Matt eased the door to his house open, blood pounding in his head. He still could hardly believe any of what he had seen, much less the fact that he had agreed to go with Rachel. All he knew was that he would find Jason. He would find him, and then he would know what to do. Jason would know. Somehow, he always did.

  “Matt?” a slurred voice groaned from the kitchen. “That you?”

  Matt bit down a curse. “Hey, Dad. Home early?”

  “Mm.” Dad lumbered out of the kitchen and offered Matt a teetering hug, to which Matt obliged. “Slow day.”

  Matt nodded, trying and failing to extricate himself from the hug. “I gotta meet some friends at Jackie’s soon. You need anything before I go?”

  Dad’s grip began to tighten. “Yeah, I need somethin’.”

  “Hey- ow.” Matt tried to push himself away, but it was of no use. Dad brought his mouth towards Matt’s left ear, reeking of stale beer and sweat.

  “You think you’re a funny guy, huh?” Dad growled. “You’re hilarious. You’re a- a comedian.”

  “What are you talking about?” Matt squirmed and thrashed to no avail, feeling the heat of Dad’s credit card all the way from his room down the hallway.

  He could hold on. This would pass.

  “Deadbeat kid,” he slurred. “You stole my goddamn card.”

  Matt shook his head vehemently. “I didn’t steal anything! Let me go!”

  Dad squeezed even harder for a too-long moment, then abruptly let go, teetering back on his heels but narrowly avoiding a fall. He recovered slowly, taking enough time for Matt to reposition himself between Dad and the door.

  “Sorry, kid,” Dad mumbled. “Dad gets like that sometimes, you know how it is. Find the card for me?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Matt lied through his teeth, stalking down the hallway to his room. With barely-restrained anger, he grabbed his backpack and began stuffing clothes into it - thrifted hiking gear, a beige raincoat, gloves, a beanie, sunscreen for good measure. He turned to Rachel’s bag, which already had the sweater and leggings she had been wearing when they had met, and added a raincoat, hat and gloves. Remembering what Rachel had told him, he snatched two insulated water bottles from his little collection and stuffed one in each bag.

  Lastly would be his hiking boots, which were at the door. He was still wearing his dilapidated sneakers, but thought it would be less conspicuous if he just grabbed the boots on his way out the door. He could always change in his car.

  “Bring me back a six-pack, will ya?” Dad grumbled as Matt hauled the door open. “Least a kid could do.”

  Matt offered no response as he pushed through the screen door. Two full backpacks and hiking boots. That was everything.

  “Matt! Talking to you!” Dad shouted.

  “Sure, Dad,” Matt called back. “On the house.”

  “Good lad.”

  Matt balled his fists as he ran to his car, ducking in reaction to the ever-worsening rain. He threw open the driver’s door and hucked the bags into the passenger footwell, hardly calm enough to care that they might get soiled. The little car purred to life at his behest, and he set off towards the zoo, newfound fervor burning in his chest.

  Anywhere but here. That was where they would go.

  Anywhere but here.

  ? ? ?

  Matt returned to the zoo in his hiking boots, toting his gear past the reception desk as if it were a perfectly natural thing to do. He paused under the eaves, relishing the fleeting break from the storm, but quickly pressed on. The rain smelled sweet, like life and color, like freshness amid a bleak world.

  “We’re closing up,” said an employee, turning to walk on a collision course with Matt.

  Matt sped up. “My friend’s still out there.”

  “We’ve done our rounds. Nobody’s left out there.”

  “Two minutes,” Matt pleaded, holding his palms together. “Please.”

  The employee sighed. “I’ll come with you.”

  Fine, Matt thought. He increased his pace to a jog, heading straight to the hippo tank where, of course, Rachel and Shannon were waiting.

  “Hey, you were right,” the employee conceded. “You two! We’re-”

  Before Matt could think to stop walking, the employee suddenly spun on his heel and jogged away. He scratched his head as he ran, speeding up to escape the rain. Matt grinned at Rachel as he approached, sure that she had somehow worked her magic on the employee.

  “Vista Point is about to have its worst cases of amnesia since Jason came back,” Rachel deadpanned. “Place must be haunted or something.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Shannon rested her hand on Matt’s shoulder. “Are you sure about this?”

  Matt nodded, dropping his bag off of his shoulder and extricating Dad’s credit card from the little back pouch. “Give this to my dad for me. It was kicking around in my car.”

  “It doesn’t have to be like this. You know we’ve offered to take you in.”

  Matt shook his head. “It’s still the same small town. Same people, same heartache, same trauma.”

  “Don’t do this because you’re running away,” Rachel offered.

  Matt shouldered his bag, then tossed Rachel’s backpack to her. “What’s wrong with that?”

  Rachel’s eyes twinkled. “Depends on a lot of factors. You might be trading a mental escape mission for a physical one.”

  “Fine by me.” Matt shrugged. “So long as I get to see Jason again.”

  Rachel smiled. “Then let’s go.”

  Shannon shot Rachel a glance. “You’ll give him the note?”

  Rachel closed her eyes and nodded. “On my life.”

  Shannon nodded and caught Rachel’s cheeks in her hands. “Good luck.”

  Matt put a hand on Shannon’s back, and there they stood for a moment, surrounded by the rain and the wind and all of the things they did not yet know they would miss. Then, Rachel broke the connection and took Matt’s hand, leaning over the hippo tank and whispering in her strange, melodic language.

  Hank, ever the lethargic beast, emerged from the water and yawned as widely as his mouth would go. Rachel stood stock-still for a moment, as did Matt, staring at what could not possibly be a gateway to anything but an early trip to the morgue.

  “You first,” Rachel ordered. “I won’t be able to keep his mouth open from the other side.”

  Matt bit his lip, leaning forward but not at all committing to a fall. Less than two seconds later, just as he was beginning to reconsider, Rachel shoved her hand between his shoulder blades and threw him forward. He screamed in terror, vertigo washing over him as he tumbled towards the gaping maw of the hippo. He braced his head between his arms as he fell through the hippo’s jaws-

  And into a tunnel.

  A slippery, slimy tunnel of flesh, darker than the blackest night, swallowed him whole. He glanced behind him, but all light had faded. He braced his boots against the walls of the tunnel in a vain attempt to slow himself down. He shouted back to Rachel, but no reply came before he abruptly tumbled out of the tunnel, tucking his shoulder too late to avoid a very awkward fall. He recovered quickly, dusting himself off and raising his gaze to the scene around him.

  The tunnel from which he had come was nowhere to be seen. In its place, a mighty tree towered towards the sky, a small gap between its root structure and the ground the only sign that it could possibly have been a passageway between worlds. He crouched down to peer inside, but as he did so, Rachel came sliding through the gap at a terrific pace, bowling into him and sending them both tumbling away from the tree.

  “My fault,” Matt said before Rachel could rub it in. “Where are we?”

  Rachel did not reply. She closed her eyes and took a breath so deep it stole the air from Matt’s own lungs, then let it go. Then, she spoke a brief phrase, and a slight gust of wind wafted past them, shaking the morning dew from the trees around them.

  Somehow, though he didn’t understand what Rachel had said, he could sense the meaning of her words as if they had thrummed through his own skin. They not only commanded the wind to blow, but also for the trees, the water and the air to welcome her home.

  “We’re here,” Rachel said, an effervescent glow brightening her face. “We made it.”

  Matt found himself unable to suppress a smile. “Where, exactly, is here?”

  Rachel’s giddiness only served to fuel his own sense of relief. Even though Rachel had said otherwise, and Shannon had trusted her, a large part of him had fully expected to perish in the jaws of the hippo.

  “Lyrian,” Rachel said simply. “Beyond that, I have no clue. If this is where Jason passed through, we can’t be too far from Fortaim.”

  Matt stepped away from the tree and scanned his surroundings. A wide, lazy river trundled along not too far from where he had emerged from the tree. Sunset had inexplicably turned to midmorning. Dew had begun to steam off of the surrounding trees in the sunlight, but it was still anything but warm. Regret nosed through him at the thought that all of his warm clothes were probably soaking wet.

  Rachel sighed. “”I’m trying to remember how Jason said he got to Fortaim. When we met. I wish he had been a little more descriptive.”

  Matt bit his lip. It did not bode well that they were already hopelessly lost. He continued to explore the immediate vicinity as Rachel tailed him, talking to herself. At the edges of his hearing, he noticed a throaty roar, as if the river was plunging off a precipice not too far downstream.

  “Do you hear a waterfall?” Matt wondered aloud.

  “Hah,” Rachel said triumphantly. “Right. Upstream we go.”

  Matt obliged without speaking, falling into step behind Rachel as she set off upriver. He dropped his bag from his shoulders and fidgeted with the zipper, searching for the fleece sweater he had packed for himself.

  “Don’t bother,” Rachel said over her shoulder. “It won’t be cold for long. You’ll just get sweaty.”

  “I could just take it off again before that happens,” Matt protested.

  Rachel cocked her head. “Walk for another ten minutes, then decide.”

  Matt sighed in defeat and closed his backpack, shouldering it and running a few steps to catch up with Rachel. “You said you know where we are?”

  Rachel laughed. “Not at all. I know more or less where we’re going.”

  Matt supposed that was a start. “And where’s that?”

  “Trensicourt, probably. If I’m right about where we are.”

  “And if you’re wrong?”

  Rachel shrugged. “Then we’ll just keep walking until we find a road.”

  Matt noticed that Rachel had seemed much more agreeable upon her return to Lyrian, and he decided that now would not be the best time to test her good mood, though he wondered how long it might take for them to truly find their bearings. He hoped for his sake that Rachel had spent enough time in Lyrian to recognize a landmark within a few hours.

  He also supposed that the fact that Rachel had not recognized the gigantic river was not a very promising start.

  “Have you traveled much here?” Matt asked stupidly.

  Rachel slowed. “You have no idea.”

  “Have you ever been around here before?”

  Rachel scoffed. “Find me a corner of this world I haven’t seen, and I’ll be overjoyed. I just don’t know whether this river is the Telkron or the Purga.”

  Matt tried not to let on that all these place names were absolutely meaningless to him. “What’s the difference?”

  “One of them leads to where we want to be,” Rachel explained. “The other leads to a whole lot of nothing. I wish I had Jason’s ring.”

  A ring? “You two were- huh?”

  Rachel sighed dramatically. “If you’re thinking we were engaged, I’m going to have to stop you right there.”

  Matt let out a snort, more relieved than anything. “Caught me red-handed.”

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “Shut up and hike, Colorado boy.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Matt argued, but Rachel offered no explanation, skipping ahead and humming to herself. Matt, obedient as ever, shut up and hiked, hoping with every step that it was a step towards seeing his best friend again.