“Mom!” Tick yelled. “What are you doing?”
“Atticus, don’t leave yet!” she said, looking ridiculous as her arms pumped back and forth. Tick realized that he’d never, not once, seen his mother run before.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, lowering his voice now that she’d almost reached them, only twenty feet away.
“I have to tell you something-I have to tell you before you go.” She slowed, then stopped, sucking in air. “It’s very important.”
Tick was so relieved she wasn’t going to prevent him from leaving, he failed to realize how odd it was that she’d raced here to tell him
… what?
“You okay?” he asked. “What is it?”
Having regained her breath, she began talking. “I should’ve told you this years ago-at the least, I should’ve told you four months ago. I-”
But Tick didn’t hear the rest of her sentence. Instead, in that instant, he and his friends were winked away to a very strange place.
Chapter 10
Tick got his wish in one regard-the place was cold. Beyond that, he couldn’t find one positive thing about it.
They stood on a cracked stone road, small pools of stagnant water filling the gaps. The smoggy air reeked of things burnt-oil, rubber, tar. Metal structures lined the long street on both sides, towering over them, black and dirty. Tick first thought they were buildings of some kind, but that notion quickly evaporated. They were more like sculptures, the dark and twisted vision of some maniac artist.
“Man,” Paul whispered, “it’s like Gotham City.”
In some spots, wide, arching pieces rose fifty feet in the air, ending in a jagged, ripped edge as if some enormous monster had ripped the top off with its teeth. In other places, huge, towering cylinders-some taller than New York City skyscrapers-ascended to the sky until they disappeared into the menacing, storm-heavy clouds. Squat, deformed lumps sat in the nooks and crannies, like weathered statues of ancient Greek gods. Hideous carvings of animals, worse than the ugliest gargoyle Tick had ever seen balancing on the outer walls of a cathedral, lay strewn about like stray dogs, frozen in place by a rainstorm of molten metal. Random triangles and pentagons hung oddly from various structures, seeming to defy the laws of physics.
All of it, everything in sight, was made out of a dark gray metal that dully reflected the scant light filtering through the clouds above. And there was no variation-the bizarre structures and sculptures lay everywhere, in every direction, as far as Tick could see.
One word seemed to describe the place better than anything else: dreary.
“Where are we?” Sofia asked, slowly turning in a circle, just as Tick and Paul were.
Good question, Tick thought. He didn’t know if he was looking forward to any locals showing up to answer it.
“What kind of people would live here?” he asked, trying to shake the worry of his mom and her undelivered message.
“People who like to gouge their eyes out, obviously,” Paul said. “This has to be the ugliest place I’ve ever seen.”
“They ever heard of flowers?” Sofia said. “Maybe a splash of color here and there?”
“Do you think we’re in one of the Thirteen Realities?” Tick asked. “One we haven’t heard of yet?”
“Where else could we be?” Paul answered. “Does this look like something in Reality Prime to you?”
“I don’t know-maybe these are ruins or something.”
Paul coughed. “Uh… don’t think so, big guy. Pretty sure we would’ve heard about a place this weird.”
“What could’ve led to something like this?” Sofia asked, sliding her hand along the flat side of a large, boxy structure, big spheres bubbling out the side of it like pimples. “How could they be so different from us?”
Tick stepped toward one of the cylindrical towers, following Sofia’s lead and touching the black metal. It was as cold and hard as it looked.
A faint buzzing sound filled the air. At first, Tick panicked because it reminded him of the Gnat Rat and its mechanical hornets that had attacked him in his bedroom the previous fall. But an instant after the droning began, a burst of light to the left caught his attention.
Near a large circle of metal, jutting up from the ground like a half-buried flying saucer, sparks of brilliant white light popped and flashed, igniting into existence only to disappear a second later, like the brief flames shooting off a welder. The sparks seemed random at first, exploding all over the place, high and low in the air, across an area dozens of feet wide, reflecting off the metal circle in dull smears of color. But then the strangest thing happened.
The sparks began to form words.
Tick thought his mind was playing tricks, the constant flashing of lights wreaking havoc on his vision. But soon it became obvious as large letters of bright, streaky light appeared, hanging in the air, flashing and dancing but remaining solid enough to read. In a matter of seconds, a wall of words flickered before them, as big as a movie screen.
Tick swallowed his awe and confusion, reading the words as quickly as possible, scared they might disappear at any second:
Inside the words of the words inside,
There lies a secret to unhide.
A place there is where you must go,
To meet the Seven, friend or foe.
Of course, an order there must be,
To hill and rock and stone and tree.
Of worlds above and worlds below,
Of worlds with water, fire, snow.
Of worlds that live in fear and doubt,
Of worlds within and worlds without.
The Path begins where dark is clear,
Where short is tall and far is near.
All this you must ignore and hate,
For you to find the wanted fate.
There lies a secret to unhide,
Inside the words of the words inside.
Tick read it three times, his eyes wide. He had no clue what the words meant, but they mesmerized him, held him captivated. He felt just like when he’d first read the original invitation from Master George.
Master George!
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Tick said, surprised at how loud his voice sounded, echoing off the world of metal around them. He looked over at his friends.
“What?” Paul asked without returning the glance. He still stared at the poem, which shimmered as brightly as ever, his lips forming the strange words silently. Sofia was doing the same thing a couple feet from him.
Tick returned to the poem, quickly rereading it. “I can’t believe Master George is messing around with riddles and clues again. I thought we’d proved ourselves already.”
“How do you know it’s from Master George?” Paul asked.
“Hmmm,” Sofia said. “Maybe because he told us to go to the cemetery then winked us here? I know it’s a little complicated for-”
A loud, electric crack cut her off, followed by a series of hissing sizzles. The letters of the poem quickly sparkled and flashed before disappearing altogether, the wispy, streaming trails of smoke the only sign they’d ever been there. Without any wind, the smoke lingered, slowly coalescing and melding into one hazy glob.
Just when everything seemed utterly silent, another loud crack of electricity made Tick jump, one last explosion of light igniting on the ground a few feet in front of Sofia. It was gone as quickly as it had come, and in its place stood a small metal box, a tiny latch on the front.
Paul got there first, dropping to his knees and reaching out for the box.
“Wait!” Sofia said.
Paul’s hands froze in midair; he looked over his shoulder. “Why? This is obviously from Master George, right? You just said I was an idiot for doubting it.”
“Well… yeah, I guess. Just… I don’t know, be careful.”
“Open it,” Tick urged. “We’re lucky he didn’t wink it into one of our skulls.”
Paul reached out again and flipped up the latch, then carefully lifted the lid open. He leaned forward and looked down into the small space of the container; Tick and Sofia stood behind him, looking over his shoulder.