Strangeworlds Travel Agency Page 5

  She quickly turned to page ten.

  ON THE SUBJECT OF SUITCASES AND THE SCHISM PHENOMENON

  The phenomenon of schisms is one that continues to demand study. We currently understand the following:

  Schisms are gateways to other worlds.

  Schisms are alive and feed on magical energy.

  Schisms can be contained (for example, within suitcases). Note: to date, only Elara Mercator has possessed the ability to move a schism and to contain it within a suitcase.

  Schisms are known to (and used by) others outside of the Society.

  Let us examine each point above in more detail.

  Schisms are gateways to other worlds.

  We do not, despite what modern science claims, live in a singular universe. Rather, our world (which includes our planet, sun, stars, et cetera) is part of a much broader multiverse. There are many other worlds besides our own in the multiverse, and each one must be properly explored and written about in a non-romantic fashion. We are not, as some have assumed, the rightful lords of new lands—we are merely travelers. seeking peace and understanding.

  Flick read the page twice. Those suitcases at Strangeworlds… each one was a gateway to somewhere magical. Every single one.

  She continued reading.

  Schisms are alive and feed on magical energy.

  Schisms are wounds in the skin of the world. They bleed magic to and fro. If left loose in the air, they will eventually clot and close, much like a wound in human skin.

  Schisms can be contained (for example, within suitcases).

  If given a durable and fixed space to inhabit, schisms become dormant and restful. During her lifetime Miss Mercator enclosed in excess of 100 schisms in suitcases, allowing safe and reliable travel to other worlds in the multiverse. The ability to move and contain schisms has not yet been demonstrated by anyone else.

  Flick wondered about Elara Mercator. Imagine being the only person who could do something so extraordinary. Had she tried to teach people? And who had taught her?

  Schisms are known to (and used by) others outside of the Society.

  There is more to the purpose of the Strangeworlds Travel Agency than tourism and exploration. This study has a purpose. For although humans cannot use schisms to travel without having them first contained within a suitcase, we are not the only travelers between worlds. There are others, outside our Society and our home world, who also travel the multiverse, using magic more fearsome than our own.

  And it is the Strangeworlds Society’s sworn duty to protect every world we know of.

  Flick’s stomach went cold. There was something very menacing about that last part. Fearsome magic did not sound impressive—it sounded like something to be wary of. Feeling more than a little nervous, she quickly turned a few more pages, wanting some distance between herself and those words. She was still intrigued by Elara Mercator and wanted to find out more about her, but there didn’t seem to be a page dedicated to the mysterious travel agency founder’s life. Flick flipped through the book again, and this time a different heading caught her eye.

  ON THE SUBJECT OF MAGICAL SIGHT

  Not everyone possesses the ability to see magic. And magic may only be seen through using one of Miss Mercator’s magnifying glasses. Many believe that the talent for Magical Sight is inherited—and that certainly seems to be true of the Strangeworlds Society members. Seeing magic through a magnifying lens is not something that can be taught. Those who cannot see magic may still be granted membership of the Strangeworlds Society—this is at the discretion of the currently serving Head Custodian.

  Magical Sight has been a feature of folklore for many centuries. In the northern countries of the world in particular, a belief in the faerie and the elvish still exists. In Icelandic legend, seers believed they could look through hagstones, horses’ bridles, or even under their own arm to reveal what they called the Unseen. Our magnifying lenses have taken the place of such superstition, though these old traditions bring to mind the question of whether or not these people knew of schisms, and who or what they were referring to by the Unseen.

  It is possible that there are greater mysteries out in the multiverse still to be revealed.

  A sudden chill ran down Flick’s spine and over her skin like a breath of cold wind. She remembered the sight of that glittering scar in the air and the dusting of magic floating around it like fireflies drifting on a breeze. It hadn’t felt eerie at the time, but rather calming, satisfying almost, like when she applied a formula to a math problem and saw all the numbers fall into place.

  But what were the Unseen? Were they real? Or nothing but an old bit of folklore?

  She turned back to the start of the book and scanned to the bottom of one of the pages.

  … we are not the only travelers between worlds.

  Flick touched a finger to the word “we.” That’s me, as well, she thought. I’m one of them. I could be. She looked over at her map, at all those places she had never been, and felt an ache in her chest.

  “I will be,” she whispered.

  You came back,” Jonathan said as Flick walked into the shop the next day. He looked up from sweeping the floor to give her a wide and slightly self-satisfied smile. He was wearing brown tartan trousers, with a mustard-colored shirt and a waistcoat that was a bit too big for him. It had an embroidered peacock on the back.

  Flick closed the door behind her. It had been easy to come back. Her parents were at work, and Freddy was at day care. As soon as her mother’s bus had vanished down the road, she’d almost run through the estate to get into the village. She had A Study of Particulars in her backpack, along with a water bottle and a banana. There was a box of Band-Aids in the front zip pocket, as well as a change of socks and underwear. If she was going traveling today, she wanted to be ready. “Yes. Is that sand on the floor?” Flick asked as she stepped forward and it crunched under her purple Converse.

  “Oh, yes.” Jonathan sighed despondently.

  “Did you go to a beach or something?”

  “Heavens, no. Not so much a beach as a desert. Some people can’t even be trusted to give their boots a shake out before they come back.”

  Jonathan tapped the dustpan out into a steel trash can and put it and the broom to one side. Flick tried to think of what to say.

  “I read that book,” she said.

  “And?”

  There was a beat of silence. The travel agency stirred in the warm summer air, and above their heads, the floorboards creaked.

  Flick took a deep breath. “I want to travel.”

  Without saying a word, Jonathan came around the desk and went over to the suitcase wall. He took hold of a handle and pulled. A suitcase of dark blue, with bright violet trim, came free from the wall. Jonathan looked at Flick. “This is as good a place as any to start.”

  “We’re going now?” she asked, her bravado deflating like an escaped balloon in the face of how fast things seemed to be moving. “Right this second?”

  Jonathan put the case down. “It’s not dangerous,” he promised. He tried to open the case, then realized it was back to front and had to turn it over. “Good start.” He rolled his eyes at himself, and Flick hid a grin, despite the cloud of butterflies starting to swarm in her stomach. Jonathan pressed the silvery catches again and this time the lid of the suitcase popped open. A cool sort of emptiness floated from within the case, as though he had opened a window in the musty shop, and fresh air was filtering through.

  Flick stepped forward and stopped, blinking as light cascaded out of the case. It was the same sort of swirling pink that her slice of agate created when it was on the top of her bedside lamp. It felt familiar and yet eerie, like seeing your reflection in the mirror move one fraction of a second too late.

  “Don’t be frightened,” said Jonathan, misreading her wide eyes.

  Flick stood in front of the case, letting the breeze from another world kiss her face. She could hear her own heartbeat thumping in her ears. “So, h
ow do I get inside? Jump?”

  “We just climb in,” Jonathan said, tucking the blade of his tie between two shirt buttons. “One foot at a time. Feel for the ground before you take a second step. And keep your eyes open, even if you feel dizzy.”

  “All right.” Flick gritted her teeth and stood, raising a foot to step into the case. “Sounds easy enough. Which probably means it’s incredibly difficult.”

  “You’ll be absolutely fine. Try not to overthink it. And when you get through, don’t wander off,” Jonathan warned. “You go first. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Flick nodded.

  She took a deep breath, gripped the straps of her backpack tight, and stepped down into the suitcase.

  The world tipped on its axis.

  She went from stepping down to stepping up without changing the motion of her legs, so she was both simultaneously climbing into the suitcase and out of it. She could smell trees and woodland, but she could hear Jonathan back in Strangeworlds, and she could somehow see both places at once, and—

  A hand gently pushed at her back, and she stepped again; this time her legs were going both into and out of the case at the same time, and everything was doubled and there were two of Flick and two of the worlds, and then—

  Then she was standing.

  Standing alone, in a different world.

  It was a beautiful woodland, though unlike any forest Flick had ever seen before.

  It was hot, almost tropical in temperature, and the air was heavy with moisture. The sky, where it could be seen through the thick canopy of oversized, violet-veined leaves, was a blue so deep it was almost black, though it wasn’t night.

  Flick looked down at her feet, and realized she wasn’t standing on the ground at all. She had stepped onto a very thick, flat section of black tree branch. Looking down further, she could see that the thick boughs of the trees snaked and knotted below her, each of the branches wide and smooth enough to be a walkway.

  The ground could have been three hundred feet below.

  The smooth, dark trunks of the trees, each one wider than a bus, grew up through the interlocking web of branches. And growing on the bark, like moss or lichen, were small glowing crystals. Some were tiny, no bigger than a grain of sand, but others were as long as a pencil, and growing upward, their cloudy, cracked interiors glimmering delicately.

  Flick laughed softly in wonder. The crystals glowed brighter as she reached for them, as if delighted to see her, happy to put on a show of illumination. When she touched them, she was surprised to find them cool and smooth under her fingers.

  Behind her, there was a gentle cry and the soft sound of feathers. She turned to see a bird, no larger than a magpie, but with purple and gold tail feathers as long as she was tall, watching her from a branch. It ruffled its wings, the long feathers glittering as if they too were made of crystal.

  Perhaps they were.

  Jonathan stepped out of the case then, unfolding himself like a particularly well-dressed deck chair and staggering upright. “Oh, it’s not changed much.” He smiled, smoothing his hair down.

  The bird squawked and took off, sailing over their heads before disappearing among the twisted tree branches. The crystals on the trees glowed a deep plum.

  “We’re in another world.” Flick stared around, the truth of the matter starting to feel a bit heavy. She wanted to sit down. “We’re in a whole other world. Just like you said. Where—where are we?”

  “I don’t know if it has a proper name,” Jonathan said. “But I always called it the Crystal Forest.”

  The quartz encrusted on the tree bark seemed to twinkle appreciatively, brightening from peach to pink as he spoke.

  Flick touched a leaf that was the size of a table. “How do we know what time it is? Is it night?”

  “Remember the clocks on the mantelpiece, back at the travel agency? Each one of those corresponds to a different world time. My watch”—Jonathan tapped his wrist—“is permanently set to our own time.” He showed her the watch face and she saw that the second hand was speeding around faster than normal. “Time here moves slower than our own time, so my watch ticks faster. A minute here might be the equivalent of a quarter of an hour back home. It’s essential to keep track of the time at home to avoid going missing for days without realizing.”

  “Are all worlds slower than our own?”

  “Oh, no. Some are the same. A great many are faster.” He gazed around at the leaves reaching out all around them. “What do you think?”

  “It’s beautiful. It’s so…” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. The new world was wrapped around her, welcoming and divine. The heavy air smelled of heat and leaves, like the inside of a greenhouse, and the gentle chatter of birdsong floated through the air. The darkness of the Crystal Forest whispered to her of mystery, of hidden adventure.

  The crystals glimmered again, in a pleased sort of way.

  Flick suddenly burst out laughing. “I’m in another world!” she cried, grabbing hold of the closest tree branch and hugging it. She felt as if she might burst from the sheer joy of it. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this happy. Flick squeezed the branch again, before letting go and looking up at the umbrella of leaves hiding the sky. “It’s really real!”

  “As real as anything else,” Jonathan said. “Now, before we go anywhere, I have to show you something important.” He knelt down in front of the case. “Reach with me.”

  Flick did as she was told, feeling into the nothingness in the case. And then, she felt something smooth and wooden. “Is that the floorboards of the agency?” she asked. The sensation of touching her own world through another was utterly bizarre.

  “Yes. Now, come back this way.…” Jonathan’s hand touched her own, pushed her fingers back, guiding her over to—

  “The suitcase handle?” Flick frowned. “But how can the handle be—”

  “Grab it. And pull. Now!”

  She did so, gripping onto the handle, Jonathan’s hand next to her own.

  Their hands drew back into the Crystal Forest world, the suitcase handle still grasped tight. The case turned inside out, yet somehow right way around at the same time, as it was dragged into the crystal world with a SNAP. The catches closed, and the two of them stood, smiling in a dazed sort of way, holding the suitcase they had stepped into.

  “See?” Jonathan beamed. “Easy as that.”

  “And… that’s the case we just went into?” Flick frowned, letting go.

  “Yes. And we’ll go through it to get back.” Jonathan adjusted his grip. “Think of the suitcase as a hallway between two doors. By pulling the suitcase through after us, we’ve closed one of the doors. Now no one can follow us, see?”

  Flick’s brain was trying so hard to keep up it was making her go cross-eyed. “So we could have left it in Strangeworlds?”

  “Correct. But, when I travel, I don’t like my suitcase to be in two places at once, so I try to remember to pull it through with me. I like the security.”

  “But how can it be here, if this world was inside it? And now our world is inside it?” She blinked. “What happens if someone sits on it?” Flick’s train of logic had derailed several minutes ago.

  Jonathan rolled his eyes. “Honestly, Felicity. If you want sense, you’ve come to the wrong place. Now, take this.” He handed her the magnifying glass that she had looked through on her first visit to the agency.

  “Lift it.”

  Flick turned the little instrument over in her fingers. It felt so comfortable in her grip. She held it up to her eye.

  The dark world of crystal exploded into a kaleidoscope of drifting color. Each stick of quartz shone brilliantly, rainbows dancing from every facet. The dark trees looked bolder; brightness poured from the enormous leaves of the trees like liquid light and the world dripped with color.

  “It’s gorgeous,” she whispered. She looked up at the canopy of branches, the joy of seeing magic pouring through the air making her smile
wide. “Can you see this?”

  “I could, if I used that instrument. That magnifying glass is made using these crystals,” Jonathan said. “It reacts to them. It’s like coming home.…” He put his hands in his pockets. “This is an intensely magical place.”

  Flick squinted through the lens. “I can see something else.…”

  Among the tree branches, too far to reach, but close enough to see, was a shimmering line in the air. It was about the length of Flick’s forearm, and thin as the edge of a knife-blade, but it glittered and shone so invitingly it was all she could do to keep her feet still on the branch.

  Jonathan followed her gaze. “What can you see?”

  “I don’t know.” She turned to Jonathan. “It looks like the crack I saw in the street, outside the travel agency.”

  “It’s a schism,” Jonathan said.

  Flick remembered what she had read in the Study of Particulars. “And schisms are… gateways to other worlds?”

  “Schisms are what are contained within each of the Strangeworlds suitcases. Wounds in the skin of the multiverse. They are places where the boundaries between the worlds are thin.”

  She lowered the magnifying glass. “Thin enough to step through?”

  “Certainly not.” Jonathan’s expression changed, and he instantly looked ferocious. “You cannot use a schism to travel between worlds unless it is contained within a suitcase. It is absolutely beyond forbidden. For your own safety. It would almost certainly kill you, if you tried.”

  Flick almost dropped the magnifying glass as undiluted fear shot through her veins. She stepped backward, away from the schism she had seen and bumped hard into a thick branch behind her. “Kill me? Why? How?”

  Jonathan sighed. “Like I said, schisms are wounds,” he explained. “Wounds where worlds have collided. A cut in the skin of our reality. For a cut on your skin to heal, it bleeds and clots. Schisms heal in a similar way. They do so slowly, taking small bits of magical energy from the surrounding worlds over time to clot and close up gradually. Left alone, they are harmless.”