I had been writing since I was pretty small, and I've always been telling these stories about doors and finding other worlds within our own.

I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen.

There was romance in the unknown, but once a place had been discovered and cataloged and mapped, it was diminished, just another dusty fact in a book, sapped of mystery. So maybe it was better to leave a few spots on the map blank. To let the world keep a little of its magic, rather than forcing it to divulge every last secret. Maybe it was better, now and then, to wonder.

There was a girl who could fly, a boy who had bees living inside him, a brother and sister who could lift boulders over their heads.

I had been writing since I was pretty small, and I've always been telling these stories about doors and finding other worlds within our own.

Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of these ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize that we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries - but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.

I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.