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I stepped sideways into the world, Jamie right on my heels, and I could feel immediately that we wouldn’t be here long. Maybe not even an hour, the Bounds were calling fiercely already, somewhere off to my left and…up, which was new.
The land was sort of a heathery moor, dark and damp and wisps of fog lingering around the craggy hills I could just see off in the distance. I didn’t like that at all; I really am better suited to the hotter worlds. I like sand. I don’t mind mud too much. It’s that horrible boggy stuff, that disappears under your feet when you least expect it and plunges you into some disgusting tepid water, that really annoys me. This didn’t look precisely like that, but it didn’t look entirely unlike that either.
“I don’t like this one,” Jamie complained. “It feels strange.”
Jamie never liked anything. “Strange how?”
“It’s like there’s Boundaries everywhere,” he said, “three or four of them, all tangled up in each other. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”
Now that he’d mentioned it, there was definitely something a bit messier than usual about the Boundaries. I’d never felt anything like it before either. It was not exactly pleasant.
“Come on,” I said, “let’s get moving. We won’t be here long, and that’s perfectly fine by me.” I turned, following the pull, and there it was. It was an enormous rickety tower, whipping back and forth in the wind, and there was a flight of thin stairs winding up and around the outside, looking dangerously narrow and not even attached to the walls particularly well.
And the Boundary was at the top of it.
“I don’t want to climb that,” Jamie said immediately.
I wasn’t particularly keen on climbing it either, but I didn’t want him to know that, so I just tossed my hair and stepped forwards, toward the building.
And that’s when the truly odd thing happened. It just… shifted. The wooden tower was suddenly a sprawling mansion, a bit derelict but not nearly as ramshackle as the other place, with a stone tower attached to the back, enormous and stately, and the desolate moors were now a wide stretch of somewhat overgrown but beautiful gardens.
This was not part of the natural laws. This was not something they’d ever mentioned at the House of Uquar.
“Was that the Bounds?” Jamie said, and he looked as confused as I felt. “It didn’t feel like the Bounds, but it didn’t feel not like the Bounds either.”
“I don’t know,” I said, because Jamie might pretend he’s an expert in everything but I’m not too proud to admit when something is beyond me. “It wasn’t Them though, right? We would know if it was Them .”
And that was when two boys came pelting out of the mansions front door, trampling a rose bush in their haste. They were both fairly thin, with dark hair, dressed in the silliest outfits I’d seen in at least a dozen worlds. They had on yellow and brown striped stockings, with a matching striped waistcoat and velvet breeches and shiny buckled shoes. They looked quite fancy, though they were covered in cobwebs and the stockings were all torn.
“Oh, hello,” said the taller one, panting. “Have you seen a girl? She’s called Millie.”
Jamie blinked. “I’ve seen her,” he said, stupidly, because he is so stupid, and pointed at me.
“He doesn’t mean me,” I hissed, and at the same time he said, “No, not her.”
“Though,” he added, looking me up and down, “she does look a little like you, I suppose. Though her hair is lighter. And she’s not as tall. And she pulls her hair back like normal, I suppose. Why are you hiding your face like that?”
I refused to dignify that with a response. “No other girls,” I said, and shook my hair even more thoroughly over my face. I hate when people are nosy, and I could just tell that this boy was as nosy as they come.
“I’m Conrad,” said the smaller boy, “and that’s Christopher.”
“Do you know why the tower just changed like that?” Jamie asked. “I’ve never seen anything like that before, and I’ve seen a lot of things.”
“No clue,” Christopher said cheerfully. “Did you come from the Stallery grounds?”
“No,” I said, “we’re Bounders.”
“Really?” Christopher asked, sounding keen, and then the mansion jerked again, becoming a little more derelict and a little less stately, and Conrad frowned.
“We ought to get back,” he said. “Millie’s probably even farther away now that it changed again, and it’s almost time for dinner service anyway.”
“Oh, yes, all right,” Christopher sighed. “I do hope I see you both again, you seem quite interesting,” and then the pair of them headed back inside.
I looked at Jamie. “Should we follow them?” The Boundary was becoming even more insistent.
“Let’s give them a bit of a head start,” he said, “I don’t want them asking any more questions.”
I didn’t either, so we sat down in the grass and waited. Jamie laid down and nearly went to sleep right there, while I started looking through the rose bushes. I’d found three earthworms, two spiders, and a millipede by the time a girl came sprinting outside, breathing as heavily as Christopher had been.
“Oh, hello,” Jamie said, sitting up again. “Are you Millie?”
The girl frowned, startled. “Yes,” she said. “How do you know that?”
“Your friends were just here a minute ago, looking for you,” I said. “Christopher and…someone else.”
“Oh no, ” she wailed, “I’ve missed them a gain ! How can this be happening to me? I used to be a goddess and now I’m just trapped, it’s horrible!”
“Oh, interesting,” Jamie said, “Helen used to be a goddess, too.”
I glared at him.
“Really?” Millie asked, distracted from her plight. “Are you an enchantress, too?”
“No,” I said, “I just have a gift,” and I showed her. I made my arm go long and thin and green like a snake, and curled it around one of the bushes, picking a half-open white rose and tossing it to her.
“Oh!” Millie gasped. “That’s much better than me, though I don’t know if it’ll help me find Christopher.”
“It won’t,” I said bluntly, “but I can tell you where he went. Right back inside.”
“I hate this place,” Millie said sadly, and turned around to trudge back inside. “Wish me luck!”
“We’ll come with you,” Jamie said, trying to sound magnanimous, but I could feel the Bounds and it was getting impossible to ignore. It wasn’t about being helpful; we simply had to get moving.
The mansion was full of rooms, all filled with dust and furniture with sheets over top, and I could almost feel a presence in there with us, watching. I didn’t like it at all.
“We need to go up the stairs,” I said, pointing through a huge archway that seemed to lead into the stately tower.
“Christopher probably went that way, too,” Millie said.
The stairs were wide and stone and sweeping and I quite liked them. The walls had interesting flecks of gold on them and something about it almost reminded me of the House of Uquar. I was so busy looking at the carvings that I didn’t even notice Millie was gone until Jamie started calling for her.
“Millie!” he yelled. “Where are you? What happened?” But his voice just echoed with no answer, and then we were at the top of the stairs and stepping into the Boundary and the strange, tangled world was safely behind us.
Of course, the next world was no better. It was raining .