I don't know if there was a measurable amount of time in which my brain processed several thoughts, but in the nanoseconds it took for the Rip to seal shut, I considered my options. Maybe I could shoot the Ice and somehow keep the Rip open for just a little longer. Maybe I could shoot Dad through it with a beam of the cold Second Gift, and hope it didn't cut him in half. Or, we could stay, and take our chances in the Blackness. But none of these were truly options—the risks were too high, the implications too dreadful. There was, really, only one choice.

I called upon the Anything for the second time.

With little time to be creative, I flung out the first coherent thought I could formulate. With every ounce of will inside of my heart, I ordered the Anything to reunite my family no matter what it took. To make it a solid invoking of the Gift, leaving no room for doubt, I imagined it happening in the first specific location that popped in my head.

The stable where we had left the horses.

In perhaps the oddest use of my Gifts thus far, I called upon the Anything to take us all to Baka.

Baka the horse.

It would be difficult for someone of my admittedly great but still limited brain to formulate the right words to describe what then happened. The very substance of time seemed to shift, and the world around me bent horribly. I could not move my head, but somehow I was aware of everything that happened around me, and even the occurrences of things thousands of miles away. Time and distance lost all meaning, and I could see everything.

The closing of the Curtain stopped in its tracks and bubbled outward to provide enough room. Dad was beside me one instant, and then a flash of color—a streak of almost imperceptible movement—and he was gone, slicing through the air and out of the Blackness. A millisecond later, I exploded out of the Blackness as well, through the Ripping, and tore through the air at a blistering pace.

But we were not flying. At least I felt no sense of passing air, I hit no ducks on the way, had no time to wave at passersby. I felt nothing—no sense of movement at all, no awareness of my surroundings on the way. Everything was a blur of chaos. We were not traveling—we were simply changing locations.

Every color in the spectrum, every creature on Earth, every climate, every landscape, millions of people passed my vision in brief flashes, like someone running past an open window, seen through the corner of the eye. The world spun below us, as if some alien giant was twirling it on a green, warty finger. Instead of experiencing feelings of motion, it was like Japan was coming to me.

Mom and Rusty, in similar fashion miles away, exploded out of a wayside motel in Japan, a gaping hole in the walls of the place temporarily obliterated to allow them passage, and then reforming as if it had never happened. Our minds and emotions were traumatized by the sudden weirdness of it all.

I will never know what forces of nature or physics or magic were called upon to meet the demands of my new and formidable Gift. I will never know if it took minutes or hours. But my last memory of the journey was seeing the roof of the horse stable melt away, and then standing there, next to Dad, Mom, Rusty, and a dirty, hungry horse named Baka.

I looked up and the roof was whole again, seemingly never touched.

For a second, a wall of confusion kept any of us from moving. But then it melted away, and we all embraced. Dad, smelling like garbage and pasted with inky slime, was overcome with emotion, and I thought for sure he was going to puncture one of my lungs with his vice-like hug. He acted like if he ever let go, we might just vanish once and for all, with no more second chances.

We were together again. Confused as heck, but together again.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I had the passing thought that the Anything could only be used two more times.

But I didn't care.