Doorways to Infinity (4 page)

“What do you want me to do?”

“I’ll explain after I give you a tour. How would you like to go to another planet right now?”

“What? Uh…how…you can do that?”

“It’s easy, and the one I’m going to show you is really nice. You’ll love it. But I guess I should ask you how much time do you have?”

“I have a meeting with my grad students in thirty minutes.”

“Can you reschedule? This is worth it. Going to another planet. How often do you get to do that?” He grinned hopefully.

She stared at him for a few seconds, then pulled her cell phone from her desk drawer.

They stepped through the magic doorway onto the sidewalk in downtown Rivershire. Dr. Tindall watched as the glowing lines winked out on the building where Jamie had placed the portal. She gave her head a shake, then seemed to lose her balance as if she might tip over. She leaned one hand against the wall and put the other on her forehead. “Hold on. I need a minute.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m just disoriented, all of a sudden.” She took several short breaths before saying, “What…did we just do?”

“We just passed from Earth to another world,” Jamie said.

“How did you do that?”

“I don’t really know. I inherited the spell from the old wizard, Eddan, when he gave me his memories and power.” He shrugged. “It might be a wormhole or something, though I think it would require a massive amount of energy to make one of those, and this spell doesn’t use much at all.”

She blinked rapidly as if she were clearing her vision. “You just made a wormhole?”

“I don’t know, exactly. We might even be in another universe, for all I know.”

“Another universe,” Dr. Tindall said hollowly and lowered her gaze for a moment, then she turned and took in their surroundings. They were in the busiest part of the small town. Narrow, two-story shops lined both sides of the street. Horse-drawn carriages and wagons rolled past them in both directions, and pedestrians filled the sidewalks. A stocky man dressed in rough work clothes was walking their way, and he stopped and grinned when he neared them. “Hello, Master Jamie.”

“Oh, hey, Mr. Darby. Business in town?”

“I’m on my way to Brinna’s shop to buy some nails,” he said with the soft burr so common there. “Who might your lovely companion be?”

“This is my professor, Dr. Tindall.”

The man lifted the brim of his hat with one hand. “I’m Van Darby. I own a farm just outside of town. Master Jamie saved my horse when my barn caught fire, he did. Just swooped in like a mighty bird and put out the blaze. ’Twas a miracle, it was.”

“A bird?” Dr. Tindall said.

Mr. Darby swept his hand through the air. “Just like that. We looked up and there he was, high in the sky over my burning barn. Never seen him before, but he arrived in the nick of time. My horse was trapped inside, but he walked right through the flames with his magic like it was nothing, and brought the poor animal out. He saved the day, he did.”

“I don’t know about that,” Jamie said. “I didn’t save your barn.”

“No matter. Someone took up a collection for me, and I was able to rebuild it.” He winked at Jamie. “Though I heard most of the money came from one benefactor.”

“Don’t look at me,” Jamie said. “I’m just the fireman.”

Mr. Darby laughed and clapped Jamie on the shoulder. “And a fine one at that!” Then he tipped his hat again. “Well, I must be off. A pleasure to meet you, Dr. Tindall.”

He walked away and Dr. Tindall said. “Swooped? As in…flew?”

“Yes ma’am,” Jamie said. “Like this.” He floated from the sidewalk and hovered in the air for a moment, then settled back to the ground.

She gaped at him and moaned softly. Then she said, “You can fly. You can fly and make magic doorways and walk through flames. Unbelievable. Unbelievable! What else can you do?”

“Lots of stuff. I’ll tell you while we head to the school.”

They walked through town and Jamie explained everything as concisely as he could — about Eddan and Renn, Fred discovering her magic, Rollie, Sammi and Nova, how Jamie had inherited Renn’s house and all of the money in it, and how the people of Rivershire had originally come from Earth.

Dr. Tindall sighed. “It’s so much to take in…so fantastic. I’m having trouble wrapping my head around all of it.”

“I think that once you accept the idea that magic is real, the rest of it gets easier. That’s the way it is for most people.”

“The folks here seem to accept it just fine. You floated ten feet off the ground and nobody seemed surprised.”

“They’re used to it, to the wizards and witches and everything. It’s been part of their culture for a long time.”

“Are you certain this is another planet? It seems exactly like Earth.”

“You’d know you weren’t on Earth if you came here at night and saw the moon. It’s bigger and more colorful than ours. The constellations are different, too.”

“Interesting. It’s hard to believe that these people are from Ireland and Scotland. But they speak perfect English, so I guess it makes sense, that story about them escaping the witch trials.”

“Most of them think they’re still on Earth and that they’re in the New World, where the other people who took ship so long ago were headed. These people’s ancestors thought they were getting a safer, cheaper way to another life.” He nodded once. “No three-month journey on a cramped, smelly boat, over rough, dangerous seas. Just walk through a magic doorway, and there you are. Free land for the taking. Good land, too. This is a great place for farming.”

“They’ve built themselves a lovely town. It’s so quaint and clean.”

“We like it here a lot. My grandfather has been charging his rich friends twenty thousand dollars per couple for a weekend stay here at the inn, and he’s had no trouble getting customers.”

“Twenty thousand dollars! Wow, that’s a lot of money. You must be rich by now, with that and all the gold you found in the stone house.”

“I put almost all of it into the school and other things here. The problem is, I keep expanding my list of stuff I want to do, and the projects I have in mind keep getting more expensive. That’s why I approached you about this. I’m worried about the environmental impact of some of my decisions and I need your expert advice.”

“Why did you have me drink that inoculation potion? It tasted awful, by the way. Are you worried about me spreading disease, or catching something?”

“Both, I guess. It’s a double-duty serum.” He held up two fingers. “It’s just a precaution, because we had a problem recently. Fred’s new adopted sister Sammi has a friend here named Leora, and she spent the night with Sammi in Hendersonville and caught the flu somehow. Leora ended up giving it to her family and they all got really, really sick. They finally went to our clinic, where we have two doctors now, and a healer. The doctors are from Earth.”

“What’s a healer, exactly?”

“She’s a special kind of witch. From what I’ve been told, all witches can make the same potions, but they infuse it with their magic in different ways. When a healer makes a medicinal potion, it’s more effective than if somebody like Fred makes it. Plus, healers can sense the nature of a patient’s illness or injury. It’s pretty amazing stuff.”

“
All
of this is amazing.” Her eyes seemed to brighten, which Jamie found reassuring.

“Yeah, I suppose. But anyway, the healer and our two doctors put their heads together and came up with the inoculation potion. Dr. Burke at the clinic thinks it may be more effective than vaccinations. You can meet them in a few minutes, because we’re almost there.”

They passed through the south gates of town and onto the dirt road that followed, and the campus came into sight on their left. Jamie pointed out a new building on their right, similar to the school, only taller, and painted the same shade of yellow. “This is my grandfather’s idea. He calls it his Rivershire headquarters. It’s connected to his warehouse in Hendersonville by a permanent doorway, big enough to get a pickup truck through.”

“A permanent doorway? What’s to keep random people from sneaking through it?”

“It’s protected by a hex that Fred put on it.” He touched the woven bracelet on his wrist. “Nobody gets through without a counter charm. That’s one of the things witches are good at. I don’t really need it, since I can just make a new doorway if I want, but I wear this anyway, in case I’m going through it with my friends.”

“Are there other worlds like this one?”

“Yes ma’am, thousands, maybe millions. I’m not sure.”

“Wow. Are they all so Earth-like?”

“Um…they vary a little, at least the dozen or so I’ve been to. But they’re all similar. Same gravity, for instance. I took a bathroom scale to a bunch of them and checked, and I weighed exactly the same on all of them. I think they all have the same orbital period, and the days are the same length, too. That’s why we think they might be quantum Earths or in parallel universes or…who knows?”

“Have you encountered any other humans?”

“Just on this world, so far.” Jamie pointed down the road away from town. “There’s nothing but farms that way, and you’d appreciate this: all organic. They don’t even know what a pesticide is.”

“How are their crop yields?”

“Good, from what I can tell.”

She gazed in the direction he was facing, at the barren fields receding in the distance, their crops harvested and stored for the upcoming winter. “I’d love to get soil and water samples from this place.”

Jamie turned and gestured toward the school on their left. “Okay, this is it. This is our pride and joy.”

The main building was directly in front of them, and to the right of it was the two-story clinic, both painted a cheerful yellow. New structures were on the side closer to the town gates.

They stepped onto the drive that led to the front of the building, and Dr. Tindall looked down at her feet. “I’ve never seen paving stones like this. Are they made of plastic?”

“They’re solar panels, designed for streets and sidewalks, so they’re tough.” The hexagonally shaped plates interlocked to form a wide, smooth surface stretching to the front door. “We just installed these. Pretty cool, huh? The ground out front was getting churned up by all of the wagons coming and going with parents dropping off their kids. We were going to pave it the old-fashioned way, but Melanie, one of my friends, told me about these. We were looking to expand our power-generating capacity anyway, and these seemed perfect. We’re using them for the sidewalks between buildings, and we made a basketball court out of them by the playground. With these and the solar panels on the roof, we’re doing okay. We’re also getting ready to install gas generators that will run on methane, in case we have some bad weather this winter and aren’t producing enough power. We may put in a wind turbine, too, if we need it.”

“Talk about living off the grid.”

“There is no grid. These people don’t even have steam engines yet.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a low-technology society, and I think it’s the wizards’ fault. Whenever somebody needed something designed and built, like a bridge or something, they went to a wizard, so people never developed the skills or mindset to tackle those kinds of problems.” He tapped his chest with his thumb. “I want to change that. That’s why I built the school.”

“Was there no school here before?”

“Used to be, years ago.” He shook his head. “That’s another story. Let me show you everything, first. Let’s start with the new library. I’d like you to meet Mr. Winston. He’s a wizard, too, but not a very powerful one.”

“Another wizard. This I’ve got to see.”

The library was a rectangular building, similar to the main one, only smaller, and parallel to it. Inside, it smelled strongly of fresh paint and new books. Shelves lined every wall, and others were arranged in rows in the middle of the room.

They found Mr. Winston near the back, kneeling on the floor, unpacking a box.

“Ah, Master Jamie returns.” He smiled as Jamie and Dr. Tindall approached him. The tall, gray-haired man stood and held out his hand for Dr. Tindall, and Jamie made the introductions. “A professor of higher learning!” Mr. Winston’s eyes brightened. “This is indeed an honor. Have you come to teach at our fine school?”

“No, just getting the grand tour. I’ve only just learned of the existence of this world, and all of the magic that goes with it.” She lowered her brow. “It’s a little overwhelming, I must say.”

“But so interesting, is it not? A young wizard with the memories and powers of an older, master sorcerer? Building a school and recruiting the people necessary to run it?”

“There’s a clinic, too, right?”

“Of course. And now we have a public library to go with it.”

“This is for the school and the town,” Jamie said. “They didn’t have one before.”

Dr. Tindall looked about the room and nodded. “It looks as if you have a respectable number of books. Are you managing the library by yourself?”

“So far, but I am need of an assistant so that I may continue my history lessons for the children.”

“Hunh,” Jamie said. “I guess I need to talk to my granddaddy and see if we can budget for it. Do you know of anybody who can do the job?”

“Miss Duffy is looking into it.” He turned to Dr. Tindall. “She is one of our teachers. She is from this world.”

“Do you have teachers who aren’t?”

“My grandmother and my aunt are helping out for now,” Jamie said.

“They are identical twins,” Mr. Winston said, “and they do terrific work here. I wish that they would stay on permanently.”

“They like it here, but they are retired, after all,” Jamie said. “I heard that Uncle Charlie finished carving your walking stick.”

“Yes, and he did a marvelous job, I must say. Let me fetch it.” He went into the back room and returned with a long, slender piece of wood. It was stained dark, and had elaborate carvings at the handle and in rings up and down its length. “I traded him a rare book for it, a rather old one,” he said, and proudly displayed his new treasure.

Jamie turned to Dr. Tindall and said, “Uncle Charlie is this old Cherokee guy who carves these amazing walking sticks. He made one for me, and it has some unusual qualities. It seems to expand my magic sense of space.” She stared at him blankly, and he added, “It gives me a mental map to places I can make doorways to.”