An elderly woman selling knit booties nodded sagely. “I’ve heard the tales. None have been spotted in decades, mind.”

Story rolled her eyes at Jaren and pressed through the throngs of people to a small stand. The woman here sold medicine, some genuine, some more likely to kill the patient than cure them. Story picked up a small green bottle that said Fever Tonic on the label.

“What’s in this?” she asked the shopkeeper, tipping the bottle back and forth to study the viscosity of the fluid inside.

As the woman rattled off the ingredients, Jaren let his eyes wander around the market. He spotted Lars easily enough. The young man and his bright hair waved in greeting before he returned to his conversation with the butcher. And there was Maggie, the woman with the formidable brows. She glared at Jaren, clearly still upset about what he’d said regarding magic.

“Who are you looking for?” Story asked, handing a coin to the shopkeeper and tucking a brown bottle with no label into her satchel.

“Oh, no one in particular,” Jaren replied. The truth was, he realized now, he’d been looking for a girl with pale blond hair, which was foolish. He knew Endlans didn’t leave their island, magic lake or no.

Story twisted her lips like she had more to say.

“I was hoping to buy honey today,” he added. “But I can’t find the stand.”

The diversion worked. There was a pretty, young woman who sold the honey, and Story would make her own assumptions from there. “She only comes every other week,” Story said, linking her arm through Jaren’s.

“Why do you think the people here are so obsessed with magic?” he asked in a low voice as they strolled the market. “Is it the thin mountain air? Too much time on their hands?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I can sort of feel it myself, when I’m in the forest. It feels different from the forest back home.”

They had moved from a city more than two weeks away by horseback when Klaus, who had known Jaren’s mother as a girl, had written to Stepan, describing the bountiful forests, clean air, and welcoming community. So far, it had all proven to be true, for the most part.

But Jaren still didn’t understand what everyone was talking about, not even his sister, who wasn’t prone to superstition. The forest just felt like a forest, albeit a quiet one.

They had made their way back to where the old man was still spinning his yarn about the wolf, which had now grown to the size of a cottage. Quite a crowd had gathered by this point, and Story tugged Jaren over to listen.

“My dog went after it,” the old man said. “I kept trying to call him back, but he wouldn’t listen.”