“Well, we’re here,” Puck said, releasing my hand to pat himself down, as if making sure he was all there. “Looks like we made it in one piece, too.” He peered past me to where Ash stood on the other side, squeezing my fingers in a death grip. “And all together. I was half expecting us to land in different corners of the Nevernever, or at the very least surrounded by nasties wanting to tear our heads off. Looks like Furball actually pulled it off.”

“What did you expect, Goodfellow?” Grimalkin sauntered by, tail in the air, and did not look at us. “I am a cat.”

I stole a glance at Ash. He looked relieved as well, though I could tell he was worried about the whole situation. He, too, had been expecting trouble the moment we arrived.

“Stay alert,” he told us softly as we moved forward, following Grimalkin down the tunnel of thorns. “Just because there are no surprises now doesn’t mean there won’t be some later.”

Ahead of us, the ceiling of the tunnel began to shimmer, rippling with waves of blue light. As we reached the end of the corridor, the passage opened up, and we stood at the edge of a small grotto surrounded by thorns. Overhead, the Briars shut out the sky, branches woven so tightly together the area felt more like a cave than anything else. The walls were filled with human clutter: toys, books, picture frames, trophies, stuffed animals, all dangling from the thorns or speared upon a long black spike. Grimalkin had vanished within the clutter, like another stuffed animal in the huge pile of toys. A porcelain doll with a missing eye stared at me as I ventured past the lip of the tunnel into the chamber.

“Well, that’s just all kinds of creepy,” Puck muttered at my side, giving the doll a look of alarm. “If you see any clowns, do me a favor and don’t point them out, okay? I’d rather live without the nightmares.”

I was about to snap at him for putting the thought of killer clown dolls in my head, when Ash touched my arm and nodded to something ahead of us.

In the center of the grotto, a bright, glowing pool threw hazy reflections over the walls and ceiling. But the pool itself was perfectly still, like the surface of a mirror, and you could see everything reflected in it. The walls full of clutter and the ceiling of the grotto plunged down like a hole in the pool’s surface. At the edge of the water, slumped in an ancient rocking chair like a pile of discarded rags—or a long desiccated corpse—was a familiar old woman.

For few seconds, the oracle was so very still that I thought she was dead, after all. Then her head slowly turned, and those empty, eyeless pits fastened on me.