“Well, we aren’t going to threaten to shoot you or a puppy. We think—some of us think—that now that you know that we’ve known where you are all along, and didn’t interfere with you, you’ll return to us with renewed trust and loyalty.”

“Are you among those who think so?” asked Hermia.

“I’m only one vote among many,” said Mother. “But it’s pleasantly needy of you to ask for my reassurance.”

“You know that whoever you send, Danny can just gate away.”

“Oh, I hope he doesn’t do that,” said Mother. “We’d have to shoot the dog.”

*   *   *

CEDRIC BIRD STOOD in a circle of tall standing stones on the brow of a grassy hill. Sheep grazed on the gentle slope below him, but Ced saw no sign of a shepherd.

He had meant to do what the others did. Step into the Great Gate, and then, the moment he was in Westil, take the next step and go back to Earth with his power greatly enhanced.

Only in the moment they arrived—in daylight on Westil instead of night the way it was in Buena Vista—he felt a touch of breeze on his cheek. And as a windmage he couldn’t go, not without first feeling the movement of the air, getting a sense of the way the sunlight warmed the air and the grass moved in the breeze.

It was only a moment, a second or two. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the others step forward and disappear. And then he stepped forward—and felt the grass brush against the cuffs of his pants. The Great Gate was already gone, and just like that, Ced realized that he had decided to stay on Westil.

He felt a momentary thrill of fear. All the bedtime stories his mother had told him about the faraway world their ancestors came from. The place where the gods of legend lived. It was a terrifying place where huge storms could be conjured by the anger of a sandmage, where Stonefathers could fashion copies of themselves in stone, where a lake could be swallowed up in stone, or an island be overswept by a Tidefather’s wave.

Yet he could also feel the wind.

He had always felt the wind, even in his sleep, it would wake him by whistling through the eaves and trembling the windows, and he would get up and open the door and go out into the wind. Mother would hear him and rush out after him and gather him up and say, The wind is a terrible thing, Cedric, it carries birds far from shore and sweeps nests out of the trees. But Cedric would say, It never hurts me, Mother. I love the wind.