Even so, there was something wrong. Some lack. Some tiny thing, like a single cricket legging madly in the night.

A second door sat on the other side of the room, eager to be opened. She worked the latch, walked through a hallway, only to come to the foot of a set of stairs. There she looked around with some surprise. She’d thought that she was still in Wains. But clearly not. This was a different place entirely.

Auri’s heart beat faster then. It had been ages since she’d come on somewhere wholly new. A place that dared to be entirely itself.

Still, carefully. In Foxen’s steady light Auri looked closely at the walls and ceiling. A few cracks, but nothing thicker than a thumb. A few small stones had fallen, and there was dirt and mortar on the steps as well. The walls were bare and slightly condescending. No. She had obviously left Wains behind.

She ran a hand over the stones of the steps. The first few were solid, but the fourth was loose. As were the sixth and seventh. And the tenth.

There was a landing halfway up where the stairway turned back upon itself. There was a door, but it was terribly bashful, so Auri politely pretended not to see it. She made her careful way up the second flight of steps and found half of them were also loose or prone to tipping.

Then she went back down the stairs, making sure she’d found all the shifting stones. She hadn’t. It was terribly exciting. The place was tricky as a drunken tinker and a little sly. It had a temper too. It would be hard to find a place less like a garden path.

Some places had names. Some places changed, or they were shy about their names. Some places had no names at all, and that was always sad. It was one thing to be private. But to have no name at all? How horrible. How lonely.

Auri made her way up the stairs a second time, testing each one with her feet, avoiding the spots she knew were bad. As she climbed, she couldn’t tell what sort of place this was. Shy or secret? Lost or lonely? A puzzling place. It made her grin all the wider.

At the top of the stairs the ceiling had collapsed, but there was a gap made by a broken wall. Auri stepped through and found herself grinning with the thrill of it. Another new place. Two in one day. Her bare feet shifted back and forth on the gritty stone floor, almost dancing with excitement.

This place was not so coy as the stairway. Its name was Tumbrel. It was scattered and half-fallen and half-full. There was so much to see.