She supposed this was because of the third problem, which was that she didn’t really believe it had happened. In a sane, normal world, when The Times reported that a ship had gone down, it had almost certainly gone down. The Times had ways of checking on these things. Sane, normal Alice would have accepted it as fact, and cried (quietly, alone, and in the dead of night, but cried nonetheless) and then squared her shoulders and tried to deal with whatever life offered her next, because that was the kind of girl she was.

But something had gone wrong. If fairies were real, then the world was not sane and normal any more. If magic was real, then what she read in The Times didn’t have to be true. Her father might not be drowned after all. He could be – she cast through her limited repertoire of fantastic fiction – a castaway, on an enchanted island. Or spirited away to a crystal palace to be entertained by an elfin court. Or anything. That was the point. If fairies were real, then anything could happen.

Alice realized, as the sun was setting, that she would never be able to leave things where they were. It was as though she had hold of a loose thread at the end of a sweater. She had to give it a tug, and find out if the whole garment unravelled, and if so, what was underneath.

The last problem, in this case, was that she had no idea what to do next. But that was all right. The difficult part was usually deciding where you were headed. After that, in Alice’s experience, getting there was just a matter of hard work.

Not that I have very much choice where I’m headed, Alice thought, for the moment. She leaned back in her seat, eyes closed, and listened to the rails clicking endlessly past.

The two-car local pulled into North Landing station, which turned out to be little more than a wooden platform, a sign, and a gravel lot. A sullen attendant lugged Alice’s trunks off the train, frowned at the nickel she gave him, and climbed back aboard the train without a word.

It was long after dark, and without the city lights to interfere, the sky was a riot of stars. Alice, who had never spent more than a fortnight outside the confines of New York City, looked up at them and felt very small and very alone. To the south, across the river, the city of Pittsburgh proper gave off a muted red-and-yellow glow, but to the north there was nothing but darkness.