“A strong desire doesn’t always need to be spoken to be understood,” the hedgewitch said. “Smart of you, though. I’ve done a fair amount of research on the Wending, after all.”

Eleanor didn’t say anything, but privately she thought that the hedgewitch didn’t understand—if her desires and longings had brought the woman here, it wasn’t because she was the hedgewitch, or a valuable ally, or anything like that. It was because Eleanor had been afraid.

And more than anything else, she’d wished her mother was there to comfort her.

Gone, gone, gone, said the beating of her heart, which wasn’t cold glass after all, and Eleanor’s throat constricted around a sob.

“Then I really am the world-walker now,” Eleanor said dully.

The hedgewitch snorted. “You will be, in time. You certainly have not earned the right to call yourself that just yet,” she said. She folded her arms, giving Eleanor a look that was deeply unimpressed. “Right now you are a foolish girl with a power she cannot begin to understand. A pity you won’t live long enough to harness it.”

Eleanor flinched. Even if this wasn’t her mother, hearing the hedgewitch talk about their inevitable deaths left her feeling bruised and broken.

“You know, the Thirteen Tales of the Gray really didn’t capture what a complete bummer the hedgewitch is,” Pip said, rolling her eyes. The hedgewitch’s lips pressed into a thin line, exactly the expression Eleanor’s mother made when she was annoyed, and Eleanor looked quickly away.

“Much as I would love to stick around, I am in the middle of a research project,” the hedgewitch said. “So if you could ask the Wending to open a road for me, I’d be much obliged.”

Eleanor gritted her teeth, anger flaring at the hedgewitch—for being rude, for being unhelpful, for being the wrong person entirely. Even these few minutes with the woman made her feel ill. Her mother was dead, and this thing looked like her, and it was so strange she couldn’t even feel grief—just this horrible, stomach-churning wrongness.

“Fine,” Eleanor snapped. “I didn’t mean to bring you here anyway.”

She turned away, unable to stand looking at the hedgewitch. She stared down the dirt road, trying to see all the shimmering threads she’d used before. Find the threads—grab hold of them—open a road.

She stared. And waited. She willed the bright threads to appear, for a new road to spin itself out of nothing, for another world to unfold before her.

But nothing happened.

Eight

Eleanor had been trying for half an hour to open the Wending again. All she’d gotten out of it was a headache.

“I think I wore out the world-walker’s world-walking,” she said, slumping in defeat.

The hedgewitch let out a noise of frustration. “Ripping your way through the Wending—what were you thinking?”