Nathaniel’s mom was about to set out a few fall decorations in the front yard, like she normally did every year, when she called him down from his room. "Can you get me the fall box from the basement? I seemed to have pinched my back earlier."

  "Sure." He ran down the stairs, then jumped down five steps, turned, and jumped down eight steps. He'd been doing that for as long as he could remember whenever he had to go to the basement. As he was rummaging through some old boxes and blankets, he noticed that some of his dad’s tools from his pegboard were lying on the floor next to it. If it had been one or two, or a hammer and glue, he probably wouldn’t have noticed, but half of the entire pegboard was completely empty. "That’s weird," Nathaniel muttered, "maybe he's rearranging them. He needs to rearrange them anyway." He looked around the basement, thinking, This whole thing is a dump… no wonder I always imagined it as a dungeon.

  Juli’s family went all out for fall and Halloween decorations every year since they were in elementary school. Nowadays, the kids in the neighborhood were all well past the age of those cardboard-box haunted houses her dad used to make for everyone, but still they always had the best costume parties. For the neighborhood party that year, Nathaniel dressed as a ranger from one of his favorite video games, and Juli wore a goofy outfit. Katie wore something that grabbed the attention of every guy there, of course.

  She soon slithered her way next to Nathaniel. "I really like your costume, do you like mine?" she asked, as she twirled around him.

  "What costume? It looks like you’ve been sparingly wrapped in dental floss."

  "Oh, God!" she said as she stormed off.

  "I don’t think that was the answer she was looking for," Juli said as she snuck up behind him.

  "Ah, just my type of girl — a nerd with glasses and freckles."

  "I didn’t think you would show. You went into hiding again. What gives?" she asked.

  "Nothing, I promise."

  "You are such a liar. You’re not even playing football this year. Something’s up."

  "My PaPa’s drawing is the only thing that’s up. That’s all I’ve been working on. I’m just about done. As soon as I add in the last bit of detail, I can send it to him and can start to live a normal life again."

  "You’ve been working on that same drawing since Christmas!"

  "I know. It has to be a Masterpiece, because it’s the only drawing I’ll ever draw for him. Besides, I like the way it’s turning out. I’ll show you when I’m finished, I promise."

  Those two hung out the rest of the night, intermingling with everyone else there. Juli had two older brothers whom Nathaniel hung out with from time to time that were also dressed up as superhero characters. It was one of those nights that everyone would remember, and they all took pictures with each other. Nathaniel even took a few selfies with Katie, who smelled like she ate eggs right before the party.

  The party was the talk around school for a few days, until everyone settled into the remaining weeks before Thanksgiving break. Nathaniel was probably the most eager for the holidays to get there. It had taken him eleven months to complete the drawing, and he put the final touches on it right before his Thanksgiving vacation. After all his hard work, he knew he'd created a grand Masterpiece that PaPa would be proud of.

  Like many artists, he felt it wasn't complete, somehow. That Monday before his Thanksgiving break, after he got home from school, he took out the drawing from underneath his bed and inspected it from top to bottom. After shading a few details, now finally satisfied, he signed his artwork: Masterpiece - N.H., like the ones he'd seen at PaPa's house. As he admired his drawing, the redbird on the branch shook the snow off its feathers, and fluttered to the top of the lantern on the wall, staring at Nathaniel for a long moment. It later flew away into the rolling hills.

  He let out a deep breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Ha… I knew it! I knew you would fly away!" Nathaniel said to the bird. Excitement filled his heart, which began beating faster. Now he could see snowflakes falling. The branch began to sway a little in the wind. Nathaniel sat back, watching intensely as his drawing came to life.

  "I guess there's nothing left for me to do," he said. He looked down at his Pen and then up at his drawing. "We did it, Mr. Fine." He looked down again and read the inscription that now seemed to be glowing:

  The Pen had finally unscrambled the words it had wanted tell Nathaniel this whole time.

  "Enter in by faith… there's no way," he said slowly. He sat in front of the large drawing and just stared. His eyes were looking at a world of black and white, a drawing of pen and ink... one where the wind blew, snowflakes fluttered, birds flew, and branches shuddered. He reached toward it to slide open the window latch with his fingers, but his fingertips went through the paper. "What!"

  He pulled them out again really fast. "There’s no way!" He put his right hand in and pulled it out. He did it again and again, finally pushing forward until his whole arm was inside the drawing. "Let’s check it out…" He put his head through the drawing, and he caught a blast of cold air in his face. He took a deep breath, and sighed with great contentment. Curious, he reached into the courtyard to feel the snow — and to his surprise, the snow was cold, just like he’d imagined it would be. He pulled his arm back in, and it was normal. He did this several times, each time leaving his arm out longer and longer.

  "Hello! Hello!" he shouted with his head poking out of the window. His voice reverberated through the cold air.

  Just then, his cell phone rang in his pocket. He dug it out and glanced down at the number: it was his mom. He cleared his throat and answered cautiously, "Hello?"

  "Hi, Nathaniel. How's your day going?"

  Nathaniel looked around the room and opened the blinds to see if anyone was watching him. "Good. Not much going on here — just finishing my homework."

  "I'm glad to see you're being proactive with your studies. Well, your father asked me to go to dinner with him tonight, so we're going to be a little late. There's some leftover tuna casserole if you're hungry."

  He scowled in disgust. "No problem, Mom. I'm cool."

  "Love you, kiddo, and we'll see you when we get home."

  "Okay, love you too."

  He hung up the phone. "Tuna casserole? Yeah, right. I'd rather eat dirt. She knows I can't stand that crap." He immediately turned his attention to exploring before his parents came home... grinning, he said, "The timing of that couldn't be more perfect." Nathaniel put on a jacket, slid the Pen into an inside pocket, and was about to climb through the window in the Masterpiece when he stopped dead in his tracks.

  "I should call PaPa and tell him what happened." He got out his phone and was about to call him when he put his phone away. "Now I know why he wanted me to seal it. He knew this was going to happen, and that’s why he wanted me to draw it!" He sat there pondering what he should do. He shook his head over and over again. "I’ll send it in a few days. I just want to go in and take a look around."

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Nathaniel climbed through the window of his drawing into the Inkworld. He turned around and saw a closed window, but couldn’t see his room so he poked his head back through and all was safe. I’ll walk in and out a few times to make sure. He was now all the way in his drawing, and the panes of the window became reflective, so he could see how he looked as a living drawing inside his very own Masterpiece. His wavy blonde hair was now shaded light gray, his blue eyes a similar shade but a little darker. His pale skin was off-white. The Pen didn't exaggerate any parts of his body, so he looked real rather than cartoonish. "This has got to be the coolest thing in the world."

  Feeling both excited and a little fearful, Nathaniel walked over to the well and looked down. "Okay, that's pretty deep. HELLOOOO…" he shouted into the well. The sound echoed back after a few seconds, suggesting it was a long way down. He picked up a small rock off the pebbly soil and dropped it in; seconds later, he heard a SKERPLOOSH. "Wild," he breathed. He reached out and pulled a little on a tree branch just above the well — and snow fell on his head. "Wow, this is so cool!" Then he yelped as some of the snow trickled down the back of his jacket.

  After he'd gotten that sorted out, Nathaniel walked to the Iron Gate and peeked out. There was nothing out there but rolling hills and trees as far as his eyes could see. "I suppose if I go exploring, I'll need a few things," he voiced.

  A moment later he was crawling back in the window, to find himself a regular boy again. A quick glance in the mirror proved his color was back. "That was wicked," he said to himself, smiling widely. He wanted to call PaPa and tell him the good news, but decided against it. He figured he'd take a better look around before he went blabbing about it. Besides, what could go wrong?

  He went into his closet and grabbed his backpack. He put his pocket knife in there, a flashlight, some gloves, a hat, a sketchpad, his Pen, a box of Prismacolors, and a small pencil sharpener. Then he went downstairs and grabbed an apple from the pantry, along with a bottle of water, and put them in his pack as well. "I guess I'm ready," he said aloud. "Wait. Better get my watch." After putting on the Patek Philippe wristwatch PaPa had given him last Christmas, he went through the window again. "Here it goes!"

  He climbed in as before, and remained fascinated by the fact that his appearance changed utterly, from a flesh-and-blood boy to a pen-and-ink drawing of that same boy — a high-quality true-to-life drawing, but a drawing nonetheless. Even so, he didn't feel any different, except maybe a little lighter.

  He passed through the Iron Gate and looked around. He could see hills and trees to the left, in the distance toward the front, and to his right. Behind him was the low stone wall of the courtyard with the well, and in the background a stone cottage, with a closed window to his real world of light, warmth, and color. He shivered briefly, then caught hold of himself and decided to head what he felt to be north, straight ahead toward the tree line. The snow fell lightly, just as he had drawn it, and he felt its feathery touch on his face and ears. When he arrived in the middle of the field, roughly halfway between the tree line and the courtyard, he stopped and stood there, looking around. He opened his arms wide and tilted his head up while the snow landed on his face. He stuck out his tongue to catch a few snowflakes — they tasted normal — then he took his pack off and fell back into the snow, looking up at the sky.

  "This is awesome! THIS IS AWESOME!" he shouted as loudly as he could, his voice carrying through the air and bouncing back from the cottage and tree line, just like it would in real life. The snow felt real, too, and he lay there and made a snow angel, something he hadn't done since the years before King Nathaniel, when he and Juli made them in her yard.

  When he got up a few minutes later, he glanced back at the courtyard he had drawn. He could still see the rock wall, the cottage, and the gate. He decided to check out the tree line, because that was as far as his drawing went. I wonder if there are any animals in there, he thought.

  As he walked on through the light snow toward the tree line, he kept looking back periodically. The stone wall became smaller and smaller with distance. Then, suddenly, without realizing it, he was in the thick of the trees that he'd drawn from so very far away. He recognized oak, pine, elm, fir, spruce, and hickory... an unusual mix, to say the least. I'll just go in a little bit farther. But he found himself drawn deeper and deeper into the woods; he hadn't realized that his drawing went on this far. Certainly he hadn't intended it to, at least not consciously. He did see some animals scurrying away from time to time: a rabbit to his left, a squirrel to his right. The squirrel climbed the bole of a large oak and, hanging upside down, fussed at him as he passed. It sounded just like a real squirrel.

  The Inkworld seemed simultaneously magical and refreshingly real. Wide-eyed, he glanced down at his watch. "It feels like I’ve been here an hour since I stepped through the window." The watch had to be malfunctioning, because almost no time had passed. "It must have gotten snow on it." He winced, thinking about the repair bill. "Crap!" He hoped it would get back into sync as it dried out.

  But he didn't let that get him down — what could, given what he'd just discovered. Still barely able to contain his glee, he hiked out of the forest (and this time the squirrel tried to drop a pinecone on his head) until he saw the stone wall in the distance. "Whew. Now I know I can go into that forest and come out again," he told the Inkworld.

  The Inkworld had no comment, but Nathaniel liked to think it seemed pleased. He continued onward through the light snow, soon arriving safely in the courtyard, where he looked around before he climbed through the window. Everything looked just it had earlier, though he thought he saw a glint of red high in the tree above the well. Maybe the bird was watching out for him.

  He left the drawing standing up once he re-entered the real world, a bit fearful that, like the other drawings in PaPa’s basement, they might freeze and he might not be able to go back in again. When he checked the clock in his room against his watch, they read the same: about fifteen minutes had passed since he'd stepped through the window to take his hike. "Huh." He distinctly remembered feeling that more than an hour had passed on the first leg of his trip, so either his watch had stopped, or it had reset itself when he reentered the real world. He couldn’t quite figure it out.

  The magical drawing now made his room feel bigger… and darker, too, now that winter in Boston was just about in full swing, with the November sky darkening in late afternoon. After eating some pizza rolls, he decided to take a shower and then sketch a little. He walked up the stairs and into his bathroom — and when he turned on the light, came face-to-face with a huge bird. Nathaniel jumped back, eyes wide. "What the...?"

  The thing hovered in front of his face, flapping its ragged wings, crow-like but the size of a turkey, peering at him as birds do: first one eye, then the other. Those eyes were dull white in color — and oddly, one had a diamond-like pupil, the other a vertical slit.

  Suddenly its wings stopped flapping — yet it still hovered in the air, as if pasted onto reality. With its wings spread wide, Nathaniel saw that those wings were covered with a multitude of eyes underneath. They stared, stirring a sense of fear and loathing in him; if eyes really were the windows of the soul, then this thing's soul was as black as the darkest night. Just as he thought that, the bird snapped at him, just missing his nose.

  Without thinking about it, Nathaniel smacked it on its beak with an open palm, sending black dust flying. The crow-thing made a sudden screech, as if he'd chopped off its beak and when he looked, he saw that the beak did seem somehow less well-defined than before.

  He smacked it again and again, until the eye-crow hit the bathroom floor; then he backpedaled as the creature, now looking really bedraggled, took to the air again and flew out of the bathroom, through his room, and straight into his Masterpiece. It cawed loudly as it entered the Inkworld, flapping mightily until it passed the wall and the open field — where Nathaniel's footsteps were still visible in the snow — and disappeared into the trees beyond.

  Nathaniel stood there in his bedroom staring out of the window into the pen-and-ink rendering he'd created with his own hand, wondering what the heck kind of Masterpiece he'd drawn. He put the Masterpiece in his closet with his heart beating fast and hard. "I don't know about this," he said aloud. He needed to hear a human voice right about then. "I should call PaPa. I don't want nasty birds flying through that window into my bedroom. I never would have drawn something like that." Who did? What kind of bird was that? Too many questions came hurling into his mind, with absolutely no immediate answers.

  He shut the door to his closet, and moved his desk in front of it. Nathaniel decided against the shower. Instead, he sat down on the bed and played video games for a little while, entering fantasy worlds where he had the power to vanquish the things that frightened him, forgetting altogether about the phone call to PaPa. The only other option he thought about was to hop in bed and pull the covers up over his body until only his eyes and the top of his head were exposed. When he was younger, that had worked for him when he was frightened, slaying the monsters of his imagination. He didn't figure it would work so well now that he was a teenager, and he knew that monsters really could come to life. I wonder if there are more. Maybe there are all kinds of crazy creatures in there. I guess I'll try going back tomorrow — when it's daytime. Who would draw something that awful?

  Then he remembered his PaPa's orcs, and shivered.

  After his parents finally got home, he felt safe again, and eventually fell asleep while dreaming the most bizarre dreams. He didn't realize until the next morning that he'd gone to bed fully dressed, right down to his shoes.