It’s about me accepting that I had no control over it, that it happened, and that all I can do is not allow myself to fall back into a situation where it might happen again.

And you know what? I don’t need to do the rest of it by myself. Maybe I need to find the conviction and belief in myself on my own, but dealing with Del? Nope.

“You ever think of Raylene?” I ask him.

Raylene went through everything I did. She ran away, too. But before she did, she stood up to Del. She cut him with a knife, and that’s why the fat drunk in the trailer park still walks with a limp.

“Why do you want to talk about her?” he says.

He’s still all cocky and full of bluster, but I caught the momentary flicker of uncertainty in his eyes when I mentioned her name.

“You know what?” I tell him. “I think we need to have ourselves a little family meeting.”

Lizzie

“Okay, somebody explain this to me,” Lizzie said.

She’d been sitting on her haunches, staring at the spot from which Jilly had disappeared. Now she lifted her head to look at her companions. Honey was the closest. She lay on a nearby stretch of flat red rock, mouth open, her tongue lolling as though she was simply an ordinary dog. Timony perched on the petroglyph rocks, legs dangling, while Geordie studied the distant mountains. Geordie turned at the sound of her voice.

“Explain what?” he asked.

“How does it work? This world where Jilly’s gone—it’s inside her head, right? So, if she’s gone there—you know, inside herself—shouldn’t her body still be here with us? How can she physically go inside her own mind?”

“Who knows?” Timony said. “How do the Walking Hills of Tremaynse travel without legs?”

Lizzie just looked at him. “You know that doesn’t make any sense either?”

I think that’s his point, Honey said. Many things are possible, here in the otherworlds. In some parts you can find anything. You only need to go deep enough.

“Everybody keeps saying that, but it just seems too weird.”

“Weird?” Geordie said. “Sure. But too weird? I don’t know. These are also called the dreamlands—the place we go when we dream. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve had some weird dreams in my time.”

“So if I dreamed I went to a place where fish breathed air and had arms and legs and lived in skyscrapers . . . that place would actually exist somewhere in here?”

The otherworld is infinite, Honey said.

Timony nodded. “It has to be, to fit everything in.”

“I guess.”

Honey stood up and stretched.

It’s time I returned to my family, she said. You will be safe here until Jilly returns.