his shoulder again until they made it to the other side. The path here led through a corridor of clay rising high to either side. “It’s kind of artistic,” Hope said. “First the path has drops on both sides, and then in an instant, it’s snug between two walls. It’s like one of those black-and-white pictures that reverses colors over the middle.”

The eye carvings were more frequent now, set into the walls instead of on pillars. “We should be careful,” Samuel said. “I have a hunch we are getting closer to something important.”

The path opened up into something that looked like a quarry, littered with natural stone structures and surrounded by cliffs. The mess of boulders and spires nearly hid the far wall from view, and every one of them had an eyeball carved into it.

Hope shivered. “I can’t say I’d like to spend a lot of time here. It feels like some monster is going to leap out of a cave and maul us to death.”

“Hmm.” Samuel’s mind worked, considering strategies for finding the torch quickly. There were plenty of crags and corners where it could be hiding. Even if they split up and searched half the area each, it would be a tedious task. Looking over the rock formations, his gaze settled on one with a decent smattering of handholds. He strode toward it. “Spot me.”

“What?”

Samuel grabbed a ledge and lifted his foot onto a toehold. It might take Hope a moment to realize what he was doing, but she would be standing in a sturdy position beneath him with her hands held forward before he was high enough to hurt himself from falling. He reached for the next handhold, and then hesitated, his blackened fingers hovering near the rock. This was not going to feel good. Maybe he should have had Hope do the climbing. But he had already started, and it was too late to back down.

What should have been a short climb seemed like forever, but when he finally reached the top, he stood and looked across the dull field. There were at least fifty rock formations, many towering above him. Not the view he had hoped for, but he did see something black near the back wall. He stared at it, trying to figure out what it was.

His heart was pounding, he realized. Hope’s talk of monsters must have gotten to him. Whatever the thing was, it hadn’t moved, and he didn’t think it was alive. He sighed, and then carefully climbed back down.

“See anything?” Hope asked.

Samuel told her, and they made their way toward the object through the forest of stone. When it came into view, it looked to Samuel like a larger-than-life polished black marble statue of a robed man. Samuel suppressed a wry chuckle at the fact that the interesting thing he had found was yet another rock. A single enormous eye filled the space where the statue’s face should have been, and it held a tablet, polished like a dark mirror, against its chest. Samuel’s third eye, visible only in reflections, stared back at him.

Hope read the inscription on the tablet out loud. “Which the eyes see, which the ears hear, the mind is beset with illusion. Beyond perception, truth lies. The light that guides the pilgrim’s path lies hidden, though in light of day. Away from the ravine is cast the eye that searches in vain.”

“I bet this is a clue,” Samuel said. He read the text himself, studying it closely. If he had found it strange at first that everyone in the Realms spoke and wrote in English, he had gotten used to it by now. Let Hope and Professor Berkeley puzzle over the curiosities of the Realms; to Samuel, the ability to communicate easily was convenient, and that was enough.

“Hidden, though in light of day . . .” Hope mused to herself.

“This last part jumps out at me,” Samuel said. “It looks like it’s saying we should go back to the chasm and not waste our time searching around here.”

Without warning, a scraping sound reverberated through the air, as if it were coming from all directions. Before them, the statue’s eye slid shut. Samuel jumped back, senses heightened, eyes darting around for any sign of danger.

“Samuel,” Hope said, her voice wavering, “they’re all closed.”

Samuel looked to find her pointing to one of the boulders. The eyeball carved into it was now shut, as if it had been sculpted that way. All of the others were too. An unsettling thought crept into his mind. He turned back to the statue and looked once again at his reflection in the tablet. As he feared, his third eye was closed. “We can’t get out of here.”

“What’s going on?” Hope said.

The clockwork was turning in Samuel’s mind. A canyon with only one exit, its sole outstanding feature near the back. They had been drawn to it, and then their only other means of escape had been taken away. He looked Hope in the eyes. “We should run.”

He darted in the direction of the entrance, Hope just a few feet behind. Pillars and boulders blocked his view of the exit, and he hoped his sense of direction wouldn’t fail him as he zigzagged between them. As he ran, claws of panic reached up within him, like the time he had arrived at his family’s hardware shop on a Saturday morning five minutes before opening time, only to realize he had left the key at home. If his instincts were right, the exit would be blocked, or heck, with the weirdness of the realms, it might just vanish.

Through the mess of boulders, the cliff appeared. Samuel hooked right around a pillar, and found to his relief that the exit was open. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be blocked along the way. As he dashed down the stone corridor, the closed eyes on the walls put him even more on edge, as if some king or god had turned away from him.

He smothered the feeling of relief that tried to come over him when the end of the ravine came into view. They might not have been trapped in the place with the rock formations, but after removing their ability to whisk themselves away, a crafty trap-setter might lure them onto the bridge, and then have it collapse beneath them. Samuel slowed to a stop, the chasm yawning at his feet.

Hope stopped next to him. “I guess we don’t get our safety net this time,” she said.

“Yeah,” Samuel said. With their third eyes closed, falling would mean landing at the bottom of the chasm. He picked up a rock and hurled it as far as he could along the bridge. It landed next to the pillar with the eye on top. The eye was closed, of course. Nothing happened. Samuel almost wished the whole bridge had shattered when the rock struck, because then at least his uncertainty would have gone away.

With bated breath, he took one step onto the bridge. It did not explode or disintegrate or shake him off, so he started across, legs tense. The bridge seemed half as wide as it had when he had come the other way, and the other side twice as far. Each step brought the end closer by an agonizingly small amount, as if space were distorting in front of him.

He made it to the middle without incident. Putting his hand on the closed eye statue, he turned to see Hope crawling across on her hands and knees, the hand holding the guidebook turned so that the ground met her knuckles.

“Don’t judge,” she said, focused intently on the ground in front of her.

“Nothing wrong with being safe,” Samuel said. He wished he had thought of it. Now, it was too late. Since he had walked the first half, he would have to walk the rest of the way. His corrupted hand twitched with a flash of pain. Right, and he would have had a rough time putting weight on that, too.

As he rounded the statue, something caught his eye. He almost missed it, with his attention aimed toward the end of the bridge. When the front of the eye had closed, the back had opened, revealing an all-too-familiar orange flame.

“What is it?” Hope asked, getting to her feet.

“Don’t touch the statue,” Samuel said, “it’s a beacon.” Now that Samuel knew this, he could clearly see that the post was the proper square shape and light gray color for a beacon, though much smaller than usual. He must have activated it unknowingly when he had passed by it the first time.

Hope rounded the statue and stared at the flame, her face falling. “This isn’t the kind of place I would like to return to.”

She was right. Not only would they have to leave the realm for their third eyes to open, but if they woke up without finding another beacon, the next time they delved into the Realms they would appear here, in the middle of this treacherous bridge. Samuel growled. “Insult added to injury.”

After a pause, Hope spoke. “Well, should we finish crossing?”

The sound of her voice jarred Samuel back to the present. He didn’t have time to waste spacing off. “Before that,” he said, peering past the flame into the cavity it occupied, “let’s check this place extra carefully for the torch symbol.” The statue’s inscription had pointed them back here toward the chasm. It would make sense to look in the new nook that had opened up.

“Is it in there?” Hope asked.

Samuel sighed. “No.” He turned his inspection to the outside of the eyeball, first leaning over to check its underside, then craning his neck to see on top of it. No torch.

“It’s facing the cliff side of the chasm,” Hope said. “I wonder if that could be a clue.”

Samuel was now on his hands and knees, inspecting the side of the bridge. He scanned it from one side to the other. “Let me know if anything comes to mind.” He moved to the other side of the bridge and checked it the same way.

“Maybe there’s a way down to the bottom,” Hope said, “like a staircase or something.”

Samuel stood and scanned the wooded side of the chasm in both directions until it curved out of sight. He checked the cliff side too, just in case, even though the clay walls prevented access to the chasm’s edge from there. “I don’t see any.”

“Maybe we should walk along it and see if we can find one.”

“That is an option,” Samuel said, “though it seems a little out of the way.” The torches so far had been in relatively reasonable places. “I hope we don’t end up having to look under every rock and fallen tree.”

They made their way across the rest of the bridge, Samuel walking carefully, Hope crawling. With his final step onto safe land, Samuel breathed a sigh of relief. His worries about a trap had been for nothing.

Keeping the chasm to their right, they started walking over the bed of sticks and fallen leaves, the light underbrush tickling their legs. As they went, Samuel made sure not to let an inch of the cliff’s edge escape inspection. After a while, the repetitiveness of his movements became rote, and the throbbing tingles of pain from his blackened right hand, which had constantly threatened to distract him from whatever task had been at hand, now blossomed to the forefront of his consciousness.

When the chasm split in two, throwing a branch at a ninety degree angle in front of them, Samuel was almost grateful for the distraction. He peered across it to the other branch, which curved out of sight in the distance. “With our luck,” he muttered, “the torch will be over there.”

“That wouldn’t matter,” Hope said, “since once we find the stairs, we’ll be able to search the whole thing.”

“But these canyons just go on so long,” Samuel said. He just wanted this delving session to be over. While awake, the pain in his hand was reduced to a dull throbbing. Only here did he have to contend with its full fury. Mirroring his mood, the sky had grown darker, and Samuel would have sworn he had heard distant thunder once or twice.

Hope, on the other hand, had an energy in her movements, which suggested she was enjoying the situation. How long had she been like that? Was it since they had escaped the stone field, or all the way back to when they had first stepped into this realm? Whatever the case, her attitude certainly did not fit the atmosphere.

Awhile later, the chasm split again. Samuel held on to the trunk of a small tree the right size for his hand, looking at the branch on the far side. “It just struck me,” he said, “that these chasms might be part of a labyrinth a lot more vast than we can see.”

“In that case, I’m sure there will be clues leading us in the right direction.”

“Let’s hope so.” Up until now, he had felt like the staircase might be around the next tree, and the torch symbol only a few minutes from the bottom. The prospect of having to search through a maze that stretched out for miles made him suddenly feel very tired. “You know, it’s getting late. We should go back to the beacon in the last realm we passed through, and come back on Thursday.”

“Aw, come on. Just a little bit farther. We’re almost there, I can feel it.”

Samuel knew that feeling all too well. It would be a shame to retrace their steps twice only to find they had stopped just before finding the path down. Of course, that was unlikely, and the logical thing to do would be to go back, but Samuel felt himself giving in. “All right, let’s keep going.”

Keep going they did, and after a while Samuel found himself wondering just how far “a little” was . Still, he did not insist again that they head back. Not yet. Ahead, he saw what looked like a giant sword spanning the chasm, cleaving the cliff on the opposite side in two. Finally, they had found something. As they got closer, he realized it was a bridge, like the one they had started at. Or maybe . . .

He cursed, causing Hope to jump. “We’re right back where we started.” It was close enough to see clearly now. The eye statue in the middle of the bridge, their footprints in the dirt path leading up to it, there was no doubt they had followed the chasm in a circle.

“Oh, yeah,” Hope said softly, “I guess you’re right.” She paused. “But I didn’t feel like we were going the right direction to loop around.”

Samuel shook his head. “I’ve been in a realm before where no matter which way I went, I kept ending up back where I started. Maybe the way the locations are connected in this realm don’t make sense. But I think it’s more likely we lost track of our direction because we can’t see our shadows.”

“Hm.” Hope looked at the evenly lit ground, and then up at the overcast sky.

“Is there anything in that book that could help us?” Samuel asked.

Hope looked down at the guidebook in her hand. “I don’t think so. I mean, we’ve both read it several times.”

It was true, but maybe some part of the text would be shown in a different light after what they had seen in this realm. He held out his hand. “Give it here.”

Hope obliged, and Samuel flipped open the cover and started reading. It didn’t take long, since it was mainly pictures with captions rather than page text. Hope was right; there were no clues. He sighed, closed the book, and handed it back to her.

“What do we do now?” Hope asked.

“We go home,” Samuel said. “We’re overdue to wake up today.”

Hope’s brow furrowed. “I hope Eli isn’t worried about us.”

“He shouldn’t be. Not yet, at least.” It was not easy to keep track of time in the Realms, and the amount of time they stayed during each delving session varied. Samuel guessed it would not be too concerning if they stayed half an hour or so over the appointed time. He was more concerned with his own schedule. They would soon run into supper time, which would delay his midterm thesis writing block afterward.

As they followed the path to the realm’s entrance, a bellow of thunder shattered the heavy stillness of the air. A few fingertip-sized pock marks appeared in the dust, the first signs of the deluge about to break. When the realm’s entrance came into view, Samuel’s heart sank. A giant pair of stone eyelids covered the stone alcove where the snowflake symbol was carved. He must have been too focused elsewhere when they had first arrived to notice that the place they had stepped out of was shaped like an eye. Now, it meant they were stuck here.

“Oh no,” Hope said, running up and putting her hand on the stone shield blocking their escape.

“I don’t suppose there is any simple way to open it,” Samuel said.

“Sure there is.” Hope rolled her eyes. “The same way we open up our own third eyes, and all of the other eye sculptures. We just have no idea what that is.”

A fat raindrop splattered onto the back of Samuel’s left hand, making a snapping sound like a bug on a windshield. The remnant droplet crawled down his finger, tickling like an ant. Then the sky tore open and cold rain crashed to the ground with a fury. He stood, his mind blank at the shock. A rivulet of water formed on his forehead, dripping from his eyebrow to the side of his nose. Before his eyes, the dirt path slowly turned to mud, and for an instant, he was tempted to let everything go and collapse into it.

With tremendous effort, he pulled his brain back to the present. It felt like picking himself up in double gravity. “Open our eyes,” he said, the words lost to the roar of the rain. He turned toward Hope, who had fled under the trees, hunching over and clutching the guidebook with both arms across her stomach. Samuel raised his voice so she could hear him. “The answer is probably on the other side of the bridge.”

“What?”

Samuel walked toward her to the side of the path, where it was not so muddy. He gestured for her to follow him. “Let’s go.”

Each step he took was heavy with the familiar fatigue of throwing himself repeatedly at a problem like it was a wall, hoping the cement busted before his skull. It might be there was no solution this time. Perhaps his instincts about the canyon across the bridge had been right after all, and the trap was the entire realm. At the start of their journey, in their second time in Rome, Belle had told them every realm had a way out, but maybe she was wrong.

The bridge was slick with water, and Samuel could barely make out the other side through the heavy rain. He closed his eyes and took a breath to steel himself.

A peal of thunder broke over the roar of the rain as he took his first step. Behind him, Hope said, “you’re not seriously thinking of going over that at a time like this.”

Samuel turned to see her, still struggling to keep the book dry. Whatever excitement she’d had before was gone now. “What do you want to do,” Samuel said, “wait around until the rain stops?”

Hope raised her eyebrows. “Well, yeah.”

“We have no idea how long that could take.” Samuel’s whole evening would be thrown off if they didn’t get out soon. If they went carefully, they would make it across the bridge just fine. He took another step.

“Samuel, It’s raining buckets, and there’s lightning.”

“Wait here if you want,” Samuel said, not caring if he was speaking loudly enough for her to hear. “I’m going.” Despite Hope’s pleas, Samuel strode forward through the curtain of rain, concentrating to keep his footing stable. Thankfully, there was no wind. That would have been a death sentence.

As he reached the middle of the bridge, he stopped. His right hand had stopped hurting, and instead tingled with pleasure, as if it were being caressed by a soft fabric. He looked at his blackened fingers and palm, taking in the relief, sweet like he had not felt in weeks.

An idea floated into his mind. It was crazy, but it felt right. He and Hope had scoured this realm top to bottom and found no trace of the torch. Yet there was still one place they had not looked: the underside of the bridge. Samuel stepped to the edge and looked down, the bottom of the chasm obscured by the rain. Confirming his idea would be easy. All he had to do was hop off and look upward as he fell. When he saw the torch, the portal would open beneath him and toss him into the next realm.

A shriek cut through the roar of the rain. Samuel turned to see Hope dashing toward him, her eyes full of terror. Behind her on the chasm’s edge stood a tall figure in a black cloak. It held its arms over its chest, and the only skin it showed was a pale, shriveled face, its eye sockets black and empty.

In shock, Samuel stumbled away from the edge. All at once, the magnitude of what he had been about to do crashed down on him. He had almost jumped to his death, on nothing more than a half-witted hunch. He fell onto his back, his breath coming in gasps. Pain flooded once again into his right hand, made sharper by its contrast to the pleasure he had just been feeling. The memory of that sweetness almost made him throw up.

“Samuel,” Hope said as she knelt next to him. She looked over her shoulder, but the cloaked figure was gone. She turned back to him. “Are you okay?”

“I---” Samuel swallowed, unable to keep from shivering. He wanted to tell her he was fine, to make her leave. She couldn’t see him like this.

“It’s all right,” Hope said, resting a hand on his shoulder.

The touch sent a wave of humiliation over him, and he sat up quickly. Where his will had failed, the instinct to recoil succeeded. Now, to get her attention off of him. “Who was that?”

Hope shivered, glancing over her shoulder again. “He looked kind of like the Grim Reaper, but without the sickle. And he had skin, I think. But his eyes . . . he didn’t have eyes. They were like black holes. When I looked and saw him standing next to me, I thought I was going to die.”

Samuel barked a laugh, surprising himself. Apparently, the Grim Reaper had saved his life. It also seemed that Hope had been focused on something other than him, and was unaware of how close he had come to committing the stupid act of the century. That thought let him breathe easier.

He stood up, energy returning to his body and mind. The rain had let up to a drizzle, and by a quirk of this realm’s alternative rules, his hair and clothes had mostly dried out. “We should keep searching for the torch,” he said. “The less time we kick dust with Skull-Face slinking about, the better.” He resumed walking across the bridge.

“What do you think he appeared for?” Hope asked, following closely behind him. “Do you think it is some kind of time limit, that if we stay in one realm for too long he comes for us? I mean, assuming he’s bad. He’s got to be, right?”

Samuel felt a knot in the pit of his stomach as another, more dour possibility knit itself together in his mind. What if the Reaper had come to kill him, having the power to control his will through the Corruption on his hand? The haunting pleasure he had felt, had it been this fiend taking over?

The two of them made their way down the corridor and around the stone structures to the statue in the back. As the black marble came into view, Samuel wondered why they had not returned earlier. It should have been the obvious place to focus their attention, especially once their panic about it had been shown to be for nothing.

Now that he thought about it, he realized he could not remember the words on the statue’s tablet. Something about the chasm. He strained to make them out as the shrinking distance made them crystallize into readable shapes in his vision. Which the eyes see, which the ears hear, the mind is beset with illusion. Oh right, part of the message had been dramatic fluff. He kept reading. Beyond perception, truth lies. The light that guides the pilgrim’s path lies hidden, though in light of day. Away from the ravine is cast the eye that searches in vain.

As he had thought, the text pointed them toward the chasm. But they had searched the chasm thoroughly, and found nothing. Maybe it was meant to be taken more literally? He turned around and looked in the direction of the ravine, to see if the torch might be carved into one of the rock formations, or was somehow otherwise visible from here. But, as expected, the only carvings he saw were closed eyelids.

“If you look at the third sentence,” Hope said, “I think it’s saying the torch is in plain sight, but hard to recognize.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Samuel said. “That would explain why we haven’t found it by now. Or . . . it could mean the torch is only visible in sunlight.”

“I’m starting to think it’s always cloudy here,” Hope said. “I bet it’s hidden somewhere weird, like carved into two rocks you have to look at from the right angle so the picture comes together.”

“I can’t help but feel like we’re missing something, though,” Samuel said.

“I know what you mean. All of the other realms have guided us to their torches. We never had to look around and find it by brute force.”

“Why don’t we search this quarry for more clues?” Samuel said. “We should split up. You take the left side, and I’ll take the right. Holler if you find anything.”

Half an hour later, Samuel leaned his back against the wall and closed his eyes. He had searched the entire area, circling boulders and stone pillars, moving on to Hope’s side once he had finished with his own. Not a single new clue had been found, and now they were even further overdue to return.

Footsteps sounded nearby, and Samuel opened his eyes to see Hope returning. “Find anything I missed?” he asked.

Hope shook her head, and then cocked it. “What’s that you’re leaning against?

Now that she mentioned it, the texture against his back did feel odd. He patted the wall behind him. It felt not like clay, but . . . wood? Turning around, he found he had been leaning against a door. “What on Earth?” he exclaimed. The nerve of it to appear so suddenly, after they had spent all that time searching! It was insulting.

“Well let’s not just stand here,” Hope said. She reached for the knob, hesitated, and then knocked.

To Samuel’s surprise, the door opened on its own. They stepped through to a scene that defied comprehension. Smooth-sided, sharp-edged shapes floated in the air. Impossible architecture stood on bizarre terrain, columns and inverted pyramids with upward-flowing waterfalls, and stairs running sideways and upside-down.

“It looks like we just stepped into M. C. Escher’s brain,” Hope said, eyes wide.

“And out of that confounding realm,” Samuel said. “Let’s look for a beacon so we can get out of here.”

“I’m afraid you won’t find any beacons here,” a light, musical voice said.

Samuel whirled to see a figure in a deep blue robe and hat, both covered in glowing yellow dots, standing on the surface of a pond. Aged features contrasted with a bemused smile and eyes that sparkled with energy. Whether the person was man or woman, Samuel could not tell. Their body type was obscured by the deep folds of their robe, and their voice was ambiguously pitched.

“Welcome to my domain!” the figure said, walking toward them across the water. “I am the magnificently marvelous Magician! Make yourselves at home.”

“You’re an archetype, aren’t you?” Hope asked.

“Perspicacious!” the Magician exclaimed. “And you are delvers, seeking the sapience of the Sage.”

“Wow,” Hope said. “How did you know that?”

“Magic,” the Magician said.

“Actually, Hope,” Samuel said quietly, “I bet it’s really easy to tell us from the realmlings. Tell me Belle wouldn’t look completely out of place in Reality.”

“Depends on where you put her,” Hope replied.

Samuel turned to the Magician. “So, Mr . . . Ms . . .” He trailed off, hoping the Magician would indicate which was correct. Instead, they just stood there looking at him with a glint in their eyes, making him feel foolish. He cleared his throat. “We’re looking for a symbol of a torch hidden in the realm we just came from. Do you know where it is?”

“But of course,” the Magician said with a bow. “Lady and gentleman, if you would please follow me.”

As the Magician walked past them to the door they had come through, Hope spoke. “Do you know about a creepy guy with a dark cloak and eyes of inky blackness?”

The Magician paused in the doorway. “Death appears near those about to meet their end. If you saw him, it means one of you had a close brush with the afterlife.”

“It really was the Grim Reaper,” Hope said softly.

So he really had almost killed himself, both inside the Realms and out. The thing was, he couldn’t imagine how he could have ever thought something so stupid was a good idea. And if he’d had one such total brain failure, how could he be sure he wouldn’t have another?

As they passed back through the door they had come from, Hope spoke, breaking the somber silence. “Funny thing about this door, we searched all over for anything out of the ordinary, and didn’t find it until Samuel was literally on top of it.”

“That’s the beauty of things,” the Magician said, raising a finger. “Sometimes, the harder you look, the easier they are to miss.”

“How does that make any sense?” Samuel said.

“You’ll see,” the Magician replied, stopping by the black statue. “Observe.” Facing the chasm with hands raised, the Magician said, “Perspecto Pythagoras!”

An indigo mist swirled up the Magician’s forearms like tongues of fire that did not know which way was up. Off in the distance, the ground rose up to meet the sky, like a giant curtain lifting off the floor. Upon this great tapestry, the chasm turned upward, connecting to make the circle they had walked around. Its two branches extended higher, connecting to make a partly wavy, partly jagged shape atop the circle.

Hope laughed, and Samuel felt the urge to do the same. The chasms formed a shape, a perfect torch symbol. The whole time they had been searching for it, they had been standing on top of it. If they’d had a map, it would have been obvious from the beginning.

An electric hum pierced the air, as it always did when they found the symbol. With it, an orange line appeared in the air before them, opening into a hole, a portal to the next realm. On the other side stood a light gray pillar topped with a white flame, a beacon. A great rumbling sound reverberated from all around, as every eye carving in sight ground open. Samuel let out a long, slow breath as relief washed over him like a wave.

“That’s amazing,” Hope said. “Thank you, Magician. We wouldn’t have been able to find it without your help.”

The Magician smiled a grin that suggested deeply guarded knowledge. “Oh yes you would have. I didn’t do anything you couldn’t do yourselves.”

“Oh come on,” Samuel said, “we can’t lift the ground or bend the light or whatever you just did.”

“My lad, you have so much left to learn about the Realms. Here, the limitations are of mind, not matter.” The Magician leaned toward him and lifted a surprisingly nimble-looking finger. “Your heart is full of stubbornness, but I sense that one day you will come to be very powerful indeed.”

“What about me?” Hope said, standing on her toes with her hands behind her back.

“You, my dear,” the Magician said, turning to face her, “are already on the path toward unlocking your potential.”

“Really?” Hope said, her face aglow. “Can you teach me some magic?”

The Magician shook their head. “Magic cannot be taught, but lies between instinct and insight. Follow the butterflies. Climb rocks and trees. Find pictures in the clouds.”

“Oh please,” Samuel said. “She already does enough of that. Don’t encourage her.” Hope shot him a grin, and he scowled back. Couldn’t she take the journey through the Realms more seriously, and loaf around on her own time? He beckoned to her. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Goodbye,” the Magician said, “I hope you will return and tell me of the wonders and terrors your journey brings.”

Samuel and Hope said their farewells, and walked toward the portal. Whatever their journey had in store for them, Samuel hoped the terrors would be minimal. All he knew was that they would meet someone called the Sage, presumably another archetype, who might be able to help with Samuel’s hand. The uncertainty made him nervous, but it was the only lead he had. The alternative was to face the Deceiver and play along with his game, but that snake had proved utterly elusive, and Samuel suspected he had seen only a glimpse of his deviousness. If he could avoid that confrontation, so much the better.

Setting his foot through the portal onto soft green grass lit by the white fire of a beacon and a bright starry sky, Samuel breathed in the cool, sweet air of this new realm. It felt like freedom. Though he knew it would bring a new challenge, and another torch to find, that was a problem for another day. At the moment, his eyes were set on the beacon, the marker of accomplishment. They had made it. He reached forward, and as his hand touched the smooth gray stone, the flame turning bright orange with a whoosh of air, it felt like a great weight fell off his shoulders. One less challenge remained before things could go back to normal.