The Magic Factory

She was gazing at the empty space. She reached forward with her fingertips and caressed the air.

“It feels just like one of mine,” she said.

“Do you think it’s made the same way?” he asked. “Through waves?”

Esther nodded. “I do.”

“How will I get through?” Oliver lamented.

“I think I might be able to make an opening,” Esther said. “Using my own specialism to counter it.”

Oliver’s eyes widened. “And you thought sonar was the worst?”

Esther smiled coyly.

Oliver watched as she shifted her mind into the place needed to summon her powers.

“Whoa,” she stammered, beads of sweat appearing instantly on her brow. “This is not going to be easy.”

She reached out with her hands. It looked like she was trying to pry apart two magnets, or rip fabric in half with her bare hands.

“I’m not strong enough to open this on my own,” she told him.

“Let me help,” Oliver said.

He summoned his own powers, this time transforming one of his hands into a crowbar. He reached forward, finding the gap Esther had managed to rip through the shield, and wrenched it further open. The resistance was powerful, but they kept at it, working together until they’d made a space big enough for Oliver to squeeze through.

“There,” Esther said, stepping back.

But the moment she let go, the gap instantly sealed up.

Esther looked over at Oliver, realization dawning on her face, turning her skin pallid.

“The shield is so strong it can heal itself,” she said. “It won’t stay open.”

Oliver let out a heavy exhalation. “Once I’m through, I’ll be trapped the other side.”

Esther shook her head vigorously as if the idea of Oliver being trapped the other side was inconceivable to her. “I’m just going to have to hold it open until you get back.”

“You can’t,” Oliver said. “It will drain you.”

“I’m strong,” Esther countered. “You said so yourself.”

Oliver shook his head. “It’s too huge an undertaking. I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You’re not asking,” she argued. “I’m offering.”

Oliver took her by the shoulders. “Then I don’t accept your help.”

Esther remained fiercely stubborn. “I’m going to do it anyway, with your permission or without it.”

Oliver sighed with frustration. “I don’t want you to risk your health for me.”

“And I don’t want you to have no chance of getting back. I can do it.” She gave him a decisive nod. “I am doing it.”

Oliver realized there was no arguing. Esther was not backing down.

“Okay,” he relented. “But only while the timetables are off. Once they’re back online tomorrow you’ll be out of bounds. You could make the dimension unstable.”

Esther looked distraught as she grappled with the reality of their situation. “Professor Amethyst said they’d come back on after forty-eight hours. That gives you less than eight hours.”

Oliver nodded gravely. He understood the stakes.

They turned back to the wall, both silent as they worked together to create a new opening. Esther ripped a seam through which Oliver used his crowbar hand to wrench it apart. Then Esther adjusted her position so that she’d be able to keep the sides of the opening apart. Oliver could see the strain on her already.

“Esther,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes I do,” she replied. Then she looked over briefly, her beautiful emerald eyes glittering with tears. “GO.”

Oliver didn’t waste any time. He squeezed through the opening, feeling a strange coldness pass through his whole body. Once on the other side, he looked back, searching for Esther. But, of course, she was now concealed by the invisible wall.

“Goodbye,” he whispered, his voice cracking.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Suddenly, Oliver heard a honk. He turned sharply. A taxi was careening toward him.

His heart pounded as he jumped back, landing on a sidewalk. He was just in time. The car whizzed past him.

But as Oliver watched it go, he noticed it wasn’t a taxi at all. It was a police car, with a little sign on top and the word sheriff emblazoned across its side. It had a strange rounded black body and large shiny fenders. It was an old-fashioned wartime police car.

Oliver knew then, without a doubt, that he was back in the past. He was back in 1944.

Oliver looked about him. The streets of 1944 New Jersey were exactly as he’d left them when he’d followed Ralph into the School for Seers. He’d come out at the exact same point he’d gone in. He even recognized the same children playing hoop and ball in the playground, the same smartly dressed men driving shiny black cars. It was as if time itself had been paused while he’d been inside the school, as if a second out here had been a day in there.

It was an unsettling thought but Oliver didn’t find it all that surprising, considering the fact the school existed outside of time. But it meant the amount of time he had to stop Lucas before Esther lost hold of the tear in the wall could be even less than the eight hours he’d anticipated.

Oliver hurried onward, heading in the direction of Illstrom’s Inventions. Without Ralph to guide him, he had to navigate the streets himself, a task that amplified how very alone he felt without his friends. They’d become his companions now and he desperately wished they could be by his side. He wondered what would happen if they all awoke before he returned, and what Esther would tell them about helping him escape. And more importantly, what Professor Amethyst would do when he discovered Oliver had left. Would he expel him? Even if Oliver survived this ordeal and made it back to the school alive, would he even be allowed back in?

He ran on, passing the housing estates and munitions factories, the workers and civilians going about their lives under the shadow of war. He could sense it in the air, that tense feeling of disaster waiting around every corner. Living during a time when the world was at war must have been terrifying, and Oliver felt supremely grateful for the safe and peaceful days he’d spent at the School for Seers. He’d needed them; his next task would test him to his limits.

At last the factory loomed into view. Oliver felt a chill run through his spine. Even with its shiny new 1940s appearance, the factory looked like home to him. To think of it in mortal peril made Oliver feel sick to the stomach.

He headed toward it, struck once again by how vibrant it was, with a steady stream of workers filing in and out of the big main doors, wearing the same blue overalls as Oliver.

The same overalls! Oliver thought, realizing that he would blend right in.

He rushed for a group of workers heading from the bus stop to the factory, and muscled his way into the middle of them. As though he were a chameleon, none of them seemed to notice his intrusion. And so he was swept along with the group, right up the steps and in through the double doors of Illstrom’s Inventions.