“None of it is from the Other Place? It’s not magic?”
Yes, it’s all magic, he wanted to say. All accidents are magic. The fact that you showed up here, the fact that it’s me you met and not one of the others who were sent here . . . “Your world is breaking apart. Like ours has been doing. It’s going to get worse. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. We didn’t think it would be right to make you sever the connection between our worlds . . .”
She unfolded her arms to study the scepter in her hand.
“Look, the story I told you—it was as fair as I could tell it,” Dylan went on. “I said you would be giving up your life if you did this.”
She fumbled to turn off the device but couldn’t figure it out. Her hands were shaking too much to find the right pressure points.
“It’s only fair.” Dylan heard his voice coming out garbled and strained. He took a few steps back from the scarred rock face, as if that would help. “Your planet is going to pieces. You’ve bombed the whole place. Even if our worlds weren’t stuck together the way they are, it’s doubtful you could ever build everything back up. The ice caps aren’t coming back, even though we’ve taken so much of your solar energy. Do you understand any of what I’m saying?” None of this was coming out right. “You let everything get so bad that there’s no turning things around.”
She finally found the right points; the blue light went out.
“Our worlds have to be separated or they’ll smash each other apart,” Dylan said.
Quinn said what he couldn’t.
“And only one will survive.”
Quinn’s skin went cold even as the heat of the late-morning sun pounded the top of her head.
“You don’t have to do this,” Dylan said. “I told you we wouldn’t make you.”
Quinn’s grip on the scepter slackened. Dylan lurched forward and caught it. He retreated with it back to the far side of the crevice, away from the wound in the rock wall behind her.
“So that’s the decision I have to make?” Quinn said, her mouth dry. “If I save the Other Place, my own world dies?”
“But do you see? That’s not even the decision. Your world is going to die anyway. It’s a world beyond repair.”
Quinn tried to understand what he was saying. A world beyond repair. The great crevices, the Ruined City, the food shortages, the animals growing scarce, the summer fires in the unbearable heat . . . But that was what the sanctuaries were for, to help them in their need.
Except—the sanctuaries were really another sign that her world was broken.
“What will happen to my world if no one cuts it away from yours?” Quinn asked.
“The same thing that’s happening now. Your world will continue to die. Time will go to pieces. Perhaps something more. If you sever the connection, the same will happen, only much, much quicker. At least, as far as anyone can guess.”
Quinn’s stomach turned. Her legs buckled in the heat and then Dylan was at her side. He guided her to a shaded spot where a sapling grew out from a deep crack in the rock wall. Quinn lay back against the slope of rocks and grasses, heat pounding in her head.
“I shouldn’t have told you all that,” Dylan said. “I was only supposed to tell you the story. It was supposed to be a lot easier.” He gave her a glum look of apology.
She glanced away. “Do you know about the Transporting Sanctuary?” she asked weakly.
“I told you the sanctuaries—”
“I know. But is it true that there’s a way we could get into the Other Place? Into your world?”
“You mean like an evacuation?” He chewed his lip. “We’ve thought about that. A long time ago a lot of your people came into our world. We tried to make a place where they could live. But it doesn’t work. Our atoms hold together more loosely than yours do. Your people can only stay for so long. And when we come here to your world—it’s like holding our breath. It’s like trying to live underwater. Neither of us is made to live in the other’s universe.”
Quinn heard him through a long tunnel. She thought she might be losing consciousness. For a moment she had the sensation of swimming in dark water, as though through an underwater cave. She imagined herself surfacing on the far end, breaking into sunlight like the Water Nymph. Finding herself in another world. Dylan’s world.
His voice brought her back. “We’ve tried to work this out for over a century. We’ve tried to find some other solution.” His tone dipped low. “Our worlds are foreign to each other. They weren’t ever meant to meet.”
A hot spike of anger went through Quinn’s chest. She lifted herself, weak as she was. “That’s wrong. You’re wrong. The Other Place is all I’ve loved ever since I was young. I saw the Water Nymph, I don’t care what you say about the avatars. She came to me, only me. She knew I had a Special Work.”
Dylan didn’t say anything. His eyes were round and startled.
“The real Dylan wouldn’t say those things,” Quinn said. “He was glad our worlds came together.”