Olivia grabs Oliver’s hand and begins to pull him in one direction.

“Ola!” he protests. “How can you even know where you’re going? Everything is blank here!”

“Well, we have to explore, we have to go somewhere. We have to be somewhere.” She says impatiently, still tugging.

“No, Ola. I want to wait until Vellie comes for us. Let’s just wait here. I’m tired.” Olivia is exasperated at this:

“Oli! We can’t take more time, Paul needs us! And we have no idea how long Vellie will take!”

“He’s always come back before. Let’s just wait. Please, Olivia! We can’t even see anything. We have no idea what’s out there.” He gestures helplessly at the blank expanse all around. Before Olivia can respond that anything is better than waiting here, and plus she is the oldest and she is in charge so he’d better listen, they hear a faint mumbling to one side of the blankness.

“MmmmmmrmmmrRRRRmmm Mumhum hum rumbababalumdadum,” says something or someone, getting louder and louder in a crescendo string of unintelligible syllables.

“Look Olivia, look!” Oliver shouts, pointing to the space behind her head. She spins around and both kids see a pale blue sky suddenly painted, as if with a giant brush, across the top half of the blankness. Once it is complete, the rumbling sound stops for a few seconds before moving into a lower register: “Mmmmrmmmbabbalumlumlumbummbabam,” it says. As the sound increases in volume, they see soft yellow sand being painted along the bottom of the blankness, under the sky, and then a darker blue ocean joining sky to sand.

Once this backdrop appears to be finished, the rumbling stops completely. The children stare mutely at one another. Then they hear a pop-bing-BING! and between them appears a voluptuous-looking person with short grey hair, a plaid shirt, overalls and bare feet.

“Well? Aren’t you going to take your shoes off? This is a beach, you know,” says a voice in the same timbre as the rumbling before. The voice comes from the overall-clad person at the same time as it comes from everywhere around them.

“Well it wasn’t a beach before!” Olivia says, sounding angry because the sudden appearance of this environment has made her feel very vulnerable and powerless. The person in the overalls laughs in a very carefree way in response.

“Come on, little ones. I will show you some things,” is all they say next, before heading off on a slow walk toward the water. Oliver casts a too-big grin at his sister.

“Come on, Ola. You wanted to explore, didn’t you?” He says, a little mockingly. “Let’s follow them and see what happens.” Fuming a little, Olivia stomps off after Oliver. We are supposed to be saving Paul… she thinks to herself. But NOooo now we are following a mysterious person on a beach that wasn’t here a minute ago, with no telling how we are going to get out of here. Or where we even are…She huffs hot breath out with each angry step. She has to admit, the sand swishing against her legs does feel like it’s the perfect temperature. She flips off her sneakers and carries them in one hand as she keeps going. Okay, this sand is nice. Really nice. She almost starts to relax a little bit. She reminds herself that they have to find Paul and Oliver is not helping. She has to stay focused.

Oliver and the overalled person stop at the crest of a large dune and wait for Olivia to catch up. She can smell the ocean now, feel the heavy salty air mixing with light beads of sweat along her hairline. How can someone paint a painting you can feel and smell and taste? Olivia wonders. She doesn’t like how big and powerful this person seems, and how small she is in comparison.

“I am the Maker,” says the person, simply, as Olivia joins them. Then the Maker begins to sing, a song without words (or, perhaps more accurately, without words that the kids can understand). The song has harsher, pointier syllables compared with the rumbling sounds from before. (More ‘K’ and ‘T’ sounds whereas the rumbling earlier was all ‘M’s and ‘L’s.)With each sharp crescendo the small, colourful point of a new sail rises above the horizon line. The Maker is creating little boats. Just like they would appear in a children’s book, the pastel striped and polka dotted triangles bob at the horizon on brown masts above wooden hulls.

“How do you do it?” Oliver asks as the three of them stare out into the great blue beyond from on top of the soft warm dune under a brilliant sun.

“Do what?” asks the Maker.

“Make things appear when you, when you… make those sounds.”

“Well, try it,” suggests the Maker, as if they were suggesting Oliver learn to snap his fingers or to, say, whistle or something. They lean over and say, almost confidentially: “At the beginning it helps if you say the name of what you are trying to make. Try it. You’ve got to practice.”

“Puppy,” says Oliver, uncertainly. “Puppy?” he says again, like he’s questioning the whole exercise and only suddenly realizing how ridiculous it is to say a word and expect that thing to pop into existence.

“Good, good,” smiles the Maker. “Now be more specific. What do you see in your head? Describe it.”

“Brown furry puppy,” says Oliver. “With a little pink tongue and dark eyes and short legs and long ears.” He’s gathering steam, getting more confident in his words.

“Believe. Believe in the puppy,” says the Maker, closing their eyes and pasting a concentrated, serious expression on their face.

“Puppy with pink tongue and dark eyes and short legs and long ears,” says Oliver, with firm conviction.

And in the next breath, from behind the neighbouring dune, a small, fuzzy shape is bounding toward them. Olivia can’t believe her eyes. She is pretty sure… no, she knows this is impossible. You can’t just want things and then say them and they become real. Oliver squeals in delight and bends down to pet his new companion.

“Hmm hmm hmmm-HMMMM Hmmm hmm hmmm-HMMM!” The Maker hums and a patch of soft grass appears around their feet, replacing the sand. “This is better for the puppy,” explains the Maker before nodding approvingly at Oliver as if to say, ‘good job.’ They turn to Olivia. She focuses on a spot in front of her. If Oliver could do it, maybe she can make a pet appear, too.

“Kitten. Gray kitten,” she says uncertainly.

“Come on, believe, believe in it,” urges the Maker.

“Kitten. Kitt-EN!” says Olivia, insistently. She’s having trouble believing it, though. Inside her chest there is only the uncertainty of someone who is pretty sure she’s being taken for a ride. Come on, focus, she thinks to herself.

“What’s the matter, Ola? You don’t have an imagination?” And then, as if to rub it in, Oliver says: “Red collar. Red ball. Soft grey kitten.” All three things appear before them, as if it’s nothing for him. The Maker smiles at him, basking Oliver in the glow of their approval.

Rage boils inside Olivia. She narrows her eyes and summons all of her most vengeful big-sister energy:

“GIANT LIZARD PREDATOR!!” She screams, this time believing fully with every fibre of her being.

What happens next is grotesque. It has eight legs altogether, which Olivia realizes is just like it looked in her imagination. It has electric-blue spikes up its back and down to the tip of its tail, and horrible, terrible evil eyes. Glassy and yellow and filled with just the kind of venom needed to hunt cute little dogs and cats and, if it gets very hungry, maybe even little brothers. It moves fast, too. Blindingly fast.

“DELETE! DELETE! UNDO! STOP!!” Olivia yells in total distress at the giant lizard that now slithers menacingly toward them from the same place Oliver’s puppy just came over on the other dune. “UNDO! STOP! DELETE!” But the predatory lizard-creature licks its horrifying chops with a red double-forked tongue and grins a spike-toothed grin. Oliver’s puppy whimpers. The kitten tries to hide under his pant leg. The lizard circles the dune, slithers closer and closer and closer. Its enjoying this.

Olivia is close to tears. Her heart is pounding in her throat.

“NO!” She screams. “Undo! Please, Undo! STOP!” She turns to the Maker. “What’s wrong?” she demands. “Why can’t I stop it?! I need to stop it!”

“We build worlds with our words,” says the Maker, contemplatively, slowly, as if they have all the time in the world. “Our words can create. Destruction is an act only time can complete.”

“YOU HAVE TO STOP IT!” Olivia screams at him! “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But you have to help.” She watches as the red tongue strikes out, its menacing fork slicing within an inch of the puppy which Oliver has scooped up and is now trying to protect in his arms.

“ Tututututututttutut. Tutututtttuutt.” Says the Maker. With his sounds, the lizard predator is caught up in a giant net made of strong twine. The beast writhes and gnashes its teeth against the net. Olivia watches in shock, trying not to think about what almost happened. The sounds coming out of her imaginary-real lizard are terrible; it is reduced to a snarling, drooling ball of rage.

“What will happen now?” Olivia asks, still staring at the writhing ball of flashing scales inside the Maker’s strong net.

“The net will hold, if that’s what you are wondering,” they reply with distinct sadness, “and the animals will fade in some time, but I should send you back to where you came from now.” Olivia feels the Maker’s disappointment like a punch in the gut. “Words have the power to create. You wanted revenge on your brother and with your words you created just that. You are very powerful. You both are. Don’t forget it.”

Again, Olivia feels the passport in her pocket grow red-hot like it’s on fire. A blinding bright-white light fills the space all around them. In a flash like from a camera, the beach and the grass and the sea and the puppy and the Maker are all gone. Olivia and Oliver are standing on sand again, but it’s the red granules of the NowHere’s desert.

“What is WRONG with you, Ola?!” Oliver demands, the second they gain cognizance of their sneakered feet and find their balance. “I had a DOG. You know I always wanted a puppy. Why did you have to make that gross lizard thing? I actually liked that place, unlike everywhere else we keep getting dragged around to!”

“Whatever, Oliver, let’s just forget it. Come on, there’s a camp or something on the horizon. We can go there and see if Rick is there and maybe he can help us find our way back to Vellie.” She grabs Oliver’s hand like she always does, and begins to tug him toward a series of dark-grey shapes lumped along one edge of the horizon in the waning light. This time Oliver plants both feet firmly in the earth and refuses.

“No way, Ola. You’re always pulling me around. You just boss me around, you never even ask me what I think we should do to save Paul, or to find a way home you just, you just… well, you’re mean and you don’t listen and you ruined my chance to have a dog and now you’re pulling me somewhere else and I don’t WANT to GO!” Oliver’s voice rises to a high wail at the end, so Olivia looks around out of habit to make sure no one heard them. She’s annoyed.

“I’m only doing it for your own good, Oli! You would just sit here and play your stupid Nintendo game if it weren’t for me. You probably wouldn’t even have tried to save Paul. Now stop fussing and COME ON. We don’t have all the time in the world, you know?”

“No. I’m not going. First of all, I came down a yellow slide, just like at the park, into the Mermaid world BY MYSELF. And I’m the one who found that passport! YOU’RE the one who wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for ME!”

Olivia rolls her eyes and sighs at him.

“Narwitches,” she corrects, in her most patient big-sister voice. “We went into the Narwitches’ world. They aren’t mermaids, Vellie told us that, remember?”

“SEE!” Oliver is really losing his temper now. “You aren’t even LISTENING to me. You just think I’m like a baby you can boss around!” The two siblings stand, staring at each other, in tense silence for several long breaths. Olivia isn’t used to Oliver standing up to her, and Oliver is even less used to it but he hasn’t felt this mad at her in a long time.

“Whatever,” Olivia says finally, turns on her heel and begins to stock away across the darkening dunes, blood-red in the dusky glow of two simultaneous setting suns behind them. “Have it your way. Do whatever you want without me.”

“Where are you even going now?!” Oliver yells angrily at his sister’s retreating shape. Olivia turns to look at him and yells back:

“I’m going to find Arachne again — that tarantula. There has to be a sacrifice and I know it’s me. I’m the eldest. I might as well get this over with so you can at least find Paul and go home. That’s what you want, right? To go home? Well, I’ll sacrifice myself and then you can go. It’s not like you’re going to miss me. All I do anyway is boss you around.” She brushes angry tears from her cheeks and starts to turn away from him. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot,” she pulls the still-warm passport out of her jeans pocket and thrusts it onto the sand between them. “Here. You need this to travel. Now I can’t boss you around like a baby anymore.” With that, Olivia spins on her heel and marches with determination toward the camp on the horizon, leaving Oliver and the passport alone in the desert.

As she marches, she thinks, In under a day, I made a horrible lizard to threaten Oliver’s dog, and I made Oliver hate me. Maybe the acorns were right. Maybe sacrificing myself is the best thing I can do to help everyone.