“Hum.” Zia narrowed her eyes, suspicious, but faintly surprised. “Well. We don’t have all night. But okay. In simpleton speak.” She raised one hand in a fist and impatiently tapped the thumb clenched at the side with her other forefinger. “We’re out here, on this side, okay? Alive, sonny. Right?”

Alex nodded. He took a step toward Zia, peering intently at her hand.

“If you’re foolish enough to stop being alive, you, all the fizzly energy of you, drains through and gets trapped inside, in here.” She shook her fist roughly, then turned her hand over, opened it, and held it under Alex’s nose, with the fingers wiggling violently.

“You’re sucked into eternity. Join the hot cosmic soup. Go where the wild things are. Dissolve into death, child.”

“Okay.” Alex managed a hoarse whisper.

“Death’s supposed to be a one-way street, rrrright? Go through the door and it’s locked behind you. Cheerio! You know about that. But at this spot, where we’re standing, when everything all lines up, just for a teensy-tiny moment, there’s a little gap, a hole.”

She curled her fingers and held the hand to her eye, blinking through it at Alex like a child playing with an imaginary telescope, then snapped the fist closed tight again. “You can step in this side here, at the castle.” Zia tapped the knuckle of the thumb. “And step out again over there, on the Kandel.” She tapped the curl of her little finger. “And in between, you’ve stepped right through death, without getting caught in death.” She gestured to Beckman. “Get Father ready.”

“The gate is at the weak spot,” Alex said, trying to piece the madness together. “You step through here. And you’ll come out on the Kandel mountain. But, in between, you’ll have . . . passed through . . . death.”

“Through death without dying.” Zia nodded, watching as Beckman and the big robot moved the tall man so his head lay centered at the foot of the gate. “Through fire without burning.”

“Can I look closer?” Alex said. “The gate, I mean. Now that I know what it is.”

Zia knotted her brow. “Maybe you are curious. Your daddy was. Okay. Slowly. But quickly. And keep away from Father. No monkey business, rabbit, or Hans’ll snap your paw right off.”

Beckman gave the loop around Alex’s arm a friendly squeeze, then let the wire fall loose so he could move. Alex hobbled past Zia, leaning on his broom and wincing with each step, a little more than he needed to. The wire trailed slack along the ground behind him. He inspected the varnished old wood, letting them see how interested he was. But he was also studying the layout around him from the corner of his eye, the positions of Beckman and Zia.

“How does it . . . work?” Alex asked, not really sure what he was asking.