So, if she didn’t believe, why was she still here, stuck in a world inside of Jilly’s head in the body of a nine- or ten-year-old girl?

A horrible thought occurred to her.

Maybe Timony hadn’t been talking to her specifically. Maybe it was only so long as Jilly believed.

She turned to look at the distant farmhouse. Del and Mattie had almost reached it now.

She had to get the message to Jilly. How she was supposed to do that without being able to talk, she had no idea. But she had to try.

If there was a moment of bravery for her in all of what had happened, this was it. Everything else, from killing the bogan, knocking down the priest, attacking Del . . . all of that had just been her acting on instinct. Standing up against what she knew wasn’t right without stopping to think.

She lifted her hand once more, caressing the strange smooth expanse of skin the way she’d run a finger over a scab, or tongue a sore on the roof of her mouth—hardly even aware she was doing it.

Her gaze remained fixed on the farmhouse. Del and Mattie had gone inside now.

This time, Lizzie realized, she knew exactly what she was getting into. Until she could get Jilly to understand how everything was dependent on what she believed, Del could make anything happen. Anything. She was sure that taking away her mouth was only the least of the horrors he could come up with.

His voice echoed in her head.

Little girl, you can’t even imagine my worst.

No, she probably couldn’t. Because she wasn’t some insane sociopath with the power of a god in his hands.

But she got up all the same. She brushed dirt and grass from her pants, then slowly started across the fields herself, aiming for the farmhouse.

Rabedy

Rabedy was sure he was going to throw up if he didn’t first fall off the salmon’s back and break his neck on the ground below. The ground far, far below.

Their route through the forest had been bad enough, weaving and bobbing to avoid the trunks and boughs of the trees, leaves slapping him in the face, branches almost knocking him from his precarious perch. But then they broke from the trees and up Odawa took them, up and up, high into the sky, to where the clouds lived and bogans weren’t supposed to go. If they were, the Moon-mother would have given them wings. But she hadn’t, so that was fairly clear, wasn’t it?

Nevertheless, here they were, a salmon swimming through the air with a bogan clinging to its back and his stomach crawling up his throat.

Until that moment, Rabedy hadn’t known that he had a fear of heights.