Oops. She reached into Aquila’s white hair and slipped the leafy pencil into her pack. Her heart thumped. Already she’d made such a silly mistake. How could she pull off being Aquila? How would she be able to convince anyone to give her the Forgers’ Hammer Tine if she couldn’t remember such a simple thing? Maybe this was a bad idea. But there was no time to reconsider as Thorn had already grabbed for her hand and was counting down.

“Three … two … one …”

They stepped together.

Though Claire knew what to expect, her stomach still leaped as the world rushed at them. The journey was smoother, though, with Thorn wearing one of the boots. She didn’t wobble so much. In about as much time as it took to sneeze twice, they were in a glade of a forest. Thorn held the spyglass up to his eye, adjusted the lens, then nodded in the next direction.

They stepped again.

They passed a field, two more harvested apple orchards, and another forest glade before the terrain started to look familiar. Claire’s breath caught as they landed on the edge of a rusty red plain, a ring of small rocks looming in its center. Last time she’d been here, it had been night, but even in the early-morning sun, the Sorrowful Plains felt like a shadowed place. They stepped quickly away, taking an extra step east to avoid the Petrified Forest.

“Two more.” Thorn huffed as they stood in a long-ago-abandoned Gemmer village at the edge of a lake, which Claire could tell had once been a quarry. His face looked pale, his legs shaking slightly as he took a deep breath.

“Do you want to take a quick break?” Claire asked. After all, she was just along for the ride, while he was responsible for making sure they didn’t squash into a random farm wall.

He shook his head. “Only two more steps,” he said, grim determination settling into the lines of Anvil’s face. He twisted the spyglass and nodded west. “This way.”

They stepped.

Everything was the same as it always was: a sudden jerk from behind the navel, a sense of sliding, but then, instead of feeling solid ground rise up to meet her sole, Claire felt her booted foot keep going, sinking through the earth with a loud squelch.

Dampness started to seep in through her trousers, and Claire sputtered as she tasted mud and something—there could be no other word for it—greenish.

Glancing down, she saw she was standing waist-deep in an earthy confection of water, leaves, and mud. They had arrived at Foggy Bottom swamp. Actually, only Thorn had arrived at Foggy Bottom, as his feet were both placed firmly on a large boulder that stuck out of the muck, while Claire had arrived in Foggy Bottom, her booted sole missing the boulder by inches.