Miss the beginning? Click here to go to Chapter 1!

5

Vasco started walking again, Magellan beside him, nails clicking along the white crystal floor.

I hustled to catch up. I felt a chill, but I didn’t think it was the cavern. Huge as it was, it seemed warm enough. I didn’t even feel a draft, and I’d always figured anyplace this big had to be drafty.

Maybe it was nerves?

Just as I caught up to Vasco and Magellan, I saw where they were leading me. Stairs had been cut into the floor and the sides of the level below us.

In fact, now that I could get a little perspective, closer to the inner edge, it looked to me as though there were stairways down every place the color changed from one shade to the next.

The stairs even had handrails, cut out of the crystal walls of the stairwell, which were the same shade as the place they’d been cut in. In this case, between deep red and deep orange.

The smell of the air changed as we descended. No longer roses, but orange blossoms. The sound of the Mozart faded away too, and apart from our own passage down the stairs, the main thing I could hear was the echoes of some kind of argument from somewhere down below.

Magellan barked a complex nine-yip sequence, punctuated with a deeper woof.

“Probably why the place is so empty today,” Vasco muttered, and I wasn’t sure I was supposed to hear him.

“Why?” I asked.

“Oh, we’ll get to that,” he said, giving me a smile again. “We have so much more to cover before we reach the center of things.”

“Great,” I said, relief flooding my system. “Answers at last.”

“Well,” Vasco said as his smile veered toward mischief. “Let’s be honest. They’ll probably just lead to more questions. But that’s good. The only time the questions really end is in death.”

Magellan yipped something that sounded bureaucratic.

I know. But I swear that’s how it sounded.

Vasco chuckled. “Magellan said that, before death, questions are the only thing more certain than taxes.”

We were walking across the first level down now, and I saw that my guess was right. The direction of the wall colors reversed itself, compared to the pattern established above. Otherwise, this level seemed to be empty, apart from solid-looking, black metal doors set into the crystal walls every so often. I was pretty sure the doors were set in the center of each pattern.

“Let’s start with Portal-land,” Vasco said, distracting me from those doors. “Throughout the world, there are places where reality runs a bit … thin.”

“Thin,” I said, tone flat.

“Think of our universe as a … a leather ball. Now imagine that there are spots where the leather wears thing. Perhaps because of us on this side, or others on the other side, or possibly just through the passage of time.”

“Or maybe design flaws?” I asked.

Magellan barked.

“He agrees with you, of course. I myself do not consider them flaws, but features. Then again, I also don’t think the universe was designed, per se. Perhaps over time, you will come to see things my way.”

“All right, so a portal is one of these spots where reality is thin?”

“Don’t get ahead,” Vasco said, shaking a finger at me, “or this will take all day.”

I nodded, chastened.

“Now, these spots where reality is thin, some of them actually wear through. Those are naturally occurring portals. They’re present twenty-four-seven. Sometimes they’re unidirectional, sometimes they’re bidirectional, but they’re always open.”

Magellan barked something that sounded argumentative.

“He’s right, of course,” Vasco said, nodding at Magellan. “Some of them do get closed and locked, but only by actions taken on this side or the other. And even then,” — Vasco turned slightly to address the rest of this to his attentive beagle — “those seals and locks are tenuous at best. Very difficult to keep closed that which nature wishes open. Like trying to hold back the tides.”

I drew breath to ask a question, but Vasco turned to me with one gray eyebrow high and I let my mouth closed.

He nodded. His wild hair bounced.

“Most countries have one or two of these natural portals. Usually somewhere out of the way, because most people naturally turn away from such things.”

“The otter,” I said. I couldn’t help myself.

“Very good,” Vasco said, nodding appreciatively while Magellan barked agreement. “You’re right. Everyone near you heard that cry for help. But because it came from nonhuman lips, most humans selectively ignored it, the way they selectively ignore the sounds of planes flying overhead, or the casual rush of a breeze.”

“But why did I hear it?”

“That is the key, isn’t it?” Vasco chuckled again, as it seemed he had to every time he heard the word key. “You heard it and acknowledged that you heard it. You even responded. Put yourself at risk where another would have seen something too fantastical to believe. Closed his mind to what his eyes were showing him.”

“But you had to have heard the otter.” I frowned.

“I did. It woke me up.” Vasco ducked his head, a bit chagrined himself for a change. “I was in deep sleep. I don’t quite rouse as fast as I used to. By the time I reached the area, you had already handled the matter. And, alas, my arrival was … not quite so timely as I might have wished. I was too late to spare you falling into the Willamette.”

“So why did I hear the otter?”

“That’s not for me to say,” Vasco said. “To return to the subject.”

I gnashed my teeth then, but I didn’t interrupt as we crossed another, lower level, accompanied by the smell of sunflowers. This level had furniture here and there. All of it crystal, done in jewel tones, and looked to be set up for meeting areas and relaxation areas.

Again the color pattern of the walls reversed itself on this level, and the next set of stairs down awaited us at the junction between yellow and green. Pale shades, each.

And still those iron doors set into the walls, in the center of each color.

“Some places,” Vasco continued. “Have several natural portals. The British Isles. Iceland. Egypt. India.”

Magellan barked.

“You’re right,” Vasco said, “he doesn’t need a full list here and now. The point is, portals occur more in some places than in others. No one can say exactly why. Here in the United States, Boston has a few nearby, as do Rhode Island, New Orleans, and a few other cities.”

“Portland?” I prompted.

“Yes, well.” Vasco gave me a proud smile. “Portland is the only city founded here because of its portals.”

“But I thought—”

“Yes,” Vasco said, cutting me off. “I know all about the common history of the area. Francis Pettygrove and Asa Lovejoy supposedly flipping a coin over who got to name the growing township after his hometown.” Vasco shook his head. “Nonsense. Pettygrove’s wife Sophia was the real power player there. And she was also a witch, who recognized the true potential of the region with the most natural portals in the western hemisphere.”

“Sophia Pettygrove was a witch?”

“Still is. Or was, the last time I saw her,” Vasco said with a smile. “And she made sure historians got the story of that “hometown” nonsense to cover the truth. This was the Land of Portals. Portal-land. Or Portland, for short.”

Magellan barked something that sounded like a joke I couldn’t quite hear…

“Yes,” Vasco said, chuckling. He frowned at me. “The jest doesn’t translate well, I’m afraid. Dog humor is tied up in smells, and the closest I can come to giving you the spirit of what he just said is this.”

Vasco cleared his throat.

“Calling it Portal-land on a map would smell like a kitchen where the fish get cleaned.”

My turn to frown. I barely took in the change of furniture on the next level or the scent of fir trees as we continued to the next stairwell.

Magellan barked a correction. The smell of fish. The side effects.

“I’m trying,” Vasco said. “It’s kind of a way of saying that it would draw—”

Suddenly I got it. The barks I heard made sense to me. I’m not sure I can explain it in English any better than I did right then, but my impression burst out of me.

“It would draw every cat in the neighborhood, and make things hard on the dogs protecting the place.”

It’s not actually an anti-cat joke. Not the way Magellan told it, anyway. It was just about … too much to handle.

I was chuckling anyway, while Magellan barked happily and Vasco nodded sagely.

“So,” Vasco asked as we crossed the next floor, accompanied by the scent of bluebells. “Do you always understand Doggerel?”

I stopped walking and blinked at Vasco.

“There’s no official name for the language of dogs,” he said, looking back at me but still walking, “and if you have a better term for it, I’d like to hear it.”

I hustled to catch up.

“Doggerel it is,” I said. “And not that I know of. I’ve lived around cats most of my life. Always had a good rapport with them though.”

Magellan barked something that sounded forgiving, though Vasco didn’t translate it.

“Anyway,” Vasco said as we descended the next staircase. “Sophia Pettygrove believed that the influx of settlers to the region would inevitably cause issues with the portals, either through accidental stumbling or … malicious intent on the part of some of those who could recognize them for what they were.”

“What about the natives?” I asked.

Vasco gave me another nod of approval while Magellan barked something similar. We were crossing another level down now, where the scent was one I didn’t recognize. Subtle and sweet and herbal.

“The Multnomah were the major tribe in the area,” Vasco said, “but they mostly avoided the portals the way most people do throughout the world.”

“Mostly?”

“Just so. Those who felt drawn to the portals formed their own small tribe. The Kenocha.” Vasco frowned. “We see them from time to time. Largely, though, they travel the portals and live among many different lands.”

I thought about that for a few steps, and realized I could pick out some of the actual words of the argument below us, though the echoes of the huge crystal cavern.

“I don’t care what he told you, we’re not doing things that way.”

Sure, that sounded like a young woman. But the otter had sounded like a young woman too. Maybe my mind just translated things that way?

I was ready to believe that about myself, so I tried not to draw conclusions about who was having that argument.

I do know that whoever she was arguing with had a high, squeaky voice. And that person wasn’t speaking anything like English. Its words came out some kind of scree-ing hissing sound.

Then we reached the last staircase. And I knew it was the last staircase because I could see a whole floor ahead of me. Softly glowing white crystal just like every other floor.

Finally, some furniture that wasn’t crystal.

In the center, a gigantic round table made from some dark, dark wood. This thing was huge. Way too big to be practical. Had to be a good hundred feet across.

Surrounding the table were scores of executive roller chairs and … well, other things to sit on? In? Perching bars, fish tanks, and a weird variety of other options that didn’t all make sense at once.

Off to the sides, away from the round table, were more of the styles of crystal furniture I’d seen above. Comfortable sitting areas around what looked like raised fire pits.

And there, to our left, the argument.

A girl in a wheelchair. On the heavy side. Teenager, from the look of her. Dark wavy hair made her skin look even paler than it might have on its own. Big black-rimmed glasses.

She was leaning forward and shoving a finger in the face of the…

“What the fuck?”

What can I say? The words leapt out of my mouth before I could think.

Up above, I’d mentioned all those flying bats? Yellow fur, black wings, all that?

Well, she was arguing with one of those bats. Except that this one was standing on its back legs. And it stood at least eight feet tall.

My cry of surprise interrupted the argument. The girl and the giant bat both turned to check out the interlopers.

“That’s him!” the giant bat screeched, pointing with a long, long wing. “That’s the one!”

“Now calm down,” the girl said.

“No!” the bat screeched. “He must die!”

---

Remember, come back the day after tomorrow for the next chapter. In the meantime, if you’d like to read the whole thing right now, you can get the whole story by clicking either of these…

Or, if you’d just like to show your appreciation, you’re free to drop something in the tip jar.