7

Marisol

MARISOL TRIED NOT TO SHRIEK AT THE INTRODUCTION.

“Amelia Earhart? The Amelia Earhart?” she gasped instead, nearly dropping the jacket. Amelia Earhart’s jacket!

This time when Marisol shivered, it wasn’t because she was cold. Meeting a famous pilot was weird and wonderful and so much like one of Nana’s stories it gave her goose bumps.

Jake’s mouth formed a perfect, shocked O.

Amelia kept walking into the wintry wonderland, steps punching through the frost. “So you’ve heard of me?”

“I had to write a report about you last year!” Marisol volunteered. “You were a famous pilot! The first woman to fly all the way across the Atlantic Ocean by herself! You loved tomato juice and hard-boiled eggs and Chinese food!”

“I still do,” their new friend replied with a wink. “That’s wild that you learned about me in school! But it’s nice to know I’ve stood the test of time. I have a theory that people remembering you on the other side of the Unknown helps your memories stick longer. Of course, there’s no way for me to prove it. . . .”

“Do you remember what it was like coming through the Unknown?” asked Jake. “Did you do anything to make it happen?”

“Golly! That was over eighty years ago.” The famous pilot paused, her breath pluming out ahead. “There were lots of clouds that day. So many snatches of sky and shadow and sea. I was flying over the Pacific Ocean with my friend Fred. We didn’t come through the Unknown on purpose. . . . Our plane veered off course, and right as we realized we were lost, we had this strange sense that up was down, and down was up. All of a sudden we were in brilliant sunshine and flying over the World Between Blinks. We’ve been here ever since!”

“Eighty years?” Jake’s brow furrowed.

Marisol did some quick math in her head. “You look very good for someone who’s more than one hundred, Ms. Earhart!”

“No one ages here!” Her laugh was as silver as bells and wreathed in frost. “And it’s Amelia! Please! You can even call me Meeley if you want.”

Jake seemed at a loss, so Marisol leaned in to explain. “That was her childhood nickname.”

“You really did do your homework, didn’t you?” Amelia gave another gap-toothed smile and waved them forward. “C’mon! Let’s go get that cocoa!”

Cocoa sounded heavenly, especially since the road started ribboning into a frozen river. Marisol was a little chilled at the thought of never turning thirteen, but she decided to let the surrounding sights distract her, since there was nothing she could do about it for now. Instead she marveled at the ice beneath her feet: so solid an elephant could walk on it. The proof was only a few yards away, the large beast curling its trunk over a juggler, whose brightly colored balls flew higher than the elephant’s head, whirling past its flapping gray ears. The performer was really very nimble for a guy wearing at least three coats.

They followed Amelia Earhart through a maze of snow-laced tents.

Unlike other fairs Marisol had been to, the Frost Fair didn’t have a Ferris wheel or a merry-go-round, but there was plenty of entertainment. Acrobats performed backflips off barrels, and horses pulled sleds of shoppers. They even passed a man who swallowed swords. Had he bought them from the knight in Ostia Antica?

It felt almost impossible that they’d seen him, on a perfectly warm day in a Roman marketplace, just a few minutes ago. . . .

Marisol trotted up to Amelia and tugged her elbow. “Where was the Frost Fair in our world?”

“London!” the pilot answered. “This used to exist on the Thames back when the river got cold enough to freeze. It was so much fun, they still put on the festival here sometimes.”

Now that Marisol knew the Frost Fair’s origins, it was easy to see. Union Jack flags hung from some of the tents as well as signs written in English—advertising everything from gingerbread to skittles, not the fruity candy, but a game that looked similar to bowling.

“So why is it next to a place from ancient Rome?” Jake wondered. “The geography doesn’t make sense.”

“It can get confusing,” their new friend agreed. “The Curators are in charge of arranging things, and they don’t think quite the same way as the rest of us.”

Hard to argue with that!

Amelia went on. “They love putting everything into categories, but this is where lost things appear, so lots of people and things and places have a way of popping up where they’re not supposed to. Of course, this makes a mess of the Curators’ system, but they do keep trying. Both Ostia Antica and the Frost Fair are lost markets, which is why they ended up close together. Shopper’s convenience! Imagine if you showed up in one place and discovered the thing you needed was all the way across an ocean?”

This made Marisol think of their journey on the Patriot, passing coasts filled with castles and pyramids. “How big is the World Between Blinks?”

“Very, very big. And still growing! Every time something disappears from our old world and appears here, the World stretches to fit it. Ah! Here’s the cocoa shop!”

The three of them ducked into a toasty tent, where groups gathered around tables of steaming mugs. Chocolate and coffee and something silvery scented the air. Amelia ordered drinks from the vendor, waving the cousins’ hands out of their pockets when they reached for change.

“This round is on me.” It wasn’t a coin or a banknote she used to pay but gold! The piece was no bigger than their pinky nails, shinier than the lost wedding rings.

“Where did you get that?”

Jake shot Marisol a sharp look, and she suddenly feared her question had been too rude.

Amelia didn’t seem to mind. “I run a taxi service with my Lockheed plane,” she explained. “Lots of pilots here do! Wings make it easier to travel the World’s distances.”

Good to know, thought Marisol, although as she watched the gold disappear into the vendor’s pocket, she doubted they’d be able to afford a ride. She’d been hoping Amelia would say that there was lost treasure to be found all over the World Between Blinks, and she’d just scooped this gold up herself. But of course if that were true, the Curators wouldn’t have given the cousins money, would they?

Even if she could afford a ride, it’d help to know where they were going first. Her magnet fingers had failed to find the language charm stall, since every passing person wore a tiny scroll.

Hopefully locating Christopher Creaturo would be easier, since there was only one of him.

“Is there anything better than chocolate?” Amelia gave a happy sigh when the earthenware mugs were passed around. “Seriously? Is there? I imagine the old world’s changed a lot since I left.”

“Well . . .” Jake sipped the drink, thoughtful. “There are iPhones.”

Amelia blinked. “Telephones with eyes?”

Marisol tried not to giggle.

“Kind of.” Her primo stretched for an explanation. “I mean, they can certainly see things, and take pictures of them. But they don’t use eyes. There were a bunch in the bin of cell phones at Ostia Antica. They look like flat glass bricks.”

“I always wondered what those were! Telephones, you say? How swell!”

The cocoa helped warm them up, and so did the hunks of gingerbread Amelia bought at the next stall: treats wrapped in crinkling blue paper that opened to a smell like Christmas.

Marisol nibbled the edges, careful not to get crumbs on the borrowed jacket. Jake—clearly hungry—chomped into his slice. A piece fell to the ice, and an instant later it was snatched up by a stray dog, who dove for it in a blur of movement.

No . . . not a dog.

No un perro para nada.

She didn’t know what the animal was. It looked like a tiger mixed with wolf—sandy brown with several dark stripes down the back. Despite a long snout crowded with teeth, the creature seemed tame. It sat up on hind legs, nose politely pointing out that they had more gingerbread to give.

Amelia obliged, throwing a piece. Jaws opened wide—as big as those great white shark bones Nana’s neighbors had—and caught the bread with a SNAP!

“Hello, Oz! Long time no see!”

The animal’s round ears perked up. Its bark sounded like a cough: ah-ah-ah!

“What is it?” Jake clutched his snack. “An Oz?”

Now it was Amelia’s turn to chuckle. “He’s a thylacine. Whenever a species is about to go extinct back in the old world, the Unknown seems to . . . well, to know. A few of each one slip through into the World Between Blinks—I guess extinction is a way of being lost. Our friend here is one of the last Tasmanian tigers.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Jake, still keeping careful hold of his snack.

“Oz is what everyone in the World Between Blinks calls him,” Amelia said. “And I do mean everyone! He gets around all over this place, Oz does.”

“Oooooooh.” Her cousin nodded. “Tasmanian tigers used to live in Australia!”

“Is that why he sits like a kangaroo?” Marisol wondered.

Oz grunted, returning to all fours, and for another wild moment she worried she’d offended the animal. Could the thylacine understand them?

Marisol tossed him another gingerbread offering.

Just in case.

SNAP!

“Feed Oz and he’ll follow you anywhere,” Amelia said. This seemed true, since the thylacine kept trailing them across the ice—nails clicking. “He’s been on a few adventures with me in the Flying Laboratory. Er, my plane.”

“I mew dat!” Marisol declared through a bite of confectionary.

Crumbs went everywhere. So did Oz, in an attempt to collect them.

The newest addition to their group wore a collar. There was a plaque on it—much like the nameplates identifying the plants at the Crystal Palace, but its text didn’t translate into either of Marisol’s languages. All she could pick out were numbers: 1936. That must be the year the Tasmanian tigers went extinct. It made her sad to think about such a weird but cute creature disappearing.

Oz stuck around, though, following the trio even after the gingerbread became nothing but wrapper. They strolled through the fair, past women with baskets of hot apples on their heads and more missing keys than Marisol could count. The keys reminded her of the set her parents had lost just yesterday. They reminded her of the key with the curling she and Jake had found at the lighthouse. It’d vanished when they slipped into the World—and probably wouldn’t be any help getting home, even if they’d somehow held on to it. She’d have liked to try, though.

When they passed some chests of golden doubloons—guarded by a watchful vendor—she even began to miss her brother, Victor.

We’ll get back to the beach house, Marisol promised herself.

We’ll find the treasure to keep it too.

Her fingers buzzed at the thought, though it would’ve been very hard to find the language charms without Amelia’s help. The shop that sold them had no sign, its sail-like fabric shut tight against the frigid air. Oars supported the tent instead of poles, Marisol noted when they ducked under the flap.

Inside sat a woman with television-static hair—white and everywhere. The chain around her neck drooped with dozens of charms: a scroll, a monocle, a fish scale, a feather, to name a few. She was nose deep in a book called . . . Marisol tilted her head to one side. Love’s Labour’s Won by William Shakespeare, the spine said. The woman behind it was oblivious to her new customers.

Oz yipped.

She jumped, snapping the script shut. “Bonjour! Madame Earhart! Ça fait longtemps! Comment ça va?”

“Hello!” Amelia returned the greeting. “I’m aces, thanks for asking! My foundling friends here need language charms. Do you have any in stock?”

The shopkeeper kept speaking in what Marisol suspected was French, waving toward a basket filled with hundreds of miniature scrolls. With Amelia’s help they negotiated a price: most of their pence, both Australian and Ghanaian.

“She wants to know if you’re interested in buy-one-get-one-free T-rex repellent,” Amelia added after the exchange.

“Maybe not today?” Jake answered diplomatically. “We shouldn’t spend our money all at once.”

“Could we get eaten by a T-rex?” Marisol asked. She wondered what else they should be worrying about—how many dangers lurked outside this tent?

“Eaten, no. Smooshed. . . .” Amelia hesitated. “Probably not. Jake is right. You’ll need your cash for other things.”

They untied their chains and added the scrolls next to their hourglasses.

“Hey, look at that,” Amelia said, leaning in to examine the necklaces. “Not a single grain of sand has fallen! That’s not a sight you see every day.”

The cousins exchanged a fraught look, as Amelia’s words brought their problems bubbling back to the surface. They had to keep moving, before sand did slip through their hourglasses—before any of their memories trickled away—and they were cataloged and stuck here. Twelve years old forever and ever . . .

“Better, yes?” the shopkeeper asked when they put their necklaces back on.

Marisol listened past the tent, catching the fair’s frostbitten voices.

A certain music had faded: the same sort of melody she heard whenever Aymara and Quechua were spoken around her in Bolivia. Words you didn’t understand were beautiful just for their sounds. This background of kaleidoscope syllables was gone, and two distinct languages were in its place.

English and español.

Spanish y inglés.

Overlapping.

Jake turned to her, frowning. “¿Cómo How’s es it sound para to you ti, Mari?”

“Está bien.” If Marisol focused, her concentration could shift from one automatic translation to the other. Like adjusting a radio dial. “It’s okay.”

Her primo nodded. “At least now we’ll be able to ask around after Christopher Creaturo.”

“Who?” Amelia wondered.

“This man dressed up as a Curator and tricked us into stealing a ledger for him,” Jake explained. “We have to get the book back if we want to return to Folly Beach. To our family.”

The shopkeeper tsked behind her explosion of hair, and at their feet, Oz gave a disapproving whuffling noise.

The look on Amelia’s face needed no translation. “This Christopher just put you behind the eight ball, did he? What a twit! Not everyone in the World is trustworthy. . . . You need to take more care around its people than its dinosaurs.”

“He’s blond.” Jake pointed to his own bright bangs. “Wearing a white suit and carrying a giant book. Maybe you’ve seen him?”

Both adults shook their heads.

“I’d like to help you search,” Amelia began, “but I’m afraid I have to hoof it. It’s time for me to pick up Glenn Miller for his concert in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. With all of his trumpets there isn’t enough room in the Lockheed for you two.”

“You’ve helped us so much already,” Marisol told the pilot.

She started peeling off the leather jacket—reluctantly—but Amelia stopped her. “Keep it for now! We’ll have an excuse to meet again. If you look inside its pocket you’ll find a walking-talking.”

¿Un qué? Marisol pulled out a walkie-talkie.

“It doesn’t have eyes, like those telephones, but it does patch in to the Flying Laboratory’s radio. You can use it to reach me if you need a quick lift. Take care of these kids, okay, Oz?”

The thylacine sat on his hind legs and barked.

They said their goodbyes. Marisol felt a pang when Amelia ducked out of the tent. Jake turned his back to the exit, studying the nearest basket, which held dozens and dozens of shining scales.

“Bubblers,” the shopkeeper told them. “Underwater charms make ocean breathing a breeze! I’ll give you a three-for-one deal!”

Marisol shook her head. They’d spent enough time shopping.

Now they needed to find Christopher.

The Frost Fair felt bigger without a friend to guide them through it. Colder too.

“Where do we even start?” Jake asked as they followed the flow of ice past yet another sock vendor. “If the World Between Blinks is as big as Amelia said, Christopher could be anywhere!”

He could. It was true.

Good thing Marisol was good at finding things. . . .

She needed to focus to “flex her magnet fingers,” which meant pausing between two tents—out of the crowd again—and closing her eyes. Hands came out of her pockets, reaching into the frozen air.

“What are you doing?” Jake sounded impatient.

“Thinking.”

Marisol pictured Christopher, with his sunshine hair and chin dent. Cold shivered into something else: the tug, the pull, the find me feeling. Her fingers swung like a compass needle, pointing back toward the Roman market.

“We should go this way.” She opened her eyes, still pointing.

Confusion squished Jake’s face. “Why?” he asked, and Oz echoed the question with a soft whine.

Outside the Crystal Palace, she’d been ready to tell Jake about her talent, but they were in a hurry and it would take too much explaining. Besides, if Marisol could use it to get them out of this World, she wouldn’t have to admit it was her fault they got stuck here.

“It’s just a hunch,” she said, and started walking.

Oz and Jake followed.

Her fingers pulled them back the way they’d come, past the elephant, through the archway, back into the clamoring dust of Ostia Antica’s market. The garum vendor waved hello again. But Christopher Creaturo wasn’t hiding in the colorful crowds. The cousins soon found themselves navigating the wider, jumbled cityscape—past Viking longhouses and sleek office buildings. Jake gasped when they walked past a huge round building, though the noise was nearly drowned out by a roar from a crowd somewhere inside.

“Mari, that’s the Globe! Where Shakespeare performed his plays! It must be the first one. I saw the replica when I was in London.”

“Was it the same?” she asked as Oz paused to salvage a sausage in bread someone had dropped near the entrance.

“The replica was cleaner,” he said. “Pretty close, though. But where are we going, Mari? Shouldn’t we start asking people if they’ve seen him?”

No. They shouldn’t stop now. The buzz beneath Marisol’s fingernails grew stronger. . . .

She shuffled forward. Arms out. Reaching.

“Mari!” Jake trailed, exasperated. “Will you at least tell me why you’re walking like a zombie?”

Stronger . . . Closer . . . Almost there . . .

Marisol turned onto yet another mixed-up street—where extinct flowers bloomed from window boxes and gas lamps were planted next to torches. At least the buildings had a theme: they all looked like residences. Igloos. Sod houses with grass growing from the roofs. Sturdier structures with doors as bright as songbird wings and shiny, out-of-order numbers. Probably not gold, Marisol reasoned, but her fingers flared all the same. Here! Here!

She halted.

Jake stumbled into her.

Here! Sunlight beamed off Christopher’s hair as he stood across the lane, studying one of the tidy brick houses. The ledger sat open in one hand, a pen in the other. He looked from page to postal address. Double-checking. Triple.

“It’s him!” Jake gasped. “Mari, how on earth did you find—”

Christopher struck a line through the stolen book.

Marisol knew what would happen next, but that didn’t make seeing it any less jarring. There was a house. Then there was NO house. Her heart skipped when she saw the empty lot, and when she blinked . . .

Things started to rip.

Through this new tear in the fabric between the worlds Marisol could see a street where cars had quickly braked, almost as if she were watching it on TV. Horns blared. A double-decker bus, painted a signature London red, had passengers pointing out of its windows. Marisol followed their fingers, expecting to see the un-lost house and finding . . . more.

Christopher had struck this address from the ledger, sending the building back to their world—never mind that a new one had been built in its place since it disappeared. Because there was no room, the structures mashed together instead. A pair of doors jostled beside overlapping windowpanes. Some of the wall was built out of brick, while other parts were constructed from granite, as if two architects had fought over the plans and decided to call it a tie. Pieces of both materials scattered the road, which was why traffic had piled up, but there was no obvious damage to the building.

“Oh!” Jake was clearly seeing the same thing. “I hope nobody was hurt!”

“Yo también.”

Marisol blinked without thinking. The London scene vanished, but there was a traffic jam forming here too. A penny-farthing bike wobbled to a halt, its rider tumbling, while cars of old stacked bumper to bumper ahead. Drivers were getting out.

“Did you see that?”

“I’m sure that Curator was just rezoning the house. . . .”

“I meant the fissure, good sir! The enormous crack! That was the clearest glimpse of home I’ve ever seen!”

Marisol’s pulse drummed hard in her throat. They had to stop Christopher before it was too late! Before too many objects were displaced and the Unknown unraveled! Before everyone and everything was lost!

“Stop!”

Her yell wasn’t loud enough to reach the other side of the clogged street, and even if it had been, Christopher probably wouldn’t have listened. There was a grin on the man’s face as he tucked the book under his arm and strolled smartly down the sidewalk, toward the harbor. The Crystal Palace shimmered from the other side of sapphire waters. But . . .

Christopher wouldn’t be going back to the scene of the crime?

Would he?

“Jake!” She gripped her cousin by the arm, jolting him into his second blink. “Christopher is heading for the docks! If he gets on a boat . . .”

Jake understood well enough to take off running, but when her primo tried climbing over the hood of a canary-yellow sports car, its driver scowled, laying on the horn. The Viking in the cart behind that hurled an ax into its bumper. The dodo being carried in said cart leaped out, landing with a flightless plop and startling a sled team of huskies who’d begun howling in tune with the horn.

“This way!” Marisol narrowly avoided tripping on the big wheel of the penny-farthing bicycle. So many spokes!

She and Jake ran the long way round, forced to double back when they finally crossed the street, and slowed down again when they had to pass the newly vacated lot. Christopher’s stunt had attracted quite the crowd. The cousins pushed through as quick as they could, running down to the marina.

Its docks were messier than before, splintered by the kraken’s tentacles, boats all tumbled together. The Curators must’ve contained—and cataloged—the offending beastie, since there was no sign of it.

Most of the white suits were gone too. Only one remained, climbing into a submarine. Christopher’s gold hair flashed a final time in the sunlight before he disappeared into the hatch.

“Hey!” shouted Jake. “Wait for us!”

Oz gave a loud cry as they ran down the dock, dodging broken boards and disgruntled sailors. Marisol’s fingers seared. Her calves did too, burning all the way to the slip.

They were too late.

The choppy gray waves closed over the body of the submarine as it cut a path through the water, away from the dock. Then it vented water up into the air, like a whale or a fire hose aimed straight at the sky, huge jets streaming high, then falling to the ground in silvery showers.

For a long moment the periscope was visible, and then it slipped into the sea. The submarine and its passenger were gone, vanished beneath the waves.