Free Eternity's Wheel by Neil Gaiman

hand.
    As before, Hue flowed over us both like weird, nonsticky honey, and I Walked.
    Josephine was a bit more used to Walking now, which made the transition smoother for me; but we were stumbling along the path rather than gliding, the gait of a weary traveler who has been on their feet for far too long.
    I think Hue is getting tired, Josephine thought at me. Well, it wasn’t really thinking at me, exactly; it was more that I was aware of her thoughts. Like she was saying them out loud, even though I knew she wasn’t.
    Probably, I answered. I don’t know how much this takes out of him, but he’s been sleeping a lot.
    Let’s try not to make so many trips, she suggested. We can Walk side to side and gather up as many Walkers as we can find, then take them back all at once.
    It wasn’t a bad plan, and if I had Josephine do most of the side-to-side Walking—meaning we’d go from dimension to dimension rather than back and forth through time—there was far less chance of us being detected. I had to make these next few trips count.
    With that in mind, I cast about for the strongest source of Walker energy I could find.
    And I found it. Close .
    Well, relatively speaking. We had been docked on one of the prehistoric Earths in InterWorld’s future. Hue took us back in InterWorld’s timeline, which took us forward in Earth’s timeline. The Walker essence I was sensing was on a parallel planet, an Earth that had never recovered from the meteor impact roughly sixty-six million years ago.
    The energy I was sensing on this planet, this dead planet, was strong . Very strong.
    Could it be a trap? Josephine asked silently.
    A few days ago, I would have said no. I would have said there was no way to simulate Walker energy from someone who wasn’t a Walker. I would have said we would know .
    I knew now that wasn’t true, so all I said was Maybe .
    The landing sent a jolt through us both, like when you’re going downstairs and hit the floor sooner than you expected because you thought there was another step. The ground was hard and unforgiving, reddish, and cracked like a dry riverbed. The air was thick with dust and ash, the sunlight filtering weakly through the haze. It smelled like rot and marshland, the landscape restricted to a color palette of grays and reds and browns. Despite the warm colors, it was freezing.
    â€œUgh.” Josephine wheezed, lifting her sleeve to her mouth and nose. “It smells like bad water.”
    â€œYep,” I said, doing the same. “Hold on.” I closed my eyes, partly to concentrate and partly because they were stinging and watering. Taking a deep breath through my sleeve, I focused on the strong, clear pulse of familiarity, of power just like mine, the same way I’d found Josephine. It was here, still, laid out before me like a trail of bread crumbs.
    â€œThis way,” I said, starting off through the trees. Josephine followed, coughing.
    â€œThis dust is really thick,” she observed, voice muffled by her sleeve. “Did a volcano explode or something?”
    I ignored the jolt of adrenaline that went through me as her question reminded me of the rockslide that had killed Jerzy and fractured my shoulder. I wanted to stop and take a deep breath, but that wasn’t really an option. Instead, I shrugged and said, “Maybe. More likely it was a huge meteor.”
    â€œYou mean like what killed the dinosaurs?”
    â€œYeah. This is a version of Earth that suffered longer-lasting effects from that, whatever it was.”
    â€œYou just said it was a huge meteor.”
    â€œThat’s what it probably was,” I said. “But no one really knows for sure. Evidence suggests it was a meteor, but scientists have a few other theories.”
    She tilted her head, looking curious. “Aren’t those things we could find out, though? Like if it was a meteor and whether or not there was an Atlantis, and