style="font-size:15px;"> Rosemary’s mother scrambled into the living room. She stopped in the doorway and took in the scene with one glance. “Theo! What did you do?”
Theo closed the book and dropped it on the floor.
Mrs. Watson rounded on her husband, who was steps behind. “Get Trisha out of the house, now. Take her out the back way. Don’t let her see this.”
Mr. Watson nodded and strode upstairs.
Mrs. Watson stepped into the room, her hair rumpled, her bathrobe askew, looking from her son to her daughter to that McAllister kid. She waved a hand in front of Theo’s face and then lowered him into a chair. She took Shamus by the collar and hushed him.
At her feet, Theo’s book flipped open with a bang. Mrs. Watson jumped. Then she saw the text streaming down on the page.
Behind her, Mr. Watson bundled Trisha out the back door.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SEA OF INK
“Revenge, of course. Why else?”
— Marjorie Campbell
Rosemary fell or floated, she could not tell which. Her arms flailed, her hair waved into her eyes, but she felt no wind. When she could see enough to look, she could glimpse only white. She had no sense of up or down.
Then she landed on her back on a surface like a soft mattress. It drove the wind from her lungs and sent up a spray of dust-like fog around her. She lay in a daze and felt the little specks fall back on her.
Slowly, the memories came back: folding girls, Theo, Puck, flying through the paper portal with Peter, then free fall. Now she was here. But where was Peter?
She brushed sand from her cheeks and sat up.
She sat in the middle of a small crater shaped like her outline. The sky was as white as a void, the sand was the colour of snow, and the horizon between them was a thin grey line. The air was still and the temperature felt like it didn’t exist. There were no birds. No sound, except for her breath.
She stood up unsteadily, adjusted her glasses, and looked around. She found Peter behind her, spreadeagled and face down in the sand. Rosemary knelt by him and shook his shoulder. “Hey, you okay?”
Peter pushed himself onto his hands and knees and spat sand from his mouth. “I think so.”
She helped him to his feet. He rubbed his forehead. “Thanks.”
“You’re sure you’re all right?”
He took a deep breath. “Yeah.”
“Good.” She slugged him.
He fell over in a spray of dust, then scrambled to his feet. “Hey! Why did you hit me?”
“Because you hit me!” She rubbed her shoulder.
He blinked at her, then snorted, breaking out into a grin. “Sorry.”
Her mouth quirked, but she eyed him sourly. “I told you not to follow me.”
He raised his hands. “What did you want me to do? Stand around while you went in alone?”
“I wasn’t alone,” she snapped. “Puck said —”
“Where is Puck?”
They looked around. They were in the bottom of a bowl of sand so white that, without the sight of each other, they’d have half believed that they’d gone blind.
Their footprints inked the ground like typewriter keys on paper.
“Puck!” Rosemary shouted. Her voice didn’t echo.
“Hi ho!” Puck called, his head popping up above the top of a white dune. “Awake, are we?”
“Where are we?” shouted Peter.
“Come up and see.” And his head disappeared. They heard a rustling.
Rosemary and Peter glanced at each other and shrugged. They scrambled up the sand dune, stuttering to a stop at the top, blinded by their first sight of black.
Before them stretched a white, sandy beach, ending abruptly at a black sea that slapped at the shore in slow, oily waves. Puck was standing at a grove of gnarled black trees, shaking a branch laden with round white fruit the size of basketballs.
Rosemary and Peter glanced at each other and shrugged again. They trudged to the grove, arriving just as Puck pulled one of the fruits free. “Something to play with while we wait,” he said.
“Wait for what?” demanded Rosemary. “Where’s my brother?”
“Across the sea.” Puck turned Rosemary and Peter by the shoulders and placed his head between theirs. He pointed across the black sea to a speck of colour on the horizon. “There, my friends, look there. That is the Land of Fiction.”
“There?” said Rosemary. “How are we going to get over there? You were supposed to bring us there! We’re going to need a boat.”
“We have a boat, wise one,” said Puck. “We must wait for the Ferryman.”
“The Ferryman?” Peter repeated.
Carrying the white fruit, Puck led the two along the beach. A jetty came into view. No boats were in sight.
Puck sighed. “The Ferryman is never here when one needs him.” He flung the white fruit on the ground.
Peter and Rosemary scrambled back, expecting it to splatter. The fruit bounced, changing colour as it hit, swirling like an oil slick on water. The swirls shook as Puck bounced the ball again.
“What is that?” asked Peter.
“An idea — the fruit of an idea tree.” Puck grinned.
“Ideas grow on trees?” said Rosemary.
“Where else would they be?” said Puck. “Tis a shame they are not more common.” He bounced the ball once and twirled it to Peter and Rosemary.
Written in black text on a white stripe were the words, “What if rugs could fly?”
Puck bounced the ball again.
The words now said, “What if we could make time run backwards?”
“Ideas fall from the trees and are blown across this beach,” said Puck, “and into the great black sea that surrounds the Land of Fiction. In time, they build the Land itself.”
Peter reached for the ball. “Let me try!” Puck handed it to him. Peter bounced it.
“What if we could travel at the speed of thought?”
Rosemary stared
