The Editor extended a third hand to pick up one of the books she had been working on and hold it out so that Eleanor could read the spine.

Eleanor Barton, it said.

She sucked in a sharp breath. “You have my book?” she asked.

“Hm. Yes. But we would have saved a few words if you didn’t ask questions to which the answers are obvious,” the Editor said. “Concision, Eleanor. It’s an important skill.”

“Does everyone have a book here?” Otto asked with interest.

“A better question,” the Editor said, nodding approvingly. Her hands continued to move across the pages of the two books, the end of the quill dipping and flicking. “No. Only certain people. And it’s not something to aspire to. Being turned into a tale that can be contained in a book makes you rather vulnerable.”

“Vulnerable to what?” Eleanor asked.

“To being changed. Deliberate sabotage. Transcription errors. Water damage,” the Editor said. “People are a big messy beautiful bunch of stories. It takes a great deal of effort to alter them. A book, though, that’s easy. Now. You are here to steal the Stories to which you are bound, correct?”

Eleanor started to lie, but then she stopped. Could she even lie to someone who was literally writing her story?

“I’m not writing it. Merely editing it. Oh, go on, then. Take a look,” the Editor said. She offered Eleanor her own book again, and this time Eleanor took it. Her skin tingled when she touched it.

Tentatively, she opened the front cover. The title page read Eleanor Barton, but below it in red ink had been added the World-Walker. Eleanor flipped forward.

Eleanor Barton was born cursed, the first sentence read.

This was her life. This was her story. She skimmed the pages, flipping forward through her childhood—and then stopped. Only a few pages in, the steady parade of black ink stopped, interrupted by a paragraph written in scarlet.

Eleanor had always had a knack for finding hidden things—secret doors and shortcuts. She never truly lost her way, for even when she did not arrive where she meant to, she found that she was where she ought to be.

It felt true. She remembered that about herself. But she was suddenly quite sure she shouldn’t. “You’re writing the Story over me,” Eleanor said, her voice a dry croak.

“It is an extensive revision,” the Editor acknowledged.

“What did this used to say?” Eleanor demanded.

The Editor considered. “I believe it was something about your best friend in third grade. Ellery. You liked that your names started the same way. You thought that you sounded like the characters in the kind of book where two friends found a magical world behind a garden wall.”