1. CAMP BIZBUZZ
According to the sign on her tank, the chameleon’s name was Kesha. Pale green, with a tail that curled like a fiddlehead fern, she was perched on a branch inside a glass terrarium in a classroom at Stormweather Prep, the fancy private school on the hill overlooking Galosh. It was a nice classroom—nicer than anything at Galosh Middle School—but Kesha didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about the inspirational posters or the hardwood floors or the floor-to-ceiling windows. She regarded Rufus with a baleful eye as he squatted in front of her, clearly wondering why she was in a classroom at all instead of scampering around the jungle catching flies or whatever it was that chameleons did in their free time.
Rufus could relate. It was the middle of July, and he felt as trapped in the classroom as Kesha probably did inside her tank. He should be at Feylawn, the rambling property where his grandfather lived. Feylawn was where, at the start of summer, he had first met a tiny winged feyling named Iris, who drew him and his cousin Abigail into a hunt for the feylings’ missing train and a battle with their enemies, the goblins. Now the feylings had gone back home to the Green World. Rufus and Abigail had promised to take care of Feylawn in their absence.
But instead of being at Feylawn, he was at camp. Chess camp last week, Plumbing camp the week before that, and now Camp BizBuzz, a two-week summer program “for the leaders and entrepreneurs of the future,” according to the brochure. Kids like the ones who were now entering the classroom and greeting each other with hugs and high fives. Smart kids. Ambitious kids. Kids who excelled. Not kids like Rufus, whose one and only unusual talent was being able to see creatures that no normal twelve-year-old believed existed.
He watched the other campers through the glass of Kesha’s tank. They clustered in clumps, filling the room with their voices, comparing shoes and haircuts and smartphones, saving each other side-by-side seats at the long tables arranged in a U shape. He recognized a few from Galosh Middle School, but he guessed that most of them went to Stormweather Prep. It was clear they’d all known each other for years.
“We don’t belong here,” he whispered to Kesha.
Kesha moved farther up the branch, her color brightening to a chartreuse banded with brown stripes and spots. Her message was clear: If you want to survive, you’re going to have to blend in.
But Rufus didn’t want to blend in. Camp BizBuzz had been his father’s idea, not his. Every minute he was away from Feylawn was a minute lost. A minute in which he wasn’t attacking the list of chores Iris had left. A minute in which he wasn’t figuring out how to persuade his family not to go through with their plan to sell it.
He looked at Kesha, green and brown on a green and brown branch. “What are your true colors?” he asked. “Don’t you get tired of just adapting?”
Kesha looked back at him with one unblinking eye. She puffed out her throat.
“Stop staring at her—she thinks you’re going to eat her.”
Rufus swiveled so fast he lost his balance and landed on his butt. Abigail stood looking down at him, her long black hair neatly braided, her hands in the pockets of her denim shorts.
“Fun fact: the whole camouflage thing about chameleons is kind of a myth,” she said, pulling him to his feet. “They change colors to communicate, not to blend in. Right now she’s telling you to back off.”
Rufus grinned. Of course Abigail would turn out to be a chameleon expert. “What are you doing here? I thought you had Mandarin Camp.”
“I did. But then my mom heard your dad snagged you a spot at Camp BizBuzz and she somehow got me in as well. Opportunity to excel and all that.”
“Where are you sitting?”
“Next to you, obviously.” Abigail strode over to the table and Rufus followed. She had laid her turquoise hoodie across two chairs on the right side of the U, a little closer to the front than Rufus would have chosen on his own. Now she unzipped her backpack and began placing materials in neat piles in front of her seat: notebook, pencil case, a folder of printed documents.
“What’s this?” He gestured to the folder.
“Research materials,” she said. “Just some stuff I printed out last night.”
“Research on what? We don’t even know what we’re going to be doing yet.”
“Preliminary research,” Abigail corrected. “Look around. Every one of these kids is a competitor. We have to be quick out of the starting gate if we want to win this thing.”
Before Rufus could ask what thing they were trying to win, a skinny guy in his early twenties strode to the front of the room. He wore a novelty baseball cap in the shape of a bee with a long stinger.
“Good morning, BizBuzzers! I’m Mark Trang and I have the great honor of being your team leader for the next two weeks of entrepreneurial adventures! You kids are the entrepreneurs of tomorrow, but your future is created by what you do today.” He gestured at the whiteboard beside him, on which he’d written, Procrastination is the thief of time.—Edward Young. “You don’t have to wait to be successful. All of you have the power to be successful right now. Each day this week we’ll meet some crazy-cool, crazy-smart businesspeople, and then you’ll get to work creating your own business plans!”
Some of the Stormweather Prep kids actually cheered. Rufus glanced at Abigail, who was scanning the room like a photographer on safari. Outside, it had started to rain. The droplets pattered on the windows like tapping fingers. Come out, come out, come out.
Mark raised his hand as if he were a camper, and then he called on himself.
“Yes, Mark? Do you have a question?
“I do have a question, Mark! If we’re doing all this fun stuff this week, what will we do next week?
“That’s an excellent question, Mark—go to the head of the class. Oh, wait, you’re already here!”
Chuckles from the other campers. Even Abigail laughed.
“Next week, you’ll get to make a YouTube ad for your business!” Mark continued. “And then, on Thursday, we have our grand-ay fee-nall-ay: the Piranha Pitch Session.”
“I guess that’s our first business lesson,” Rufus whispered. “Charge boatloads of money for a two-week camp and then end one day early.”
Abigail shot him a warning look. Pay attention, she mouthed.
“What is the Piranha Pitch Session, you ask?” Mark was saying. “It’s a chance to test your mettle. You’ll pitch your business before a panel of three judges. The best pitch wins five hundred dollars in start-up money!”
“Five hundred dollars?” whispered Rufus. “That’s snack money for these rich kids.”
“But it’s real money for us,” Abigail replied. “One of us has to win it.”
“That would be you,” Rufus said. He had zero ideas for a business, and zero interest in coming up with one. What interested him was finding a way to get out of that room and up to Feylawn. Just before climbing on the train that would take her back to the Green World, Iris had told Rufus and Abigail that she’d left them a list of chores to do—chores that would keep Feylawn safe. Rufus had studied the list so often he had it memorized. He wrote it down now on the first page of his notebook, hoping the act of writing would make him look like he was paying attention.
Smuckle borderWard scrygrassGoblin patrolKeep umbrals from houseTroll (lunch)Daily the diarnutsJanati nestsSpetch the nimbolichenWeed wanderlustCotter counselingRufus knew some of the words on the list. Smuckling was what kept anyone outside the family from finding Feylawn, even though it was right in the middle of town. Umbrals looked like large flying manta rays and made the electricity go out if they got too close to the house. Cotters were tiny orange fur balls who lived inside apricots and fell in love with everyone they met, leading to more relationship drama than any soap opera. But what on earth was a diarnut? What did it mean to spetch or ward or daily? Where would he find scrygrass and wanderlust?
Abigail looked over at the page.
“I know you hate Nettle, but we’re going to have to let him do some of that stuff,” Abigail said in a low voice. “He’s there, and he knows how to do it, and we’re at camp. Plus, it’s pouring.”
Rufus shook his head. “Why would I trust him to do anything important? He nearly killed my dad! He’s the reason they want to sell Feylawn.”
“But now he can’t hurt us,” Abigail reminded him. “Iris made him swallow peony seed for a reason—so he could help us do the stuff on this list. If we want our parents to change their mind about selling it, we have to keep things from getting crazy over there.”
“Just because he can’t hurt us doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to.”
“It’s in his own best interest to help us,” Abigail argued. They both knew that Nettle had to make amends for what he did, or he’d never return to the Green World. “At least let him explain what warding the scrygrass means. It’s the second thing on this list. Seems like it might be important.”
“I’ll figure it out on my own,” Rufus said. “We can sneak up there today, after camp.”
“You’ve already spent three weeks trying to figure it out,” Abigail said. “And I have swim practice after camp.”
“Just come long enough to check on the cotters and the umbrals. You’re the one who gets along with them.”
“Fine.” Abigail rolled her eyes. “Now stop talking and focus on the assignment. Procrastination is the thief of time.”
“What assignment?”
Abigail gestured at the instructions on the whiteboard. “‘Brainstorm a list of possible businesses. Consider how to monetize your hobbies.’”
Rufus flipped to a blank sheet of paper and sighed.
Procrastination wasn’t the thief of time. Summer camp was.
2THE GATE OF A THOUSAND LOCKS
Rance Diggs had been trapped in the Place Between for a while, but it was impossible to say how long. There was nothing to measure it by. The silence sucked at his large piglike ears. The air was leaden, bearing down on him like the low ceilings of the tunnels at home. For a long time, he had shimmied around on his belly like a worm, but there were no places to go, no enticing corridors or caverns, and at last he’d simply lain on his back and yelled. He was a Very Important Goblin, Northwest Regional tunnel boss, eldest of thirty-seven brothers, and he’d had his hands on, literally on, the train that would gain him entrance to the Green World, enriching him beyond measure while also bestowing the not-inconsiderable side benefit of bringing the feylings, his long-standing enemies, to a final and brutal extinction.
And then the boy, Rufus Collins, had somehow awakened the train, which had struck Diggs head-on and knocked him here. The Place Between. Where no one could find him and where his guile, his craft, his wealth, and his authority had no power. And so he kicked his thin bird-like legs in the air, and yowled with frustration, tearing at the Nothing around him with the talons of his feet. Perhaps he did this for hours. Perhaps for days or even weeks.
Eventually he stopped and lay on his back. Then he saw it: a small rip in the air, with a hanging flap of gunmetal-gray sky dangling from it like a torn cuticle. Rolling to his knees, he yanked at the dangling sky-skin until it tore further. He pushed an arm through, and then his head, and then he dug his long nails into the dirt of the other place and levered his way through.
He rolled to his knees and wrinkled his nose. The air had a briny, grassy smell. Being a rock goblin, he preferred the dank scent of tunnels and pits, but even an unpleasant something was better than a neutral nothing. He was getting somewhere at least.
He began to walk.
* * *
The path was narrow. To his left, violet waves clawed a rocky shore. To his right stood a six-foot-high wall of deep-red brambles. He ignored them, keeping his eyes on the queasy, disorganized swells of the purple sea, scanning the horizon for any sign of a boat, a bay, or a distant shore. He had been walking for most of the afternoon when he came across the print of his own talons in the dirt. He had come full circle.
As Mr. Diggs inspected the talon-print, his neck prickled with the sensation of being watched. He straightened slowly and scanned the late-afternoon shadows: the shore, the brambles, the few stunted trees. Nothing. And yet he was certain that someone was there.
Seeking cover, he dropped to his belly and wormed his way into the bramble thicket as if through a tight passage. Insects and snakes scuttled and squirmed out of his way. Sharp-beaked birds wheeled over his head. Rats skittered and squeaked as they burrowed deeper into the undergrowth. He ignored them all, just as he ignored the thorns that tore his flesh. He paid attention only to one thing: the sensation that something was on his trail, silently tracking him.
At last he emerged into a clearing. In front of him was a fence made of tall metal bars positioned so close together that he could barely poke a fingernail between. He stood and craned his neck up at their length, calculating that they were about the height of a five-story building, then inspected the metalwork with professional interest. He found it to be without fault or fissure, uncorrupted by the salt air. Behind those bars was either something valuable or something dangerous.
But which was it, and how could he turn it to his advantage?
The fence extended some fifty yards in each direction, then turned a corner. He walked along the perimeter, tracing its rectangular shape, until he came to a pair of gates lashed tight with chains. Here he stopped, his jaw dropping in surprise. He had heard of this place, but only in stories: a gate fastened not just by one lock, not just by two, but by hundreds and hundreds of locks, all of them black, all of them round, all of them tightly closed.
“The Gate of a Thousand Locks,” he said aloud.
“Do you want to count them to make sure?” said a voice on the other side of the fence. “You seem quite a thorough creature, tramping round and round like a dog on a chain.”
Mr. Diggs didn’t like being startled and he didn’t like being spoken to by someone he couldn’t see. The skin on his legs and arms had begun to sting and swell, and now it suddenly itched so viciously that he hunched over, trying to scratch himself with both his hands and one of his talons.
“Who speaks? Are you guard or prisoner?” he called.
“I could ask the same of you,” said the voice. It was a female voice, and it had far too much of a smile in it for Diggs’s taste.
Irritation wrinkled his throat. “I’m a free man,” he said, hoping it was true. “And you’re a prisoner.”
“Genius,” marveled the voice. “What was your first clue?” She laughed. “Here’s what I know about you. You’re short. You’ve either got a thick hide, a high tolerance for pain and itching, or a complete lack of sense. I’d guess all three. That combined with your bilious temper says goblin to me. Welcome to the island of Imura, goblin. Have you come to set me free?”
Diggs snorted. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that I wanted to. And let’s say that I somehow managed to unfasten the one thousand locks. Then what? We’re on an island without a boat. How do you propose we escape?”
“Ah,” said the voice. “I’ve had so much time to ponder this question, but I prefer thinking about what we’ll do when the escape is accomplished.”
“The meals you’ll eat, you mean?” Mr. Diggs said this in a careless tone, but his stomach grumbled. Goblins could go quite a long time without eating, but he was starving.
The laugh squeezed through the bars and exploded in Diggs’s ear. “The meals will be the same inside or out—stupendous. I’ve got the Horn of Plenty in my cell. Spits out anything I’d like.”
Diggs sank to the ground in astonishment. “The Horn of Plenty? That’s been missing for five hundred years.”
“I don’t see how it can be missing when it’s right here,” the voice said. “The only one of my prizes my captors allowed me to keep. Here, I’ll waft the smell your way.”
A moment later the scent of stewed hooves and antlers drifted through the bars. “Borlibganlan,” sighed Mr. Diggs. “Like my mother used to make for Fortieth Feast. With beetles.” He closed his eyes and let the acrid smell burn itself into his nasal passages. Then his eyes snapped open.
“You’re the Thief of the Eight Worlds,” he said. “The one they call the Calamand.”
“I am,” said the Calamand in a modest tone.
“You stole the Horn of Plenty and the Felling Ax and the Slicers.”
“I did,” said the Calamand. “And much, much more.”
“And you’re locked here till the end of time.”
“Gosh, I hope not,” said the Calamand. “I have other plans for the end of time.”
Mr. Diggs got to his feet. “We have a lot to discuss,” he said. “But first, breakfast.”
Text copyright © 2022 by Dashka Slater
