The Pixel Lands

The warehouse smelled like dust and old boxes and things that hadn't been used in a long time. Maps covered every wall. Crates were stacked floor to ceiling along the far end, labeled in Lily's handwriting - rope, tools, field kit, emergency. And one with just a question mark - for stuff she hadn't figured out yet. It was also the biggest one.

The Adventure Crew stood around the central workbench. On it, five curved pieces of metal sat in a loose arrangement, their edges lined with fine marks spreading outward like the arms of a star. They each knew their own piece. They'd been carrying them for weeks. This was the first time all five had been in the same room.

Lily stood at the end of the bench. She didn't have notes. She didn't need them.

"I'm going to tell you a story," she said. "Then I'm going to tell you what it means. Then I'm going to ask you a question, and whatever your answer, I'll understand."

She looked at them for a moment. "But I think I already know what you'll say."

"His name was Johan Tohlen," she said. "An inventor. A builder. Someone who believed something almost unbelievable - that right beside our world there was another one. A world of color and light. And he wanted to go there."

She started walking around the room, five sets of eyes following her. She was reaching into her pocket for something.

"So he worked on it. For years. We still don't know how, but he invented this."

Out of her pocket she pulled a drawing. On the dry yellowed paper was a drawing of a cube, each side a different color: red, yellow, green, purple, magenta. And one side was missing.

"It's called the Color Cube. And it creates bridges between worlds." Everyone's eyes went large and they started asking questions all at once.

"What kind of worlds?" "Are they just like ours?" "Is there another me there?"

She held up her hand to stop the questions.

"I'm getting there. I found out about it because of a man named Scott," Lily said. "I was at a university doing some research when he came into town with a lecture tour titled 'Myths You've Never Heard Of.' Well I had to go to that."

She paused.

"He described a small building at the edge of a coastal town, a spiral mark above the door - even showed a crude drawing of the squiggle. It wasn't exact, but it was close enough that I recognized it. I had been there. I'd walked past that building years ago and taken photos of the door without knowing why. After the lecture I walked right up to him, pointed at the squiggle and said 'Hi, I'm Lily, and I know where that is.'"

"Firefly Landing. We went together," she said. "Scott and I."

The town was small. A coastal road, a handful of buildings, the sea at the end of every street. We drove in late afternoon and I knew it immediately - this was the place. The building was at the edge of town where the road ran into the jungle. Overgrown at the base, the walls the color of old cream, a spiral carved into the stone above the door - the same marking I'd photographed years ago.

Scott stood in front of it for a moment, taking it all in. I tried the door. It opened. Inside it was exactly what I had expected. There were maps on the walls, diagrams pinned everywhere. And notebooks. Lots of notebooks. And the panels. Just sitting there in a pile on the workbench.

Scott started going through the notebooks. That's how he discovered stuff. Me, I'm all about action. I picked up two of the panels and clicked them together. They stuck. I'm not sure how. I put the rest together while he kept reading - red, yellow, green, purple, magenta. The sixth side. Where was it?

"Scott, have you seen another one of these panels?" I asked.

Without looking up from the notebook, he pointed a finger across the room. There it was, lying on the floor by the far wall. I went over and grabbed it, turned it over in my hand. This one was different. First, it was clear. But it also had an indentation of what I thought was a horse head. But looking at it closer, I realized it was a unicorn. I turned it about, started lowering it into place.

"Wait!" Scott said. He had just learned something, but I didn't know what.

It was too late. The last panel snapped in place. The unicorn face came alive. Not one color. Every color at once. A soft rainbow shimmer, steady and quiet. The Color Cube suddenly felt very heavy in my hand and I had to drop it. Then the most amazing thing happened. The wall in front of me started to shimmer and wave. Then in a burst of light it was gone. And in its place - a bridge. A bridge made out of color, stretching off into the distance.

I looked at Scott. He was already moving toward it. We stepped onto the bridge and something changed. I can't really describe it, but I just felt like a different version of me. I looked the same, spoke the same, but also somehow... different. We practically ran up the bridge and came to an intersection. It doesn't matter to this story which way we went first. Let me just tell you what we found. Eight lands.

• The Ancient Lands - familiar somehow, ruins and old paths and a world full of things worth finding.
• The Tide Lands - sea and ships and a world that moves by water.
• The Creative Lands - bright with color and movement.
• The Spark Lands - loud with invention, tools and gears and the hum of things being built.
• The Grove Lands - quiet and warm, animals in the trees, the feeling of being happy you were here.
• The Coral Lands - a whole world shimmering beneath clear water, light bending through the deep.
• The Cosmic Lands - enormous and full of stars and wonder.
• The Cloud Lands - strange and light and alive with laughter.

The crew looked at her in amazement, so stunned that no one could come up with anything to say.

"We went four times. Each time we came back, one face of the cube went dark. But we didn't realize it until the fourth crossing."

"So, you can only go back two more times?" Naomi asked.

"One more," Lily answered. "The unicorn side is special. Johan's notebooks described a key - designed to fit the hollow space on the clear face exactly. It was a power source - like a battery. To charge it, it had to be carried through all eight lands to find the unicorns who lived there. Once it was fully charged, you could place it on the Color Cube and it would hold the bridge open forever."

Rory spoke up. "Did he do it? Did Johan charge the battery?"

"We don't know what happened to him. We believe he's still out there, lost in the Color Lands somewhere."

"Let me guess," Isla said. "He took the key with him."

"Good reasoning," Lily answered. "He's in there. Somewhere across one of eight lands. Not in danger. He just needs help finishing what he started. And we need the key charged in all eight lands so we can make the bridge permanent." She looked at each of them.

"Scott and I decided to split up, get help, and go find Johan. Scott has a boat, the Luma Tide. How he got it is a story for another day. He's going to take the coasts, the islands, the rivers. We go inland. We find Johan. We charge the key. We come back."

"But we've just got one chance," Zane said. "If we come back without the key, that last face goes dark. The bridge closes. Forever."

Lily just nodded. "I want to tell you why each of you is here," she said.

She looked at Isla. "You notice what other people walk past. We're going into eight lands none of us have ever been in. Every detail is a clue. We need someone who reads them."

She looked at Naomi. "When your first answer is wrong you don't give up - you find a new angle. Whatever situation Johan is in, it won't be simple. We will need that creativity."

She looked at Rory. "You build a map everywhere you go. Eight lands, none of them on any chart we've ever seen - and you'll know the way back. That's how we all come home."

She looked at Zane. "You catch things before they become problems. In a world none of us know, early warning isn't a bonus. It's what keeps us safe."

She stopped. Didn't say anything about herself. She didn't need to. They already knew.

"I found you because I needed this crew," she said. "I need it now. So I said I was going to ask you a question. Here it is." She paused and looked at all four of them. "Do you want to go?"

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Then Rory slid his compass piece to the middle of the workbench. Isla placed hers beside it. Naomi's clicked gently into place next to those. Zane picked his piece up. Turned it over in his hand. He grinned wide and set it in place.

Lily pulled a new piece out of her pocket. It was the middle section. The part that was still missing. She pressed it into the center.

The compass clicked. Every piece locking into the next, the marks along each edge lining up perfectly. The needle swung. Held. Pointing somewhere specific, but not North.

"Where's it pointing?" Rory asked.

Lily looked at it for a moment. Then she picked up her pack.

"Firefly Landing," she said.