THE TRAVELLERS
Amanda SunThe first gate opened over Ali-san, the colossal mountain that plunges like a stake through the heart of Taiwan. They’d miscalculated the coordinates, and the door opened to nothing but sky and a blazing sunset, and below, the trickle of a waterfall run dry. They say their fingers curled for the sway of a bridge on the way down. The CTS news reported they were tourists who’d looked too close to the edge of things, who’d misstepped into a future they hadn’t anticipated. They weren’t wrong.
The second gate opened two weeks later over Tokyo, right beside the Australian embassy in Minato. The third opened over Waitangi, New Zealand. The news couldn’t attribute these ones to being hikers on the wrong path on Taiwan’s sacred mountain. Both groups were calm and orderly,
