For five days, Norch endured. Five days of broiling heat. Five days of ceaseless chatter. Five days of violent tantrums. On the sixth day, a storm swept in from the coast and broke the heat. Nae Xali, waterlogged and unable to fly, clung to Norch's back. He had to keep readjusting the thin arms wrapped around his neck to avoid choking. The Jemily, who had forgotten its promises of "taking care of" the little fairstash, leapt from one puddle to the next.

"What's that?" Nae Xali asked, leaning forward and pointing over Norch's shoulder.

Norch turned and took her wing full in the face. He blinked glitter out of his eye and pushed the appendage aside. In the distance, he could make out a small log cabin. The Jemily landed with a splash next to him.

"Do you know that place?" Norch asked, pointing.

The Jemily squinted, frowned, and shook its heads.

"Is it the Rohn?" he asked.

So far they had avoided meeting them.

"Oh, no," the Jemily said, "You never see them coming."

Somehow, that didn't reassure him.

"To be safe, we should go around," he concluded.

He took a step and found himself in front of the cabin door. Bewildered, he turned around and took a cautious step away from the cabin, only to find himself once again facing the door. When he turned again, the Jemily stood on the step behind him.

"I think," he said, "we have to go inside."

The Jemily's face blurred, and it took Norch a moment to realize it was shaking one head and nodding the other. He looked away before it gave him a headache. With trepidation, he reached out and turned the latch. The door swung open to reveal a small, ordinary entrance. A worn red rug ran the length of the floor and a chipped vase sat on a round, three-legged table to their right. Norch stepped inside, relieved when it was a normal step. He took another. Behind him, the door slammed shut. Uncertain, he tried the latch again, but it stuck. Norch swallowed his fear.

"Let's look around," he whispered to the Jemily, "maybe we can find a key, or a window."

This time, the Jemily nodded both its heads.

***

They searched each room off the hallway. Nae Xali rummaged in drawers, the Jemily lifted rugs and cushions, and once even tried to peer up a stove pipe. Norch checked every corner and cupboard, but somewhere towards the fourth room, he realized they had covered more ground inside than the tiny cabin allowed for outside. He headed back into the hall and peered from side to side. In one direction, he could still see the door, and down the other nothing but more hallway and doors leading off to other rooms. He turned and looked back into the room. A sitting room. The Jemily occupied itself with a bookshelf that ran along the back wall. Nae Xali, bored, draped herself over a footstool.

"This will take forever," she moaned.

Norch feared she might be right. He caught the Jemily's eye and beckoned it into the hall, but when he shared his observation, he only got a wave of the hand.

"Not all things are the same inside as outside," it said.

"They are where I come from," he said.

She frowned at him, then said, "How unimaginative."

Norch let it go. "Get Nae Xali. I want to see how far this hallway goes."

***

The hallway, while long, did not go on forever as he had feared. It ended in two sets of stairs. One led up, one led down. When he took the stairs leading up, he found himself headed down. There he found another hallway, darker, with a red rug running its length. A chipped vase sat on a three-legged table to his right. At the end of that hallway was another set of stairs. Up and down. Again he started up and found himself going down. Another hallway, a red rug, a chipped vase and a three-legged table. Each time he went down, the hallway was darker. Six floors down, he rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs and shouted, startling Nae Xali and the Jemily. In front of him was a small humanoid creature, four feet tall, with an overly large head for its body. It had gills around its neck and face, and the same pale peachy skin as Nae Xali and the Jemily, but covered in small brown splotches. Its hands and feet had four digits each, long and thin with a bulbous tip. It gazed up at him with deep blue eyes devoid of any whites.

"Hello," it said.

Its voice was light and chiming. Girlish.

"Uh. Hello," Norch replied.

The Jemily and Nae Xali peered around him.

The lizard-footed creature tilted its head to study them.

"Are you supposed to be here?" she asked.

"I--, I'm not sure," Norch answered, "We didn't mean to come here, but we can't find the way out."

The girl thing hunched her shoulders to her gills and looked from side to side.

"Did you mean to come in?" she whispered.

"No, we tried to go around, but--" Norch waved his hands to indicate the hallway, the cabin.

The girl nodded, "Yes, yes. It happens that way. And now you are stuck?"

She scarcely waited for their nods before hurrying on, "This is a dangerous place. We need to get you out of here. Come, I can help you."

The Jemily made to go around Norch, but he caught its arms and frowned at the girl.

"How can we be sure you didn't lure us here in the first place?"

She looked at him in surprise, "Why would I do that?"

"Why would you--" Norch said, "I don't know. Why wouldn't you?"

She studied him a moment before answering, "Don't you know what I am?"

Norch shook his head.

"I'm a Kathelak," she said.

Norch looked at the Jemily, who shrugged.

The Kathelak gave a sad sigh and shook its head, "Come on then."

She started off down the hall, but turned back when no one followed her.

"Stay if you want," she said, "but this home belongs to the Crai."