The sun was vast and low and not so bright that I couldn’t make out something happening in the fire of its surface, the tracings of a story so distant I’d never read it. Flowers furled into pellets or went lurid as I passed, sending out vapor trails of scent—cardamom, iced tea, Ella’s shampoo. This new world was too strange, too lucid; it made my mind explode in a dandelion puff. Everything had a revelatory crispness, like a new day seen through the lens of a coffee-fueled all-nighter. I started reciting stuff in my head to keep my thoughts within safe borders: The track lists of my favorite albums. The names of all the Harry Potter books in order. The places we’d lived, one by one. Chicago. Madison. Memphis. Nacogdoches. Taos.
It kept my mind wrapped around a thin blue wire of sanity and denial. But it was slipping. Ella, I knew now, was in the place I’d left behind. And I was in an alien world, surrounded by trees whose sentient interest in my passing ranged from distant friendliness to a ruffled annoyance that made me picture a dog smelling someone else’s pet on your clothes. I had Earth all over me. But underneath it, if Althea was to be believed, I was Hinterland.
I believed her. If for no other reason than how good my body felt moving through this wood. The air was crisp, almost autumnal, but everything in sight was lavishly green or flowering. The light was an ambient, suffused gold, and it did something funny to the shadows: they looked like black stamps. My own shadow gave the distinct impression of keeping up with me just to see what I’d do next; if I proved to be boring, I suspected it would ditch me.
After spending an hour pushing through low-hanging branches that either courteously shrank from my touch or pushed back, I stumbled by luck onto a path.
It was almost too picturesque, lined with berry brambles and flowers that wept fat, furry petals onto the packed dirt. They were duckling yellow and smelled like buttered toast.
I took two steps and stopped.
Birds had been singing. Three- and four-note trills I didn’t recognize. A breeze had moved through all that curious green, branches had cracked, leaves had rustled, unseen animals had made their quiet way. But here the noises stopped, replaced by a focused, annihilating calm. There was a bend to the air here, an almost invisible heat that made my fingers curl and my nose itch.
It made me hungry. I was hungry, and my hands were so cold I felt them burning through the fabric of my pockets, chilling my thighs.
I didn’t see the girl till she was almost close enough to touch. She’d stopped a few paces off the path and didn’t notice me. Her profile could’ve been drawn in one long, economical stroke by a master, and her hair was as thick and dark as my shadow. She stood perfectly still, both hands pressed against the bark of a tree. Her mouth moved furious and silent, as if she were reading a very disturbing letter.
The air around her shivered and prismed like the heat over blacktop. She was what I was looking for, the hot moving point at the center of this island of charged quiet. I watched her with a feeling I couldn’t name—fear or awe or recognition.
The tree trunk cracked in two between her palms. I sucked in a breath as its bark became doors, opening inward. From where I stood, just above her, I could see the top step of a silver staircase going down, and hear the sound of a party happening far away. As the girl lifted her foot and placed it on the first stair, I took a step forward.
A hand landed heavy on my shoulder, and a voice spoke in my ear. “Wouldn’t do that if I were you. You don’t want to come between a Story and their story.”
I jerked away from the man standing next to me. He was in his early thirties, wearing wire-rimmed glasses, jeans faded almost to white, and a shabby brown bomber jacket.
And he was eating a Hershey’s bar. He saw me staring at it and stepped backward, blocking it with his hand. “Dude, no. This is practically my last one. It’s not like I can go buy more.” His accent was American, mostly, but touched with something else. It gave a crisp edge to all his consonants.
I pushed my hands deeper into my pockets, breathing in the cool, untainted air he carried with him. “Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re from Earth.”
He stared at me a moment, then sighed. “Oh, hell, no. You just got here? Nope, I’m not equipped to do an orientation. Wait, you didn’t bring any food with you, did you? Like … packaged stuff?” He scanned me—sweatshirt, jeans, no bag. “Okay, that’s a no.”
“Orientation?” I echoed, glancing back toward the girl. She was gone, the tree trunk seamless. “And what did you say before? About a story and a story?”
“Jesus, no wonder you almost followed the Woodwife into hell. You’re green, aren’t you? Like, just-fell-through-a-mirror-in-Tunisia green?”
I thought about telling him I was Alice-Three-Times, seeing if he’d give me the rest of his candy bar. But I decided against it. “Is that how you got here?” I asked. “A mirror in Tunisia? Are you the only one?”
“Agh.” He shoved the rest of the chocolate in his mouth, stared at me while he chewed. “Okay, I’ll tell you the basic deal. The very basic deal, then you’ve got to find someone who’s actually good at this. First off, of course I’m not the only one, assuming by ‘only one’ you mean the only jackass stupid enough to think it was a good idea to beg, borrow, or steal his way into a place without record players, bourbon, or chocolate. There are lots of refugees here. From Earth and from other places—or so I’ve heard. Second, stay away from the Stories. You’ll know them when you see them. If they glow at the edges, move like they’re in a trance, smell like smoke or flowers or salt, or generally look like they belong in a murder ballad, steer very, very clear. I knew a guy, a classicist from Cambridge—got in through a wishing well—who tried to save the Skinned Maiden before she got skinned. Christ, was that a bad idea.”
“What happened?”
“Don’t make me spell it out for you. Look, did you mean to get in? Because it kind of seems like you didn’t.”
Against his will, it seemed, he was becoming interested in me. “I didn’t mean to get in. Someone pushed me,” I clarified.
“Well, that’s … that’s maybe more than I want to get involved in.” He looked shifty. “I don’t want to be a dick, but I’ve got a decent thing going here. Finally. I’ve got a girlfriend—ex-Story, so that keeps things pretty interesting—and I was taking a walk so I could eat this without her staring at me. They think packaged food is disgusting.”
He kept talking, but I didn’t hear anything after ex-Story. “What do you mean, ex-Story?” I interrupted sharply. “Does that mean she used to be a, uh, a character?”
“Pretty much.” His eyes flicked over my shoulder; he was getting bored of me. “Look, if you follow this path long enough you’ll find a little old woman who’ll ask you to do something—carry her pail, chop her wood, whatever. Just do it, and use the wish she grants you to find Janet. You understand? Don’t ask to be sent home, or to be made into a princess or whatever. She can’t do that much anymore; she’s ex-Story, too. Tell her to send you to Janet, and she’ll know who you mean.”
“Old woman, Janet,” I murmured. “Got it.” My mind was spinning around on a hamster wheel, thinking of the implications of being ex-Story. Even from inside the Hinterland, maybe I could find a way to get free.
“That way,” he said, pointing me down the path. “It might take five minutes, it might take an hour. Good travels.”