She ran across England until she found herself at a strip of water—ENGLISH CHANNEL, it was labeled. She eyed the coast of France on the other side. Lenora took a few steps back for a running start. With a leap, she was over the channel, almost. At least she didn’t get any water above the ankles.

France flew by under her feet, then more of Europe. Her parents were sailing around down there somewhere on the real globe, she supposed. Without her. She gave Europe a little stomp and ran on. She ran down the boot-shaped country of Italy and came up short. Here was the Mediterranean Sea, and it was too much for her to leap over. But there was a rowboat conveniently docked on the nearby island of Sicily. She splashed over—her shoes were already wet so it didn’t matter—and rowed away. She steered past the Rock of Gibraltar—which she’d always imagined was just a big rock but turned out to be a massive limestone fortress covered with monkeys—and north along the coast of Portugal with its blue-green waters. She saw mountains here and there, but none of them were Mount Everest.

On one of the mountains she spotted the balloon.

It had gotten itself wedged in a rocky outcrop and was fighting desperately to break free. Propellers were whirling, flaps were flapping, and sails were pulling this way and that in the high mountain wind. Lenora paddled closer. Despite her loathing for the balloon, it could offer escape from the globe.

As she neared the coast, she spotted a dark figure on the other side of the balloon’s basket.

A young, skinny man wearing a black bowler hat and an overcoat that was much too large for him.

He had an axe and was chopping away the part of the basket that was stuck in the rocks.

“Hey!” shouted Lenora, outraged. “That is library property!”

The man glanced in her direction, then gave a final chop, and the balloon soared free over the mountains, back toward Europe and far away from Lenora.

The man in the bowler hat hopped over the eastern edge of the mountain and was gone.

Lenora rowed away furiously, thinking hard about these people in overcoats and black bowler hats. The first had tried to keep that young boy from learning about astrophysics. The second had lied to Bendigeidfran, and she and the robot had almost been lost in time and space. The third had deliberately sabotaged the balloon that might have gotten her off this globe. Whoever these people were and whyever they were doing these things, Lenora had no idea, but she was determined to find out.

For now, she journeyed onward.