I didn’t know Annie Tidwell before it all happened. I didn’t know about Hemingway, or the books, or any of it.

You might say that my ignorance got me hired, the day I asked about the CLERK WANTED sign at Ogden’s books. Bernice, the owner, looked me over. She had the vague, airy sort of look that you’d expect of a woman who ran a used bookstore. She wore a long skirt over fleece-lined rubber shoes, cat-eye glasses, and far too much jewelry. But her voice was sharp and crisp. “Are you a wanderer?” she demanded.

“Pardon?”

“A wanderer. A voyager. Whatever you people call yourselves. A cat-follower.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Have you ever followed a cat into a book?” She pronounced each word very clearly, as though she suspected I might be a little stupid.

“Are you serious?”

She heaved a sigh. “Oh, thank heavens. You’re hired.”

 

*          *          *

 

Ogden’s felt less like a bookstore and more like an ancient and well-loved private library. The shop had run out of space on the built-in shelves years ago, and Bernice had apparently decided to cope by jamming the aisles with a mishmash of secondhand shelves, carts, and tables, each crammed with yet more books. The claustrophobic aisles almost certainly violated every fire code the county had ever passed. Books teetered in towers on the floor, shouldered each other out of the way on shelves and tables, gathered in every nook and cranny of available space. Bernice had taped up little handwritten signs here and there: “Romance,” “Self-Help,” “Civil Rights History,” and so on, but these were little more than stone cairns in the wilderness. The whole tangled forest of words was coated in a fine patina of dust.

“Since you’ll be closing, of course, you’ll also need to feed Hemingway,” Bernice added. “You don’t need to bother with his box or anything – I’ll take care of that. Just leave him plenty of kibble and some water.”

“Hemingway?”

“The cat.”

I looked around. I hadn’t seen a cat.

“Oh, he’ll be out wandering.” Bernice looked at me sharply. “That’s another thing. When he wanders, don’t follow him. At least not during store hours. What you do with your own time is your business, of course. But if you do follow him, you be sure you follow him all the way.”

I stared at her, uncertain what to make of this extraordinary statement.

Bernice smiled. “So let’s go do the paperwork, shall we?”

 

*          *          *

 

It didn’t pay much, but I got health insurance, and I could borrow any book I wanted. I spent the slow evening shifts reading or crocheting the lumpy throw I’d been working on for weeks.

The job was entirely satisfactory. Except in two respects.

First, the loiterers. They were all . . . odd, somehow. One man always wore hats, while another walked with an old-fashioned cane complete with a carved rabbit head. One woman actually wore binoculars around her neck. They came sidling in, slipped down an aisle toward field guides or histories, and then just didn’t come back. I started writing down their comings and goings. Sometimes Hat Man would come in on a Tuesday and not leave until Saturday. Binoculars Woman would disappear down the fiction aisle, but be nowhere to be found when it was time to close up, even though she’d never left. I began to wonder if there was a secret room someplace, or perhaps a tunnel or something that led to the meetings of a society of unusual people.

The second problem was the question of Annie Tidwell.

I first heard the name during my second week, when a man with a beard like a small untamed jungle said, “You the new girl? What happened to Annie?”

“Annie?” I punched in the prices on the rickety cash register.

“She worked here before,” he said. “They ever find her?”

I frowned. “I’m not sure. I’ve never heard of her.”

“She was a nice girl,” the man said. “Responsible-looking. Didn’t seem the type to just run off from a job without telling anybody.” He eyed me, clearly thinking that I wasn’t as responsible-looking as Annie had been. He handed me a wad of bills. “I wonder if they ever found her.”

 

*          *          *

 

I found the story online. Annie Tidwell, age thirty, had closed up shop one night and then vanished. Her roommate reported that she never came home that night, and police found her bike still chained up in its usual spot in front of the store. All the money from the cash register was neatly bundled in with the receipts and tucked away in the safe, matching to the penny the register’s daily report. She’d even left a paperback under the cash register, her place marked with a card from the coffee shop that was just two stamps away from a free beverage.

There was a missing-persons flyer, Annie Tidwell smiling into the camera. According to the flyer, she was last seen wearing jeans, a green shirt, and a brown jacket. But the trail had gone cold before anyone even knew there was a trail. Annie Tidwell had simply dropped off the face of the earth.

I don’t know why it bugged me so much. Maybe it was just the creeping feeling that perhaps someone had actually murdered her, right here in the shop, and just did an impeccable job of covering up the crime. Would the place be haunted if that were the case? And if it were haunted, how would I know?

 

*          *          *

 

I learned Hemingway’s secret when I was shelving poetry. One moment, I was stacking books on an empty shelf. The next moment, the shelf was suddenly full of angry, spitting orange cat.

Embarrassingly, I screamed a full-throated Hollywood scream, leaping back from the shelf in a shower of books. Hemingway glared at me, affronted, his single eye a blaze of offended madness. With a growling meow, he jumped down from the shelf, hitting the floor with a thud.

Pressing one hand to my thundering heart, I bent to gather up the books, cursing the cat. I had most of the stack and my dignity back in hand, ready to straighten up and get back to work, when Binoculars Lady suddenly popped out of the air, making me shriek and drop everything again.

“Oh, I am so sorry,” she gasped, fumbling to straighten her glasses and pat her hair back into place. She peered up at me with a slightly glazed, befuddled look. “I didn’t expect you there. Of course, you can’t control where you land, can you? You just come out wherever you come out.”

“I’m sorry, what?” I managed. “Where did you come from?”

“I took a tour, of course.”

“A tour? A tour of what?”

“Oh, you never know when it’s poetry,” she said. “It’s all dream and fluff and wind-tossed beaches. Quite beautiful, of course. But completely aimless.”

“I’m . . . I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’ve been in Poetry since we closed, shelving.” I gestured toward the upended cart, the spill of books. “I would have seen you.”

“Not when I was in the books, surely. I don’t believe that’s how it works at all.”

“In the books?”

Understanding broke across her face like sunlight. “D’you mean to say you’ve never followed the cat? Oh, you must! Especially since you’re here after hours. You can stay as long as you like. You’ll love it, I promise.”

I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was having me on in some elaborate joke. Still, she and Hemingway had appeared from someplace. I decided to go along.

“So you follow Hemingway . . . into the books?”

“Pretty much.”

“How do you choose the book?”

“Oh, there’s no choosing. He’s a cat, after all. Truth be told, I’ve followed him through far more poetry than I’d prefer. The novels are far better, though maybe not the Russian ones. And the philosophy books are always fascinating. You’ve got to be careful, though. If you follow him, be sure you stick with him all the way. Don’t let him out of your sight.”

“Why not?”

She shivered. “You’ll get lost.”

“But it’s just a dream or something, right? Can’t you just wake up?”

“Just trust me. And trust him,” she added. Hemingway had curled into a spiky-looking orange ball, purring like a rusty engine. “If you just stick with him, he’ll get you through.”

“Good to know.” I thought it best not to argue.

She smiled and patted my arm. “You’ll have a wonderful time.”

And the next time Hemingway trotted off into the shelves, bottlebrush tail high in the air, I followed, squashing down the sense of absurdity.

 

*          *          *

 

I expected some sort of physical sensation, certainly. Spinning around, or falling through a void, or something to suggest a leap from one plane of reality to the next. Instead, Hemingway led me through the fiction section and into a room that hadn’t been there, a grand old foyer where a woman named Mrs. Dalloway was preparing to go and purchase flowers for a party.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I stammered. Hemingway trotted over to the woman and wound himself around her ankles, purring his chainsaw purr. “I was in the bookstore, you see, and I must’ve stumbled through . . .” I glanced behind me, where Fiction should have been, but there was only the wall.

The woman peered in a mirror to arrange her hat and paid me no mind. Nor did she acknowledge Hemingway, who had rolled on his back to bat at the hem of her dress. It was as if I were a ghost. That feeling strengthened abruptly when the woman turned and walked straight through me toward the door.

Hemingway followed. So did I.

It wasn’t hard, keeping up with the woman and the round orange cat. But it was strange, because of the words.

They flowed and whirled around me like a fine mist, stage smoke spilling off of dry ice, each one as carefully carved and perfectly formed as a snowflake. If I focused, I could almost hear them whispered, an invisible narrator telling the story as it unfolded around me. But mostly the words simply filled the air like perfume, seeping into my thoughts and consciousness so that I understood everything around me. Everything. I walked through the swirling snowfall of Clarissa Dalloway’s memories and doubts, her reserved dignity and regrets over love long lost. I cried when Septimus Smith committed suicide, wallowed in numb sorrow over the lost loves and missed chances, reveled in the quiet elegance of the party preparations. I could feel the hot summer air on my skin, could smell the flower arrangements. I ghosted through the world, living it with the characters.

It ended too soon, when Hemingway turned a corner and led me into the Sports and Games section. He leapt up to a table of chess manuals and began washing his face. I swayed, gripping the shelves for support, as the disorientation struck. The bookstore seemed dulled, somehow, muted after the saturation of smells and colors in Mrs. Dalloway’s world. Perhaps the words had made things more intense.

Dazed, I scratched Hemingway behind the ears. He allowed it, then yowled imperiously. I obediently went to get his dinner.

 

*          *          *

 

After that, I followed him every chance I got, after hours when no one else was around. We walked through another novel, some Civil War era bodice ripper. Then a book I could only assume was a fly-fishing guide. A dry history of the Russian Revolution. A book of Pablo Neruda poems that I swam through like fever-bright dreams, words flowing in hot torrents of Spanish and English so beautiful my heart broke. Twice he led me through Mrs. Dalloway again. It seemed to be a favorite.

On our third tour of Mrs. Dalloway, I saw the Edges for the first time.

Hemingway paced ahead of me, walking with the leisurely stride of a cat in his own home, pausing here and there to chase a butterfly or wash his paws. I followed him, hot and languid and vaguely bored.

Perhaps the shadowy darkness caught my eye because of my boredom. I stopped short, squinting into the distance, past the boundary of the park. I had a vague impression of darkness, of shifting sands and things moving beneath them.

I took a step off the path. Then another. The two steps brought me closer to the darkness than I would have expected, so that it suddenly seemed only yards away. I leaned forward, trying to make out the shapes of the things that slipped and skittered through the shadows, of tangled brambles like a thicket molded from nightmares and madness. This was not part of Virginia Woolf’s world. That much was clear. So what were they doing here?

And then I caught a glimpse of something else. A bright green strip of fabric, a tiny tattered flag waving in the darkness. It was caught on one of the brambles, no more than a few feet from me, garish against the darkness. I raised my foot to take another step, fingers outstretched toward it.

Hemingway’s imperious meow cut through my thoughts. I swung around, heart pounding. The orange cat was shockingly far away, staring at me with his single bright eye.

I hurried to catch up, leaving the fabric fluttering on the branch.

 

*          *          *

 

“It’s the Edges, dear,” Binoculars Woman – Myra – told me.

“The Edges.”

“Yes. The parts where the story isn’t. I always think of them as . . . oh, the forest around the village, really. Where the wolves live.” She paused. “It might only make sense to writers.”

“I see.” I didn’t. “And there are wolves there?”

“Not as such. But there are monsters of some kind. It’s really best to stay on the path.”

“Has anyone ever gotten lost there?”

Her face quirked into a grim little smile. “If they had, how would we know?”

 

*          *          *

 

“What happened to the other girl? Annie?”

“She moved back home.” The Official Story seemed to serve, most of the time.

His eyebrows quirked upward. “To Nebraska? I thought she hated it there.”

 

*          *          *

 

Myra flinched when I grabbed her arm. “Annie Tidwell.”

“What?”

“Annie Tidwell. You asked how we’d know if someone got lost in the Edges, right? Well, I think she did.”

“The girl who used to work here? What makes you think that?”

But I saw the shift in her eyes. “She used to follow Hemingway, didn’t she?”

“Of course.”

“She was wearing a green shirt when she went missing – what if that’s what left the fabric I saw? What if she’s still out there, wandering around the Edges?”

“That doesn’t make any sense. She moved home.”

“But that doesn’t make sense, either. Why would she just vanish? Why leave her bike still chained up outside? Her purse under the counter? How did she get to Nebraska without any clothes, any money?”

“So what, you think she wandered away from a story into the Edges? She knew better.”

“Maybe it wasn’t on purpose,” I reasoned. “Maybe she just got lost somehow.

Myra snorted. “So what do you want to do? Go looking for her? You’ll just wind up lost yourself.”

“We have to try.”

“We?”

 

*          *          *

 

I had spent days thinking it through. I had to follow Hemingway to get through the story, but there was no rule that said I had to let him go at the pace of his choosing. I just needed an accomplice to tether him, and then hold onto him, while I searched for Annie Tidwell.

Myra regarded the kitty harness I’d bought. “Have you tried putting it on him?”

“Not yet.”

She laughed. “Why don’t you start with that, while you’re here in the store? See if he’ll even cooperate.”

“People walk cats on leashes all the time,” I protested. “I’ve seen them do it.”

“You have to train them to it, though.”

Sure enough, Hemingway made his disdain for the entire concept of leash-walking instantly apparent.

“Is it hurting him?” I asked, applying another band-aid to my scratched and bloodied arms. Hemingway proceeded into his tenth minute of crouching in the harness, completely immobile and growling a low, mournful growl.

“I wouldn’t think so,” Myra said. “He just doesn’t like it.”

“So what do we do?”

“Give up on the whole thing, because it’s a stupid idea? Scowl at me all you want. You know I’m right. Besides, we don’t even know if we can both follow him through to the same book at the same time.”

“Why couldn’t we?”

“We go one at a time.”

“Have you ever tried going through with anyone else?”

“Of course not. That would be like trying to read a book over someone’s shoulder.”

“But it’s not really reading. It’s more like watching a movie. Or taking a trip. And you do that with other people, right?”

“It’s not the same. This is magic. And magic has rules.”

I sighed. “Look, will you just try it with me?”

“Why do you care so much?” she asked. “You didn’t know Annie, did you?”

I knelt to remove the harness from Hemingway. My true answer, the one I couldn’t say aloud, was that I needed to do something. Anything. I was thirty-five years old and still waiting for some great adventure, something to do besides crocheting blankets and reading novels about other people’s lives.

Besides, I had wondered: if I disappeared like Annie Tidwell, who would take sufficient note to start a search? I couldn’t think of anyone offhand. It made me feel a strange kinship for the girl I’d never met.

“I want to know what happened to her,” I said finally. Hemingway sprang free from the harness, shaking himself like a wet dog. “Besides, shouldn’t we find out if somehow she got attacked? Maybe there’s something else out there, some other danger besides just getting lost in the Edges.”

“And how do we even know what book she wandered into?”

I frowned. “It would be Mrs. Dalloway, wouldn’t it? That’s where I found the fabric, after all.”

 

*          *          *

 

We tried the next night.

I hadn’t expected it to work. Despite myself, I’d believed Myra about the rules. But we just followed Hemingway’s bottlebrush tail down one of the aisles, and abruptly found ourselves . . .

“Damn it,” Myra said. “What is it with his obsession with Virginia Woolf?”

Sure enough, we were in Mrs. Dalloway’s foyer again, watching her arrange her hat before stepping outside to go buy flowers. A thought snagged at my brain. “I bet she really is here.” Excitement crept into my voice. “I bet he’s looking for her, too.”

Myra looked around, as though actually seeing the foyer for the first time. “You know, it has just been in the past few months that he keeps coming back here.”

“Since Annie went missing?”

“I’m not sure. But it’s been pretty recent. But wouldn’t she have come out before now, if she were here? Or maybe she can’t – if she got lost in the Edges, she might not be able to come back here.” I could see the tense fear in her eyes.

“Let’s follow Hemingway an have a look,” I suggested.

“We can’t just go wandering off.”

“Of course not. But there are two of us. If you keep an eye on the cat and make sure I don’t lose him, I’ll take your binoculars and just see if I can see anything. I’m not going to wander off the path, I promise. I’ll just get as close to the Edges as I can, and see what there is to see.”

 

*          *          *

 

It turned out easier said than done.

The borders blurred between the story and the Edges, the ground between thin and treacherous. I could see the boundary line well enough, where the bright colors and crisp shapes of the story blurred into the dark tangle of the Edges. If I focused, I could see the twisting shapes of eerie growth that clawed at the landscape, so different from the tidy English gardens of Clarissa Dalloway’s world. Creatures, rough-hewn and sneaking, crept through the barbed undergrowth.

But the boundary twisted and moved, slipping now further away, now closer. Once, one of the creatures seemed to slither around behind me, trying to herd me over the border. I called out Annie’s name, over and over. My voice vanished into the tangled desolation.

“Iris?” I heard real tension in Myra’s voice, and realized I had wandered over the boundary. The thorny brush tangled around my ankles, dragging at the cuffs of my pants. The jewel-bright world of Clarissa Dalloway lay yards away, and things slithered between me and the manicured grass of the park. Myra seemed impossibly far away, Hemingway a mere dot of orange.

I sprinted back. The run felt impossibly slow, my legs heavy and tangling in the brush with every step. One of the brambles suddenly clenched around my ankle, a dead hand reaching up out of the ground. I fell, landing on my hands and knees in the rich green grass, the smell of tulips thick in my nostrils.

Shaking, I crawled to my feet, trying to breathe. I’d torn a hole in the knee of my pants, and blood trickled from fresh scrapes on my palms. But hope swelled in my chest. I’d stepped into the Edges, and I’d returned.

Annie could do the same.

 

*          *          *

 

When Myra showed up the next day, I had my kit ready, stashed under the counter. I knew she’d laugh.

“So do you think we actually need to wait for another trip through Mrs. Dalloway to find her?” I whispered, hoping to avoid Bernice’s attention. Given Bernice’s view of “cat-followers,” as she called them, I was fairly certain she’d fire me for joining their ranks. “Or are the Edges connected somehow?” I’d looked around on trips through other books, and had found the same shadowy tangles, the same sense of things shifting in the dark. Maybe the Edges were one vast forest, dotted here and there with stories like jewels tossed into a tangle of barbed wire.

“We must need that one,” Myra answered. “Otherwise, why would the damn cat be so obsessed with that book?”

When closing time finally came, I pulled out my kit. As anticipated, Myra laughed heartily, and kept hiccupping chuckles as we followed Hemingway into a biography of some Nineteenth Century inventor.

But the carrier worked, far better than the harness. I’d put plenty of treats into it, so Hemingway didn’t object much when I scooped him up and popped him in. I handed the carrier to Myra, along with the spool containing a hundred feet of sturdy clothesline. I knotted the loose end of the rope around my waist.

“We’re in the wrong book,” Myra objected.

“We might as well test it anyway,” I pointed out. “Hemingway can’t leave us here if we can contain him. And if you hold onto the rope, I’ll be able to find my way back.”

“What happens when the story ends and he’s still in his cage?”

“I’m trusting you not to let that happen.” I ignored her protest and turned toward the Edges.

Even knowing I’d be able to get back, stepping over the boundary between the story and the Edges terrified me. I quelled the urge to keep looking back to be sure that Myra had a firm grip on the spool. I forced myself to stride onto the thin path threading through the shadowy bramble, blood shivering through my veins.

I wandered for what felt like hours, calling Annie’s name. Mostly, nothing came back but the flat silence, or furtive scufflings. Once, I thought I heard another voice, but couldn’t be sure. There wasn’t enough slack left in the rope to investigate. Just in case, I scattered some snacks I’d brought. Granola bars and chips, sealed and brightly colored to stand out against the landscape.

Finally, I turned back, coiling up the rope as I went. The Edges grated on my senses, every sound making me flinch and jump.

I’d almost reached the story when one of the things in the undergrowth finally struck. I could see Myra, clutching the cat carrier in one hand and the nearly-empty spool in the other. Her mouth moved as though she were shouting something, but I couldn’t hear even though she was only yards away. I sped up, dragging the rope more quickly through the tangled growth.

So I wasn’t watching the ground. I barely had a second to scream when the creature leaped up out of the shadows, striking toward my face. My glasses protected my eyes, but the thing scrabbled and tore at my forehead and cheeks, chittering like a half-mad squirrel. I clawed at it until I finally had a grip on its greasy fur. I flung it as far away as I could, then fled toward the boundary. I stumbled at last into the inventor’s study, blood streaming down my face, panting as though I’d just sprinted a mile instead of half a dozen yards.

“Come on.” Myra said. “It’s time to go.”

 

*          *          *

 

“If she’s there, she must be dead by now.”

We’d just returned from our fourth trip, counting the inventor. This time, the attack had come from a flock of small flying creatures, swarming up out of a hole. I had cleaned up the cuts on my face, scalp, and arms – they were all shallow but bloody – and had poured us each dash of brandy from the bottle I’d started keeping under the counter to calm their nerves after these trips.

I had become quite dashing, I realized. I might still be a doughy bookstore clerk with a pile of yarn and nothing in the fridge but olives and diet soda, but I had already acquired a good collection of scars and a taste for brown liquor.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

Myra shrugged. “Food, for starters. What can she eat? You can’t touch anything in the story, so clearly she wouldn’t be able to eat any of those nice cakes and sandwiches Mrs. Dalloway had set out for her party.”

“I’ve been leaving her food.” Ignoring her expression, I plunged on. “Besides, she could touch things on the Edges.” I gestured my latest collection of wounds. “Maybe she found some food there.”

“What, you think she’s picking berries and frying up critters like the ones that keep trying to eat your face?” Myra snorted. “Even so, something must have killed her by now.”

Here, Myra had a point. Each of the attacks I’d experienced had come from small, vicious creatures. But larger things stalked me through the shadows. I could feel them, biding their time, watching with alien hungry eyes.

“So do you want to stop looking for her?”

Myra studied me for a long time. “You’re gong to get seriously hurt. Or killed. What happens when something cuts your line, or some creature finally hurts you too badly to get back?”

I knew she was right. But for some reason, I no longer dreaded these things. At least, not so much. “I might,” I admitted. I frowned, trying to pick my words.

She realized what I couldn’t say. “Holy shit. You’re having fun.”

I smiled a little. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am.”

 

*          *          *

 

A week later, Hemingway took us back into Mrs. Dalloway again. This time, I had chalk to mark the path.

Walking into the Edges exhilarated me, but my skin still crawled at the twisting, shifting growth. I struck off in the general direction where I’d found the fabric, scattering treats and chalk marks like a child in a fairy tale forest.

I almost didn’t notice when the air changed, when all the shifting and slithering creatures suddenly went silent. But I noticed when the shadow suddenly fell over me, dark and winged and too large to even comprehend.

Fortunately, my body wanted very much to stay alive. Sheer instinct, driven by some part of my brain that remembered being a small furry monkey surrounded by much bigger things with teeth and talons, forced me to leap to one side, rolling in the bramble.

A bird the size of a dinosaur plunged into the ground where I’d been. Its feathers gleamed the color of smoke and steel, its talons each longer than my forearm. It struggled to its feet from its failed dive. I backed away, afraid to drop my gaze for even a second.

The thing opened its beak – a beak that looked perfectly capable of snapping my ribcage in half — and gave a single, imperious shriek, leaping at me.

It had almost reached me, its breath hot on my face, when I heard another cry, a banshee bellow that echoed through the waste. I fell backwards as another creature, green and screaming, slammed into the bird. It stumbled and reared back shrieking in angry surprise. The newcomer – who, I realized, was not actually green but merely clad in green – struck the bird again with a makeshift club cut from one of the brambles.

“Hit him, you idiot!” she yelled, tossing me another club. I waded in, swinging wildly. I caught the bird’s beak with a backhand just as it lunged down toward me, smacking the hard silvery shell with a loud crack. The bird reared back, shaking its head. It flung out its wide inky wings.

“RUN!” She grabbed my arm and plunged away from the bird.

I risked a glance over my shoulder. The bird was crouched down, preparing to leap upward toward the gray sky. “We’ll never outrun him,” I gasped.

“He has a hard time getting airborne,” she answered, without breaking stride. “Your line leads back to the story?”

“What?” I glanced down at the forgotten coil of rope. “Yes. It does.”

“We’ll get there.”

I wanted to believe it. The bird’s call sounded so close, but I couldn’t look back. Was it airborne yet? High enough to strike again? The muscles between my shoulders cringed, waiting for slicing talons.

And then we could see the watercolor green story world. We dug deeper for a fresh burst of speed. She dropped my arm, and I used both hands to drag up the slack of my line, keeping it from tangling around the brambles. The woman hung back, letting me get ahead. She was probably better-equipped to fight off the bird. She still had her club, for a start.

Ten yards away. Seven. Five. I saw Myra coiling up the rope as quickly as her hands would move.

“DOWN!”

I threw myself down without hesitation. Air whooshed through my hair as the bird swooped down, talons snapping so close that I heard the sliding of the leathery skin. The bird pumped its wings, trying to gain altitude for another dive.

I scrambled up. The woman in green was still crouched on the ground. I grabbed her arm and dragged her up, pulling her bodily toward the boundary. Finally, I flung her the last few feet into Myra’s awkward arms, plunging after. The bird slammed into the ground a bare yard behind my feet I crossed the line.

Gasping, I fell to the grass.

 

*          *          *

 

“Yes, I’m Annie.”

We’d opened Hemingway’s cage, and he stalked ahead, ignoring us completely.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

Annie shrugged her twig-thin shoulders. “I heard you,” she said. “And then I came across one of your granola bars. I started watching for you when you came.”

Myra stared at her. “So you weren’t lost at all.”

Annie hesitated. “Not exactly,” she said. “I just…”

I studied her. The hard independence in her face. The smooth capable movements of her hands as she rolled the club back and forth. The fearful looks she kept giving us.

And I remembered the thrill of adrenaline, running from the bird.

“You don’t want to come back with us,” I said at last.

Annie’s smile was quick. “You’ve been exploring the Edges. What do you think?”

Myra rolled her eyes. “I think you’re both bloody insane,” she said, looking between us.

But I looked back at Annie, sensing a stronger kinship than ever. “They’re beautiful, I suppose, in a savage kind of way. What did you eat?”

“Mostly, I didn’t. Your snacks were great.”

Myra snorted. “You have to come back with us, girl,” she said.

Annie’s face fell. “Are people upset about my being gone?”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose not.” She sounded wistful as she peered toward the Edges. “It was an adventure, though,” she said softly.

“I bet it was.” I couldn’t quite keep the envy out of my voice. Then, an idea occurred to me. “Maybe we can come back next week?” she suggested.

The smile burst across Annie’s face like the sun. “We can,” she said. “We definitely can.”

 

THE END