I hated to do it, but I had no choice.

  “No,” I said, “I'm not.”

  Trying to be as gentle as possible, I called upon the Ice. Misty swirls of air flew in from all directions, and encircled each agent with solid ropes of frosty Ice. More and more I called out of the air, wrapping them until they couldn't move a muscle. Surprising me, their looks went beyond even that of my poor friend when he poured chocolate milk on Bonnie-Bingle-Who-Wasn't-Bonnie-Bingle.

  “Sorry,” was all I could say.

  A last burst of Ice pulled the female agent's hand away from the elevator, and the doors slid shut with a dull thud. The elevator began its ascent.

  We reached the third floor, the doors opened, and we sprinted to Hood's room. From some unimaginable place within his robes, he pulled out his credit-card key, and opened the door. We walked inside. Hood went over to the closet and opened it with his pasty hand. Inside, leaning against the back wall, was a vehicle faster than any space ship conceived by the most brilliant of scientists.

  The Bender Ring.

  Then the worst thing that can happen to a kid who is in a hurry to save the world happened.

  I had to use the bathroom.

  “Okay, Hood,” I said, “hold tight while I use the bathroom. There ain't no way you're going in there with me.” The thought hit me that I had never noticed Hood leave to use the bathroom since I'd met him, but it seemed the wrong time to ask him about it.

  I went in to take care of business, hoping the agents didn't break out of the Ice and find our room in those few moments. Although my mom probably would've forgiven me under the circumstances, I paused out of instinct to wash my hands when my task was complete.

  Just as I turned the water off and grabbed a towel, I heard the door to our room crash open.

  With wet hands, I ripped open the bathroom door and ran out into the room. Three agents, different from the ones I had frozen with icy ropes, were holding Hood by the arms, his struggles useless against their strength. One of them spoke.

  “Just wait, Jimmy,” he said. “Please hear us out—we're only here to help you, to ask you to help us. We're out of options, and have no idea what is happening to our world. The skies are dark, mythical beasts are everywhere; people are falling into comas at an increasing pace. Please, help us.”

  The desperation in the man's voice was crystal clear, and pity filled my gut. But time was out, and the Rip would open any minute, thousands of miles away.

  Saying nothing, I walked up to the group and grabbed Hood by the arm. They tried to stop me, but it was useless, and the agents couldn't hide their surprise at finding out their comrades had not been lying about the invisible Shield.

  I smacked a ball of Ice against the agents’ chests, and they tumbled backward as one, falling over each other with shouts of anger. I reached into the closet, pulled out the Bender Ring, and handed it to Hood.

  “Let's go,” I said.

  Hood nodded, his droopy robe flopping up and down. As I held onto his arm, he raised the Ring above our heads so that we both stood within its circumference.

  “Stop, or I'll shoot!” one of the agents screamed. “I swear to you, I will shoot!”

  “Go ahead,” I said, making sure I was touching Hood.

  I had called the man's bluff, and he lowered his outstretched arm holding the gun, giving up.

  Then Hood dropped the Ring. I caught a last glimpse of the agents as the Ring passed my eyes, a red swath of chaos following in its path, replacing the room around us.

  We were on our way to the North Pole. I couldn't help but wonder if we had a better chance of seeing Santa Claus than seeing a Rip in the Black Curtain.

  The racing, squiggly red lines seemed so familiar, even though it was only the second time I had journeyed with the Ring. They trailed the circle as it fell, seeming to devour the hotel room around us and replace it with demented, dancing lines on top of blackness. I followed the path of the falling Ring, and when it hit the ground, I stared at the circle of carpet, wanting to catch the moment of transformation.

  Dizziness and nausea attacked me, but I focused on the ground. There was a flash of red across the carpet, like a flashlight shone through a red bed sheet. Then it faded into a bright light, the red quickly replaced by blinding whiteness. I expected the white to fade as well, remembering the time we went from the riverside to the yard outside of Tanaka's house, and seeing the green grass at my feet.

  But the whiteness stayed, and the Bender Ring began to ascend, this time reversing its earlier course, devouring the disappearing red lines in its path, and leaving a trail of reality in its wake. Then it hit me. Of course. The whiteness.

  How many movies about Santa did I have to see to remember that the North Pole would be nothing but ice and snow? As the Ring moved upward, past my knees, past my waist, past my chest, there was nothing but blinding whiteness, glaring—the pure absence of color in all directions. Cold air washed through my clothes, a wetness in it that was like small needles prickling against my skin.

  Squinting my eyes to shield the glare, I looked up. It was finished, and Hood was once again grasping the Ring with both hands above us. He pulled it over and down and let it fall to rest by his side. He pointed to our right.

  I looked over, and willed my eyes to hurry and adjust to the surrounding light. The sky here was not dark like where we had come from, and the sun beat down upon the snowy landscape with unforgiving brilliance. Through the eyelash veil of my squinting eyes, I could just make out a vertical object packed into the snow, and walked over to it.

  It was a thick, red post, with a white line spiraling down its length, just like a candy cane. A square sign was attached about halfway down, with several languages written on it in faded gold stamping. I scanned it for something recognizable, and found some English. It was so simple it sent shivers down my spine.

  THE NORTH POLE

  Known to some people, particularly certain god-like people from another world, as The Northless Point.

  Hood acted like he wanted to tell me something, but seeing as we were in a sea of white, and his finger only talked in one color, he shrugged his shoulders and gave up.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. “If I'm in there for fifty-six minutes, you'll get awfully cold. I know that robe is thick, but …”

  He wagged his hand in the air, indicating it was nothing for me to worry about.

  “If I'm not back in that amount of time, you might as well head back without me, okay? I guess your clue will be when the Ripping closes, right? Promise me you'll head back then.”

  Hood nodded. I had expected him to resist at least a little bit, but then remembered that the Shield was probably protecting me from the cold already, and that Hood was maybe already approaching the point of misery. I hoped he could handle an hour.

  “Well,” I said, “If you get too cold, head back for a while and then come back.”

  I looked around, and there was nothing but the same in all directions, from where we stood to the distant horizons. Flat, white land. No fat guys in red pajamas, no bustling toy workshops, no elves. A few years earlier I would've been devastated.

  I looked at my watch. The Ripping was supposed to open in less than five minutes. Since my conversation with Hood was as wordless as a tongueless mute drifting in space, my mind wandered.

  There was so much confusion, so much fear, so much pain. The turmoil of putting my dad's life above my duty to save the world from the Stompers gnawed at me, and I had the sickening feeling that I'd made an irreversible mistake. What good was Dad's life if it was spent in a world full of literal nightmares?

  Somehow I had to right things. Who cared that I had technically given my word to the monster named Custer Bleak? A deal with the devil is never valid. Somehow, some-way, I would figure out a way to keep the Red Disk out of Raspy's hands, and still save my dad. My decision on that matter was made, and I felt a lot better.

  Of course, it was funny that I didn't even know the first thing about the Red Disk or why Raspy wanted it so badly. But the fact alone that he wanted it was enough to tell me it must be rooted in evil. Or that it was so important to our cause that he merely wanted to prevent me from having it.

  Once again, I got fed up with my thoughts, and I pushed them away. Thinking too much could be really depressing sometimes. The Ripping of the Black Curtain saved me from any further mopey contemplating.

  Later, when I thought back on the moment when the ripping, crackling sound first trickled through the frosty air, right on time, I realized that I never really doubted it would happen, not once.

  Even as the blacker than black ink spot tore open in front of me, I reached down and set my stopwatch to 56:00, set to count down backward.

  With a sense of bravery that somewhat surprised me, I waved to Hood, pushed the start button on my watch, and stepped into the Blackness.

  I was about to experience the longest “just-a-hair-short-ofan-hour” in my life.

  It was only my second trip into the mysterious gateway between worlds. Just like the time before, there was a brief moment of floating, surrounded by darkness, before the substance of the Blackness seemed to form around me, and light slowly dissolved away the dark. I was standing on a black path of marble, winding away like a ribbon both before and behind me until it disappeared on the horizon. On both sides of the path, a great sea of inky, pale liquid stretched out for as far as the eye could see, eventually swallowed in migrating bodies of mist. The sky was dark and grey, as if the storm of all eternity was about to break.

  The Ripping through which I had come stayed open, revealing a blurred vision of my home world on its other side. Stay open, little buddy, I thought.

  The Blackness looked exactly the same as the last time I'd been there—not a smidgen more inviting. Scanning all directions, I saw no sign of a Shadow Ka or any other visitor, but spotted a widening of the path about two hundred feet away. It had to be the gateway Farmer had told me about—the one leading to the Lady of the Storm. Knowing my time was dwindling with every passing thought, I ran in that direction.

  Our world, Earth, was unique in that it did not have a portal to the Blackness, which is why it had gone hundreds or thousands of years without being discovered by the Ka and the Stompers. It was instead separated by the Black Curtain, although how it all worked I had no idea. All I knew was that you could enter or leave the Blackness from any spot as long as there was a Ripping.

  I kept running. I was about halfway to the landing.

  The air was wet, and my clothes seemed to absorb it and moisten with every step I took. The gently lapping ocean of liquid silver looked menacing, like it would swallow you whole if you even dared to stick a tippy toe in it. Then I remembered my first visit, when the attacking Shadow Ka bounced off the Shield and fell into the waters, screaming, never to be seen again. I shivered as I ran.

  The landings that held the iron gateways were made of a different material, resembling sandstone. After my brief sprint, I made it to the one I was to go through, and looked in awe at its less than comely state. The stone was jagged and uneven, with great breaks running through it in all directions. On one side, a large pillar jutted toward the grey sky, tipping precariously at its top like it had been trying to escape gravity and finally gave up.

  The horror of those few moments after blocking the Black Curtain rushed into my mind, and I realized that the devastation of it had spread throughout the entire Blackness. I couldn't help but wonder if alien creatures lived somewhere in this place, under the strange ocean, or in the air, or on islands unseen, and whether or not they had been harmed during that frightful event.

  But it couldn't have been any other way. The blocking of the Curtain just may have bought us enough time to make it as far as we had. Otherwise, the Stompers would've already controlled all of our minds and dreams to the point of no return.

  I stumbled over the uneven ground to the stack of iron rings that formed the barrel-shaped gateway to whatever world awaited me. What kind of place did a Lady of the Storm live in, anyway? As I looked over the upper edge of the rings, something clicked in my head.

  The scratches on my dad's arm. Although very crude, they had looked like a series of the letter ‘O’ overlapping each other. It looked a lot like the iron gateway! The revelation was bizarre, and my mind wanted to explain it away as coincidence. But the longer I looked at the rings of the gateway, the more they reminded me of the image of the scratches. But what did it mean?

  Puzzled, I looked down at my watch. Forty-seven minutes. My mouth dropped open—how could nine minutes have already passed? I could no longer afford to think or pause for anything.

  I placed the palms of my hands on the uppermost ring of the gateway, pushed down, and swung my legs up and over into the middle of the barrel. I knew there was no magic word, no fancy waving of the hand—it just happened.

  Several seconds passed, and just as I began to worry that it might not work, a blinding flash of light erupted from the bottom of the iron rings and shot upward. My eyes shut on instinct, and when they opened again, everything had changed.

  I was in a world forged by aliens, and it was raining.

  On one of our first days in Japan, when everything was still hunky-dory, it had rained in a way I'd never seen before. Having grown up in Georgia, where thunderstorms and tornadoes were not uncommon, that was saying a lot. The rain had fallen in sheets, impossible in every way to make out individual drops. Within seconds the gutters and streets had filled, and luckily it stopped after only a few minutes.

  The onslaught of falling water I now stood under was twice as bad.

  It was nighttime in this new place, and the pelting rain again reminded me of standing under the waterfall at the local amusement park. Wiping my face was futile, and I was forced to squint and try my best to see through the cascading deluge. I looked down.

  A glowing light was coming from somewhere. Just as I had been warned, the gateway on this side of the Blackness was fragile, perched atop a thin rod of glass or crystal, looking like it could break with the slightest tap. Farmer told me that if it did indeed shatter, there was no return—the gateway would be ruined. He also told me that Shadow Ka would be there, somewhere, waiting to destroy it. This was going to get tricky.

  I took just a moment to make out anything else I could see, and a lump the size of Texas formed in my throat. An instant blaze of panic almost made me faint.

  The crystal rod holding me up protruded from the tip of a giant pyramid, made of an eerie, pulsing material that glowed varying shades of purple. The falling rain washed down its four angled sides in flowing sheets, slick and smooth. It looked like a fancy display in a shopping mall. One of the downward sloping edges formed by two sides of the pyramid had steps cut into it, leading down into darkness.

  My pyramid was not alone. In all directions, there were countless more, made of the same material and in varying sizes, rising to an assortment of heights. They were all connected to each other in a haphazard manner, creating a wild maze of sloping walls and sharp edges, with the same cut stairs leading here and there amongst them. The rain made it difficult to see, but it appeared as if I were in an entire city of pyramids, jumbled and massed together like a crowded city on an Italian mountainside.

  But none of this caused the lump in my throat and the panic in my chest.

  On every pyramid, perched at its pointed tip, sat a full-grown Shadow Ka, wings folded, awaiting my arrival.

  The whole plan seemed doomed before it even began.

  Time was ticking away, and I had no idea what to do. The Ka could not hurt me—that was not my concern. But if I left the gateway, they would instantly swarm in and destroy the crystal shaft, trapping me there forever. And I certainly had no time to seek out and freeze or destroy every Ka I could see—they seemed to stretch into the distance forever and ever.

  I looked at my watch. Forty-two minutes.

  My first thought was to use the Anything. Maybe it was my only choice. I could call upon it to protect the gateway from harm, no matter what happened. But to use another one of the four chances was so risky. Farmer said at least one would need to be saved for the very end, which would leave me with its power to use only once more before that time.

  Thinking of Farmer made it all come together.

  In the last seconds of our conversation under the Tower of Air, he had said the Shield would be the key. I knew he'd told me more than once that the First Gift had uses that I had not yet realized. Was there a way to leave the protective power of the Shield behind? Maybe if I cut off my hand and placed it on the gateway, so it could be touching me? Okay, that was stretching it.

  I couldn't help but look at the watch again.

  Forty minutes.

  I decided to take a leap of faith. I would always have the Anything as the ultimate backup.

  Wishing I were invisible, I clambered up onto the top of the iron rings and shifted my body around so I was facing them. With every bit of care, I tried to climb down the rings and onto the crystal shaft by hugging and releasing, squeezing with my feet and legs for any possible support. Somehow it worked, and it was only as I slid down the rod like a fireman on his pole that I remembered that I could've just jumped and the Shield would have protected me just fine.

  When my feet touched the slick top of the fluorescent purple pyramid, they slipped down the side until my arms—wrapped around the crystal—stopped my fall when they reached the juncture of rod and stone. I stayed still, hugging the glass, waiting for any action from the Ka.

  There was no sign of their trademark scream, no sound of flapping wings.

  I shifted my feet, slipping and sliding, until I could maneuver them over to the stairs. Although wet, they seemed somewhat secure, and I carefully pushed away from the crystal rod and stood up. The rain continued to pour from the black sky.