IF: Boundarylands Read online

  “Me?” Emma gasped, her eyes wide with horror.

  “That girl’s worth a dozen maps, witch. We gonna do business, or we gonna waste daylight?”

  “Fine, fine,” she said, throwing up her hands. “Keep your piglet.” Emma sighed with relief. She untied the sack of éclairs and stuffed one into her mouth whole. She smiled as the creamy filling squished soothingly into her cheeks. “But you know as well as I, this map is worth a pretty song.”

  “Then tell me what you would hear,” the Stranger demanded.

  “Well...I could let it go for...say...an eyetooth,” she said with a sly grin.

  The Stranger’s eyes widened. The old woman was sharp, much sharper than she let on. “You know that ain’t possible,” he said.

  “Oh, I think it is, dearie,” she said, all sweetness and smiles. “Unless I miss my mark, these young ones aren’t branded, are they? And this one here has real dollar-money. There’s only one reason I can think of that accounts for that.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  The old woman shrugged. “Too bad, then.” She gripped the edge of the map and began to roll it up. “I was so hoping to have a little business today.”

  The Stranger spat a curse loud enough for the children to hear. Willy clamped his hand over his own mouth and giggled. The Stranger turned and hunkered down in front of the children. “This is your journey; I leave it to you,” he said, looking seriously from one to the next. “What she asks is no small thing: a canine tooth, though I’d wager any tooth’d do. I’ll tell you this, without that map, we’ve no hope of getting to the Royal, and he’s the only one who can tell us where to find your friend.”

  “Why does she want a tooth?” Etherie asked, picking thoughtfully at her incisors.

  The Stranger hesitated. “They’re valuable,” he finally said. “To some, anyway. There’s a sort of magic in teeth—real teeth—and I don’t know what she’ll use it for. But I reckon it won’t be good.”

  “Is she the Tooth Fairy?” Polly asked, intrigued.

  The Stranger snorted. “Far from it.”

  “Anyone have any loose teeth?” Cole asked. He’d lost his latest just a week ago. He still caught himself tonguing the little socket it had left behind. That little tooth was responsible for one of the two dollars in his pocket. It was the only loose one he’d had, though. The rest weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

  Not naturally, anyway.

  “I got one,” Willy said. He spread his lips wide and wiggled one of his lower bicuspids with his tongue. It was definitely loose.

  “Give it to her, you dumb-dumb!” Polly said.

  “It’s still in my mouth!” Willy protested.

  “Your call, kid,” the Stranger shrugged.

  Willy screwed up his face and tried to look down into his own mouth. “Is it gonna hurt?”

  The Stranger shrugged again. The other children exchanged nervous glances. Cole suppressed the impulse to say, Of course it’s going to hurt; it’s a tooth attached to nerves, and she’ll rip it right out of your head! But that, he knew, would almost certainly be counterproductive to obtaining the map, which they desperately needed. So instead, he tried to smile encouragingly…though he was pretty sure his mouth just ended up looking grotesque.

  Luckily for their mission, Polly stepped up to the plate.

  “Naw, it won’t hurt,” she said. “It’s a tooth, and tooths are made of rocks, and rocks don’t get hurt.”

  Willy nodded. That made sense. “Will there be blood?”

  Polly closed one eye and thought. “Mmmm...yes,” she decided.

  “Cool!” Willy jumped up and down with his fists clenched in excitement. “Let’s do it!”

  Cole, who was rather squeamish when it came to blood, tried his best not to watch the operation. But he wrestled with his curiosity, and he did snatch a few glimpses out of the corner of his eye…

  He saw Willy open his jaw so side, his whole head practically came unhinged.

  He saw Polly pushing at the tooth with her finger.

  He saw her using her light-up star wand like a crowbar.

  He saw the tooth flying in the air, just a split second before it knocked against his forehead and tumbled to the floor.

  “I did it!” Polly cried.

  Willy ran his tongue cautiously over the socket. “Hey—there’s hardly any blood at all!” he complained.

  The Stranger reached down and picked up the little tooth between his thumb and forefinger. “You made a hard sacrifice,” he said seriously. “Prayers up it doesn’t come back to bite us in the end.” He stood up and set the tooth down on the old woman’s counter. She snatched it up and examined it closely.

  “This is no eyetooth,” she whined.

  “So it isn’t,” the Stranger confirmed. “You don’t want it, give it back.”

  “Now, hold on, hold on,” she said, shielding the tooth from the Stranger by twisting sideways. “I suppose, seeing as how it’s a genuine tooth, I could trade it for half the map.”

  “It’s the whole map.” The Stranger pulled the cheroot from his lips and knocked the ash to the floor. “Or nothing at all.”

  The old woman frowned. “Fine,” she snapped. “Take your blasted map.” She flung the roll of parchment at him.

  He caught it deftly with his left hand. “Much obliged,” he drawled, tapping the map to the brim of his hat. “Mind if I use your counter for a spell?” The woman glowered, but didn’t refuse. She waved her hand at him dismissively and wandered over to an ancient telephone set into the corner of the stall. “Obliged again.”

  He unrolled the map and looked over its ever-shifting inkscape. Almost as an after-thought, he reached down and pulled a short-bladed knife from his boot. He wiped the blade on the sleeve of his shirt, then pushed the point of the knife into the pad of his forefinger until it broke skin. A little ball of blood beaded above the cut. The Stranger turned his hand over and squeezed the drop of blood onto the map.

  “Oh, gross,” Polly said, her face going sour.

  “Cool!” cried Willy. He clamored up to the counter and pulled himself up onto his tiptoes so he could see the stain. But instead of spreading, the red splotch was actually getting smaller, as if the paper were sucking the blood into its old, yellow fibers. The spot grew smaller and smaller, then vanished altogether.

  “Look!” Etherie breathed, pointing excitedly at the bottom of the map. Cole craned his neck up over Willy’s shoulder and saw that a red circle had appeared inside the map’s Way Station, near the western wall.

  “Gimme your finger,” the Stranger said to Cole.

  The boy eyed the knife warily. “What for?”

  “It’s important.”

  Cole frowned. “Just me?”

  The Stranger gave a rare grin. “They’ll get their turn,” he said.

  The other children watched Cole with wide eyes. If he didn’t donate a drop of blood to the map, some of them wouldn’t, either. Cole bit at his bottom lip nervously.

  The Stranger wouldn’t have bled himself if it weren’t important...right? he thought to himself.

  He gulped hard and held his shaky finger out to the cowboy, who grabbed it, not unkindly, and held it steady above the map. He squinted at Cole from under his hat. “Ready?” Cole nodded and gritted his teeth. He drew in a sharp hiss when the cowboy pushed the tip of the blade into his skin. A red bead dropped from Cole’s finger and disappeared into the map.

  A second red circle appeared in the Way Station, overlapping the first.

  The Stranger wiped the knife clean on his jeans and held it up to the other children with a smirk. “Who’s next?”

  Chapter 3:

  In Which Mother Earth Throws Quite a Fit

  “Well. What shall we do now?”

  Miss Twist sat perched on the edge of her desk. The child
ren had just disappeared through the chalkboard, and now she was left with IFs for company.

  “We shall walk barefoot into Pan’s forest on the slope beyond these walls, and together we shall become one with his gentle blanket of pine boughs,” Gaia suggested.

  “I suppose I should have known better than to ask,” Miss Twist sighed. “I think it’s best you all stay inside, and out of sight.”

  “I say bugger-all to this, we should go in after our Anchors, and protect them as we were made to do,” the Servant pouted.

  “And have the portal close behind us?” Frau Mütter snapped. “I don’t like this any more than you do, but we’re stuck in it now until they return.”

  “We could have a snack,” Mr. Puffles suggested. He reached behind his back and produced a pineapple upside-down cake. “Ooooooo!”

  “It’s not the worst idea I’ve heard,” Miss Twist decided.

  “Look. This is still a school, is it not?” asked Frau Mütter, rising from Willy’s desk. “I see no reason for us to carry on any differently than you would on a typical day. Teach us something.”

  Miss Twist laughed. “This is a third-grade classroom, Frau. I assume you already know how to do simple math, point out France on a map, and make abstract art out of macaroni,” she said.

  “Surely there’s something you could teach us,” Frau Mütter insisted. “Personally, I’d be interested in learning more about humans. You must be something of an expert on human beings. And you are particularly qualified to teach us what we don’t know, having a foot in both worlds, as you do.”

  “Yes, you spend time in both the real world and the imaginary,” the Servant agreed. “You would know what knowledge we lack.”

  Miss Twist shook her head and sighed. “Humans are harder to understand than you would think,” she said.

  “What about children?” Frau Mütter asked. “What can you tell us about the children?”

  The Servant padded over to the desk next to Frau Mütter’s and took a seat. “Yes…shed some light on that particular dark corner, would you?”

  “Oh, yes! Teach us about Emma!” added Mr. Puffles, squeezing into a desk at the back of the room. His round belly bulged from the sides like a balloon being hugged by a python.

  Only Gaia seemed reluctant to take part in this lesson. She stood near the outer wall with her palms on the windowpanes, yearning glumly against the glass.

  “Would you like to know about your Anchors specifically, or human children in general?” Miss Twist asked.

  “I doubt there’s much difference,” said the Servant, his nose high in the air.

  Mr. Puffles protested that a study in Emma would be for the greater good of all, but Frau Mütter silenced him with her hand. “Children in general, I think.”

  “You already seem to know enough about them to get them to behave,” Miss Twist observed.

  “I know what William needs to hear in order for him to behave like a proper human being,” Frau Mütter said. “I know this because he formed me with this knowledge. I do have some additional insight into human children...we all do, I suppose...but it comes from the children we’ve encountered in the Boundarylands, and those are just imaginary creations, and therefore their ideas may not be wholly accurate.”

  “Children do not act in dreams as they act in life,” Gaia put in sadly from the windows. She pulled the crank and cracked one of the windows open, letting the warm August breeze hit her full in the face. She smiled.

  “The air conditioning is on,” Miss Twist pointed out with a frown.

  “Air is wholly and perfectly conditioned by nature,” Gaia shot back. “It is man who has corrupted it.” But she closed the window anyway and planted her forehead against the pane. With her swirling, colored gown, she looked not unlike a caged bird.

  “Please, have a seat, Gaia. There’s no telling how long we’ll be here. We might as well be as comfortable as possible.” Miss Twist gestured to an empty desk near the front of the room. Mother Nature sulked her way over to a different desk, one in the back corner, and she heaved into it with a dramatic, rattling sigh.

  “All right. Children,” Miss Twist said. “Here’s what I know about human children: They’re not as educated as adults, but they sometimes know quite a bit more; they understand the value of both snacks and naps, which most grown-ups seem to discount; they have extraordinary worlds inside of them, and their imaginations are limitless, though I suppose you all already know that part.”

  “Urrrrrrrrrrngh,” Gaia moaned from the back of the room. Her eyes were closed, and she was swaying in her seat like someone lost at sea. She reached into her long, brown hair and rifled slowly through it. “Urrrrrrrrrrngh.”

  “What on earth is the matter with you?” the Servant asked.

  “She’s hungry!” offered Mr. Puffles. He winked a chocolate cupcake into existence and set it on her desk. But Gaia didn’t even look at it.

  “She’ll be fine,” Frau Mütter said, waving off the goddess of the Earth. “I would like to hear more of this lesson. The things you say of children, they are all positive things. But where do their weaknesses lie? I am interested in learning where they fall short.”

  “Why would you want to hear of their shortcomings?” the Servant demanded. “We should only strive to build children up.”

  “I agree, children should be celebrated,” Frau Mütter replied. “But if we know where they fall short, we can guard against those pitfalls and help them to be good human beings.” She gave the Servant a chance to respond, but he didn’t seem to have anything to say. Satisfied, Frau Mütter nodded, and returned her attention to Miss Twist. “Where do children fall short?”

  “Well,” Miss Twist said, rubbing her nose, “my educational experience is mostly with younger children, and not with those in adolescence. I understand that is the point at which so many of them fall. But I know that children who have an improper amount of creativity—either too much or too little—can often become either very dangerous or very boring as adults. I know that that is why we send them to school; so they can learn enough facts to balance out imagination and enough imagination to wage war against some facts.”

  “Wage war against facts?” asked the Servant. “Shouldn’t education strive to reveal and enforce facts?”

  “Yes, of course,” Miss Twist said, standing up from her seat and pacing the length of the room. “But we strive to balance whimsy with those facts. Too many facts can be detrimental to a child’s heart. For example: Imaginary friends are, in fact, imaginary, and they do not exist in the real world.”

  The Servant’s face turned a bashful red, and he sank down in his seat. “Erm…yes, I see your point.”

  “Do you mean to say that the entire point of education is not to actually educate the mind, but to regulate the amount of creativity that flows through it?” Frau asked.

  Miss Twist nodded. “That’s how I see it.”

  Frau Mütter considered this. “Education is a very strange thing.”

  “Urrrrngh!” Gaia started rapping her hands quickly on the desktop. It vibrated so hard that the cupcake bounced right off and fell to the floor with a plop. Mr. Puffles gasped in horror. “Please,” Gaia whimpered to no one in particular. “Please, please, please.” Her palms slapped the desk, faster and faster.

  “Gaia, are you all right?” Miss Twist asked, bewildered.

  “Wait, one moment,” Frau Mütter said, “I want to discuss this further.”

  “Let me out!” Gaia wailed. “Let me out!” She jumped up onto the seat of her desk and stomped on it with her bare feet. “Let me out! Let me out! I have to get out!” She leapt from her desk to Mr. Puffles’s desk, then to the Servant’s. “I need to get out!” she cried, grabbing the Servant by his sideburns and shaking him into oblivion. He tried to pull away but was confined by the desk, and the whole piece of furniture went tumbling over instead.
The Servant pitched to the floor, but Gaia was thrown clear and fell into Frau Mütter’s arms. “Out!” she screamed, knocking her own forehead against the broad expanse of the larger woman’s. “Out!” She spun herself free and ran toward the classroom door. Her feet slipped on the dry linoleum, and she went careening into the bulletin board. She flailed her arms and caught two fistfuls of construction paper. She ripped the red and white scalloped border as she fell, throwing her hands wildly and flailing the pieces about her head like a pair of circus whips. Then she clamored to her feet, dashed to the door, pushed it open with her hip, and was gone down the hall, pumping her fists in the air and screaming, “The confinements of mankind have rendered nature mad!” Then she was down the hall and around the corner, shrieking and laughing and causing a general ruckus.

  Miss Twist stood at the front of the room, rubbing her forehead with her hand. “Great,” she sighed. “Just great.”

  Chapter 4:

  In Which the World Freaks Out

  Cole stood at the Way Station’s exit and decided that he must be having a stroke.

  His complete inability to speak certainly gave this theory legs.

  The massive exit doors were made of glass, and through them the children caught their first true glimpse of the Boundarylands. Polly screwed up her face in confusion. “What is it...doing?” she asked.

  “It’s freaking out,” Willy breathed, his eyes wide.

  The world outside was, quite literally, slipping by. When they approached the doors, the landscape on the other side was quiet and peaceful. It was twilight, and the land in front of the station fell gracefully away to a shimmering pond, where a pair of gazelles dipped their heads to drink. But five seconds later, that world began sliding to the left, turning like a carousel, moving slowly at first, so slowly that Cole wasn’t sure it was actually happening, then kicking into overdrive and whirling with sickening speed until the pond was a pale blue blur. This blitz of movement stopped almost as soon as it had started, but when the blur cleared into an image, the landscape was completely different. Gone were the lake and the gently sloping hill and the pair of gazelles. Now, the street outside the doors was New York City in the dead of night. The Empire State Building towered above the station, its lights twinkling in the electric-brown night sky of the Big Apple. Then the world whirled again, and now there was a lake of fire lapping at the station doors. Emma cried out as a wave of lava crashed into the glass, certain that the doors would melt, and that the lava would dissolve the flesh from their bones. But the doors held, even when a great fire demon rose from the pits of the flames and spewed a stream of steaming hot obsidian shards at the station from its sulfur-lined throat. Thousands of pieces of smoking rock pinged and cracked against the doors, but they held firm. Then there was another blur of movement, the fire demon was gone, and the children found themselves staring out the doors at the deep recesses of outer space, an entire imagination’s worth of galaxies spinning lazily in the absolute darkness.