The evergreen forest was lovely. The trees were huge and old, majestic in a way that was hard to find back on Earth, where the forests had been logged and regrown so many times. The ground was covered in fallen needles, like a golden carpet. It was soft, and every step smelled of earthy loam and the sharp tang of pine. The canopy was thick, but here and there, wavering beams of sunlight broke through, dappling the forest in dancing light. The walk would have been pleasant, but Lanie jumped at every rustle and shadow. She was worn out and wound up tight. She was a city girl, used to concrete, steel, and car horns. Every sound was new and potentially dangerous. To take her mind off it, she thought about what she needed to do when she got back.

  She needed answers. First thing, she still needed an internet connection. She needed to look up this Samsara Stone, and chakras and sakti, and all the other odd stuff that had been crammed into her head. Then, she needed to find the client who had hired her to steal the Samsara Stone. He or she would be the best chance of getting the answers she needed, not just about the Stone, but also about the men hunting her.

  It was still possible that she’d pass the Stone unharmed and be able to hand it over and get her payment, but she was more and more certain that wasn’t going to happen. That last gut-punch from Cole had done something, and the most likely explanation was that he’d broken the Stone, and whatever had been contained inside it was what had given her the interface and her new abilities. If those men were after the Samsara Stone, and the Stone was part of her now, then they were going to keep hunting her.

  She needed to contact Jorge, or, better yet, get back home to Minneapolis. She’d feel a lot safer on her home turf, with access to her network of contacts. She hesitated at that thought. Did she want to drag this craziness back to Jorge’s doorstep? He’d done so much for her. It would be a slap in the face to bring her mess to his place. She’d call him. As soon as she had a phone again. If nothing else, he needed to know there might be people looking for her.

  So, she had her priorities: Find a way back to the real world. Get Nips what he needs for that anti-tracking charm. Call Jorge. Get online and do some research. Find the client and ask him or her some pointed questions. Avoid getting caught by the Three Scary Stooges. Worst to-do list ever.

  The air was getting warmer as they got farther down the mountain. It was starting to feel like Spring again, instead of the biting winter chill of the upper slopes. There was something about this place. Lanie couldn’t put her finger on exactly what the difference was, but it felt more alive than the real world. There was a richness in the air, and the colors seemed more vivid than back home. It was a quality she was having trouble finding the right words for.

  “Nips? Tell me more about this place. Fairy in general, I mean. What does it mean that it’s a different realm? What makes it different from Earth?”

  “Hmmm… that is a very large topic.” Nips climbed out of the messenger bag and rearranged the flap so that it hung across the opening of the bag like a hammock. He used the delay to gather his thoughts. When he was seated in the makeshift hammock and comfortable, he continued, “I guess the first thing you need to know is that Fairy isn’t just one place. Well… no… technically, Fairy is one realm among many realms, but there really isn’t a word for them in English, so Fairy has sort of become a catch-all layman’s term for all the different liminal realms.”

  “Liminal? That means like in-between, right?”

  “More or less. A liminal space is a threshold or a transitional space. Neither one thing nor the other. The material world, Earth, has very little magic, relatively speaking. The other realms attached to Earth all have varying amounts of magic, moving outward until you hit realms that are entirely made of magic with very little physical substance, like Divine realms or spiritual realms. Fairy, or the Liminal Realms, exist in between — neither purely physical nor purely spiritual.”

  “What? Like Heaven and Hell?”

  “No. No one is sure if there is really a Heaven, and the beings who claim to be from Hell can’t be trusted enough to know if even that claim is true or not. At least, as far as the Judeo-Christian mythos. There are plenty of small ‘h’ hells, in the sense of very unpleasant places you don’t want to visit. I was speaking of places like Asgard or Hades. Places carved out and ruled by beings who have ascended to godhood, or places inhabited by spiritual beings with no physical forms.”

  Lanie’s eyes got very wide. “Asgard is real?”

  “Oh, yes. As are the gods and goddesses who live there. So is Olympus, and a myriad of other places that humans consider mythological. The dividing lines are blurry. Tir-na-nog, for example, straddles the line between liminal realm and Divine realm. It gets hard to differentiate them all, so, in conversation, they all usually get lumped together as Fairy, unless you’re speaking academically and need to make the distinction.”

  “I see,” Lanie said, “So, do places over here always line up with places on Earth, like this place connects to Turkey?”

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  “Not really. I have only the one folk tale to go by, but it’s shared by the Turks and the Mongols, so I’d have to guess there are Ways from here that connect to places on the Steppes of Central Asia as well. That’s a lot of area, but this realm may be larger or far smaller than Central Asia. There are some realms that you can get to from almost anywhere on Earth, some you can’t get to from Earth at all, but only by going through other realms, and some that drift over time. Sometimes you can cross from one realm directly to another; other times, you have to go to Earth and then cross back. There are realms where time runs the same as on Earth, and realms where it runs slower or faster.

  “Think of the realms like soap bubbles all clumped together. Sometimes the same two bubbles stay stuck together in the clump, sometimes they move around and bump into different bubbles. The Mortal Realm is like a solid marble in the center, and things get looser and weirder the farther out you go.”

  “Huh.” Lanie’s head was spinning. She’d accepted that magic was real, but the scope of it blew apart her understanding of reality. The idea that places like Asgard and Olympus were real, and all those old gods were not only real, but still around… it was too big, too far beyond her. She put it all to the side, but decided she would have to do a lot of reading once things settled down and she wasn’t running for her life.

  She took a deep breath and tried to remember why she’d asked in the first place. Oh, right. “So, Fairy has more magic than Earth? Is that why the air here feels different? No… It’s not the air, exactly… it’s… I’m not sure how to describe it, it’s just… it feels different. It’s like everything is more… well… just more.” She shook her head, knowing that she was doing a terrible job of communicating, but unable to find the right words. “Like everything is just a little more real, a little more vivid.”

  “Ah, yes. It’s like that. Hard to put into words, I mean. I think the term you're looking for is Significant. Significance is sort of like… metaphysical weight, if you will. I’m surprised you noticed it. The effect is very subtle here. In the Higher Realms, the realms with more magic, it’s much more noticeable. The more magical something is, the more Significance it carries, the more of an impact it can have on the world around it. You must be very sensitive to it if you can pick up on it here. That’s a good thing, though. Especially once we get back to the physical world. It means you’ll be better able to tell when magic is being used around you, or on you.”

  “That’s a handy thing to know.” She made a mental note to pay attention to that feeling, but something Nips said earlier came back to her. “Back to the soap bubbles thing… Is it possible we could find a Way that leads to somewhere other than Turkey? I’d feel better if we could leave here a lot farther away from where we came in. If those men were using magic to track me, more distance would give us more lead time to prepare for them. Or for you to make that charm you mentioned.”

  Nips cocked his head in thought, then nodded slowly. “It’s possible. I don’t know where we might end up, though. Somehow, I don’t think winding up in Mongolia with no visa stamps on your passport would be very useful.”

  “Yeah, that would be… less than ideal.” Lanie sank into her thoughts again, considering options for getting home if they did come out somewhere unexpected. There were a lot of places where an American with a fake passport could end up in a dark cell, being either interrogated or used as a political chess piece. Her brief stay in a cell that morning was more than enough for a lifetime. ‘Was that only this morning? It feels like it’s been days.’

  She really was exhausted. She’d completely lost track of time, but she hadn’t slept or eaten, aside from the berries, since before the museum heist the day before. Since then, she’d pulled off a heist, spent all night running, been kidnapped and tortured, had magic infused into her, run some more, rescued Nips, traveled to a magical other world, fought with a giant spider, endured its venom, and climbed down a mountain… if she hadn’t had the magical Endurance boost she would likely have collapsed by now.

  The shadows were starting to get long. Nips had mentioned that time ran differently in some of the realms, but if time ran in step with Earth here, it had been more than twenty-four hours since she’d had any real rest. She could see in the dark, but the idea of stumbling through the woods at night made her shudder. “We should try to find someplace safe to hole up for the night,” she said, stopping to look around.

  Now that she was paying more attention, she realized that she could hear running water in the distance. It was faint, but they must have been getting close to the river. The woods had been much easier going than she’d anticipated. The trees were large and old, their branches intertwined to the point that not much light made it to the forest floor. That meant there wasn’t much underbrush, only the occasional clump of bushes or thicket of smaller trees where one of the giant evergreens had fallen in the past.

  Occasional rocky outcrops and boulders pierced the carpet of pine needles. It was one of these that Lanie settled on for shelter. The rock jutted out of the hillside, and one of the giant pines had fallen against it to create a shallow alcove. It wasn’t much, but it cut the wind and would protect them on two sides.

  “What do you think? Will we be safe sleeping out here?” she asked Nips. “We haven’t seen any wildlife since the cave.”

  “I think it doesn’t matter. I can see that you’re barely keeping to your feet. We’ll be better off here than if you collapse in some random spot in the woods, or stumble into the river because you’re too tired to see straight. Get some sleep,” he chided, “I can keep watch.”

  Her stomach rumbled, and her throat was dry, and she didn’t dare build a fire for fear it would draw attention. It was going to be a cold, miserable night, but she didn’t care. Nips was right; she couldn’t make herself take another step.

  It was much warmer in the valley than it had been on the slopes, but the temperatures were still those of early Spring—mild so long as the sun was shining, but already starting to drop. She set down her bag so Nips could climb out and started piling up pine needles to make a warm-ish nest for the night.

  She climbed into her pile and got as comfortable as the situation allowed. She’d planned to ask Nips a few more questions and take some time to go over the new options in her interface, but almost as soon as she lay down, she was fast asleep.