Beckman’s breathy singing became higher, faster. All at once, he stopped, raised a mighty mechanical finger, and tapped the gate.

Tap-tap.

A second later, like a delayed echo in the woods, the sound repeated, but it was slightly different.

Tap-tap—tap.

“It’s working!” Zia beamed, actually jumping and clapping. “That’s little William von Sudenfeld. He’s on the other side of the gate. Up on the Kandel. Its shadow is falling there now. See?” In the brightening moonlight, Alex could clearly see the shadows of himself, Zia, Beckman, and the life-sizer. Yet the gate cast no shadow at all.

“We took all the pieces of the gate to the Devil’s Pulpit first, to charge it on the rocks, remind it where it had to open,” Zia said. “It was so happy. Go on, Hans.”

Beckman started singing new words. Zia looked to the sky and straightened, preparing herself.

“Immortality?” Alex asked, playing for time. “So why hasn’t he done it before? If he’s known about it all this time.”

Zia ran at him fast and rapped him hard on the forehead with a sharp knuckle.

“Knock-knock. Hello? Are you listening? ‘You-have-to-give-your-life-away.’ Understand? That’s ve-ry dan-ger-ous. Father has studied the gate for years and always held back. But now there’s no time left. No choice.”

“So, where is he?” Alex put weight onto his weak foot, testing it.

“What?” Zia snapped.

“Your gate-maker,” Alex said. “If he was supposed to have found the secret to eternal life here, then where is he now?”

“Oh. He made a mistake. Surrounded himself with idiots. Scaredy-cats. Unable to believe. Father will be the first to go through. We’ll be next.”

“We?”

“Yes, big ears, we. Father will give the gate his life, then the gate will hold the hole open, and we can all pass through with him. It’s a great gift. The greatest. Immortality’s on offer: of course we go through! Besides, you wouldn’t want to be left out here when the gate opens and everything starts falling.”

“The castle.” Caught by a new rush of panic, Alex barely heard her. He looked up at the shattered tower. “It collapsed.”

“Yes, yes. Keeping the hole open long enough to go through is like ripping it open over and over again. There’s energy released. Everything’s energy and vibrations, Alexander, that’s the first secret. The energy has to go somewhere. It goes rumbling into the earth.”

“But the story said, if it was opened again, it would . . . destroy the earth. The end of the world.”

“Poppycock. Don’t be such a drama bunny. Why would we want that? Father’s calculated it. The fault line will only open from here to the Kandel. Just twenty-five miles long or something. And only a few hundred miles or so wide either side. Some things’ll fall in, yes. But we’ll be sheltered by the gate.”