IN THE LAND OF NARRATORS, BROOKE PAGE IS running.
She is running past her house, down the street, through town. Narrators line the block to watch her, their mouths open, because they’ve never seen a Narrator become a character in a story before.
“You can do it, Brooke!” someone yells.
A few applaud. The applause grows louder and louder, and it feels like approving pats on her back.
Brooke smiles. She believes she can. Her parents hope she can. And though they are very, very, very, very, very worried, they are still narrating her. They are narrating her at this very second because they believe she can do it, too.
At the edge of town, Brooke enters the Grammar Forest, hopping over root words and ducking under the dangling participles. A breeze weaves through the trees, pushing fallen nouns into piles on the ground. Verbs hop, wiggle, and march by, and Brooke leaps over them. Adjectives float like seed puffs, sticking to anything they touch. She brushes several adjectives out of her hair and runs faster.
At last, coming out from under the foreshadows of the forest canopy, Brooke sees it. The Fourth Wall. The great wall runs the stacks’ length of the World of Stories, creating a barrier between this world and the Readers’ World. It is white, like the stone land under Shadow High, like the bridges in the Margins, a foundation that is and always will be.
Brooke climbs the Fourth Wall.
The wall is uneven, and there are places to grab with her fingers and tiny holes for her toes.
Soon she is high, much, much higher than her mother would like. So high that her father’s heart is pounding hard with worry, and he’s sweating like a buffalo.
No, Brooke! Be careful! If she falls, it’s a long way down.
Brooke spots some adjectives still stuck to her from her run through the Grammar Forest. She peels the word sticky off her arm and places it on the bottom of her shoe. Now her shoe sticks to the wall. It’s the extra lift she needs.
She pulls herself to the top of the wall and looks over.
The land of Readers! Mostly she can see only fog over the world—thick, white, seemingly solid, like the kind that fills the Margins.
“Of course,” she says. “Just like in the Margins, magic spells don’t work in the Readers’ World, but imagination is extra powerful.”
She stands up on the narrow top of the Fourth Wall. Through the fog she thinks she can see buildings, streets, houses. And when she squints, she sees people. Busy. Everyone so busy, moving and living and working and studying and just being. It’s the land of Readers, and yet not many of them are reading, not right at this moment, when she so desperately needs them. She hopes there is at least one. One with a book open, ready for a story.
“Ahem. Halloo! Hey, uh, Reader! I need you. We need you. Raven, Apple, Frankie, Drac, and Maddie need you. Even the Evil Queen needs you! They’re stuck. It’s not supposed to go like this. Ms. Direction is cheating, you see. She broke the rules. She’s trying to bring on The End before the heroes have a chance to finish the story. Can you help?”
Brooke listens. No response.
“I said, can you help?”
Reader, answer her! Yes, you. You are the Reader. Please say yes now so Brooke can hear you. She needs to know you’re listening.
Please?
…
Through the fog, Brooke hears a faint “YES!”
“Yay!” says Brooke. “Thank you! I need you to help change the story. I don’t know what will work. I just know that the heroes are stuck and they’ve done all they can. Can you do the rest? If you think up a way for them to escape Ms. Direction and imagine it, you’re so powerful that you can actually make it happen. I have some ideas. Go to the next chapter if you’re willing to try.”