Free Out of This World by Douglas E. Richards

rearrangements, from the letters that you find in there .
     
    From the letters that you find in there . Don’t assume anything about meaning. From the letters that you find in there . Concentrate , he ordered himself.
    Wait . What if there didn’t refer to the building. He and Jenna had made that assumption. What if Hirth was just referring to the word, T-H-E-R-E. Were there four words that could be made, without rearranging any letters, from the letters found in the word THERE?
    He glanced down. The tendrils were now just inches from the ground and closing quickly. He looked back at the pad. And he saw the four words.
     
    THE re, t HERE , t HE re, t HER e
     
    He had it. The vines were just entering the ground. Was he too late?
    “THE, HERE, HE, HER,” he shouted at the door.
    There was a loud click and the door began to slowly open. Several tendrils had now reached the ground and were tunneling into the earth.
    “You did it!” shouted Jenna excitedly. “How?”
    “I’ll explain later. Get ready.”
    The door had opened just enough for them to squeeze through. Their only hope now was that the portal was just inside the door rather than deep inside the building.
    It was. Finally, some good luck.
    The familiar visual distortion of the portal greeted their eyes less than a foot from the door. They gathered up the few tendrils that had begun to burrow into the ground and yanked as hard as they could. The tendrils held.
    Zachary grabbed his sister's hand. “Dive for it!” he shouted, praying there was enough slack in the vines for them to make it through.
    Together they dived off the car and through the door, aiming for the portal, screaming as they shot through the air. The slack in the vines around their ankles was quickly taken up as they flew. Would there be enough, or would the vine snap them back before they reached their goal?
    “Ahhhhhhhh” they both yelled in one continuous scream, squeezing their eyes shut tightly.
    And then they hit the portal, dead center—and at the same instant felt a backward jerk from the now taut vines. Had they made it through in time?
    Jenna opened her eyes.
    They were through. They had done it .
    Although they had dived through the portal headfirst, they had somehow arrived comfortably on their feet as they had after entering the portal in their kitchen.
    The fungus that had gone through with them was writhing rapidly and turning brown. Within seconds it stopped moving and fell from around their ankles.
    “We did it!” shouted Jenna joyfully. They inspected themselves carefully for any trace of fungus or injury and found none.
    Zachary nodded, letting out a long, thankful breath. “Did we ever,” he said. “Talk about close calls.”
    They were standing in the middle of a lush forest filled with trees that made the largest trees on Earth look like miniatures. The massive trunks were as big around as houses and the trees reached hundreds of feet into the air, branching extensively.
    The forest was mostly green, and if not for the sheer size and density of the trees, it might have passed for an exotic jungle on Earth. The many leaves formed a shady canopy, keeping the forest below shielded from the extreme brightness and heat of the sun, providing a cool, pleasant climate. The forest floor was thick with wild flowers of every color along with mushrooms, mosses, and lush grasses. The air was crisp and fresh and filled with the faint scent of flowers and other living things that,while unlike anything they had smelled before, was quite pleasant.
    “This is my kind of place,” said Zachary.
    “Incredible,” whispered his sister in agreement.
    Just seconds before they had been battling for their lives on top of a car in the middle of sprawling farmland and now—in the blink of an eye—they were standing in a lush forest on some other world, as if the transparent man’s world had never existed. These portals were going to take some getting used to.
    Jenna looked at her