Notes

**Chapter One: The Beginning**

Somewhere, in a space beyond space, in the exact center of the universe, lay the Crossroads: a massive room where the floors and walls seem to be made of the starry sky itself, glowing with numerous tiny lights like stars. When you stand in the middle of that magnificent space, all around you will be hundreds of luminous windows, on all sides, extending all the way into the ceiling you cannot see. On the other side of each window lies a world yet to be explored. Mages and scientists alike call them "portals."
Only one person had ever been in the Crossroads.
He woke up on the glassy, starlit floor and looked up.

[Insert Illustration Here]

It was cold, and he felt dizzy. All different kinds of wind seemed to blow in through the glowing windows. It felt as if there was a strange mist in the air, accompanied by some ethereal aura. The floor felt cold, too... The boy stood up slowly and gaped all around at the expansive chamber he was in. Where was he? He didn't know. He peered through the windows. He opened their glass doors and carefully reached out his hand into them. It was a gateway into another world. He crept around the place, quietly, as to not make a sound and awaken some otherworldly being. He gazed up at the ceiling no one could see, and when all that was done, he simply sat there in awe, completely and utterly bewildered.
Had he died? Was he in Heaven? He glanced down at himself. He felt his heart beating, his chest breathing... his hands felt cold, perhaps from the cool air around him... but he still felt very much alive. How had he gotten here? He needed to find a way to get back to... back to... He blinked. Where was he from? One doesn't wake up in a place like this by chance. He reached out, far back into the depths of his mind, for a memory: a word, an image, a voice... where was he from? No one and nothing replied. Empty. He began to breathe faster. He searched again. Nothing. There was nothing there.
He walked over to one of the windows and stared into the glass, and sure enough, a face stared back at him. One he didn't recognize. His heart began to race. He saw in its glass, himself; with dark, round, blue eyes that seemed to reflect his spacey surroundings; pale hair, silvery but having a faint hint of a warm hue; his face, red-cheeked from the cool air; and his body, small, and wearing slightly formal attire, a sort of tuxedo-like coat pulled over a sweater and suit-pants, topped off with a red scarf. He bore his eyes into his own, and looked for a name. What was his name? Who was he? What was he? No one and nothing responded. Not a single memory.
"Okay... okay... calm down," he thought to himself, still breathing heavily and feeling lightheaded. He stared up and up and up at the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of little windows. He walked back to the spot where he woke up. "I woke up on the floor... perhaps- perhaps I fell... fell through one of these portals, and hit my head." As he looked up, he tried to calculate which portal was the most likely he fell through, but there were simply too many.
"Okay, okay... um... perhaps this was a place I visited often, and if I wait, perhaps someone will come to check on me." He waited a few minutes. He waited for quite a while, all the while doubting that this was a place that he or anyone would frequent. If he did, then seeing the place should've refreshed his memories, at least a little bit. After much waiting, he grew hungry and steadily more anxious.
"No one's going to come... I can't stay here, I'll starve... I have to go... go somewhere..." The chill of the misty Crossroads made him pull his coat over himself. He felt a warm breeze drift from one of the windows, and he ambled over to it. "If I did go in," he thought to himself, "how would I get back to this portal-room?" He stuck his cold hands into his pockets to warm them, but he abruptly pulled them back out again. He had felt something small in his left pocket. It was small, hard, round... The boy inserted his hand slowly back into his pocket, and pulled out a necklace with a ring-shaped object on the end. Somehow, he recognized it. He held it between his fingers, extended his arm outward, and closed his eyes.
There came a series of faint, high-pitched noises almost like beeping and whirring, and then a whoosh; a small gust of wind came from in front of him, and he opened his eyes again. A small circular portal had appeared, with the other end leading just a short distance from where he stood. "This is mine," thought the boy to himself. "...wait." He thought harder, and he held the pendant in his hand tightly, trying with all he could to remember, until the realizations finally came to him. "I made this. This is... this is a... a..." He thought and thought and thought. What was this thing called? He decided it was called a "portal pendant." And then, just then, a few visions had began to play in his mind: he was sitting for long hours at a desk, reading, typing, and fiddling with tools; a job that others would find stressful and tiring, but one he found comforting and familiar. He tried to remember a little harder, but no other memories came back, to his disappointment. Still, he had been able to remember something, perhaps something very important! He was saddened, however, that the memory he had recovered was just one of him working. Why couldn't he remember his family? His home? His own name? He decided to stop thinking about that for now so he wouldn't wound up crying.
He glanced back to the portal window from which he had felt the warm breeze; he now had a way back to the portal room, and nothing could prevent him from entering. Albeit small, timid, unprepared, and nameless, he was going to enter that portal.
He looked back up again at all the hundreds, perhaps thousands of little windows; one of them was his, and he was going to look for it. He took a deep breath, and stepped forward.

**Islands**

As he stepped foot on the other side of the portal, he felt a cool, humid breeze across his face. The salty smell of the ocean was new, and wonderful. The sand crunched loudly under his boots, as he found himself on an island.

...in the middle of the ocean.

He looked around him and considered heading back for the Crossroads immediately. Too hot, too much nothing, and definitely not where he came from. Just then, a crab walked up and pinched his leg. He gave a yelp and dropped the portal pendant. The crab snatched it up in its little claws and began to scurry away.
"Hey!" cried the boy, "Come back! Please?" He gave chase to the crustacean, all around the little beach; but it crawled under rocks and sticks and things and it became difficult to keep up with it. It began to scramble away from the beach, weaving through trees as the boy reluctantly followed it into the forest. It was rather dark in there.
"Please, please stop running... I need that..." There were an awful lot of plants, even for a forest, it seemed. He tripped on a tree root, then a rock, then a small plant, then fell on a bunch of other plants. The crab just kept going. As he tried to pick himself up again, his scarf got caught in a low-hanging branch; but when he finally managed to untangle himself, the crab was nowhere to be seen.
He got up, dusted himself off, and looked around. He'd chased the crab into the middle of the forest, and he had no idea which way it went, and
he had no idea where he himself was, either. This was off to a not-so-great start.
*well,* he thought, *I can't be more lost than I already am. Although I could've found a better place to get lost... this is more of a jungle than a forest.*
He gave a sigh and began to walk off in the direction he saw the crab run away. All the trees seemed to object to his being there and blocked his path, having to crawl under several branches and things. It was lucky he was small. After walking for about twenty minutes, he saw a faint light up ahead.
The boy followed it quietly, hopeful but perhaps a bit scared of who or what it might be. He continued moving forward. The plants seemed to be less dense in this area. He kept going, hoping he was actually progressing- but after another five minutes of walking, all the vegetation just... stopped. It's as if someone had cleared it, and perhaps it was true. He looked to his left and right, and sure enough, he was standing in the middle of a path. Narrow, but more traversible than all those plants. He looked down one side of the path, as far as he could see to where it bent in the undergrowth, than took the other, just as fair.
Continuing in the direction where he had seen the light moving, this path truly did have the better claim, as it began to widen as he progressed. He ran along it with a bit of cheer: those plants were much more enjoyable to smell and look at when they weren't in his way. The air was moist, and much cooler in the rainforest than it was out on the beach.
A rustling noise came from the distance. ...There weren't any tigers on this island, were there? The boy quieted himself and wandered on slowly. He heard another sound. No, it wasn't a tiger growling... It sounded like the gruff voice of a man, laughing. The boy hid himself in the plants. Perhaps the plants weren't so bad, after all. He kept moving in the same direction as he had been, crawling on all fours through the overgrown botany (and occasionally checking for frogs.) He heard a voice again. This time, there were more of them:
"What a clever crab you are! How does one just find treasure like this?" ...*Crab? Treasure?* "You boys must be blind to miss a shiny gold thing like this just lyin' on the beach! We oughtta be rich by now!" "Are we going to sell this thing? It'd fetch a fair price with a fella I know..." The boy peeked out from a bush. There were two, three of them.
*Pirates.* One holding his portal pendant and observing it gleefully, one with a crab on his shoulder... That *terrible* crab. He really should have found a better place to get lost in. Small, unarmed, and timid, he kept himself in that bush and watched them worriedly. Suddenly, a frog appeared. The boy gave a tiny yelp, covered his mouth, and scrambled back, and the small yellow frog hopped away. But his shuffling had made a noisy rustling that did not go unnoticed.
"Oi! Who's there?" yelled the one with the crab. The boy quieted himself, being careful even not to breathe too loud. What was he going to do? He couldn't go back without that pendant, but he wasn't exactly fit to put up a fight with someone much bigger than he was, let alone three... he was developing a strong dislike of crustaceans. "Come out and fight, coward!" "That isn't going to get us anywhere! I'll check it out myself." The pendant-holding pirate went into the bushes. The boy trembled. Not being able to handle the tension anymore, he abruptly got up and startled the pendant-holder.
The pirate staggered backwards, and the boy looked up at him with a timid expression. "Oh, I'm sorry- I didn't mean to- I wasn't trying to- I hadn't meant to- I was just- I was trying- I needed to- I was-" "Slow down, boy!" yelled the pirate. "You needn't fret so much. Just tell us why you were hiding in the bushes." The boy gulped. "I was- I was just watching..." "Why were you watching?" "Because... b-because... I-I didn't k-know what to do, sir. I was attacked by... b-by that- that crab, sir, and it took... it took my... my..." "You stammer more than my grandmother, bless her!" interjected the pirate. "And quit sir-ing me so much. Is this what you're going on about?" He dangled the pendant in front of him. "Ye-es." "Is this yours?" "Yes sir." "Do you need it back?" "If you please, sir... I-I need it very much." "Then you may have it."
The pirate placed the pendant into the boy's hand, much to the other's disapproval. "Oi!" yelled the crab-owner. "We found that treasure on our island, and everything on this island is ours!" "It was stolen from this boy, you fool!" yelled the first. "Your crab stole from a child! You swore off stealing years ago!" "How do you know that boy ain't a liar? We need it more than he does, look at his clothes!" The crab-owner pointed at the boy's clothes, which were very nicely made indeed. "How're we going to afford another meal this week?" "Shut up!" said the third pirate, who was missing an eye and had been very quiet throughout the whole affair. "Just let the boy speak!" And the three of them turned to the boy, who still looked a bit frightened. He very much wanted to leave. The first spoke again. "What's your name, boy? How'd you get here?" "I'm sorry..." said the boy. "I've forgotten my name... and as for how I got here, it'd be difficult to explain-" "Forgotten your name!" cried the crab-owner. "What a story! How could anyone have forgotten their name?" "SHUT UP!" yelled the pirate with the missing eye. "Go on." And the boy went on and told them the whole story of how he had awoken in the Crossroads with no memory, and of the portals, and of the portal pendant, and when they exchanged bewildered glances he demonstrated to them how it could make portals, and they at last believed him. "I'm just hoping to find where I came from." His stomach grumbled. "...and perhaps some food."