The Jeep had hardly rolled to a stop, and I heard Hanna scream as she rushed out the front door. The younger kids followed close behind her—seven-year-old Liam, four-and-a-half-year-old Emma, and three-year-old Niko toddling after—all of them running up the grassy embankment to greet me.

As the kids descended upon me—Emma jumped, boldly but correctly assuming I’d catch her—Mia came out of the house more slowly, because she was wrangling the twenty-two-month-old twins. Luna was fussing, pulling at her dark curly pigtails, even with Mia carrying her on her hip, and Lissa held her hand as she took slow, uncertain steps.

Their house was a large peridot green cottage, surrounded by the big full branches of towering oak, maple, and pine trees, along the thick forest of the bluffs along the Mississippi River. I’d nearly forgotten how beautiful it was here, and how good it felt to be home.

“What happened? Where have you been? Did you see Eliana?” Hanna peppered me with questions the second she let me go, and the other kids followed suit, lobbing their own barrage of inquiries at me.

“Were you working? Will you live with us again?” Emma asked, her voice high-pitched and insistent.

“Why do you look weird? Are you sick? I look weird when I’m sick sometimes,” Liam said knowingly.

“Ulla, Ulla!” Niko shouted, followed by demanding babble I couldn’t understand. He held his pudgy hands to me until I scooped him up.

“Give her space,” Mia commanded, and Finn took the twins from her so she could give me a proper hello. She pulled me into a side hug, since my arms were full of Niko. “Welcome home, Ulla.”

We all went into the house, and I let the kids interrogate me. They didn’t believe me at first when I told them I couldn’t remember what happened, but once they were convinced, they grew bored fairly quickly because all my answers were “I don’t know.”

I sat at the kitchen table, sipping sun tea and hungrily devouring the mulberry tarts Hanna had made. Finn asked his mother to take the younger kids upstairs to play, so it was only Mia, Hanna, and myself sitting around the large farm table.

“What’s going on?” Mia asked, eyeing her husband.

Finn came back from helping herd the children up the stairs, and he took the Jem-Kruk book from my bag. “I don’t know, but it’s definitely odd.” He set the book on the table and slid it across, toward Hanna and Mia.

“Why do you have Grandpa Johan’s book?” Hanna asked, wrinkling her nose.

Mia looked just as confused, and she touched the cover tentatively. “Where did you get this?”

“From the Mimirin,” I said. “I’m borrowing it, technically.” So far, I’d just stolen it and defaced it, but that wasn’t the kind of example I wanted to set for Hanna, so I modified the truth.