Faith could feel her power increasing immediately. A breath, a sigh, and she was herself again. She glanced at the sky and knew it would rain if she wished it to. She gazed at Jack Finney and with the sight was able to see through him to the young man he’d been when he lost his wife and child; she saw the grief he carried with him in a tight web that sat beside his heart. When they stopped to rest, she spied the souls of the murdered Lenape, the original people who had lived in the marshes, for their spirits had gathered in the blue dusk and their weeping sounded like the cry of the seabirds. Faith was overcome with emotion, and if she’d been another girl she might have wept, but instead she walked out to where Finney couldn’t spy her and she danced as the moon rose. She was herself again, it was true, but she had also been changed. Inside there was a line of bitterness that reached directly to her heart, so strong it brought her to the brink of tears. This is who she was: the girl who had climbed through the window to save her own life.

They stayed at a farmhouse on Rabbit Island, called Konijon Island by the Dutch and Coney Island by the English, referring to the ancient name for these creatures that was used in the King James Bible. It was here, near the seaside, where a Cornishwoman named Maude Cardy lived on her own. Although she and Jack Finney had forgotten how they were related, they had cousins who were cousins, and she always had a room for him should the need arise. Maude loved Brooklyn and how wild and lonely it was, for she was wild and lonely as well. She’d come across the ocean because of a man, but that affair had been short-lived, and many other men had been in her life; forty years had passed since she’d thought of that fellow, except once in a while when the tide was high or the moon was full she remembered to be grateful to him.

“Who’s this?” Maude asked when she saw the strange dark-haired girl. Maude was suspicious no matter the circumstances, and wise to be so, for she lived all alone in this odd blue land where it was possible to see for miles and where robbers and ruined men had settled among the good people of Brooklyn.

“I’m his niece,” Faith was quick to say. Her gray eyes gave nothing away, but for every lie she told a white spot appeared on her fingernails.

Maude pursed her mouth and studied the girl. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at.

“That’s who she is,” Finney agreed, wondering how he’d ever gotten so involved when he’d spent all his years on this side of the Atlantic having nothing to do with other people.