The second portal to Mere had been two feet high and three feet across. Amber knew this because later she returned to that exact spot beside the woods and measured where the portal had been using her wooden school ruler. She did not know the size of the first portal because she had been much younger then — just six; she was seventeen now — and so she had overlooked many important details. In the back of her notebook she recorded the second portal’s measurements, and beside those numbers she drew a crude sketch of the surrounding landscape, indicating the portal’s precise former location: low to the ground and in the shade, as if it hadn’t wanted to be noticed or had no need to be. It hadn’t appeared in the center of the woods, where the canopies of branches crowded closest together and there was a tinge of darkness even at noon, but at the spot where the trees ended and the athletic field began. When she turned, Amber could see the soccer nets set up for the afternoon game and, farther down the field, a pair of frisbees rising into the air. What had even drawn her to this spot? A glimmer like a piece of lost jewelry in the dead leaves. But the real source of the glimmer had been the light from that other place, Mere: a glimpse of its foreign sky. There had been no omens to suggest that, by going through the portal a second time, Amber would ruin the rest of her life: no bats circling the entrance nor enormous crows cawing ominously from nearby branches. Even if there had been bats and crows, I believe Amber would have gone anyway.