Eternity's Wheel by Neil Gaiman Read Free Book Online Page A

chances of something going wrong if she panicked were pretty high, which is why I was holding on to her.
    Hue stretched paper-thin over us both, and I felt Josephine press closer against me. It was like being in a sensory-deprivation tank, I would imagine, at least at first. I ceased to feel the air on me, to hear the birds, to see the brightness of the rising blue sun.
    And then, as I opened my eyes, I could see and hear and feel everything .
    Hue was like the universe’s best looking glass, like the missing element that made everything fall into place. That made everything make sense . Walking was no longer about finding the door, it was about suddenly realizing you were surrounded by doors and you knew exactly where every single one of them went. It was like sitting down at a testyou’d never studied for and finding you knew all the answers anyway.
    I could feel everything. I could feel Josephine’s wonder and terror, her slow understanding and her deep yearning. She was experiencing what she’d been born to do, and I could already feel her fear giving in to eagerness, to the desire to learn.
    Even though I theoretically knew where all the doors would take me, it’s always easiest to go someplace you’ve already been. I followed the path to future InterWorld flawlessly, and all too soon we were standing there in the purple dawn light, there on that crumbling base.
    Josephine let go of me as soon as Hue receded, taking a few steps back, though she didn’t look afraid. She looked like she understood.
    She walked slowly down the gravel path, alternately staring at the smoke-blackened trees and the scorched ground. I still didn’t know what had happened here; perhaps at some point, when I had time, I could have Hue show me.
    All I knew was that sometime in InterWorld’s future, the base must have been attacked. There were burns all over the place, areas where the ground was dark, rust red with the memory of violence. There was nothing here, not even a breeze. We were alone on a dead world.
    â€œThis is the future,” Josephine asked, though it didn’t sound much like a question.
    â€œSeveral thousand years from where we were, yeah. I don’t know how far exactly,” I said, catching sight of something glinting in the morning sun. I knelt to inspect it, finding a twisted scrap of metal that could have been anything from a blaster shell to a piece of jewelry. It wasn’t recognizable as anything but junk now.
    â€œSo why keep fighting?” she asked.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWhy even bother? You said you have to get back to your InterWorld, but it’ll just be this eventually. Even if you save it back then, it’ll wind up like this.” She gestured at the area around us, the shattered glass and dead trees and broken doorways. “You’ll lose anyway.”
    I was silent for a moment, watching Hue float off toward one of the rooftops. He settled there, perched on the edge of it like a balloon-shaped gargoyle, and turned the same color as the metal. I’d never really seen him camouflage before, but the guy had a hundred little tricks I wasn’t aware of.
    â€œYeah, maybe,” I said, shoving my hands into the pockets of my sweatshirt. “Eventually.”
    â€œSo why are you even bothering?”
    â€œBecause if I don’t, all this”—I shrugged, indicating the devastation around me—“will happen everywhere a lot sooner. There won’t even be this left. There won’t be anything.”
    She scuffed her foot against the gravel path, watching thepebbles scatter this way and that. “But doesn’t the existence of this ship in the future, even if it’s deserted, mean that there is a future? That the world doesn’t get destroyed?”
    â€œIt doesn’t work like that,” I told her. “FrostNight will erase everything, past, present, and future, all at once. If it’s released, this