Fire sprang up in the spot I was studying. I watched it leap and shimmy like a living creature. I noticed its yellow and orange, and the pale white at its heart. There was more to it than what I was seeing, I realized. What I saw was a tiny outpost of a whole world of fire. It drew me. I wanted to see the whole. It was just a little ways away.

“That’s good, Beth,” Callie said shakily. “I think you’re seeing it. When it pulls you, let your sight follow. It will probably look like a tunnel to you.”

“It doesn’t look like a tube or a tunnel. It doesn’t look like anything.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “Whatever it looks like, try to find something out of place.”

I again focused on the fire until the pulling feeling happened. I looked deeper. Flames suddenly engulfed me, but they didn’t burn. Distantly, I could hear voices, but what held my attention was what I saw — not a tunnel, but an expanse of black, craggy ground, sloping gently upwards toward a low hump that convulsively spewed white-hot fire. Red embers spouted up from the white heat, settling in graceful arcs, and pale gray smoke drifted up against a black sky. Long tendrils of orange wound down the slope toward me, pooling here and there like fire-licked mirrors. A distant sound caught my attention — a clattering roar punctuated by sharp pops and booms. It swelled until I couldn’t hear anything else. I began to feel heat on my face.

Was this what the strait looked like inside?

I was supposed to look for an anomaly. I glanced right and saw more of the same — blackness and fire. Then I looked to the left and saw the most surprising thing. A folding lawn chair was perched on the jagged rocks. In it sat a man, or rather, a man-shaped creature. His surface was similar to the black rock all around me, except it seemed to be riding on a molten core, which occasionally blossomed through a crack, then cooled and darkened. He was sizzling softly. Impossibly, he was reading a paperback. As I watched, he shifted and crossed his legs, then glanced up. His eyes narrowed and swept over and around me a few times before catching my gaze. A look of astonishment spread over his face. The book in his hands combusted in a puff of ash and smoke.