“No,” said Jacqueline—who had, after all, been encouraged to sit quietly, to read books rather than play noisy games, to watch. No one had ever thought to ask her to be smart, which was good, in the grand scheme of things: her mother would have been much more likely to ask her to be a little foolish, because foolish girls were more tractable than stubbornly clever ones. Cleverness was a boy’s attribute, and would only get in the way of sitting quietly and being mindful.

Jacqueline had found cleverness all on her own, teasing it out of the silences she found herself marooned in, using it to fill the gaps naturally created by a life lived being good, and still, and patient. She was only twelve years old. There were limits to the things she knew. And yet …

“The moon shouldn’t be that big,” she said. “It’s too far away to be that big. It would have to be so close that it would mess up all the tides and pull the world apart, because gravity.”

“Gravity can do that?” asked Jillian, horrified.

“It could, if the moon were that close,” said Jacqueline. She stood, leaning down to pull her sister along with her. “We shouldn’t be here.” The moon was wrong, and there were mountains in the distance. Mountains. Somehow, she didn’t have a problem with the idea that there was a field and an ocean below the basement, but mountains? That was a step too far.

“The door’s gone,” said Jillian. She had a sprig of some woody purple plant in her hair, like a barrette. It was pretty. Jacqueline couldn’t think of the last time she’d seen her sister wearing something just because it was pretty. “How are we supposed to go home if the door’s gone?”

“If the moon can be wrong, the door can move,” said Jacqueline, with what she hoped would sound like certainty. “We just need to find it.”

“Where?”

Jacqueline hesitated. The ocean was in front of them, big and furious and stormy. The waves would carry them away in an instant, if they got too close. The mountains were behind them, tall and craggy and foreboding. Shapes that looked like castles perched on the highest peaks. Even if they could climb that far, there was no guarantee that the people who lived in castles like grasping hands, high up the slope of a mountain, would ever be friendly toward two lost little girls.

“We can go left or we can go right,” said Jacqueline finally. “You choose.”

Jillian lit up. She couldn’t remember the last time her sister had asked her to choose something, had trusted her not to lead them straight into a mud puddle or other small disaster. “Left,” she said, and grabbed her sister’s hand, and hauled her away across the vast and menacing moor.

*   *   *