He fell silent.

  “Well,” I finally said, “are you going to tell us how we can figure out which way is the right one?”

  “What? Oh! Yes, yes, of course. Sorry, I was having an old daydream of mine, the one where I get swallowed by a mermaid. Now, where were we? Ah yes, the door.” He paused, and put a glistening finger to his lips.

  “As you well know by now, the Givers are mysterious, and love to speak in riddles. It's more annoying than having sand in your underpants, but I promise you, there is a definite purpose to it. Riddles can teach us, can make us smarter—they help us better understand and appreciate things once we figure them out. Wouldn't you agree?”

  I nodded, but felt a feeling of dread as I remembered the last riddle I'd had to live through. The thought of those flying spears and the crumbling rift made me shudder.

  “I am only a messenger,” the apparition continued, “and nothing more, so let's get on with it, shall we? Are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?” I asked.

  “Why, the Riddle of the Infinite Door.”

  “Come with me to the wall of water.”

  We followed the apparition's fluid gait over to the edge of the cavern, and he raised his hands, palms out, facing the water. Then he began to speak his riddle. As he spoke with metallic clicks and hissed vowels, raised letters formed on the wall—watery words that were easy to read in the glare of the flashlights.

  And this is what we heard and read:

  If I am lying, I tell you no lie

  If I am truthful, believe me and die

  What I say first, is good but not true

  What I say second, is what you should do

  Go from the north, but not from that way

  Go forward not backward, and you’ll save the day

  Joseph and I stared, in awe of our own stupidity. It made no sense whatsoever.

  “Well,” the messenger said, “I must be off now that my duty is complete. All those hundreds of years, waiting for this. A bit anticlimactic, I must say. Adieu.” Its shape began to distort back into blobs of water.

  “Wait!” I yelled. In an instant it again formed into the tall man.

  “That's it?” I asked. “What if we need help—will we ever see you again? Do you even have a name?”

  “Why … yes, I have a name. Although it is rather embarrassing, I must say.”

  “What is it?” asked Joseph.

  “Well, it's …” he hesitated. “Well, if you must know, I am called Scott.”

  I laughed—it was too good to be true.

  “Scott?” I said through my chuckle. “Scott? You're a magic being made out of water and the best you could come up with was Scott?”

  “Yes. I think it sounds rather distinguished—much better than Jimmy. Your parents really had to stay up all night thinking of that one. Now, I've had quite enough. Good-bye.”

  A gust of wind came from nowhere, and Scott exploded into a million pellets of water, blowing into the wall of the cavern like a quick burst of machine-gunfire. Just like that, our watery friend was gone. Surprising myself, I felt sad to see him go.

  Joseph and I looked at each other and laughed, then looked over at the riddle. That sobered us right up.

  Now all we had to do was figure it out.

  The Riddle of the Infinite Door.

  I figured we at least had a fifty-fifty chance of survival.

  Joseph had been thinking the same thing.

  “Well,” he said, “there are only two ways to go through that door, so even if we just guessed, we'd have a fifty percent chance of being right.” He walked over to it, and ran his palm along its wooden face on the south side.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but if you knew for a certainty that you also had a fifty percent chance of being killed, would you do it?”

  “Sure, no problem.” He smiled. “But of course, it's not me that's going through, now is it?”

  “No, it's not. So if you don't mind, I'd like to be the one who decides to so carelessly throw my life away. Come on, between the two of us, this thing will be a piece of cake.”

  We went over to the wall with the raised lettering of water, and stood directly in front of the riddle.

  “All right,” Joseph said. “I've got an idea. Let's just look at it, both in silence, for ten minutes. That way we can think without being interrupted or influenced by each other. When the time is up, we'll discuss whatever ideas popped in our heads.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Joseph looked at his watch, and we began the thinking process.

  When the ten minutes were up, we were closer to solving the Jack the Ripper case than we were to figuring out the meaning of the cryptic words.

  “Now, now, we can do this,” Joseph said. “Let's take it one line at a time.” He pointed to me. “You read it out loud, then let's talk about it.”

  “All right. If I am lying, I tell you no lie.”

  “Okay,” Joseph said, “so it's like opposite day on that old kids show you used to make me sit through. If we think the riddle is lying, then it's actually the truth. Make sense?”

  “If I ever watched that, I sure don't remember. How old was I?”

  “I don't know, three or four. I still don't understand how you could've forgotten a guy like me. Go on, read the next line.”

  “If I am truthful, believe me and die.”

  “See! What I said makes sense. Opposite day. We basically need to believe the riddle if it lies, and ignore it if it tells the truth.”

  “If you say so,” I said. Joseph gave me an ugly look, and I let him know I was kidding. “No, that makes sense. Kind of. Okay, here's the next one. What I say first, is good but not true.”

  “Wait.” Joseph rubbed his chin, which had way more hair on it than his head did. “Go ahead and read the next line.”

  “What I say second, is what you should do.”

  “Hmmmm. It's just about to click in the old ticker upstairs. Give me a second.”

  “Well,” I said without waiting, “think about it. There are two more lines left, so those are the first and second things.”

  “Yeah, and it's telling us that the first one is good but not true!”

  He looked at me, full of excitement, and I just stared back, not quite understanding.

  “Not true, Jimmy! So the first thing is a lie, but good, and it told us that if it lies, it's actually not lying.”

  “Yeah, I think I'm getting it. And the second thing-it says that's what we should do. Meaning, it's the truth, so actually we should do the opposite, right?”

  “I think so. Read the last two lines, which we've both agreed are what the riddle is referring to as the first and second things it says. Right?”

  My mind was turning into oatmeal. “Uh, yeah. Here goes: Go from the north, but not from that way.” I paused, waiting for Joseph to say something. When he just stared, deep in thought, I continued, “Go forward, not backward, and you'll save the day.”

  We said nothing for quite some time. I realized that my brain was not working as hard as it had when I was under the gun trying to solve the riddle for the Gift of Ice. I was relying on Joseph too much, using him as a crutch. My mind kind of shut down, and I found myself waiting for him to give me the solution.

  More minutes passed.

  “HA!” Joseph's voice exploded from his mouth, just about making me jump out of my undies.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Jimmy, my boy, how do you stand there, in my presence, and not bow down and praise me as the most brilliant man who has ever lived? I am utterly wise beyond even my own expectations. I've figured it out!”

  “Yeah, you're the smartest person alive. Now tell me what you've come up with.”

  “You must do the first thing, because it is a lie and therefore not a lie.” He began to pace the cavern, one arm behind his back, one hand raised with pointed finger as he made his various points. He looked like a ridiculous version of a college history professor.

  “Therefore,” he continued, “you enter from the north. But not from that way, you see. The second thing is what you should do and therefore not what you should do. You must go through the door backward. That explains how you can enter from the north, but not from the north, because you do not have your back to it. Your back will be to the south while you walk backward through the door, from the north but not really, and then receive your magnificent gift.”

  He took in a very deep breath and waited for my response, as proud as if he'd just revealed the cure for cancer. I gave up.

  “Joseph, my brain hurts. The Givers sent you as my guide for this, and the things you just said seem to make sense—although I'm not sure I could repeat them for a million dollars. I think I'll just trust you on this one.”

  “No, my boy,” he said, growing very serious. “This is far too important for you to take my word for it. I want you to explain it back to me, or I won't let you get near that door.”

  Frustrated, but knowing him to be right, I concentrated my powers of the mind, and combined the words in front of me with the things I'd just heard from Joseph.

  “All right. There are six lines to the riddle, right?” Joseph nodded, even though what I had said was obvious.

  “Okay, okay,” I said with the voice of a man trying to build the nerve to bungee jump off a cliff. I rubbed my hands together. Then I walked up to the wall and pointed at each line of the riddle as I referred to it.

  “The first and second lines say to follow a lie and do the opposite of truth. The third line says that the fifth line is a lie, so we must do it, according to the first line. The fourth line says that the sixth line is the truth, so we should do the opposite, according to the second line.

  “So if I follow the counsel of the fifth line, combined with doing the opposite of the sixth line, then I will enter the door from the north, but backward, so that I am facing north, but also departing it.”

  I took my own deep breath, and looked over at Joseph.

  “Well,” he said, “if we had some chocolate cake, we could celebrate with cake and ice cream, if we had some ice cream.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Come on.”

  He grabbed my shoulder and led me over to the door, walking around it in a complete circle, then coming to a rest on the north side. For a few moments we both just stared at the door. It resembled the other doors I'd been through to perfection—a rectangle but with slightly curvy edges, ancient wood, and strange etchings that were no longer recognizable. The iron handle was long and curved, vertical, and attached at both ends to the wood. It was a door that was ready to be opened.

  “All right, Jimmy. This is it. I will be right here, waiting patiently. Say hello to the old man if he's the one in there, okay? I sure like that fellow—he reminds me of my granddad. Anyway, off with you now.”

  I took one more breath of the moist, salty air, and grabbed the iron handle. I looked over my shoulder at Joseph.

  “Both times before, something terrible happened right after I finished. Be on your toes.”

  I pulled the door open, turned to face Joseph, and stepped through, backward.

  A wave of sweltering heat hit me from behind. My back foot stepped on something soft and grainy, then my other foot followed. I could sense a brightness coming from behind me, and saw a look of wonder on Joseph's face, his eyes the size of silver dollars. Without a word, I pulled the door closed, and saw his face swept away by the aged wood.

  The door did not disappear—for some reason I had thought it might. But I could tell right away that in this new place, the door stood in the open just like it had in the watery cavern. When I turned around to catch my first glimpse of the Third Gift's sanctuary, I sucked in dry, scorching air as I saw that this place couldn't be any more different from the one I'd left on the other side of the door.

  I was not in a room. I was not in a building. I was outside, in the middle of a vast and never-ending desert.

  A sea of orange, glowing sand flowed in undulating dunes everywhere I looked, extending to the distant horizon in all directions, meeting the blue sky with a crisp and defined line. The air was stifling, a slight breeze blowing it into my face like dragon's breath. It was a place that was everything I would have imagined the Sahara being like.

  There was an absolute silence in the desert world for the few minutes I took in my surroundings. But then I heard a strange buzzing sound, a rumbling hum that was growing louder. I set off in that direction to investigate, my feet slipping and sliding in the loose sand.

  The land rose sharply into a tall dune about twenty feet to the side of the door, and the sound was coming from there, getting louder by the second. I scrambled up its loose slope, putting my hands in front of me, grasping the hot sand, mostly in vain. The sand stuck to my wet shoes. I was three feet from the top when something big and monstrous flew off of the dune from the other side, flying over my head and crashing to the ground behind me. I spun to get a look.

  It was a dune buggy.

  The four-wheel, glorified go-cart was revving its engines. It had landed and turned around so that it was now facing me. The driver of the desert machine was wrapped fully in white linens, his head wrapped as well, protecting him from sand and sun. I had a very good idea of who this person was, but I sure hadn't expected him to greet me this way.

  He cut the engine, and swung his legs out of the vehicle. He walked over to me, paused, then lifted his hand to pull away the cloth covering everything but his eyes. As his arm went to his face and he pulled back the linen, I could see a very familiar plaid pattern.

  He revealed his face, then pulled what seemed like a whole houseful of bed sheets off his body. Dusty overalls and plaid flannel met my eyes. No surprise this time—it was Farmer—the mysterious Giver who had become my mentor and friend.

  “Hello, Jimmy,” he said.

  “Hello to you. Is it your goal to make sure each of our meetings is always stranger than the one before it?”

  “Oh, come now, child of the Four Gifts. I may be a figment of your imagination, and I may be an old man, but no one said I couldn't have a little fun.” He smiled and indicated the buggy behind him. But his words had made my heart pause.

  “Figment of my imagination? What do you mean?”

  Farmer's face grew serious, then broke back into a smile. “Oh, it's nothing like what it sounds, believe me. I am most definitely real, as real as your hand, as real as your heart, as real as your house back in Georgia. But when we meet in these special places, I am more of a recording than anything else. It's very difficult to understand, much less explain.”

  He turned and walked back toward his vehicle, indicating with a wave of the hand that he wanted me to follow. I did, again finding it difficult to walk in the shifty sand.

  Farmer reached into the buggy and pulled out an old lawn chair, then gave it to me.

  “Go ahead,” he said, “have a seat. We have a lot to discuss, and you are getting closer and closer to knowing the full truth of things. Very close indeed.”

  I grabbed the chair and unfolded it, reminded of summer barbecues and little league baseball games. It took a little working, but I eventually got the chair settled and stable in the soft sand, then sat down. I was very eager to learn more.

  Just as he had in the room of ice inside the Pointing Finger, Farmer sat down on an invisible chair. He leaned back, and put one foot up on his knee, looking like a man ready to watch the big football game.

  “My dear boy, I cannot convey to you how happy it makes me to see you arrive here. You have come so far, through so much of danger and worry.” He let his foot drop to the ground and leaned forward. “I am very anxious to tell you more. I think you are prepared more than ever now.”

  He leaned back, his look of excitement fading.

  “However, it also drains me to tell you some of the things I must. No matter what you have been through, you cannot be prepared for the surprises that are in store for you. You have seen much that has forever changed your perceptions of the world and the universe itself. But it truly has only been the beginning.”

  “Farmer,” I said, “you always tell me that you are going to tell me everything, but it sure seems like you never do. What is a Stomper? When are they coming and what will they do to us? I feel like I need to know these things—everything. How else am I supposed to defeat them?”

  A gentle wind picked up, blowing grains of sand lightly across the back of my neck. It was very strange that I had not even paused to think how weird it was that I had stepped into a desert through a door standing on the bottom of the ocean.

  “I have told you before,” Farmer said, “how there is rhyme and reason to my timing on revealing the secrets of the Stompers to you. You have been patient, and I thank you. But listen to me.” He pointed his finger at me like an executioner. “If I had told you everything in the beginning, you would not be here. You would never, ever have made it this far. And that has a much different meaning than you probably think.”

  “See!” I said. “Again with the riddles! What are you talking about?”

  “I understand your impatience. Perhaps you are ready. I will tell you everything if time permits, but I want first to bestow something on you, to ensure that it happens before the tides of trouble rise on this sea of sand. You know how our luck has been thus far …”

  “You mean the Third Gift?”

  “Of course I do.”

  He stood and walked to the back of the dune buggy and opened a small compartment. He pulled a small object out and came back to sit on the chair that was not there. I tried to see what he held, but it was cupped in both hands, hidden from view.

  I couldn't believe the feeling that consumed me, a tingling excitement that swelled inside of me. The Third Gift. The Third Gift! I thought about how much the other two had completely changed my life, and here I was about to receive the next one. I could hardly stand it.

  “Now,” Farmer said. “I told you once before that the second two Gifts were much different from the first two. This is very, very true. But I assure you that each of the Four have their own very distinct purpose in the end. Indeed, I bet you couldn't guess the Fourth Gift—the most powerful one—if I gave you one billion chances.” He let out a little chuckle, like this was all some game to him.