When she got close enough to see the front of the storehouse, she folded herself against a wall and peeked out. In the slender open area before the big doors, Linta Massera sat at a table, facing Lovisa, making notes in a small notebook. The table was crowded with objects and implements, some, like a stove, oddly shaped glassware, a microscope, reminding Lovisa of the laboratories at the academy. Others seemed more like the detritus of life. A cup of tea; a tray with empty dishes and cutlery; papers and pens; a short stack of notebooks like the one Linta wrote in. Ropes hung on the wall behind her. A small, square trapdoor was set into the floor near the table. Lovisa had noticed it before but never tried it, for it had always been locked. It intrigued her now, because she could see the key in the lock, sticking out of the floor like a tiny spike.

A pot on the stove at Linta’s left elbow bubbled gently. Linta turned toward it to check on it, and when she did, something moved against the wall to her right. When she turned back to her notebook, the movement stopped. A moment later, she reached for the pot again and the same thing happened. Lovisa watched, fascinated, as a sack of some foodstuff, positioned among other sacks of foodstuff, shifted closer to the table. A wave of nausea swept through Lovisa, heightening when she forced herself to stare at the sack and was able to discern in its rumples and folds, ever so slightly, the shape of a crouching girl. The sack was Hava. And Hava was trying to get closer to Linta’s table.

What should she do? How could she help? Lovisa began hunting around her stall, looking for an answer. She found it: a sack of some dried thing—beans—with a tiny hole in its side. A bean lay on the floor beneath the hole. Lovisa stuck her finger into the hole, widening it. She caught the stream of beans that emerged. Then, the next time Linta seemed intent on her notebook, she hurled the beans to the side of the room opposite from where Hava was lurking.

They made more noise than she’d intended, crashing against the wall, pounding down onto barrels, bouncing across the floor. Linta jumped up, stared around, then left the table and walked to that corner, muttering to herself. Instantly, Hava mobilized, stretching into a clearly girl-shaped sack that crept to the table, snatched up Linta’s notebooks, then shot down the narrow alleyway between the stalls. She dove into Lovisa’s stall. Turning back into a girl, she grabbed Lovisa.

“Get down. I can hide you,” she whispered.

Lovisa really thought she might vomit. The rapid transformations were so overwhelming. “How did you know I was here?”

“I saw the flight of whatever you threw. Sh!”