Christopher Boucher - Golden Delicious

“You’re kidding,” you said.

I shook my head.

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure,” I said.

You stood up, found your shoes, and followed me back up the stairs and across the street. When we reached the fields I led you over to the hole in the page closest to where Sentence had disappeared.

“You sure he went this way?” you said.

“No,” I said. “But this is where I lost sight of him.”

“What was he doing off the leash in the first place?”

“We were riding on the Bicycle Built for Two — he leapt off the handlebars,” I said.

The Reader squinted and looked around.

“Should we go after him?” I said.

“What do you mean?” The Reader looked into the hole. “Down there?”

I shrugged.

“Absolutely not!” the Reader said. “We don’t have any idea—”

“ ‘I am.’ is down there,” I said.

“We don’t even know that for sure,” the Reader said.

“He could be hurt! Or killed!”

The Reader pointed out to the treeline. “What if he went into the margin?”

“He didn’t — he made a beeline right for this hole.”

You lay down on your belly and tried to see into the hole. Then you stood up and brushed the page off your hands. “It’s completely dark down there,” you said.

“He’s getting farther away every second,” I said.

“For the record, I think this is a terrible idea.”

“Noted,” I said, and gestured to the hole. “Go for it.”

You held up your hands. “Age before beauty,” the Reader said.

“Aren’t you older than me?” I asked.

“There’s no way I’m going first,” you said.

I walked over to the bookwormhole, sat down on the page, and put my feet into the hole. Then I slowly lowered myself down. My thoughts were yelping, but when I stretched my body out my feet touched a fiber floor. I stood up and helped the Reader down.

We looked into the tunnel. I saw dim light ahead.

We stooped and trotted through the dark channel. “It stinks in here,” the Reader said.

“That’s the rot,” I said.

After twenty feet or so, the chute widened; we stood up straight and walked side by side. A string of bare lightbulbs now ran overhead. For the first few hundred yards, I could see the underside of the page above us — the roots and tendrils of printed words. Directly above me was the d in “killed,” and, later, the re of “amphitheatre.” Then the print grew higher and fainter, though, and soon I couldn’t see it at all anymore.

“ ‘I am.’!” I shouted, but my words just boomeranged back to me.

We walked for a while in silence. Then the Reader said, “Think we’re still on the same page?”

“This has to be a different one,” I said. “Doesn’t it?”

You shook your head.

“ ‘I am.’!” I shouted again.

“Please stop that,” said the Reader.

Soon we saw some light up ahead and an intersection in the channel. It was a crosshole — another pathway burrowing to our left and right. “Should we take one of these?” I said.

The Reader grimaced. “I say we keep reading forward,” she said.

We trudged on for another few minutes, until our surroundings changed; the walls became gluey, and we hopped over a synapse and passed what appeared to be giant white ropes.

Finally we reached the end of the channel, and daylight. When we were almost under the opening, I stopped and knelt down to see what was up there.

“Well?” whispered the Reader.

I shook my head. “I see — sky,” I said. “Clouds.”

A cough of wind passed over the surface and sand scratched our faces. The Reader nodded upward and laced her hands together; I stepped into them and she hoisted me up out of the channel — then I pulled her up behind me. There wasn’t much on this page; just a few rickety wooden buildings and a single donkey tied to a post.

A gun rode by on a horse. Two more guns sat in wicker chairs on the porch of a shabby building.

I looked at the Reader. She walked up to the gun. “Excuse me,” she said. “Have you seen a sentence walking through here?”

“What sentence?” said the gun.

“ ‘I am.’,” I said.

“You’re— what ?” said the gun.

“That’s the sentence,” I said.

“ ‘I am.’?” said the gun.

“Not much of a sentence,” said the second gun.

“You haven’t seen it, then?” the Reader said.

The gun shook its head.

“What’s the story here?” asked the Reader.

“No story at all today,” said the gun. “Story here yesterday . Two guns met their makers.”

The Reader thanked the guns and we walked back toward the hole. The Reader’s eyes were bright. “You realize what’s happening here,” she said.

I stared at her.

“ ,” she said. “We’re in a different story.”

I climbed down into the hole.

“Get it?” said the Reader.

“No,” I said.

“The bookwormholes?” said the Reader. “The worms? Go from novel to novel .”

I still didn’t understand. “We just need to find Sentence,” I said.

“Are you hearing what I’m saying? All of literature is at our disposal!”

“Because he can’t have gone that far,” I said.

The Reader put her hands on my shoulders. “He could be anywhere, —in any one of these books.”

“I just want to find him and go home,” I said.

We walked past the gluey walls and toward the crosshole. This time we took a left. Soon I heard a giant pounding: bm-bm; mb-bm; rm-tm; vm-bm .

“What is that?” I said.

dm-vm; mb-zm; bm-dm .

“Whatever it is, it’s big,” the Reader said.

When we pushed open the next bookwormhole cover we were on a strange page. All we saw were lines of words — row after row of them. None of the words were moving or making any sound.

“They’re all dead,” I said.

“Of course they are — it’s a graveyard,” said the Reader.

I looked around. I’d heard about these places — fields where people buried their deadwords — but I’d never actually seen one. I studied the words. “What language is this?” I said.

A wind blew across the page.

“It’s so sad,” I said. “All these words, with so much potential.”

“What do you mean? These words probably lived good lives.”

“They died too young,” I said.

“You didn’t even know them,” said the Reader.

“They could have been so much more,” I said. Then I lowered myself down into the bookwormhole. The Reader followed and closed the cover above us.

The Reader and I walked from story to story: into dramas, romances, science fictions, detective stories. Sometimes we were in a quiet scene — a praying river, a prison cell — but other times we climbed up right into the thick of the action. In one novel, I found myself sitting in a steel boat full of soldiers under fire. In another, I crawled into the story between two lovers in a steamy romantic scene. “I want you so badly,” said a gruffy man, and he pressed against me.

“Me?” I said.

He opened his eyes. “No,” he said. “Her.”

Somewhere in a story about 1930s France, though, I lost the Reader. One minute she was there with me, marching through a crowded city square, and the next minute she wasn’t. I thought she was following me, but when I turned around she was gone. I waited for the crowd to disperse and then retraced my steps, but she wasn’t anywhere. I looked for her all day; I prayed to her but received no response. Finally, I turned around and went back to the bookwormhole we’d come in from, on the altar of an old church in the corner of the city. When we’d arrived, we’d crawled out of the hole in the middle of a service; everyone had stood up, shocked. “ ‘I am.’?” I asked the parishioners. Then the Reader led me through a side exit and out onto the street.