Worlds War One

ix [Autumn]

Autumn Loloma had not set foot outside Coconino County during her entire first twenty years of life. The farthest she'd ever gotten from her village in Polacca, Arizona, had been to Flagstaff a few times. A typical day might have been going to school, participating in a religious ceremony, harvesting some squash, and helping her aunt make a few Kachina dolls to sell at McGee's. Now she was standing at the edge of another world, chasing monsters into other realms to retrieve the ambulatory corpse of her zombie sister.

"You ready for this?" Callie asked.

Callie had roused Autumn from sleep mere minutes before. Autumn still wondered if this was maybe a dream. When Saanvi had assigned them separate quarters, Autumn took full advantage of getting some rest. She'd been troubled by nightmares ever since Spring had disappeared. Autumn would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. She'd been worried the thought of something walking around wearing the rotting skin of her undead sister might make the bad dreams even worse.

Instead, Callie had shaken her awake before she had even started to dream. "Get dressed," the soldier had said. "It's time."

Now, they waited in front of a gateway to some other world. Recent victims of this dangerous adventure lay on either side of the portal, emaciated men dead from dehydration. Bad disappeared into the portal. Saanvi and Ji had already gone through. She watched Drill follow, with Fox and Quest right behind him. Callie fidgeted like a kid waiting outside the big top, ready to get inside to see the lions and elephants and trapeze artists, but a companion hindered her momentum with a fear of clowns.

"C'mon, Autumn," Callie said. "We're not going to find your sister by standing still."

"I don't belong here."

"That's the point, Autumn," Callie said. "None of us belong. We're a bunch of random shapes and colors mixed together. That's why we're calling ourselves the Misfits."

"I'm scared, Callie."

"Yeah? Well, maybe we aren't so different after all."

Lieutenant Robinson had ordered the soldier to be responsible for Autumn. Autumn couldn't tamp Callie's eagerness for adventure. Even in the face of fear, Callie was ready for whatever awaited them on the other side. Autumn wasn't going to get left behind in the woods with God knows what creeping around. Autumn forced her foot across the threshold of the gateway.

And into somewhere else.

It was stone, and it was a home, like a petrified apartment structure. The Misfits crowded into a corridor that stretched in both directions with walls, floors, and ceiling all cut from the reddish rock. Doorways on both sides opened into shadowed caves containing even more portals leading to places unknown. The hallway was like some central hub of many different gateways. Autumn checked where they'd come from, and there was only darkness within the opening she had stepped tough. Then Callie appeared from the shadow. The shimmering shine they'd seen from the other side wasn't evident from this end.

Somehow, they'd been transported from the forests of Paraguay to somewhere else. Instantly. Teleportation? Wormhole? Magic?

"This is impossible," Autumn said. "I can't do this."

Saanvi gave her a withering glare. "Then go back."

Autumn stared behind her. The place where they'd all arrived from appeared dark and ominous. Maybe the way back didn't lead to Paraguay anymore? And what would she do all alone in South America anyway? Hitchhike back to Coconino County?

"It's okay," Callie said to her, taking her hand. "I'm right here."

Autumn nodded. Misfits. None of them belonged together, so that gave them something in common. The first time she ever had anything in common with some blonde, White girl. Autumn wanted to find Spring—or the thing wearing Spring—and she could never search for her sister without the resources available to these privileged players. Autumn believed following Callie and her socially acceptable diverse team was her best chance at finding her sister. She took a deep breath and exhaled, letting the worst of her panic dissipate.

"What happened?" Autumn asked sharply, regaining some of her spunk. The rest of them were thinking it—all of them except Saanvi. Stepping through portals to other places must be as normal as taking a Greyhound to Flagstaff.

"Someone important resides here," Saanvi said. "This home is constructed on a hub connected to various places in the Wider World."

"And where in the world are we?" Autumn asked.

Callie was checking the compass on her wrist. She seemed to interpret the glowing holographic globe that hovered over the surface in three dimensions. Autumn thought it was straight out of Star Wars. She didn't like Star Wars. White people in space.

Autumn worried Callie would tell her they were on another planet. Or this was a mirror universe where everything was backward. Maybe here, the indigenous people of America had sent the White conquerors back to Europe.

"It says we're in Colorado."

Autumn checked over her shoulder. "And anyone can walk through, skipping from one continent to another?" Colorado was a lot closer to Arizona than Paraguay.

"Usually, there's a key to get into a place like this," Saanvi said. "But the undead man you called Wang Mot simply broke through. Fascinating."

"I think you pronounced 'frightening' wrong," Autumn said.

Stone wasn't prone to decay, so the trail of the undead ended. The zombie could have gone either way along the corridor. Badia was first through and had informed the others she hadn't seen Wang Mot go either way.

"And can we stop giving the undead a name?" Autumn sneered.

"He named himself," Fox said.

"By that logic, I had a cat that would have named herself 'Meow,'" Autumn replied.

"That wasn't a cat," Ji said.

"Which way?" Badia asked Saanvi.

"Certainly, he escaped through another gateway," Saanvi said. "Each one of these doorways leads somewhere else. A thousand possibilities."

"Then we lost him," Fox sighed.

"Not necessarily," Saanvi said. "Someone that lives here might be able to tell us which doorway he used. Then we can follow. We need to speak with the residents of this place." She looked at Autumn. "Wouldn't you like to meet some extended family, Miss Loloma?"

Autumn was speechless, a strange situation for a woman who had trouble tempering her tongue. She studied the ancient stone that cut these corridors. Didn't she feel some pang of familiarity, like something old spoke to her very soul? Spring had been the spiritual one, peering past the mortal coil at an ethereal world of the invisible and untouchable. "You know what is invisible and untouchable, Spring?" Autumn used to ask her sister. "Only the things that don't exist."

That list of impossible things was a lot shorter today than it had been yesterday.

"Like fellow native people?" Autumn asked Saanvi.

In a world where the undead were up and energetic and portals connected Paraguay and Colorado, did she expect timeless Anasazi sitting on a council of immortal indigenous Americans? Or spirits haunting the halls of the cave-carved pueblo? Or something more sinister?

"More like lost brothers and sisters," Saanvi said. "I don't think family means quite what you thought it meant. The Way Things Really Are for things like you aren't the same as it is for the rest of us, Autumn Loloma."

Things? Rest of us? What was Saanvi talking about? "What's so different about me?" Autumn asked.

Misfits, Autumn thought. None of us belong. We are a bunch of random shapes and colors mixed together.

"Everything is different about you, Autumn," Saanvi answered. "Come. See. Finally."

And as Saanvi led, Autumn and the others followed. As the seasons changed and the hours turned to days, so Autumn felt that this moment was the last before everything became different forever.