“They treat you like that because you smell bad.” When Barclay huffed with offense, Viola added, “It’s that charm you carry around. It reeks like skunks.”

Barclay didn’t realize it smelled even when it was in his pocket. He must be used to it. After all, Dullshire had such charms everywhere. The whole town must smell like a herd of skunks, and he’d never realized it.

“And I’m not a princess,” Viola continued. “My father is just… important.” As the bookshop owner passed, she ducked down behind him to avoid notice. “It’s a bit annoying, actually. I don’t want my father to hear I… never mind.”

She went back to perusing the book titles, each written in the Lore script. Though Barclay still didn’t want anything to do with Lore Keepers, he couldn’t help but look through the stacks too. Reading was his favorite pastime, after all, and he was curious what sort of collection a Lore Keeper might keep. There was a yellowed, weathered copy of An Almost Complete Cartography Collection: Six Half-Done Maps of the Wilderlands. A glossy paperback of Ghostly Beasts That Go Bump in the Night. And a leather-bound edition of A Traveler’s Log of Dangerous Beasts.

Viola pulled out the last one and flipped through its pages. The writing wasn’t printed—it was scribbled and messy, like the notes of a madman.

“I’ve been wanting to read this! The author, Conley Murdock, is famous. He traveled all across the world studying deadly Beasts. I heard he was writing a sequel, but I guess we’ll never read it now.…”

“Why? What happened to him?” asked Barclay.

“There was some kind of accident. He was eaten by the Legendary Beast of the Sea. It was front-page news in the Keeper’s Khronicle. I heard his partner barely made it out—”

“The Sea?” he echoed.

Viola laughed. “The world is a lot bigger than just the Woods. There are six major regions to find Beasts, which we call the Wilderlands. There’s the Woods, the Desert, the Sea, the Jungle, the Tundra, and the Mountains. Six Wilderlands, six Legendary Beasts.”

Truthfully, Barclay had only heard rumors about such places in books. They must have been very far away indeed. The Woods had always seemed endless to him—an entire world to its own.

“Have you ever been to any of them?”

“I’ve been to the Desert, the Woods, the Jungle, and I live in the Mountains. Mitzi is a Mountain Beast as well. All dragons are.”

“What about places that aren’t the Wilderlands? Do they have a name?” Barclay asked.

“The Elsewheres,” Viola answered, shrugging.

Well, that certainly sounded insignificant. Barclay felt a bit snubbed on Dullshire’s behalf.

Then Viola snapped A Traveler’s Log closed. “You know, I think I’ll buy this. I’m sure there’s loads I could learn about Gravaldor in here.”

She counted the number of coins left in her purse. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out another purse, also full.

Barclay swallowed down the urge to ask how rich she was, deciding that was rather rude. Instead, he examined one of the heavy gold coins—one side engraved with a dragon, the other triangular peaks of what he guessed were the Mountains, though a few of them had trees instead. He frowned. “What kind of money is that?”