Bright-blue eyes above pink-apple cheeks stared back at her, while steel-gray hair wisped over her forehead. Wonder filled Claire. She looked exactly like Aquila—down to the little scar on her cheek that hinted that this sweet-looking grandmother might be able to swing an ax as easily as she could bake a pie. Though there was still something a little soft around the chin to be properly Aquila, and when she smiled, something seemed off. While the hats had made them look like the Malchains, in reality they were only as much the Malchains as a photograph of them would have been.

Gray hair and rosy pink cheeks weren’t what made Aquila Aquila.

Claire was relieved. She was still her, even if she looked like the famous Forger. She guessed it was because even though clothes could make you feel and look different, they didn’t actually change who you were. The Make-a-Face was more of an illusion, really, than an actual transformation.

She clicked the mirror closed and put it back in her pocket before turning to face Thorn, who was using his new height to pick one of the few apples left on a tree.

“You’re going to need to stand a little straighter,” she told him. “And keep your arms stiff; you’re swinging them too much.”

“They’re just so long,” Thorn said, grinning at their success.

Claire bit her lip. “And Anvil doesn’t really smile, unless he’s about to use his double-headed ax.”

Thorn’s black brows furrowed in a very un-Anvil-like show of confusion. “You better tell me everything you remember if this is going to work,” he said.

They quickly pulled on the spare Forger tunics Claire had tucked into her Hollow Pack, and spent the next half hour practicing moving around like the Malchains. How Anvil came off as forbidding but really most of the time he was just thinking. How Aquila often teased Anvil, and how Anvil pretended to hate it, but Claire could secretly tell he enjoyed when Aquila, only a few inches taller than Claire, told him exactly what she thought.

“We should go soon,” Thorn urged, and Claire knew he was right.

They deconstructed the ReflecTent and scraped apple mush from the bottom of their shoes before placing everything in the Hollow Pack except for the spyglass. They had done the math, and it would take about eight steps north and west to get to Fyrton in Claire’s boots. At each new spot, Thorn would use the spyglass to make sure that their next step wouldn’t send them to the bottom of a lake or into the side of a mountain.

“Ready?” Thorn asked. “Wait! Claire, your pencil!”