JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

Between the Worlds.'

       'Look,' Zane suddenly pointed, raising his arm toward the distant horizon. 'It isn't all just water. There's something out there.'

       James followed Zane's pointing finger. Very faint and distant, a dark shape clung to the horizon.

       'Is it a boat?' Lucy asked doubtfully.

       Ralph shook his head. 'It's an island, I think. But not like any island I've ever seen. It looks almost like a big giant footstool.'

       'It's a plateau,' Petra said. 'Just like this one, I think. Look over to the right. There's another one.'

       'There's more on this side,' Zane added, peering around the boulders of the cave's left edge.

       James leaned carefully out over the rocks of the cave's mouth, scanning the length of the watery horizon. The shapes were grey in the ocean mist, so far off as to be almost invisible, but once you began looking for them, more and more of them seemed to appear. They were eerily similar: rocky plateaus, oddly flat on top, rising like giants' stepping stones out of the monstrous ocean.

       'What are they?' Izzy asked in a hushed voice.

       'They're portals,' Petra answered, and James did not doubt her. 'Like this one. Each one leads to a different universe, or dimension, or reality. Some of them would be almost exactly like our own. Others would be so different, so alien, that we could barely look at them.'

       'They're awful,' Lucy proclaimed with a shiver, hugging herself.

       'No,' Petra countered. 'They're just themselves. They aren't good or bad. They just are.'

       Ralph asked, 'Do you think this whole world is covered with them?'

       Petra shook her head. 'It isn't a world. It isn't round, and it doesn't have an end. But yes. I think all of it is like this. On and on, infinitely. If one had a boat, just think of the places they could go, the things they could see.'

       James shuddered again at the thought. The idea of taking a boat out onto that strangely disastrous, unnaturally flat ocean was horrible. Looking out over all that distance and those endless bland islands, James wanted nothing more than to crawl back into the shallow of the cave and huddle into a ball. He turned around and was both amazed and relieved to see a door standing in the shadows of the cave. It was framed with wood and James recognized it immediately as the front entrance of Apollo Mansion, seen from the inside. It hung open and through it, James could still see the slope of Victory Hill, the broken werewolf statue, and the crowd congregated on the quad behind Administration Hall, milling uncertainly.

       'I guess that's how we go back when we're ready,' he said, gesturing toward the doorway. The others turned and looked, and there was a palpable sense of relief. The view of the dark quad and the familiar campus was very comforting after all that bright, blank vastness.

       Lucy finally let go of James' hand. 'So what do we do now?'

       James glanced around nervously. 'I guess we just look around,' he ventured. 'The whole reason we came here is because this is the one place that someone could hide something as powerful as the stolen thread from the Vault of Destinies. If we can find the thread, then perhaps we can find out who really broke into the Archive and prove Petra's innocence.'

       'Not to mention,' Zane added suddenly, as if the idea had just occurred to him, 'if we find the missing thread, maybe we can put it back into the Loom! Maybe that would set everything back to rights again! After all, our Loom was switched with one from another dimension, right? It got stuck here instead of reverting back to its own universe because whoever broke into the Vault stole the crimson thread from it! Remember what Professor Jackson said? He said that the switching of the Looms between our dimension and some foreign one changed everything, and maybe even broke the balance of the destinies! He made it sound like if the thread wasn't returned, eventually things would break down into complete chaos! Maybe if we put it back…'

       'Then all of our destinies will snap back to the way they were before the break-in happened,' James said, completing his friend's thought. 'I wonder, is that really possible?'

       'Perhaps Petra will never have been arrested?' Izzy suggested, a small ray of hope alighting on her brow.

       'Maybe, if we replace the crimson thread,' Zane replied thoughtfully, 'then none of this will have happened.'

       The gathering was quiet for a moment as they all considered this. Finally, James nodded decisively.

       'All right then,' he announced. 'Everyone take a look around. Let's see if we can find any evidence that someone from our world was here recently.'

       Ralph blinked. 'Like, maybe, a candy wrapper or something?'

       'Why,' Zane asked, 'do you see one?'

       'No,' Ralph shook his head, and then pointed. 'But there are some stairs carved into the rocks by the ledge over there. Maybe somebody dropped something there…?'

       James peered around the larger boy, looking toward the right corner of the cave's mouth. Just as Ralph had said, a series of worn, narrow steps curved around a boulder, leading out into the dull light.

       Lucy asked, 'Where do you think they go?'

       Petra took a step toward the stairs. 'Up,' she said simply. She let go of James' hand, renewed her grip on Izzy's, and moved toward the nearly hidden stone staircase. The rest followed in silence.

       The stairs did indeed go up. As James followed Petra and Izzy into the strangely flat light of the World Between the Worlds, he saw the stairs rising unevenly before them, carved into the crags of the cliff. The steps were worn smooth with age, and were wet with mist so that James gulped as he began to climb them. He felt the pull of the distance on his left side, heard the shuddering crash of the surf as it reached up, up, trying to drag them all down into it. To compensate, he leaned against the cliff face on his right, nearly hugging it as he climbed. Behind him, Lucy, Zane, and Ralph followed closely, shooting worried glances into the hungry depths.

       Several minutes went by. The cliff was remarkably high and James felt that the steps had taken them some distance around the strange island. Finally, unexpectedly, the six travelers reached the top. Petra and Izzy moved a few paces out onto a flat plateau and the rest gathered around them, clustering unconsciously against the gaping white space all around.

       James realized where they were even before he saw the black castle. He remembered the hissing shush of the yellow grass and the march of the clouds as the wind pushed them. He'd seen it all in Petra's dream-visions and had assumed it had only been a figment of her subconscious mind. Now, standing on the solid rock of this place, feeling the salty mist on his face and the feather of the wind as it combed through his hair like fingers, he felt the subtle shift of destinies. Here, everything was possible. The six of them were standing on the raw bedrock of reality, from which all dimensions sprang and grew. Here, every footstep had the potential to shake universes. And somehow, deep in the basement of Petra's mind, she had known. She had sensed they would end up here, and because she had known it, so had James. He just hadn't made the connection.

       'I sure wasn't expecting that,' Ralph breathed, staring with astonishment at the black castle. It stood on the distant ledge of the plateau, defying gravity, encrusted with turrets and conical roofs. Its windows were tall and narrow, glassless, black as doom.

       'That's where we need to go,' James said, not at all wanting to go there, but knowing it was their destination nonetheless. Beside him, Petra nodded.

'Someone's there,' Lucy said in a low voice.

       Zane peered up at the castle. 'Looks empty to me,' he commented, a little hopefully. 'It almost looks… sort of… dead.'

       'Nice,' Ralph moaned.