No, what I need is both worlds. But to have that, I have to get back to the other one first. If the otherworld’s not closed to me anymore, I can get Joe to help me learn to deal with it all. The staying safe. The going back and forth.

“I guess we have to find someone to ask for help,” I say.

My companion nods.

I remember when I was here before, how I managed to make my way to Mabon, the otherworldly city that Sophie brought into being. There would be people there I could ask—I might even be able to track down Sophie. But knowing it exists doesn’t really help, because my getting there before was so arbitrary. I’d go to sleep and either wake up in the cathedral wood, or in Mabon. I only travelled between the two the one time, and that was using something called door magic, which works in both worlds, apparently, but it’s much easier in the otherworld.

What you do is, you open a door expecting the place you want to be on the other side, and if your will is strong enough, and if you’re lucky—which I’m guessing is a bigger part of the procedure, at least when it comes to me pulling it off—the place you want to be in will be waiting for you.

But there are no doors here.

“Do you know where Mabon is?” I ask my companion.

“No,” she says. “But I sense an end to the forest in that direction.”

I look to where she’s pointing. I’m not sure if I see it because it’s really there, or if it’s because of what she’s said, but there seems to be a faint glow in that direction, as though a stronger light is pushing back the twilight of the forest. Something like the lights of a city.

“Well, I guess that’s as good a direction as any,” I say.

I start off, stopping when I realize I’m alone. I look back at her.

“Aren’t you coming?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “No. I . . . I have the urge to find the woman you see when you look at me, though I’m not sure why. It will just . . . complete something, I suppose, even if it simply means I’m absorbed back into her.”

“Maybe I should come with you. I’d love to meet her again, and I have some questions to ask her.”

She gives another shake of her head.

“Though I was born from your memories,” she says, “I believe we have separate journeys to take now.”

“I feel funny going on by myself.”

“Call one of your otherworldly friends to you. The crow girls, perhaps. Or that little man from the Greatwood who still visits you from time to time.”

“You mean Toby?”

“Yes, him.”