There was Anna’s mom, projected on the wall, looking surprised and relieved at the same time. “Where are you? Oh, I’m so glad your father explained how to communicate with keys to you! Where are you?” she asked again.
“Can she see us, too?” Tim whispered.
“Mom, can you see us?”
“No! I don’t know where any keys are here. Hold on, I’ll use your father’s. Tre!”
Tre appeared next to Einna. “I need your key. Anna’s communicating!”
Tre pulled out his key and handed it to Einna. She touched the center. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “You found Nelle’s secret room, which is wonderful, but you should have come back before the sun came up. I told you, you shouldn’t be there after the sun rose.”
“We are back.”
“You knew about my mom’s secret room?”
“Wait- They have to be back to communicate.”
Anna, Tim, and Tre all spoke at the same time. “Let me go first. Honey, to communicate like this with keys, they must be in Snillotia. So, they are back, but-
“Then you’re at the Y? How on Htrae did you get there?”
“Well, I can try to explain, if you let me-”
“Wait. I want to know how you knew about my mom’s secret room! I didn’t even know it existed, so, how did you?”
“We always can keep our Y rooms with us, if we choose. Upon completion, we’re told how to essentially copy our room and its contents, in any room we’re living in. I didn’t even think to try it in the backwards world, but Nelle loved her room, so I guess she did, and it obviously worked. I recognized that old chair behind you.”
“But how did you know it was a secret?”
“Well, when we first escaped, we talked and saw each other all the time. It was just the four of us and we didn’t know anyone or anything about the place we were living in. We had discussed how our future children would have to be the saviors of our world. Unfortunately, we didn’t agree how we were to go about preparing you for that. I knew she didn’t plan to tell you until you completed your 13th year. It was one of the reasons we stopped talking. You both were getting older and if Anna knew things that Nelle didn’t want you to know yet, she didn’t see how to keep you from learning whatever Anna knew. You two always had so much fun playing together,” she finished wistfully.
Tim looked at Anna, she didn’t look surprised by the revelation that they had known each other before. A fleeting image of a tiny dark-haired girl in pigtails flashed through his head. Before he could respond Anna cut in, “Okay! Now on to how we get out of here!”
Anna recounted their story of finding the secret room and discovering they were in the Y. “But it’s just a never-ending hallway! There is no end at all and no way out!”
“It sounds like you’re in storage,” said Tre, then he continued, “Once you have a room at the Y, it exists forever. Rumor was that it went to storage after you left and a new room took its place. That’s how you could copy it if you chose. I guess the rumor was true. I wonder…”
He had trailed off, lost in thought. “What, Dad?”
“Well, part of that rumor was that storage existed because of, and was controlled by, a creature no one ever saw, but was said to be horribly ugly, with large eyes that barely fit into its head! But don’t worry, I doubt that parts true,” he said, not to worry them, “The creature’s called a Gup, but it’s just mythical- not real at all!”
Tim laughed. Anna looked at him, then smiled. He was looking down at her feet. “Well, Dad, I can tell you Gups definitely are real!”
She picked up the pug, so her parents could see. “She isn’t scary at all though. Actually, I think she’s really cute!”
“Gup… pug… now why didn’t I put that together? Our neighbors down the street in the backwards world have a pug!” Tre exclaimed.
“Well, pugs aren’t horrible, dear, they’re just little dogs- quite nice actually-” Einna started to say.
Anna cut her off. “Guys! It doesn’t matter! We still need to figure out how to get out of here!”
“If the Gup is real, honey, I’d take a guess, that only she can show you the way out,” Tre said.
They all stared at the dog in Anna’s arms. She stared back, her mouth open so wide she actually looked like she was smiling. “Well, I guess we wait to see what she does, then,” Tim sighed.
“We’ll see you later, Mom and Dad!” Anna said, cutting the connection to her parents.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Once they were alone again, Anna sat on the chair with the dog on her lap. The pug licked her face once and then curled up and went to sleep. Anna gave a half-hearted smile. “She is really cute, but she’s a dog! She can’t talk to us or tell us where to go from here. She isn’t even leading us anywhere now!”
Tim looked around the room again. “She brought us back into this room before. She led us to my mom’s journal. Maybe what we’re looking for is here. Maybe it’s in her journal!”
“Maybe,” Anna agreed, “but, Tim, did you happen to notice how many notebooks are on those shelves?”
Tim looked up from the page of the journal he was looking at. “There are more?”
Anna nodded. “Your mom wrote a lot. She must have really liked writing.”
Now Tim nodded. “She did! That was her job, you know.”
Anna shook her head. “Wait! I know something about my own family you don’t?” Tim asked, “My mom wrote children’s books. She had a whole series. They’re pretty popular. They’re about a princess who doesn’t know she’s a princess, but she has magical powers…” Tim’s voice trailed
