“Unusual how?”
“I fell into a . . . a . . . hole or passageway or something—I’m not sure I want to talk about it.”
“I knew it!” His eyes flared with excitement, and he leaned in. “Josephine, for my entire life I’ve heard stories about passageways, doors, tunnels, whatever you want to call them, that connect different places. They can transport a person to a new land, a new time, or even a different dimension. Legend has it that these tunnels are strongly linked to a person’s subconscious desires. I think that’s what happened to you.”
Josephine felt a flutter of hope, as if she’d been speaking a foreign language all this time and had finally found a translator.
Morgan stood up with the help of his cane, his excitement growing. “I’ve spent fifteen years searching for such a tunnel. As soon as Ned was born, I knew we needed to leave Gulm, but the Brothers have kept us from escaping. Maybe the tunnel you’re describing could take us to safety!”
“But how do you know these tunnels aren’t dangerous? I landed in Gulm, even though I didn’t want to.”
“Are you sure you didn’t want to? What were you thinking about right before you came through?”
Josephine tried to remember. “I was looking for Fargus, and I was trying to figure out where he was.”
“So at that moment, would you say your primary goal was to find your friend?”
“Yes. I guess I would.”
“Well, don’t you see? The tunnel took you where you needed to go to find him. You did want to come here!”
Morgan was right. At that moment in the shed, she had wanted nothing more than to find Fargus.
“I have something you may find interesting,” Morgan said. He began searching through his shelves of books. “Every so often I come across a mention of the tunnels in our stories and histories.” He pulled down a thick volume of local myths. It was Josephine’s favorite kind of book, extremely heavy and bound in aging leather. Morgan flipped through the yellowing pages, detonating a large puff of dust. “I think this one is my favorite,” he said, coughing.
He handed the book to Josephine and pointed to a dog-eared page. She got up out of her cozy bed and sat on top of the blankets. The book was almost too heavy for her to lift, so she laid it on her lap.
Morgan explained, “I used to read it to Neddy when he was younger.”
She nodded and began to read.
BROKHUN’S CRACKS
For many centuries the Dark World was ruled by King Brokhun. He was cruel and caused much suffering throughout the land. He had no affection for any creature except himself. This included his wife, the ogress Ladona. One day Ladona gave birth to a daughter, Angrin, and when Brokhun set eyes upon the newborn, love finally filled his heart. He spoiled the child and never let her out of his sight. While she was with him, every living creature in the universe experienced a golden age, with plentiful food, long life, and abundant love.
As Angrin grew older, though, she became afraid of the evil creatures that roamed the Dark World, terrified that one day they would eat her. So she ran away. Brokhun was brokenhearted, and he searched the entire universe for her. When he could not find her, he fell to the ground and wept, pounding his fists mightily upon the earth. His pounding shook the land and the seas and the skies. On the fourth day of his mourning, Brokhun pounded so hard he cracked open the universe, creating passageways between all worlds.
Brokhun declared that the passageways, thenceforth known as Brokhun’s Cracks, would remain open until he was reunited with his dear Angrin.
Josephine closed the book, wrinkled her nose, and peered at Morgan. “Do you believe that story?”
“It’s a nice story, don’t you think? But no, I can’t say that I believe in Brokhun. I’m a man of science, not myth, and in physics there has long been a theory about something similar to his cracks called a wormhole.”
“A wormhole? What’s that?”
“Think of time and space . . . as an apple.” He grabbed an apple out of the kitchen and a pencil to demonstrate. “Now, imagine a worm crawling around this apple. Normally he would have to travel the entire circumference to get around it, but what if he suddenly decided to take a shortcut by burrowing his way through the center?” Morgan shoved the pencil through the apple until Josephine could see the lead tip come out the other end. “The worm has created one of your passages. The idea is that space and time—say, the meat and juice of the apple—are one and the same.”
Morgan could see Josephine was confused. “Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t understand. Very few people do.” Morgan came to sit beside her. “So where was your wormhole, Josephine?”
“I don’t know where it was, exactly. One minute I was in my shed at home and the next thing I knew I was in the cellar of the Higgins Institute for Wayward Children and Forsaken Youth. And no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find the way back.”
“The passageways are probably hidden very well. If they were in plain sight and everyone used them, there would be chaos. The time/space continuum would likely collapse in on itself.” He shuddered at the thought.
Josephine asked, “The time/space con—what?” Her molars ached from all the new information.
“Don’t worry about it. The important thing is that I think I have what we need.” He crossed the room and picked up the strange little instrument with the clocks that Josephine had noticed earlier. It was about a foot long, and Morgan held it out horizontally for her to inspect. The stem was made of tubular brass and on each end the metal curved up and was topped by a small timepiece a little larger than the face of a wristwatch.
“I’ve been working on this for some time. I call it a claganmeter. Imagine that I were holding two stethoscopes and I could listen to your heartbeat and Ned’s heartbeat at the same time. I could tell you if there was a difference between the two, even if it was minuscule. Well, the claganmeter does the same thing, but it measures time at two locations simultaneously.”
“Measures time, like a watch?” Josephine asked, not sure what was so impressive.
“Yes . . . and no. This has two timepieces and can tell me if there is a difference in time between point A and point B.”
“That’s silly. How could two spaces that are only inches apart have different times?”
“Exactly. Normally, they shouldn’t. So if we move the claganmeter around this room”—he began to walk around the living room holding the instrument horizontally, so that the clocks were on either side of him—“everywhere we go, the two clocks read the same time. But if we went to that cellar, the place where you first arrived, I bet you we would find an area where the clocks tell us two different times.” He paused and added triumphantly, “And that’s how we’ll know where the door is!”
“The door?”
“The wormhole! Because the passage itself leads to another time and place, it is inevitable that some of that time inconsistency has leaked into our world, like the juice, say, leaking from the apple.”
“But how do you know it works?” she asked, curiosity piqued.
“He doesn’t,” came a voice from the other bed.
Morgan and Josephine saw that Ned was awake and had been listening for some time. Ned rolled his eyes at his father. “He’s been trying to use that thing for five years now.”
“Yes, but Neddy, don’t you see? We weren’t looking in the right place! This girl can take us to the room where she landed!”
