After so long, his clothes were beginning to fail. He washed them weekly in one of the small streams tumbling through the gnarly landscape around his cave, laying them out in the sun to dry, but the hard living and the rigours of foraging and fending for himself were taking their toll. His jeans had worn at the crotch, and several rips on the legs were fraying and growing worse. His T-shirt was weakening at the seams. His boots and socks were worn, underwear threadbare, and the light jacket he’d been wearing when he was trapped in the Fold had gone missing days after his arrival. He sometimes thought he saw a fleeting figure wearing the jacket—one of the Kin the fairy had brought here—but he had never managed to get close enough to see for sure.

He had made a coat of rabbit furs in anticipation of winter, but true winter never came.

He reached what he judged to be the highest point of the hill and took a good look around. It was a warm day and a refreshing breeze swept past him as he looked down into the valley that had become his home. The wind came from behind him, from beyond the valley, and carried scents he could not identify. He did not understand that. Like the river, it showed signs of starting and ending beyond the Fold. But that could not be.

Vince had lost count of how many times he’d attempted this, but he had to try again. Trying was what kept him moving, and alive. Not trying would be to give up.

Turning his back on the valley, he walked across the exposed hilltop and then started down with the breeze in his face, moving away from the Fold and the wide basin. He had never done this in this exact place, although he recognised some of his surroundings from previous attempts. Maybe this is the time I find the chink in the Fold, he thought, and despite his failure every previous time, his heart beat a little faster at the possibility. The landscape was vast and stretched for miles into the distance, with no visible barrier and no indication that his whole world now consisted of one large valley that it took a day to circumnavigate. He saw hills and rivers and lakes, all of them beyond, and he was careful not to take his eye off them.

I’ve seen them all before, I know they’re not in the Fold.