Ulysses Jason MacTavish was nearly 13 when he found his first gateway to another world.

He wasn’t looking for it at the time. He wasn’t looking for much of anything, except a place to hide. He ran through the woods behind his middle school, his sea-green eyes darting frantically back over his shoulder. It was late March, so the ground was still hard with frost. Sharp, leafless tree branches tore at his jacket. His sneakers slipped on patches of leftover snow. Every breath made him wheeze, pain tightening in a hot band across his chest. He didn’t run because he was playing a game, or because he wanted the exercise, or because he was trying to break the land-speed record for eighth graders.

No, Jason ran because he was being chased.

The growl of engines echoed through the woods like a pack of approaching wolves. Menacing, nasal laughter ricocheted off nearby elm trunks, seeming to come from all sides at once. Jason rounded a bend in the wooded path and came to a stop, gasping. There was no way he could outrun his pursuers, but perhaps he could outsmart them. He unzipped his backpack, digging through folders until he found a history essay he’d written about Easter Island.

As the roar of dirt bikes grew closer, he shoved the paper into the roots of a mossy oak, making sure his name was showing. Then Jason jumped down the hill, sliding on the wet, decomposing leaves that coated the embankment. He took cover behind a papery birch, peering up at the path.

Three 14 year-old boys rounded the corner, squeezing the throttle on their bikes for menacing effect. Their features were shaded by the thick tree canopy, but two things were clear: they were big, and they were angry. Jason guessed that most of their victims didn’t lead them on such an extensive chase. The teenagers scanned the woods, muttering their frustrations. Jason was beginning to worry they wouldn’t take his bait, when the hefty one with the buzzcut (Geoff or Todd, he wasn’t sure which) pointed to the base of the mossy oak. They’d spotted his history essay.

Their leader bent down to inspect it. He was tall and thick-limbed, a full year older than Jason. His pale scalp was capped with platinum-dyed, dandruff-dusted hair, and a puffy pink scar dribbled down from his left eye. His expression was fixed in a permanent sneer, showing off crooked yellow teeth. His name was Dustin Davison, but all the kids at school called him ‘D-Day’. He jerked his head at his cronies, and they began walking their dirt bikes down the forest path – in the opposite direction of Jason’s hiding place. The ruse had worked.

Jason leaned against the birch, trying to get his wheezing under control. Every new school he came to, it was the same. He’d have a day or two of anonymity, but then his sickly demeanor would draw the attention of the local bullies like hyenas to rotting meat. They’d corner him after class, predatory grins practically dripping with saliva. They’d offer to guide him home or give him the lowdown on his new school, usually in exchange for money. Whether Jason agreed or refused or tried to change the subject, it always ended with him getting hit and them taking what they wanted. A dozen or so of these encounters later, Jason had learned it was more efficient to simply run.

Unfortunately, running was one of his least favorite activities. Since he was a baby, Jason had had a weak constitution. He was allergic to more things than he could count, he was highly susceptible to dampness, and he always seemed to be either getting a cold, or getting over a cold. Worst of all, he was asthmatic. A jog of ten paces, and he’d be wheezing as if his lungs were made of Swiss Cheese. A full-on sprint, such as the one he just finished, and it would feel like red-hot iron bands were squeezing his chest.

Jason scrabbled through his backpack, straining to keep his wheezing quiet. His fingers closed on the cool plastic of his inhaler and he brought it to his mouth. He strained his ears, but couldn’t hear anything beyond the panicked rattle in his own chest. He depressed the plunger on the inhaler. A blissfully cool mist entered his lungs, expanding his airways, but the sharp sound sliced through the still forest air.

An engine screamed to life. Jason whipped his head around the tree trunk, seeing Dustin’s bike turn on the path and head directly for him. A wild, vicious grin crinkled the big kid’s dripping scar.

Jason pushed off the birch, sprinting through the undergrowth. His wheezing returned, making every breath painful. Despite the uneven ground, Dustin and his cronies drew parallel to their prey, their hoots and jeers creepily blending with the growl of the bikes.

A small gully lay up ahead. It was too wide to jump across, and too steep to slide down. But Jason knew if he stopped, Dustin and his crew would get him. Without thinking, he leapt into the chasm.

It was at least 20 feet to the bottom, but Jason’s hands shot out, grabbing for anything within reach. He managed to snag a branch and slid down it, the rough bark scraping the skin from his palm. He let go, tumbling the last six or seven feet to the cold creek bed. He hit the water, cold mud filling his sneakers and seeping through his jeans. The branch whipped upward, striking Dustin in the face. Geoff and Todd froze, and there was a deadly silence as the bully touched the red mark on his cheek.

“You’re gonna regret that, freak,” Dustin said quietly. Not wanting to learn the details of how that would happen, Jason stumbled off down the creek bed. Cursing, the bullies followed him on the crest above, looking for a way down.

After about 50 yards, the gully widened out. Jason immediately ran in the opposite direction of his pursuers. The roar of the bikes was fading, but Jason knew he couldn’t run much more. He had to find a real place to hide.

He exited the creek bed, spying a copse of evergreen trees up ahead. They stood on a small hill and their branches were full of needles, providing the perfect cover for a lookout spot. In the center of the trees was a moss-rimmed puddle, its surface catching the stray beams of afternoon sun. If his situation hadn’t been so dire, it would have been quite a welcoming sight. There was a shout behind Jason. The bullies had found their way to the creek bed.

Even though each breath was like a white-hot stab to the chest, the boy went as fast as he could toward the circle of evergreens. The lowest branch was seven feet off the ground. He leapt for it, but he was so spent, his fingers didn’t even graze the bark. He tried again, red spots beginning to bloom in his vision. The dirt bikes were now at the base of the hill. With a massive effort, Jason leapt straight upward, his hands wrapping around the branch. He tried to pull himself up, but the rough bark scraped the skin of his palms. He kicked feebly. In moments, the dirt bikes would be over the rise.

Desperately, Jason heaved himself upward. His forearms hooked around the branch, smearing his jacket with sap, but he was home free now. He scrambled up the tree limbs like a ladder, until a thick curtain of evergreen needles shielded him from the rest of the forest.

He leaned against the trunk, trying to steady his breath and wishing – not for the first time – that he was normal. While other kids debated the merits of flying or super-strength, Jason simply wished to go outside without the worry that his face would swell, or his lungs would close. No other kids his age had to carry Epi-pens and wear stupid-looking bracelets that contained a list of everything they were allergic to.

His bitter reverie was broken by a glint of light from the moss-ringed puddle beneath him. He craned his neck, trying to get a better glance at the water below. The pool was about ten feet across, and still as glass. The tree-tops and branches were reflected in its surface, framing his sweaty face. Jason was thin and gangly for an eighth grader, and pale from having spent most of his childhood indoors. His eyes were a light sea-green, and his wavy mouse-brown hair fell across his forehead in a careless way.

But as the boy looked down, the reflections in the puddle began to change. The trunk of one evergreen transformed into a twisted tower. The branches of another became a network of pipes. A squat, bushy conifer turned into a round-roofed mosque. The more he looked, the more the tree outlines came to resemble a fantastic city skyline.

Jason leaned out precariously on the branch. Not only had the forest behind him vanished completely, but so had his own face. In their place was a collection of soot-stained, clay buildings clustered around a busy harbor. It looked like photos Jason had seen of cities in the Middle East, combined with pictures of London from the late 1800’s. The difference was, the buildings in those places obeyed the laws of physics. Here, the structures twisted and curved throughout each other, interconnected by metal pipes that seemed more like overgrown vines than man-made objects. The pipes wormed around buildings, or were supported by braces, or simply appeared to float in the air. But as if that weren’t enough, the city in the puddle was moving.

It wasn’t like the general, hazy movements the trees made, back and forth with the direction of the wind. The movement here was random, varied, the kind you see when gazing down from a tall skyscraper. Once his eyes adjusted to the tiny scurrying dots, Jason realized with a shock what they must be: People. The smog-shadowed port was filled with thousands of tiny people, all going about their business, unaware that a 12 year-old boy was gaping at them from the branch of an evergreen tree.

More elements began to reach his senses. First, there were the sounds: people calling in a rich, foreign language; seagulls crying as they wheeled above the creaking ships; bells clanging as the boats left dock. Then came the smells. Even though he was in the middle of an isolated wood, Jason could clearly detect the odor of burning machine oil. His nose wrinkled at the scent of horse poop littering the wet seaside streets. His mouth watered at the aroma of fried fish cooked by a dockside vendor. But the one that floored him was the strongest of all, the one that infused everything else with its salty, thrilling odor: the smell of the sea. They were several hundred miles from the nearest ocean, yet the marine spray of a vast, unknowable body of water was entering Jason’s nose. There was only one explanation:

He was gazing into another world.

“Where the hell is he?!” A grating, nasal voice broke through the sounds coming from the puddle below. Surprised, Jason nearly slipped off the branch, but caught a limb and steadied himself. Dustin and his crew were directly beneath him, sitting astride their dirt bikes. The smell of their exhaust was sharp and tangy, blanketing the more subtle smells from the strange seaside city.

“We saw him come up here,” said the blond mountain troll to Dustin’s right. That was Geoff, Jason remembered. Which meant Brown Buzz-Cut was Todd.

“If he came up here, moron,” said Dustin, “Then how did he manage to get away so quickly? Can he fly?”

Thankfully, the other two looked down at their bikes instead of upwards. Dustin scanned the area one last time, then spit on the ground. “A waste of space, the both of you. Let’s go. Maybe we’ll catch him on the way out.”

The three of them gunned their engines and roared off. Jason looked back down at the puddle, but the fantastic seaport had vanished. The only things in the moss-ringed water now were the waving branches of trees and the scratched face of a tired, nearly-13 year-old boy.

But Jason was sure of what he’d seen. The smell of the ocean was still in his nose, and cries of the gulls still echoed in his ears. And there was one more detail, one that convinced him more than any other that the city in the puddle had not been an hallucination. He’d only taken one breath of the seaport’s salt air, but it had managed to accomplish what no amount of inhalers or steroid shots had done for Jason’s entire life –

The air of that other world had stopped his wheezing.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2: Questions for Uncle Mike