The Middle of Nowhere

THE DISTANCE SHE FELL WAS no more than the distance to the floor, but she could tell by her soft landing that this was not her carpet. She was facedown in something that felt like wood chips. Stella sat up and brushed herself off, but when she opened her eyes, the whiteness of the sky and the wavy black horizon blinded her. She put her hands over her eyes for a moment. Heat pulsed down against her scalp. Wincing, she tried to open her lids just a slit. The sky was white, the ground was black, and the brilliance clawed at her vision. She shut them again, heart thumping and clanging.

She tried again, more slowly, and with lots of blinking. After a few moments, things came into focus. The sky was a washed-out, pale blue, almost white at the edges. The ground around her was black, except for the small bit she was sitting on. That was a mound of woodchips which seemed to serve a few very sad-looking mums placed here and there. It was a median. She was seated on a median in a vast, empty parking lot. Music floated on the still air. It was a blandly cheerful tune that Stella felt certain she had heard before over the speakers at her doctor’s office, and it had a tinny quality, as if it were being played on a toy saxophone.

A line of large buildings built in faux-Spanish hacienda style hulked nearby. It was . . . a strip mall. Stella read the names of the stores: Impulse, Harmless Fancy, and one called Momentary Fascinator. The buildings were set back at the center, where there was a large fountain featuring a bulging-eyed fish sculpture spouting a column of water.

Beside the fountain was a double door, like the kind on an elevator, set beside a Metro sign and a down escalator. And there, not ten yards away, something small and silver scurried away from her. The mouse!

“Come back!” Stella shouted, racing after it.

“Eep!” It squeaked and doubled its speed. Its tiny legs pumped furiously, sending it hopping across the cracked clay, but there was nowhere to hide. Stella was awkward and slow, but the creature’s small legs were no match for the length of her stride. Stella caught it easily in her left hand. She held it up and looked at its face, which was almost comical, with its overly large eyes and very fine set of whiskers. He was a lovely color, sleek as a dolphin, and he wiggled in her hand, flashing her an indignant glare. “I’ll bite you,” he threatened.

“Don’t you dare,” Stella warned. “I saved your life!”

“Oh, so it’s like that, is it?” The mouse twitched his whiskers and sniffed. “We’re going to argue over who did what for whom?”

Stella paused and stared at the rodent in her hand.

“I am talking to you,” she said. She brought the mouse closer to her face. “HOW AM I TALKING TO YOU?”

“Believe me,” the mouse retorted, “I’d much rather you weren’t. Now if you would simply unhand me—”

Stella turned in a full circle and stared again at her surroundings. “Where am I?” she whispered.

The mouse scoffed. “As if you didn’t know.”

“Hey!” Stella had to stop herself from giving him a good shake. “I don’t know what this is or who you are or how it is that you can talk. But you were in my room. You have a piece of my brother’s notebook. Explain!”

The mouse rolled his eyes and heaved a sigh.

“Start with where we are,” Stella ordered.

“Put me down,” the creature countered.

“Not until you tell me where we are.”

“I should think it was fairly obvious,” the mouse said, “that we are in the middle of Nowhere.”

“Not helpful,” Stella replied.

“But true, nonetheless,” the mouse said. “See for yourself.” And he twitched his whiskers in the direction behind her.

Stella turned and looked more carefully at the Metro sign by the tree. It was an ornate iron lamppost at the top of which perched a sign written in curly letters. Dreamway, it read in all capitals. And then, below, Nowhere, and the escalator that led down into the concrete. Stella looked more closely at the elevator doors on the other side of the sign. They weren’t connected to anything. They were just . . . doors.

“Where—?”

“Can’t you read?” the mouse asked sarcastically. “If you want to get from Nowhere to Anywhere, you have to go into the Dreamway. We’re right on the edge.”

The moment he said this, the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Twenty people spilled out. Some were carrying shopping bags or random items. One man held a black cat. A woman wearing a large, colorful turban carried an oversize, heavy-looking book. One or two headed into the shops, but the rest walked the short way from the elevator toward the escalator down into the Dreamway. They did not glance at Stella or at one another, and nobody spoke.

“Who are they?” Stella asked.

“Sleepers,” said the mouse.

“What?”

“They’re asleep,” the mouse explained. “In your world. Barely just asleep. They’re heading into the Dreamway for the night. We’re on the edge of the Penumbra, right between Here and There.”

Stella stared at the tiny mouse in her hand, who was clearly doing his best to look dignified.

“What’s the Penumbra?” Stella asked.

“Not too bright, are you?” the mouse answered. “The Penumbra is the world you come from. The Shadow World.”

“I come from the real world.”

The mouse cocked his head. “Oh, do you?” He looked bored.

Stella scanned the landscape in every direction. There was nothing. Nothing but the strip mall, a single gnarled tree, the elevator doors, and the escalator down into Dreamway. “So the Dreamway is where they—sleep?”

“No,” the mouse snapped. “They sleep in the Penumbra. The Dreamway is where they dream.”

“That’s not how dreaming works.”

“Well, you’re the expert, of course.” The mouse twitched his whiskers haughtily.

Stella shook her head, and it occurred to her that, perhaps, she was the one who was dreaming. She slapped herself in the face and was very disappointed when it hurt the appropriate amount. “How did I even get here?”

“A question for the philosophers,” the mouse remarked. “But I think I pulled you through by my tail. Not,” he added quickly, “intentionally.”

The last of the Sleepers was on the escalator now. It looked as if the old woman was sinking into the concrete. As Stella peered around again, she began to feel dizzy. She didn’t like this place. It wasn’t . . . anything.

Why did I come here? she thought, and then remembered. “Why do you have a piece from my brother’s notebook? What were you doing in my room?”

“I’m a Door Mouse,” the mouse said importantly. “I travel between the Here and There.”

“What about this piece from the notebook?”

“I . . . found it.” The mouse’s whiskers twitched shiftily.

“Where?” Stella demanded.

The mouse tried to look away from her, so she held him right up to her eyes. “Fine,” he snapped. “I found it in the Dreamway, all right? It was just sitting on a platform, so I said to myself, ‘What’s this doing here?’ And I realized it had come from the Penumbra. It shouldn’t have ended up in the Dreamway. Nothing and no one travels between the worlds without the proper authorization. But it seems as if a lot of unauthorized things have been happening lately, and I wanted to investigate.”

“So—how did it get in?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure, but I think—well, it’s possible it was a Chimerath.”

Stella didn’t know what a Chimerath was, but the word sent a shudder through her. “What”—her voice was suddenly dry and raspy—“is that?”

“A Chimerath is—it’s a shadow creature. They live along the Nightmare Line. But they’re always looking for a way into the Penumbra. They’re attracted to the brightness, you see. People with—with the brightness inside of them—”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, you know. A certain creativity. A certain lightness of spirit. They look for someone who has that brightness, and then they wait. The Chimerath wait until some darkness comes, and then . . .”

“What kind of darkness?”

“Fear,” the mouse replied. “Sadness. Those things are like a crack for the Chimerath to get through.”

Stella swallowed. She didn’t want to ask the next question. “What do they want Cole for?”

The rodent shifted, uncomfortable. “Well, ehrm. Well, they eat the brightness, you see. Suck it out of people like a bowl of pasta al dente.” He slurped noisily, and Stella shuddered.

“So—that . . . thing that tried to get Cole . . . ?”

“It didn’t try to get him,” the mouse told her. “It got him.”

Stella wobbled, as if the ground had suddenly become a tar pit. “What?”

The mouse pointed to the piece of lined notebook paper. “There’s your proof. He’s probably on his way to the Nightmare Line right now.”

“But—Cole is at home! He’s asleep in his room!”

“Yes—so are those people,” the mouse said, gesturing to a tall woman wandering around the strip mall. “Well—that one’s almost asleep. But the point is that the Chimerath doesn’t take your body. It takes your spirit—the youness of you. Are you following?”

Stella nodded, mute.

“Your you energy is very powerful. And if you can trap that energy—”

“You can use it,” Stella finished.

Stella thought about the vacant look in Cole’s eyes, the way he had flickered. “So Cole is—”

“He’s here and he’s there. But the important part of him . . .”

“. . . is here . . . somewhere.” Stella tried to stay calm and focus all of her energy on sounding reasonable. “But nightmares end,” she pointed out. “People wake up. People must be able to get out.”

“Get out?” The mouse looked blank.

“Yes—I mean . . .”

“Oh . . .” The mouse nodded. “Yes. Right. That’s if they come in as a Sleeper. A Chimerath pulled your brother through a door. That’s the difference between having a nightmare and . . . um . . . let’s say, becoming one? The longer he stays down here, the dimmer his light in your world will become. Eventually, it will go out.”

“And he’ll be—dead?”

“No. His spirit will be. Wait—there’s a word for it in your world. He’ll be . . .” The mouse paused dramatically. “A zucchini.”

“A zucchini?” Stella repeated. “You mean a squash?”

“What? No. That’s not—” The mouse shook his head. “Blank stare?” he prompted. “Muttering? Musssst . . . eeeeeat . . . brainssss . . .”

“A zombie?” Stella cried.

“Yes! That’s it—thank you! A zombie!” The mouse paused, then added, “Only he won’t want to eat brains, of course. That’s only in movies.”

Stella felt every bit of her insides tremble. She remembered the strange look in Cole’s eyes and the way he had flickered on the subway.

Then, suddenly, an image of Angry Pete popped into her mind. Could Cole turn into—that? A frigid icicle of fear traced down her back.

“How fast? How fast will it happen?”

“Oh—it could take years. Or days. You never really know.”

“Days?” Terror squeezed her heart. “How will you stop it? What are you going to do?” she demanded.

“Me?” The mouse huffed. “I’m going to take this paper to someone who can prove where it came from then file a report!”

Stella nodded. “And then what happens?”

“Someone will look into the situation!”

“And then?”

Cheerful, tinny music bleated over the silence that hung between them. The fish fountain burbled on, oblivious, as the mouse let out a squirmy cough. “Well . . .” he admitted, “eventually someone might write a strongly-worded letter.”

“A strongly-worded letter?” Stella screeched. “Eventually? Someone has to get my brother out of here now!”

“Well—then you’d have to go into the Dreamway, and that’s—”

“Fine,” Stella said. She began to walk toward the escalator.

“—ridiculous. What? Wait! What do you think you’re doing?” the mouse squeaked. “You can’t just walk in there and find your brother. You don’t know where you’re going! You have no idea where he is!”

“That’s why you’re going to help me.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I have you in my hand, and I’m not letting you go.”

The mouse thought this over. “Huh,” he said at last. “I see. Good point.”

“Can you help me?”

“Of course I can help you! I am, after all”—and at this he lifted his long silver whiskers a bit—“a Door Mouse. If I can’t help you, then I don’t know who can.”

She looked down at the mouse. “Great. So what’s your name, anyway?”

The mouse looked surprised. “Yes!”

“What?”

“No one has ever guessed my name before.”

“I’m sorry, it’s—what?”

“Not What!” The mouse looked deeply offended. “Of course I’m not What. He’s a ridiculous toad. I’m Anyway!”

“Oh, your name is Anyway?” Stella repeated.

“Of course.” Anyway shook his head with clear disgust. “And I had just begun to think she wasn’t completely hopeless,” he grumbled to himself.

Stella shot another concerned glance toward the Dreamway. It looked like a normal subway entrance, with the exception of the fact that it was in a strip mall and seemed connected to an elevator to nowhere.

She hesitated. Those other people have already gone down there, she thought, trying to reassure herself, those Sleepers. “Are you sure that’s the only way?”

“If you want to get somewhere, you have to get out of Nowhere,” the mouse replied. “Duh.”

Sometimes, crazy things sound reasonable. This, for Stella, was one of those times.

Just in case, though, she smacked herself across the face again. It still hurt. She sighed and wondered what to do with the mouse. He was grouchy and furious at being held against his will, but she was afraid that if she let him loose, he would run away. That would, of course, be a disaster as she had no idea where she was or where she needed to go. The Door Mouse eventually suggested that she keep him in the little pocket on her pajama top. That way, she could keep an eye on him, but he wouldn’t be strangled by her “giant walrus fingers,” as Anyway referred to them. (Do walruses have fingers? Stella wondered. Or were her fingers themselves like walruses?)

So she put him in her pocket, where he was an unexpectedly reassuring spot of warmth against her quickly-beating heart.

Anyway seemed quite pleased with this arrangement. He stood with his paws at the top lip of the pocket, very much like a lookout in the crow’s nest of a ship. From there, he could direct Stella where to go.

Stella stood at the top of the escalator, watching the steps vanish into the darkness below. It was decrepit, with a brass railing and wooden steps that clattered and shook. Stella did not want to step onto it. “It looks very old,” Stella said.

“Old? Hah! It’s ancient,” Anyway agreed, but he said it in a proud, rather affectionate way.

“How do I know it’s safe?” she asked.

Anyway laughed again. “Wait—are you quite serious?” he wondered.

“Yes.”

“How do you know it’s safe?” He looked at her sharply and twirled his whiskers. Half to himself and almost as an afterthought, he added, “What is safe, my dear?”

Stella took a couple of deep breaths, watching the stairs sink into the landscape. Her stomach felt cold and queasy, her legs heavy. But she forced herself to take a step, and then another, and then another until she had gotten onto the escalator, which rattled on, unconcerned, taking her down below the asphalt crust that she had been standing on moments before. Anyway hummed a few bars of “Turkey in the Straw” as the escalator went on, down, down, down into the semidarkness.

“Ready, ready!” Anyway shouted, and Stella realized that they must be coming to the end. Escalators often gave her trouble, and the dim light made her nervous. She was preparing to step off when Anyway cried, “Mind the gap!”

Gap? Caught off guard, Stella stumbled forward and tripped. With a cry, she twisted as she fell to avoid crushing Anyway and managed to catch herself—with her right hand.

She brought her right hand up to her face and made a fist—a tight fist. Gracefully, she wriggled her fingers. Her right hand had never been flexible. She could move it, yes, enough to get dressed, but it wasn’t easy. Her wrist curled toward her body, and her fingers were stiff. Her right leg, too, dragged slightly. People hardly noticed it—Stella hardly noticed it—until she had to run, or dance, or climb a rope. Stella sat up. She pointed the toes on her right foot, then flexed. “Wow,” she whispered. She stood up, and gave a little jump, and another. Then a skip she had never been able to do before, and it took a couple of tries before she managed a lovely, even series of skip, skip, skips. She stopped suddenly and waggled her fingers in front of her face. It was mesmerizing, the way she could make them move up and down, up and down, in a wave.

Ahem! The paper-crinkly sound of someone very small clearing a very small throat cut through her concentration.

Only then did she remember to check her pocket.

“Thanks for your concern,” Anyway said drily. “You’ll be pleased to hear that I was not crushed beneath the weight of your falling body.”

Stella was barely listening. “I had a stroke. I had a stroke when I was a baby, and my hand doesn’t—”

“Things are different here.”

She spread her fingers, then clenched her fist again. “I’m healed.”

“No.” Anyway shook his head. “No—you’re just in the Dreamway. It’s like you’re an avalanche.”

“An avalanche?”

“You know—something that represents you. Like a projection of you.” Stella still looked blank. “Like in a video game.”

“An avatar?”

“Yes, that’s what I said, an avatar. It’s a little like that. Except that you really are here. And you aren’t.”

For the first time, Stella looked up. She was sitting on the floor, and before her, at a bit of a distance, was a subway station. But it looked nothing like the subway station that she visited every afternoon on her way home from school. This was a beautiful old-fashioned train station, with enormous stone columns and echoey marble floors. Arched windows were perched along the top of the walls, like birds on a wire. It looked like the kind of thing that someone would see in London or Paris. Stella had never been to either of those places, but the cities evoked elegance and grandeur, and that was what this train station was like. Several arched tunnels led off along the sides of the walls. Stella imagined that this was where the tracks were. She skipped again, enjoying the feeling of movement. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t real, she thought. It feels real. It feels realer than life. It feels . . . easy. She had to stop herself from running.

“We have to go.” Anyway perched on her knee, then crawled up her sleeve and back into her pocket.

Closer to them was a large chrome arch guarded by a gargoyle on either side. Beside each gargoyle was a silver mesh container, like a large basket, about the size of a pickup truck. At the top of the archway was a television monitor, on which a man with a bad toupee—the TV said his name was Dr. Peavey—droned something about paperwork. The arch was strange, made of metal and brutal in design—a direct contrast to the elegance of the station beyond. It didn’t belong; it looked like something someone had added recently.

“We’ll have to get past the turnies somehow,” the mouse said darkly.

“Turnies?”

“Turnstile operators. We’ve got to get past, and right away!” He tugged at her pocket, until she was forced to move out of fear that he would rip her favorite pajamas.

“Okay,” she said. It didn’t look too hard. For one thing, it wasn’t a turnstile—just a big arch. It was sleek and silver, backlit with a glow like the moon. It looked out of place in the old station, positioned between gargoyles, as if it had traveled there from the future while the station had traveled from the past. There were no “turnies” in sight. Stella shrugged and took a step forward.

A gargoyle leaped in front of her and let out a bone-rattling roar. Stella screamed and threw her arms over her face.

“I was thinking you might try something a bit sneakier,” Anyway told her. He faced the gargoyle. “Now, really, is that necessary, Horace?”

Horace, who had a beak and pitted eyes, ducked his head sheepishly. “Well, it’s on Dr. Peavey’s orders, ahkay? I had to stop her, right, Martha?” he asked, turning to the other gargoyle, who nodded.

“Oh, yeah.” Martha nodded. “For sure.”

Horace looked delighted. “All Sleepers gotta hand over any and all baggage before proceedin’ troo da turnstile, ahkay?” Horace explained, just as the television image of Dr. Peavey droned, “All Sleepers must hand over any and all baggage before proceeding through the turnstile.” Horace jutted his chin and tucked his long stone tail around his paws. “As I was sayin’,” he added importantly.

“Them’s the rules,” Martha explained.

“That’s right, them’s the rules!” Horace agreed.

“Zip it,” Martha told him. “They get it.”

Horace ducked his stony head.

“I don’t have any baggage,” Stella said.

“What’s that in ya pocket?” Horace demanded, pointing.

“That’s me, you nitwit!” Anyway shouted.

“Well, ya bein’ carried around, baggage-like,” Horace went on. “Am I right, Martha?”

The other gargoyle narrowed her eyes. “This will have to be investigated—forms filed, and other things.”

Horace looked as if he were about to chime in, but with a glare from Martha, he clamped his gray lips shut.

“We’re not filing any paperwork,” Anyway snarled.

“Excuse me, I really need to get out of here,” Stella said.

“Whattaya tawkin’ about?” Horace demanded. “What kind of a Sleeper are ya? This is suspicious, am I right, Martha? I’m right, aren’t I? Tell me I’m right.”

Martha lifted a stony eyebrow. “This is gonna be a ton of paperwork. I’ve already got a migraine just thinkin’ about it.”

“Look, this is official Door Mouse business,” Anyway said importantly.

The gargoyles looked at each other. Then they broke into stone-shaking laughter. Martha’s laugh was a demure little hiss-sss-sss, while Horace’s was a honking haw-haw-haw. It was as if an avalanche had a snuffling cold.

Anyway tried to look dignified. “Look, she isn’t even a Sleeper!”

To Stella’s surprise, that stopped the laughter right away. Horace straightened up and eyed her. “I said she was suspicious, am I right, Martha?”

“Another non-Sleeper,” Martha said thoughtfully.

“What does that mean?” Anyway demanded, an edge in his voice.

“This is the second non-Sleeper we’ve had today! The other one came through with a creepy something-or-other. I couldn’t see. He had a hood.”

“The non-Sleeper,” Stella asked. “Was he carrying a notebook?”

“Oh, yeah,” Horace said. “Sure. Tried to keep the notebook with him, but I got it from him! I got it from him, didn’t I, Martha?”

“I was very proud when you told me,” Martha said, and Horace dipped his head, clearly pleased by her praise.

“Can I see it?” Stella asked.

“Of course,” Martha said. “Show them, Horace.”

Horace’s stone eyebrows shot up. “Er, now?”

“Yes, now.”

Sheepishly, Horace pulled a few crumpled pages from a stone pocket. Stella stared at the pages that he held out to her. She knew that awkward, backward-slanting scrawl. It was Cole’s. “But where’s the rest?”

“The rest?” Martha glared at Horace.

“Well, I got most of it,” Horace simpered.

“There’s unaccounted-for baggage inside the system?” Martha’s voice was brittle.

Horace cowered. “Just a bit,” he admitted. “Part of some.”

Martha glared as if she was about to smash him to rubble.

“Look, you’ve got to let us through.” Anyway pulled a scroll from his pouch and unrolled it.

It was a very tiny pouch and a very fat scroll. “How did that fit in there?” Stella asked.

Anyway rolled his eyes. “Everyone from the Penumbra wants to talk about ‘space’ and ‘time’ and ‘smell.’ Well, that’s all different here!” He unrolled the scroll with a flourish. It was very long, and the words written on it were so tiny that Stella couldn’t read them. They looked like a series of dashes and dots, like Morse code. “It reads right here, ‘Sleepers must surrender baggage to the appropriate turnstile operators. No sleepers will be allowed to remain in possession of aforementioned baggage unless they have filled out the proper paperwork in octuplicate and filed it with the Office of Undersight. Failure to declare baggage will result in detention of the aforementioned Sleeper.’” With a smug glance above the scroll, Anyway went on, “No mention of non-Sleepers, is there? Therefore we are free to proceed!” The mouse rolled up the scroll again and placed it back in the pouch.

“Well, he does have a point, Martha,” Horace said.

Martha glared at him. “Do you know how much paperwork this is going to require?” she demanded.

Stella looked at the gate. Her brother was in there somewhere with something that was headed for the Nightmare Line. “If you let us through, you won’t have to fill out any paperwork,” Stella said, trying to be helpful. “And if we take these pages, there won’t be any paperwork for that, either. It’ll be like we were never here. Like it was never here.”

Martha was clearly thinking it over. “Never here?”

“Never here.”

“But you were here,” Horace pointed out. “You’re here now!”

“Shut it,” Martha told him. “We’re gonna close our eyes, and when we open them . . . never here.” She winked, then put her paws over her eyes. Horace followed suit. “Go ahead.”

Stella felt something small poke her shoulder. It was Anyway, who hissed, “Just go!”

Stella stepped, at long last, through the archway. In her pocket, Anyway shook and trembled, and it took Stella a moment to realize he was laughing.

“What’s funny?” Stella asked him.

“Oh, nothing,” he said at last. “You’re a quick thinker, that’s all.”

“I am?” Stella asked. She found this somewhat hard to believe. “I think I just said the obvious thing.”

“I don’t think it would have been obvious to most people,” Anyway agreed. “Not around here, anyway.”

Stella tried to walk lightly as she traversed the grand old station. Although Sleepers moved through the space, their eyes unblinking as they made their way to tunnels marked with track numbers, their feet were noiseless on the marble floor. Stella’s feet, on the other hand, were making extra noise.

Flip-flop flip-flop flip-flop.

Besides the Sleepers, there were other people in the station. A bear in a gray jumpsuit held ten strings in one hand. Each string was connected to a Sleeper who floated in the air, trailing slightly behind as the bear pulled them along, like a bouquet of balloons.

“Headed for the Flying Line,” Anyway explained.

A group of men dressed in dark suits—one of whom looked alarmingly like Abraham Lincoln—passed by. Taylor Swift followed behind, texting on her smartphone. There were large talking animals, a couple of unicorns, several dentists, a robot that looked like it had been made from tin cans and a giant toaster, and a green-faced witch. These “people” were chatting with each other and laughing, and several of them held paper coffee cups with plastic tops. Stella got the distinct impression that they were headed to work. The Sleepers did not seem to notice any of them. “They work in the dreams. We have an outstanding casting department,” Anyway said. “Ah! There it is—that’s the track you’re looking for.” He pointed.

When she looked, Stella saw a tunnel marked “The Track You’re Looking For.”

“Well, that’s . . . convenient,” she said.

A train was just pulling onto the platform. The locomotive was strangely shaped, rounded at the front. It reminded Stella of a submarine. Sleepers lined the platform, and just as she neared the second car, the doors rattled open.

“Go on,” Anyway urged when she hesitated. With a deep breath, she stepped forward and into the car. Inside, it was old-fashioned and elegant, with wood paneling and large windows. The ceiling was made of glass and the bench-like seats were upholstered with red velvet and all faced forward, like seats on a school bus. Several Sleepers had taken seats already. Most sat facing a window, but when Stella looked out, all she saw was the platform she had come from.

“Welcome to the Water Line,” announced a tinny voice over the loudspeaker. “Origin stop: Fountain in the Middle of Nowhere. Next stop: Stream.”

The train chuffed and rumbled, and then, with a jerk, moved forward. Stella looked down at the papers in her hand. There wasn’t much on them: a sketch of a dragon, a fragment from a poem, a sentence that didn’t lead anywhere.

“We need a map,” Anyway announced. He had to repeat himself twice before Stella managed to tear her eyes away from the pages.

“What?” she asked.

“We need to look at a map.”

“You don’t know where we’re going?”

Anyway’s silver whiskers flushed a deep shade of scarlet, and he stuck his nose in the air. “I suppose you know much more about it than I do,” he snapped.

“I didn’t—”

“No, no, please—go ahead without me, I’m sure you’ll be much better off.”

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“Who’s insulted? Not I! To be questioned—”

“I never said—”

“—on the Dreamway—”

“I was just—”

“—when I’m but a lowly Door Mouse with only four hundred fifty-seven years of service—”

“Four hundred fifty-seven?” Stella repeated, impressed.

The mouse seemed pleased by her tone. “Yes,” he replied. “I know it’s but a trifle compared to your vast knowledge. . . .”

Stella could see that the mouse wasn’t going to be happy until she had flattered him a little. “I didn’t realize I was dealing with such an expert.”

Anyway’s tail flicked impatiently. “Well, you are.”

“Four hundred and fifty-seven years of service,” Stella went on, “certainly means that you know your stuff.”

Anyway snorted. “Unlike some people,” he agreed. “Though I won’t say who. Or What,” he added, emphasizing his nemesis’s name.

“So if you say that we should look at a map, then we should,” Stella went on. “Absolutely.”

“Well, I’m glad that you’re going to take my recommendation.” Anyway twirled his whiskers. “Finally.”

“Where is the map?”

“There’s one right there.” He pointed toward the nearest door with the tip of his tail. Beside the door was a map behind glass. “They keep them locked up. ‘Too volatile,’ they say. But I like to keep my own.” He pulled something from the pouch around his neck, and unfolded it twenty-seven times, until it was a full-size map.

“Oh,” Stella said as she glanced at the map, for she could see at once that it was a mad tangle of lines that seemed to shift and change with every glance. She looked down at Anyway, who was haughtily inspecting his tail, as if the entire matter was beneath him. “Could you please tell me how to read this map?”

The little mouse harrumphed. “It changes according to who is in it,” he said with a huff.

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Of course it does. The same thing happens in your world, doesn’t it?”

“What? No! In my world, things stay the same no matter who’s there and who isn’t!”

“Really?” Anyway replied. “When people leave, things don’t change?” And the way he said it made Stella think of her father. Her mother didn’t laugh as often when he wasn’t around, and Cole got into trouble more than he normally did. She couldn’t prove it, but even the weather seemed to be worse when he was gone.

“Please help me, Anyway,” Stella said at last.

“Fine,” he snapped. He peered over the edge of her pocket and stared at the map. His whiskers tickled her cheek, but she strained to keep herself from giggling. She didn’t want to offend the mouse again. She didn’t have that kind of time. “We’re on the Water Line . . . here’s Memory . . . ah, let’s avoid Humiliation Line . . . hm—hum!” He muttered to himself for a few minutes until he finally sat up straight, announcing, “Got it! We’ll need to make three transfers, but we’ll get there.”

“Where are we going?”

“We need to find out just where your brother is. The Nightmare Line has more than one station, after all. So we’ll stop in to see a friend of mine.”

The lights flickered, then went out with a sudden, shocking blackness. Stella felt the brakes engage and smelled the acrid burn as the train slowed. Overhead, the lights buzzed and flickered on. The brakes screeched as the train stopped. It paused a moment, as if it were catching its breath, and then the doors snapped open.

When she looked around, Stella saw that the train was empty. “Anyway?” she called.

Wait, she thought, should I get off here? The mouse said we would transfer. Did he mean now? Did he get off already? “Anyway!”

She was afraid to get off of the train without him, and she was just as afraid to stay on it. Already, the voice was announcing the station stop. There was nothing beyond the doors—at least nothing Stella could see. . . .

“Last call,” said the voice over the loudspeaker. “Next stop—”

“Anyway!” There was no reply. The doors began to rattle, and Stella darted through them.

“Mind the gap,” said the voice as Stella fell from the platform and landed with a splash.