Free The Storyteller by Aaron Starmer Page B

from an actual place,” I said. “They just … come.”
    Alistair shook his head and twirled the pen in his fingers like a little baton. “There’s another dimension besides ours. It’s a place where only kids go. I go there. I’ve spent a long time there. I call it Aquavania, but there are other names for it.”
    â€œAlistair, stop. You’re—”
    â€œNo,” he said. “I have to ask you to stop. Before you say anything else, let me tell you that this is real. This is not something I’m making up. I’ve stood where you’re standing. Actually, I was sitting in the corner in the beanbag chair, but … technicalities. Point is, you’re going to try to read something into what I’m saying. Don’t. What I’m telling you is the plain and simple truth.”
    â€œWhat you’re telling me sounds crazy.”
    â€œWell, the truth can be crazy sometimes,” he said. “Let me explain why you saw that wombat. If you still think it’s crazy, fine. If you can come up with a better explanation, then go ahead and believe that. But this is what I believe. This is what I know.”
    â€œGo on,” I said, because that’s what you say to your brother when he decides it’s time to bare his soul. His cracked soul.
    He spoke slowly and clearly, like he didn’t want me to miss any details. “When kids visit this other dimension, this Aquavania, they basically become gods,” he said. “Think of it as the ultimate sandbox, but kids can create more than castles and sand sculptures. It all starts with water, and from that water, they build worlds containing anything they can think of. Anything is possible. Ice caverns swarming with flying polar bears. Talking stick figures. Space stations with monster galleries. Anything. And the kids, the daydreamers as we call them, have a long time to create. Because when they go to Aquavania, it’s as if the regular world—or the Solid World as we call it—freezes. They can spend countless years in Aquavania and come back and not even a second will have passed at home.”
    I was staring at Alistair’s bookshelf, the spines of classic fantasy tales staring back at me. “Okay,” I said. “So it’s like … What’s the book where the kids go to a magical—”
    â€œThis isn’t a book,” Alistair said. “This is where the inspiration for books comes from. Images and sounds and ideas from these worlds seep through the water and into our dimension. And those things inspire people like you. Storytellers.”
    There was frost on Alistair’s window, clinging to the edges. If I held a magnifying glass up to it, what would I see? A web of ice crystals. Molecules. Frozen water—that’s all.
    â€œSo the wombat is something some kid thought up in Aquavania?” I asked.
    â€œNot exactly,” Alistair said. “The wombat is how it all began. It was the original gateway into Aquavania.”
    â€œAnd the image came to me … through water?”
    Alistair nodded and said, “For some reason, you saw the beginning.”
    â€œWhy me?”
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe so you can help me.”
    â€œHelp you? I don’t even know what you’re doing.”
    Alistair paused. Then he tapped on his teeth with the pen. Tap. Tap. Tap. “I’m doing my job.”
    â€œWhich is?”
    â€œI’ll tell you,” he said, “but first you have to make me a promise.”
    Then he slipped the pen behind his ear and put out his hands. I grasped them, and he squeezed back, hard. The bones in my fingers couldn’t take this for long, and while I don’t think he was trying to hurt me, it was pretty obvious he was showing me how serious he was.
    â€œI need to know what I’m promising,” I said.
    â€œYou’re gonna be tempted to tell Mom and Dad about this,”