“As if that is a bad thing.” Grimalkin sniffed and turned away, waving his tail. “And yet, who is on the correct side of the door? Come, prince.” He twitched an ear at me. “We did not come all this way to be stopped at the finish line. The dog has made his choice. Let us move on.”
I gave the Wolf one last glance. “I’ll be back,” I told him. “Try to hang on. When I’m done with this, I’m coming back for you.” He snorted. Whether it was because he didn’t believe me, or because it took too much strength to talk, I didn’t know. But I turned my back on him and walked the final few paces out of the temple.
Grimalkin was sitting at the end of the hall, silhouetted beneath a stone archway, his tail curled primly around himself. Beyond him, I could see a black sky littered with stars. But they were huge, glowing things, almost blinding, as if we were far closer than we had been in the Nevernever. I heard the roar of water as I approached Grimalkin, 235/387
and heard Puck’s slow exhale as we joined the cat at the end of the hal
.
The vast emptiness of space stretched before us, endless and eternal.
Stars and constel ations glimmered above and below, from tiny pinpricks of light to huge pulsing giants so bright it hurt to look at them.
Comets streaked through the night sky, and in the distance, I could see the gaping maw of a black hole sucking in the surrounding galaxy, billions of miles away. Huge chunks of rock and land f loated, weightless, in empty space. I saw a cottage perched on a boulder, spinning endlessly through space, and a massive tree grew from a tiny plot of grass, its roots dangling through the bottom. Beyond a stream of jagged rocks, past a treacherous-looking rope bridge over nothing, an enormous castle f loated among the stars.
Below our feet, the River of Dreams f lowed from beneath the hall and roared over the edge into empty space, falling into the void until we couldn’t see it anymore.
I drew in a deep, slow breath, feeling my companions’ amazement match my own.
We had reached the End of the World.
PART THREE
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE TESTING GROUNDS
Ariel a found the stairs. We made our way down the narrow, crumbling path to the bottom of the cliff, gazing out into the void. A rock f loated past my face; I tapped it and sent it spinning away into space.
“The end of the Nevernever,” Ariel a mused, her silver hair f loating around her like a bright cloud. She sounded sad again, and I wanted to comfort her, but restrained myself. “How many have been here, I wonder? How many have seen what we’re seeing?”
“How many have dropped off the edge and are drifting through space right now?” Puck added, peering over the end of the cliff while hanging on to a sickly tree trunk growing from the rocks. “I keep expecting a skeleton to f loat by. Or maybe they just keep falling forever?”
“Let’s not find out,” I said, turning to the castle, feeling it beckon me like a distant siren call. “The Testing Grounds are our goal—we’re going to reach it without anyone falling off the edge of the world or drifting through space. Watch out for each other, and be careful.”
“Hey, don’t worry about me, ice-boy. Gravity isn’t so much of a problem when you’re a bird.” Puck glanced at me and sighed in mock ag-gravation. “Someday, I have got to teach you people how to f ly.” A river of f loating rocks stood between us and the castle. Grimalkin strode up to one and looked back at us, twitching his tail.
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“I will meet you at the castle,” he stated, and hopped lightly onto one of the rocks. It spun lazily, easily holding the cat’s weight. Grimalkin blinked at us as the rock drifted away. “I trust you can make it to our destination without me for once,” he said, and headed for the castle, leaping from rock to rock with the inborn grace of a cat.
“You know, sometimes I just hate him,” Puck grumbled. I stepped onto one of the rocks, bracing myself as it tilted slightly, but it appeared to hold my weight well enough. “Come on,” I said, holding out a hand for Ariel a. She took it, and I pulled her up beside me, though she didn’t meet my eyes.
“We’re almost there.”
We picked our way over the treacherous terrain, leaping from rock to rock, trying not to look down. I glanced back once and saw the door of the temple jutting from the face of a cliff, and that cliff sprang from a wall of briars, stretching away to either side, farther than I could see. It emphasized the vast infinity of this part of the world and made me feel very small.
“I wonder if anything lives out here,” Puck mused as we crossed a shattered stone bridge, twirling aimlessly through space. “I thought the End of the World was supposed to be filled with monsters and here there be dragons and things like that. I don’t see any…oh.” I knew by the tone of his voice that I wasn’t going to like what I saw next. “Don’t tell me.” I sighed without turning around. “There’s some sort of huge monster out there, and now it’s coming toward us.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you.” Puck sounded faintly breathless. “And, uh, you probably don’t want to look down, either.” I peered over the side of the bridge.