“We’ve got places to be?” was all I could think to say as my shaking fingers, overwhelmed by everything that had already happened, tied the cord around the mask and slipped it on my face.

  Fleck appraised me before nodding. “You may still be wearing funny clothes, but at least no one can tell who you are. Now hurry!”

  She ran forward, and after a second of consideration I tagged along. She might not have been pulling me anymore, but I knew that I was still meant to follow.

  We wound through crowds of people in the street. They were all masked. One man had a red mask with a long nose. Another wore a mask that covered her whole face, round like the moon. People wore wigs and frills and costumes, like Fleck.

  The deeper we were pulled into the revelry of the city, the stranger people became, their screaming fouler, their movements wilder, and the music ever louder until I could feel it shaking even the tiniest bones in my ears.

  “Where are we going?” I shouted to Fleck—not that the answer would have mattered much. I just didn’t want to be here anymore. The walls of people were closing in. It made me anxious.

  Fleck said something without turning around, but her words were lost in the chaos.

  “What?” I screamed.

  Her head turned, but she never stopped running. “The graveyard, I said—”

  “Wait!” I shouted, but it was too late. She had plowed unseeingly into a tall man with a yellow velvet coat and a tall top hat.

  “Good evening, children.”

  Fleck’s face paled as she looked up at him.

  He was taller than anyone I had ever seen in real life. His arms and legs were bone thin, and I could see the round outlines of his knees through his pants.

  I knew who he was instantly, and I felt all of my veins grow cold. I was frozen.

  The Smoke Keeper of Eleven.

  “C-come on,” Fleck whispered to me, but she couldn’t seem to move either.

  The man smiled down at her. His teeth were long, yellow, and cracked—but not as long as in Jo’s drawings. He had almost no lips, and his large nose was broken in the center. I couldn’t see his eyes beyond his mask. That frightened me, because I suspected, like Jo had said, that they weren’t there at all. “Why are you in a rush? Where did you come from, little ones?”

  The man looked past Fleck and straight at me. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before”—his thin lips curled into a smile—“and I see everyone.”

  He stepped toward me, past Fleck. Her eyes were big and worried as she stared on.

  The Smoke Keeper loomed over me, his very presence seeming to quiet the music and the party that surrounded us.

  “What is your name and why are you a stranger to me?” The puff of his breath smelled horrible and made my stomach hurt. “Strangers get sent into the Wall, you know. Strangers don’t belong here.”

  Help, I wanted to say to Fleck, but the word wouldn’t leave my throat.

  He was going to devour me, and I couldn’t run.

  The Smoke Keeper reached a hand out to me, trying to snatch up my wrist. I jerked away, but his long, curling fingernail sliced into my hand, making a C shape on the meat of my palm.

  I winced. The pain was enough to shake me out of my fear. Then Fleck’s warm hand slipped into mine, and she yanked me into the dancing crowd.

  The townspeople linked arms, spun, and mashed their bodies together.

  Over the heads of the dancers I could see the bobbing hat of the Smoke Keeper. Fleck tugged my hand harder, dragging me farther in until I couldn’t see him anymore.

  Then a tall woman wrapped her elbow around mine and spun me in a fast circle, breaking my connection with Fleck. The woman laughed at whatever ridiculous expression I had made, then set me loose—whirling and alone.

  The walls of people began closing in again until all I could see was a blur. People spinning. Explosions. Drums.

  I was flung around, my head whipping from side to side, searching for Fleck.

  It’s just a dream.

  But then I saw the Smoke Keeper. He was coming right for me.

  It’s just a dream!

  “Rose!”

  Before I could process everything that was happening, Fleck was pulling me forward. We ran. Fast. Cutting corners, jumping walls, not looking back until we were racing across black sand. Another beach. There was an island just ahead. In the middle of the island was a tall building stack—but this one was entirely white. It looked like it was made of marble, and it reached up so high into the sky that I couldn’t see the top.

  “What is that?” I asked, panting, my hands on my knees.

  “The graveyard.”

  Fleck made another boat out of tile. We sailed aboard it to the island. On the other side the boat exploded into purple smoke.

  I looked around. We were alone. I heaved a sigh when I realized the Smoke Keeper must not be following us anymore.

  As we approached the white building, the ground was growing warmer and warmer, making my forehead sweat.

  “Why is it so hot?”

  She gave me a look that said I wasn’t very smart. “Because it’s a graveyard?”

  All around the white building was a wide stretch of dirt and sand scattered with tombstones. From a distance it seemed that there were waves of green clouds moving across the surface of the ground, as if it were a murky swamp.

  We approached the door of the white building, but the opening was so small that we had to crawl through.

  Once inside, however, I was shocked to see how massive it was. The marble box was filled with tiny stone buildings with names written above the front doors. The stone buildings sat side by side, like a neighborhood.

  But, you know, a neighborhood where everyone was dead.

  I stared at a particularly pretty grave house—gray with gold veins threaded throughout the marble—and I felt more heat creep up from my shoes.

  I followed after Fleck, who was already all the way down a corridor and turning out of sight.

  She didn’t say anything as she led me down long hallways of dead neighborhoods where the tombs became bigger. We were headed upward, it seemed, into the stacked tower of white buildings.

  The farther we went, the darker it became. I ran my hands along the walls to keep my place, but I shuddered back when my hand ran across something that felt very different than the cool marble. I squinted at it.

  “Bones?”

  I heard Fleck sigh ahead, and I followed the sound.

  “We’re in the catacombs now. It’s like a maze, so stay close behind.”

  “B-but why are there bones in the walls?”

  She looked back at me, surprised. I could barely make out her face in the darkness. “Oh. There aren’t bones in the walls.” I sighed with relief. Then she continued, “The walls are made of bones.”

  A shiver ran through me as I looked again at the wall. A row of skulls stared back. What a horrible place, I thought, running to keep up with her.

  We finally reached a row where the boxes had no doors sealing their fronts. These were unused graves. I peeked into one, lit from the inside by a fiery glow. I looked up, following the source of the glow to see a bird made of fire circling overhead, lighting the room from within.

  “Whoa—ahh!” My surprise turned to fear when I looked down and saw a boy’s big pink face.

  Fleck finally turned around. “Oh, Jonquil, I found her. This is the girl Jo sent.”

  The boy climbed out. He was about a head taller than me and much, much wider. He reminded me of a brick, tall and squared off. His skin was sunburned to a nice pink. His hair was yellow. Not even blond, exactly, just yellow. Or maybe it looked more yellow against his pink face. I figured he was probably a year or two older than me.

  “Where did you find her?”

  Fleck shot me an angry look before climbing into the large, open tomb. “Back on the beach. What she was doing there for hours, I can’t even imagine.”

  I climbed in after them. The tomb inside was almost… homey (if you could ever call a giant dead-people box made of bones “homey”).

  It was covered in pillows, cushions, and blankets. They were many colors, and it reminded me of a ball pit.

  I waded through the cushions after Fleck and Jonquil, sitting on a big one that looked like a purple marshmallow.

  When I looked up, three faces were staring at me.

  I held in my surprise as I counted them.

  Fleck.

  Jonquil.

  And now a smaller child with curly black hair, dark brown skin, and big round eyes that looked like an avocado cut in half. The child looked to be in third or fourth grade, I figured.

  “Who are you and where do you come from?” Avocado Eyes demanded, prodding me in the chest with an unusually long finger.

  “Uh, I’m Rose from Arizona.”

  “So you’re not from here, then?” the child whispered, excited. Fleck just nodded back, a small smile on her face.

  I shook my head. “I’m from a place very far away, I think.”

  All three of them looked to one another again, deciding which question to ask me next. I continued, “And who are you?”

  The brick boy pointed to himself. “I’m Jonquil. That’s Scape—they’re a little ball of energy!”

  “I’m Scape!” Scape held their hand out to me, grasping mine and shaking it.

  “And you already know Fleck,” Jonquil said.

  I nodded at her. Fleck stared back at me with a deep and serious frown. “It’s time we got down to business,” she demanded. “She says that Jo gave her a Smoke Ball.”

  Jonquil and Scape looked at each other with shocked eyes.

  “So it’s true?” Jonquil asked.

  “She’s the one who will help us?” Scape added.

  “I have my doubts. She doesn’t even seem to know what an Islet is.”

  They both quirked their eyebrows at me, unimpressed.

  “Look,” I said, “I’ll be honest with you. Jo’s my aunt, and she did give me the watch—er, the Smoke Ball—but I can’t help you with anything. I’m just a kid.” The dream was more fun, I decided, if I went along with it. I would wake up soon enough anyway, and I preferred this place to the real world. Plus, there was something in me that tingled—thinking maybe it could be real.

  Fleck looked genuinely confused. “She told us that she was training a replacement and that they would arrive soon. That’s why we were looking all over the island for you.”

  “Training a replacement?” I thought about all the stories Jo had told me, all the hours we’d spent painting and drawing. It seemed that she had been preparing me for this world and its strange drawing powers. “I guess she did train me. She mostly just told me about the realms.”

  The three leaned in, their eyes wider than before.

  “I knew it! Can you fly to the others?” Fleck said a bit too loudly. Jonquil grasped her by the shoulder, pulling her back.

  “What do you mean ‘fly’?” I asked.

  “Jo was the only one of us who could fly over the Wall. Each of the hour worlds has a Wall, see, and because she could pass over them, she could go anywhere. Using the Smoke Ball,” Scape explained. “She used to tell us fairy tales of those other places.”

  “They’re not fairy tales, Scape. It’s history,” Jonquil said. “They just don’t want you to know that.”

  “Who are ‘they’?” I asked.

  The three surrounded me in a half circle, and Fleck lowered her voice. “The Smoke Keepers,” she said.

  A shiver ran through me. Just hearing their name was frightening. Jo had told me that the Smoke Keepers like to steal magic from people and that there’s a different Smoke Keeper in every world—but that’s all I knew. I didn’t like when she told me stories about them; they scared me, so she didn’t talk about the Smoke Keepers that often.

  “We have a Smoke Keeper—he’s horrible. He captures people and throws them into the Wall,” Scape said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The Walls need smoke to stay up. They’re made of smoke. So when a person is thrown into the Wall, all of that person’s smoke is sucked out.”

  “Why don’t people stop them?”

  “Some people like the Smoke Keepers,” Scape whispered, “because they keep order.”

  “And the rest of us are too afraid of getting thrown into the Wall,” Fleck added.

  “Jo told us all about the Smoke Keepers from other lands—they used to be the Kings and Queens of each hour world more than a hundred years ago,” Jonquil said.

  I remembered that part of the story—about the Kings and Queens. There were twelve worlds for each of the twelve hours. The worlds didn’t use to be separated, but then the Kings and Queens decided to keep them apart. Jo had never told me why. She claimed that I would understand it when I got older.

  “But how can the Kings and Queens still be alive?” I asked.

  “They each created a Wall, and now they feed off it. They are living off the smoke that has been stolen from others. But they look like skeletons, because they aren’t really alive and they aren’t really dead,” Jonquil said.

  I imagined the thin face and empty eyes of Eleven’s Smoke Keeper. He did look like a skeleton.

  Jonquil continued, “The Smoke Keepers keep the Walls alive so that the twelve worlds will stay apart.”

  “Why did they want to separate them?” I said.

  Scape wrung their hands as they looked at Jonquil. “We’ll tell you at the end of the story.”

  “When we’re sure we can trust you,” Fleck added.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “But how do you get smoke out of someone?” I asked.

  Scape plugged their nose and mouth and then breathed hard. A puff of green smoke shot out each of their ears. “It’s easy, see?”

  The three continued to explain, jumping back and forth.

  Apparently, the Walls became so powerful that no one could cross them. In fact, if you got close, you got “Smoke Sick” as you breathed it in. If you lost all of your smoke, you died.

  “But if you inhale too much smoke, you also die,” Scape explained.

  If people did really bad things, the Smoke Keeper of Eleven would toss them into the Wall. It would suck their smoke straight out.

  “After you get sucked into the Wall, it takes five days, and then, poof, your body is gone,” Scape said plainly.

  “Can you pull them back out before then?” I asked.

  “No. Once the Wall has you, it won’t let go.”

  “But I thought you said you were going to destroy the Wall?” I asked, turning to Fleck, who grimaced.

  “Well, we were supposed to, but we need to go to the other worlds to collect the necessary tools.”

  “Why didn’t Jo destroy all the Walls, then?” I asked. “If all you have to do is go between worlds, then Jo could have done it, right?”

  “It’s not that simple.” Jonquil sounded uneasy. “You have to collect smoke from each world from the Smoke Keeper of that realm.”

  “Jo wasn’t very powerful,” Fleck went on, “so she was afraid of getting caught by the Smoke Keepers in the other worlds.”

  “But you think I’m strong enough?”

  They all looked at me like I had said something totally silly.

  “Well, sure. She said that you had more smoke than any of us.”

  “Me? But I’ve never even used smoke!”

  They looked at one another again, even more surprised. Jonquil leaned in to Fleck to whisper something. Fleck nodded, turning to me.

  “Come close to me. I need to see your eyes.”

  I felt my cheeks burn. “My eyes? Why?”

  “That’s how you see how much smoke someone’s got.”

  Fleck grabbed me by the shoulders. She was so close that I could feel her breath on my nose as she stared into my eyes.

  “Wow” was all she said before releasing me. “She was right.”

  “Right? What do you mean ‘right’?” I asked.

  Jonquil snatched a small mirrored square off his belt and held it up in front of my eyes.

  “You can tell how much smoke someone has, how strong they are, based on how many specks and lines they have in their eyes. It’s just the way they’re born.”

  “Your eyes are mostly specks!” Scape chirped. “And I thought I had specks.” They batted their eyelids. From a distance I could see some dark green spots in their eyes.

  I looked in the mirror. I don’t like mirrors much. I think my face is boring, and my eyes definitely aren’t special. As I looked at their reflection, they were the same dull hazel they’d always been. Looking closer, however, I saw the specks Scape was talking about.

  My eyes weren’t clear, like Jo’s. They were speckled with lots of brown and green dots that shot through the irises in streaks. “Okay, so I see some colors and shapes. So what?”

  “It means you have power.” I looked up at Jonquil; I could see a couple big lines in his eyes. Fleck had lots of small dots, like her freckles.

  “Well, where I come from, it just means they’re dirty.” That’s what Jeremiah used to call my eyes, anyway.

  Fleck sighed, holding my nose. “Blow.”

  I rolled my eyes but did as she said, keeping my mouth shut as Scape had done. I blew hard once and heard them gasp.

  “What?” I pulled away to look around. A cloud of brown smoke descended on me, and I coughed. “Ack! What was that?”

  “That’s your smoke.”

  I squinted my eyes through the cloud. There did seem to be a lot of it—at least three times what Scape had had.

  “Why is mine brown if Scape’s is green?” I asked.

  “That’s what Jo’s smoke looked like too. She said that’s what the smoke from everyone in your world looks like.”

  “My world?”

  Jonquil nodded. “She called it Thirteen.”

  I squinted hard. That was silly. Jo had never told me there were thirteen hours. “And what are the powers of people from Thirteen?” I asked.

  I knew the powers of everyone from the twelve hours, based on Jo’s nursery rhyme. They could turn into animals, float, draw ghostly objects, create fire, be super strong—you know, amazing things.

  “You can travel to all of the other worlds and save us,” Scape answered.