It didn't budge. I pulled, even though I knew that to enter the desert world I had pulled the door into the wet cavern. Nothing. Looking behind me, I pushed and pulled again.

  Death in the form of black goo was fast approaching.

  And the door would not open.

  “Help me!” I yelled.

  A great wind picked up, blowing from the other side of the door toward the oncoming wave of black behind us. I knew why. The goo sucked in life, devoured everything in its path, like a vacuum that was possessed. I'd learned that lesson back in Georgia.

  Farmer pushed against the door with his shoulder, and I joined him. We put all of our strength into it, digging our heels into the sand that gave under our feet, slipping and sliding as we exerted every drop of energy we had.

  The door opened an inch. Blue water poured through the bottom of the opening, about two feet high, soaking our legs and feet and turning the sand into mud. I had the horrible vision of the Tower of Air collapsing completely on the other side, drowning Joseph and probably Rayna, who had surely come looking for us by now.

  I felt a rush of adrenaline, and I heaved my weight against the door. It moved another two inches, the water really gushing through as it did. The force of the water began to shut the door again. An arm shot through the opening, wedging itself through the space to keep it open.

  Joseph's arm—he was still alive, at least for now. His face appeared.

  “Hurry, Jimmy!” he said. “Push! The Tower is collapsing!”

  The current of air had picked up considerably, the black wave getting closer by the second. The wind transformed then into something far more terrible—it was truly sucking at us now. My feet lifted from the ground without warning. I grabbed the edge of the door at the last second, holding on with wet, slippery fingers. I called upon the Ice and froze my hands to the wood, the rest of my body now parallel to the ground, the black goo's force pulling me with all its might.

  Farmer had slipped and collapsed to the ground, his arms wrapped around the base of the door, choking and gasping under the pouring water. Neither of us were pushing against the door anymore.

  “Joseph!” I yelled, “can you pull it open?”

  “My arm …” was his reply. The door was hurting him badly.

  Despair cascaded through my body. I stole a glance behind me, and saw that the black wave would be on us in less than a minute. It had grown so large I could barely see anything else but writhing, hungry darkness.

  Then it got worse.

  A grating, snapping sound came from below, masking Farmer's wet grunts of exertion. The door and its frame shifted, tilting to the right several inches. I looked down, my body flapping in the wind like a flag.

  The door was ripping from its foundation, Farmer barely hanging on to its tattered bottom corner that had come loose. I froze his hands to the door as well, and was just about to yell again to Joseph when the whole structure tore free.

  The door flipped and shot into the air, towing Farmer and I along with it, our hands firmly frozen in place.

  We were airborne, a flat door with two figures trailing it like hung laundry, headed straight for the middle of the black wave.

  I knew we only had seconds.

  The door still acted in every way like an opening into the water cavern. Water poured from the thin opening, swept away in a horizontal stream. Joseph's arm was also there, keeping the door open.

  “Jimmy,” he said, struggling to be heard over the roar of the wind and water, “one more try, one more push! You can do it, boy!”

  We were in a slow roll as we approached the wall of black. My stomach turned and pitched, my head swam. Farmer had somehow gotten a leg up against the door, and was pushing with it as hard as he could. I released my left hand from the Ice and did my best to push against the door as well, pulling against the frame with my right hand for leverage. I could see Joseph's other hand clasped along the edge, pulling.

  I could feel the darkness behind me, reaching out, waiting, hungry, sensing victory.

  A quick thought flashed through me—use the Anything. But I didn't want to, not this early, with so much still ahead of us. Then I remembered my first Gift and had an idea.

  I reared my head back, and with every possible ounce of strength still contained within my body, I heaved my head against the door, trying with all my effort to smash my brains out.

  The Shield sprung into action. It slammed the door all the way open to protect me, a wall of water rushing outward. Joseph caught himself just before falling out—he had planted his feet firmly on the top edge of the doorframe. He grabbed my shirt, and pulled me inside the cavern below the ocean, skimming across the top of the river of water.

  The force of the rushing river shut the door for the last time.

  Farmer was left on the other side.

  The freezing water was already up to my chest as I tried my best to right myself in the frothing pool. Joseph grabbed my hand.

  “Let's get out of here!” he yelled.

  He let go of my hand and we swam toward the tunnel that led back to the Tower. The passageway was filling up fast—there were only a few feet between its curved top and the rising waters. My entire body was exhausted, and I had to reach deep down to find the strength to keep moving.

  “Joseph,” I said, spitting out salty water, “stay close to me. If it does collapse, the Shield will protect us somehow.”

  “Okay,” he replied. He tread water for a second until I caught up with him, and then we continued on, side by side.

  Just before we reached the entrance to the tunnel, a head popped up out of the water in front of us, blocking our way. The shock of it made my heart skip a beat, and I cried out in surprise. Then it registered in my head who it was.

  “I have one last message for you,” the watery face of gleaming crystal said.

  It was Scott.

  “The Giver is okay,” he said. “He wanted you to know that. He cannot be touched in those special places where he meets you, and only hung around for as long as he did to help you. I sure hope you are grateful, Mr. Fincher.”

  After recovering from the sight of a face springing up out of the water, we continued swimming. Scott floated alongside us. His head bobbed up and down to our right, speaking as we swam.

  “The Giver wanted me to tell you one last time what you must do, because with a brain like yours, he knew you needed to be told more than once.”

  It seemed like such an odd time for Scott to continue his smart aleck ways.

  “Remember—go to the Northless Point, where there is no north, and enter the Blackness. Go through the nearest iron rings, find the Lady of the Storm, and she will direct you to the Dream Warden. You will only have fifty-six minutes. Good-bye!”

  His head slipped under the water.

  The strangeness of it all was lost in our panic to get out, but his message did help solidify the importance of Farmer's instructions, so I was grateful. I even had the thought that I would miss the watery creature.

  We continued down the tunnel, our backs almost scraping its top now. The water had become almost unbearably cold, and I knew the Shield would kick in soon to protect me. But I had learned from my first spill into the ocean—to save my dad—that it was very difficult to move through the water when the Shield encased me. My brain was holding it off for as long as possible.

  We swam on. My limbs begged me to stop, and I could see that Joseph was just as tired. The cold bit our skin like small daggers. Water went up my nose and down my throat, burning and choking.

  We swam on.

  We entered the Tower of Air.

  I tried to touch my feet to the ground for a brief rest, but the water was too high. Exhausted, I did my best to tread water, although my head dipped down below the surface more than once. I looked around to take in our surroundings.

  On every wall of the tower, millions of leaks sprayed forth water in varying degrees of strength, raining down on us in a mighty deluge. And then I noticed something that brought a wave of sick despair to my innards.

  The stairs were gone.

  Joseph forgot the urgency of staying together and thrashed his way over to the wall where we knew the stairs had ended their journey from far above. He felt along the wet wall, fighting the incessant spraying that was coming from leaks everywhere.

  He yelled something, but I didn't hear. My body was finally giving up—all I wanted was a minute to rest my bones. I sunk beneath the surface.

  The Shield popped open a bubble of protective air around me. I floated all the way down until I was lying on the ocean floor, sinking slightly into the muddy quagmire the seething waters had formed. I rested my head on my arms, desperate for just a small rest.

  A terrible sound yanked me from my respite.

  I had never been to Niagara Falls before, but TV shows about them had always fascinated me. The roar of the falls was my favorite part, and I'd longed to go there since I was a little teeny squirt of a kid. It was that awesome noise, the sound and reverberation of the entire world collapsing in a severe torrent of cascading water, which I heard at that moment.

  I looked up, and there was no blue sky in the distance, no mist, no rainfall from the leaks. The entire ocean was falling down on top of us like a falling tidal wave. Right before it hit us, I heard two people scream.

  Two people.

  One was Joseph. The other came from a familiar source—I had heard it for the first time while up in Ole Betsy, when I had seen her mistreated by the evil Mayor Duck.

  Somehow, Rayna had joined us, and I had no idea how I could possibly get to her and Joseph before it all ended.

  The Shield protected me, but the fright of seeing millions of tons of water falling on top of you was impossible to ignore. I instinctively covered my face and held my breath while the roar and explosive splashing surrounded me. Despite the awesome power of the Shield, my protective bubble still swayed in the massive current created by the waterfall. My fear for Joseph and Rayna consumed me, and I stood up and moved as best as I could around the floor of the ocean, the pocket of air following.

  I knew a little about ocean stuff, and I felt for sure that the other two could never survive the pressure that much water creates. I worried that they might be dead already. I cried out for them, knowing it was useless.

  The swirling waters began to calm, all the empty spaces filled now, the ocean going on its normal way as a big tub of dirty water. A claustrophobic panic attacked me, not only for my friends, but for me. How was I going to swim to the surface?

  The Ice, I could use the—

  Then it hit me. I had a third Gift now, one that was almost all-powerful. Every time I used it had to be of the utmost importance, to fulfill the direst need. For a second I hesitated, realizing that the fate of the entire world rested on my shoulders, wondering if two people were worth using one of the four chances I would have.

  My dad used to always say that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, but sometimes, in special circumstances, it went the other way. I'd always thought it very profound until my mom told me he'd stolen it from a Star Trek movie.

  A small nugget of peace erupted in my heart, and I knew that I could not change who I was, or the way I thought. Joseph and Rayna were my friends.

  I closed my eyes and called upon the Anything.

  For a second or two I imagined the way I wanted it to happen, imagined the waters swirling apart and forming another void in the water. But then I stopped myself. Farmer had said my brain was in charge, that it would decide how it worked and what constituted one usage of the Gift. So I changed my strategy.

  All I did was make it very clear, and imagined it, envisioned it in my head, that I wanted the three of us safely on the boat again, alive and well. Then, just as I did with the other Gifts, I thought it into action.

  Some unseen force exploded beneath me. With the Shield acting as the prow of a ship, it parted the water before me as I shot toward the surface. The sensation of flying through water was breathtaking, and I allowed myself to enjoy it for the few seconds it lasted.

  I broke the surface with a loud pop and swish, catapulting forty or fifty feet into the air. My stomach and lungs seemingly stayed in the ocean, because I couldn't breathe. I looked around and saw two other figures in the air with me, and for a split second we all hung there, looking at each other. The three of us were meteors in reverse, trailing streams of water still connecting us to the ocean.

  Then a great wind came from nowhere, and lifted us into its arms, swirling around us, holding us, carrying us with a gentle but massive sigh of air to the waiting ship below. Soon, to the shock of our companions who happened to be on the decks, we were placed without harm onto the yacht, safe as can be.

  My only regret was that I didn't have a camera to capture the look on Rusty's face.

  Mom threw her arms around me and didn't let go for the longest time. During our reunion, I thought about what just happened.

  One down, three uses of the Third Gift to go. It was a little discouraging, but if given the same chance a million times, I would've saved my friends without fail. But the power of the Anything was more than we realized.

  Joseph and Rayna both told us that a pocket of air had formed around them as the water crashed down to the ocean floor. That meant, as far as we could tell, that the Anything could actually work before I invoked it, that it could somehow see into the future. Either that, or it could go back in time to fulfill its beckoning call. Either way, we were all relieved it had worked so well.

  Rusty could not get over it. He kept going on and on about what it was like to see three bodies suddenly shoot out of the water then float down safely to the ship. If only we'd caught it on video.

  The first thing I did after catching my breath was to check on Dad. He had not changed, still sleeping in his bed like a dead man. It made me ill now, knowing what I did about the Stompers. I still didn't understand how they worked, but the thought of Dad being infected by one of those things made me sick to the core. I spent some time with him and then went back to join the rest of the crew.

  The remainder of the day was spent in the Mess Hall, resting and filling each other in on what had transpired since we'd set out on the raft. Joseph and Rayna and I went first, taking turns telling them everything. I told most of it, since I had been the only one to go through the door far below us.

  Rayna had given us the two hours she had promised and then set out down the stairs, bent on saving us. She'd been wary of the many leaks, but it only increased her concerns over us, so she had kept coming. The stairs had collapsed when she was only twenty feet from the bottom, or else her fall would have surely killed her. When the Tower began to collapse, and we were all swimming around at the bottom, we'd somehow missed her in all of the commotion and noise. I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if I had not heard her scream at the last second and therefore had not included her in my invoking of the Third Gift.

  As for the ship itself, they had been able to sense the weakness in the Tower long before it imploded, so they'd taken the ship a little further out to avoid being sucked into the whirlpool its collapse caused. They knew they could do nothing but hope that my Gifts saved the day.

  In the end, that was exactly what had happened.

  Feeling safe once again, and warm, I told them that in the morning, I would give more details concerning what needed to happen next. They could see my exhaustion and did not argue. I also had not yet told them about the Stompers—I was just not ready for that.

  I hit the sack. After what I had learned from Farmer, I was very glad that I did not dream that night.

  The next morning we were huddled around our breakfast, all efforts at small talk quashed by the anticipation of what I would tell them next.

  “All right, Jimmy-san,” Tanaka said through his oily mustache, “please hurry with eggs and toast and tell what happened, for crying up loud, neh?”

  We all laughed at his failed attempt at an American saying.

  “What?” he roared.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, glad that he had kind of broken the ice. “Before Tanaka gets his eyebrows in a wad, I'll tell you.”

  I pushed my plate aside and folded my hands on the table in front of me. I leaned on my forearms, and tried to look at everyone as I spoke.

  “The first thing we have to do is a little vague, because Farmer gave me another riddle.” Everyone groaned.

  “It's not so bad, guys. It doesn't sound as hard as the last one, really.”

  “What is it?” Miyoko asked.

  “We have to go to a place where there is no north—in other words, a place called The Northless Point. Tanaka, if you can figure that one out, I'll give you a buck.”

  He snapped to attention, his finger whipping down from his face into his lap—we'd caught him in a suspicious itch of the nose.

  “Yes,” he said, “I start thinking right away.”

  “We have three weeks, I mean, two weeks and six days—twenty days. At that time a rip in the Black Curtain will appear, and I will have only fifty-six minutes in which to go in, find one of those iron gateways, and find some woman called The Lady of the Storm. She'll direct me on how to find this Dream Warden we've talked about, who will apparently reveal to me the Fourth Gift. Then I have to get back out before the Rip closes. All in fifty-six minutes.”

  There was a pause, the silence thick with contemplation.

  The first thing all of us wanted to do was to get off the stupid ocean.

  So it was decided. We would go back to Japan, where Geezer was supposed to have gathered as many of the Alliance as possible. Once there, we would somehow figure out where to find the Northless Point and—hopefully—obtain the Fourth Gift. Then, we could regroup and decide what needed to happen in order to win the battle against the Shadow Ka and the Stompers.