The day was still dewy when Mat and Snow left Gran lounging in her armchair after breakfast.

"You're hurting me," Snow grunted, shaking the hand Mat crushed as he pulled her toward the Burnt Forest.

Mat had checked the road from the hill to find celebrators sleeping in the dirt; through the forest they would go.

"Sorry," he muttered without slackening his grip.

When they got to the tree line, she pulled him to a stop, wriggled out of his grip with an accusatory glare, and stalked past him. He could practically hear her: I'm not a child anymore. I know the way.

Wasn't she afraid? He sure was and couldn't bring himself to utter a coherent thought the entire way. His heart somersaulted as they stepped out into the sun-dappled field that led to Elis' door and they didn't pause until they reached the stoop. At some point, while crossing the field, she had taken hold of his hand, he only now noticed, and when he hesitated with bated breath, she squeezed. Without knocking, Mat opened the door. The chime of the bell skipped up his spine as she slid past him into the shop.

"Elis," Mat called and shut the door.

The tinker peeked his bespeckled head around the last case on the right. His suspicion of visitors confirmed, the rest of his body followed.

"Mathew," he said as he approached, eyes on Snow.

"I brought a friend."

She lowered her hood by way of introduction and her white mane sprung free.

"So I see," Elis said as if Mat had told him the sky was blue.

Mat cleared his throat. "This is my cousin. The one I told you about."

"Ah, the one gifted my phonograph."

"That's right. She's visiting 'til New Moon."

The silence yawned and a discomforting smile played on Snow's lips.

As if remembering himself, Elis smiled, adjusted his spectacles and offered his hand. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

She shook his hand. "My name is Snow."

The tinker smiled politely and gave a slight bow before releasing her hand to gesture widely at the shelves. "Welcome to my humble home and shop. I'd wager," he said, turning to give Mat a knowing glance, "you're a bit old to care for such playthings?"

Mat opened his mouth but Snow was quicker: "I like to read."

"Ah, yes, I myself have quite the collection," he said much to Mat's surprise, as he could not recall a single bookshelf in all his orbits as the tinker's helper.

Elis gestured for them to follow as he grabbed a lantern from a nearby shelf. They took a sharp left down the last aisle toward a case against the wall stacked with thingymajigs and doodads and stopped beside a gap where the case T'd with the brick and mortar—an aperture Mat had never noticed. Elis sucked in his gut and slid through with Snow quick to follow and Mat close behind.

The nook the case created was more spacious than Mat would have thought possible standing on the other side. Elis raised the lantern, shedding light on shelves upon shelves stacked full of books that reached all the way to the ceiling, the top-most shelf obscured by darkness. Big, small, thick and old, some with titles in languages he didn't know.

"Have you ever seen so many books in a single place?" Mat asked.

Snow shook her head, craning her neck to look toward the top.

Not a single shelf nor spine had a film of dust, their upkeep in direct opposition to the dingy state of the rest of the shop Mat knew so well.

"I'm willing to bet," Elis said, sidling up to her, "that you are quite the diligent escapist, but let's start with something easy on the eyes."

She waited patiently for the tale the old man would handpick for her.

Elis wiggled a book with a thick, maroon spine etched with silver lettering from its perch. "This one was my daughter's favorite when she was a child." He eyed the cover with naked nostalgia.

The confirmation of his ever being a parent made Mat's heart hiccup.

"Spine's worn, but its otherwise unspoiled condition is a testament to how much she treasured it." Elis handed it to Snow and read her the title as she held it up to the light: "Fantastic Folklore and Helithican Beasts. That's bound to last you a moon's turn at least."

Snow opened the cover and began thumbing through the pages with care.

Elis' eyes lingered on the crown of her bent head for so long that Mat cleared his throat uncomfortably. The tinker turned with a push of his spectacles, and when he did, the lantern swung toward the wall and illuminated an expansive mural of a clearing surrounded by conspicuous trees that any Mystian would recognize.

"The Burnt Forest."

"Indeed."

It wasn't the Burnt Forest Mat knew. A crater in the forest floor was filled to the brim with white flowers beneath a ripple in the night sky where mites of light appeared to flit, too fuzzy to be fireflies. The painting took up the entire wall, branched out onto the ceiling and even spilled out into the next aisle.

"It took Elsie more than a moon to paint the stars alone, the poor thing."

Mat prickled with doubt, despite his seeing the chameleon in action firsthand. It was the one anomaly Elis permitted the boy to witness; the shop had never come alive again in all the orbits Mat worked for the old man. Many times, Mat had wondered aloud how such a thing was possible. Elis only ever replied that Elsie wasn't such a peculiar exception, animals could be trained to perform a sleuth of menial tasks. But Elsie's paintings were something else; it was the attention to detail that smelled of a lie.

"Took a few artistic liberties, eh?"

Elis cocked his head, looking infuriatingly bemused.

"The flowers. The..." Mat rummaged around in his mind for an apt word, "haze."

The tinker smiled and Mat imagined it wasn't without condescension. "The mind is an imaginative thing, the eyes merely portals, and faulty ones at that; surely no two someones who have sat in the same garden, traveled the same sea, ventured through the Burnt Forest know them to be the same. Entire worlds can rise and fall right here," Elis said, touching a finger to his temple.

Like that settled it, Elis turned and sat the lantern beside Snow sat on the floor with her book. The old man gestured at Mat before squeezing back through the gap. Before Mat could slip all the way through, Snow's gaze snapped to the painting the moment she thought herself alone.

Elis was nowhere to be seen. He hadn't bothered to wait, so Mat took his time searching and instead brooded over how Elis had greeted Snow like he had dared to hope he might, but then why was a general uncertainty still bubbling in his gut?

He made it halfway down a dark aisle when he started—a chime emanated from a towering house. About three feet tall, it was perched among dozens of other miniature architectural feats. The windows that dotted the ribbed, cream paneling started to light up, one by one, as if the inhabitants were all waking up. Detecting movement inside, Mat, feeling very much like a giant, peered into the top-most windows where porcelain dolls with bobbed cuts and painted faces wearing loose tunics and slippers bustled about the rooms with trays while others sat in circles atop pillows strewn around low-rise tables. Mat's mouth slackened in disbelief as he watched more servers shuffle from the back rooms with more platers of tiny pastries and steaming mugs. His nose wrinkled at the spicy tang of tea, and he could hear the clinking of mugs meeting plates as the patrons were served and the steady hum of conversation. Mat stuck an index finger through the open window with childlike curiosity and a hush fell over the room as everyone turned toward the intruder. A server who had been fanning herself reached out and slashed Mat's finger with the paper fan. He hissed at the twinge of pain and quickly retracted his finger, now oozing a thin sliver of very real blood.

Mat suckled his finger as smoke began to billow from the chimney. Spotting movement on the balcony, Mat leaned in to see a doll with an ivory horn in hand. The figurine brought it to his lips and unleashed a deep, reverberating sound. Faster than farmers wake to the crowing of a rooster, the neighboring buildings began to light up. The hornblower, who sported a single tuft of white hair that looked like a wispy ball of steam atop his head, bowed politely to Mat before retreating back inside.

That surreal clarity that comes with having the boundaries of everything you know to be true pushed away blossomed in Mat as he meandered down the aisle and witnessed an old man fishing in a moat around a fortress who gave him a little wave; a graveyard that spit out dancing skeletons who made a game of tossing around a crown as the evident owner scuttled between them; a headless horseman galloping around a garden, using a rapier to spear vegetables that would disappear in chomps above his head hole; and three mosaic dragons slinking up a crumbling castle's tallest tower. When Mat drew close, an obsidian-colored one bellowed a quick burst of flame. Feeling the heat on his face, Mat leapt back, rattling the wares on the shelves at his back. Mind astir, he stumbled out into the main corridor in time for a small rubber ball to roll over his boot, a gang of hamsters in suspenders hot on its trail.

The enchantment was undeniable.

Keeping his eyes straight ahead as toys burst into animation around him, Mat followed the light dancing on the ceiling above Elis' worktable.

"Cousin, huh?" Elis said, bent over papers, writing in a sloping hand.

Mat didn't bother to breathe new life into the lie.

Elis plopped the quil into a canister of ink and turned in his chair. "I see the resemblance.

"What happened there?" Elis said, looking to Mat's bloody finger.

He thought he had staunched the flow but looked down to see tiny sunbursts multiplying on the floorboards.

"Your teahouse," Mat said evenly, as if he was already resigned to the absurdity that he lived in a world where dolls don't need children to play.

Elis seemed to mull that over as he opened a drawer in the worktable. "Let's mend that, shall we?"

He rubbed a salve on the cut and used a strip of cloth to wrap the finger.

"So, how's it all work?"

Elis, focused on his task, mumbled a noise of inquiry nearly lost under the hubbub of the shop.

"The magic. You like people thinking you're a hermit who hordes, but I've seen things."

Elis ripped away the excess cloth. "I told you not to tell." His eyes flicked up now, boring into Mat from over his half-moon spectacles, making ice of his innards. "Did you? Tell me honestly."

"No," Mat said, and in his mind's eye, crossed his heart. And hope to die.

Elis nodded in Snow's direction. "You told the girl."

"I didn't. Honest."

A gleam ignited in his eye. "Of course, you wouldn't be responsible for anything witchy happening while she's here."

Worry calcifying behind his Adam's apple, Mat tried to swallow the lump that refused to budge.

A frumpy shadow climbed up the wall where the main corridor dead-ended and they both turned as Snow peeked around the corner, lantern in hand.

"Speaking of," Elis said with a smile.

Snow's lips moved in a hint of her own before she looked up at another Elsie painting hanging from the chameleon's prime work spot.

Mat joined her. "It's the shop."

Each square inch was packed with as much detail as its neighbor--the picture moved. On paper, the sunlight shining through the slats in the shutters dappled the floor where toys communed in busy detail: skeletons in absurd attire laughed at the expense of a sulking king wearing a tiny crown; a rank of soldiers marched with parasols; a cobra comprised of knickknacks and doodads slithered across the floorboards; the cuckoo clocks released real birds that flew beside pirate ships with wind in their sails and smoke, residue of cannon fire, billowing from their gun ports; the miniature porcelain servers were out of the teahouse and bustled about the room, serving tea to patrons; the horses had escaped their carousel and raced a circle around a pirouetting ballerina; armored knights fought the fire-breathing dragons with swords no bigger than fingernail clippings; and hamster medics shared a brew, knocked mugs and foam spewed from the rims, while dust particles flitted about like wingless pixies. His mind was loud with the impossibilities, and he didn't immediately hear the commotion that began to crescendo like a fast approaching storm at his back, not until Snow tugged on his sleeve.

He turned and found himself face to face with a cobra—the very serpent from the painting that consisted of moving, mismatched, mechanical parts, not two of which touched, the creature held together by an invisible force. His first instinct was flight, but there was little room to squirm with the wall at his back. Its tightly coiled tongue flicked, tasting the limited space between them. Much to his chagrin, he noticed Snow struggling to contain her amusement. Once caught, she looked away and departed down the aisle as Mat screamed internally, but the serpent quickly lost interest, gave a final flick of its tongue, and slithered away in pursuit, its belly grinding harshly against the floorboards.

Mat's eyes rolled as he tried to take in the entire shop at once. It was the painting, come to life.

Paper birds with sharply folded wings zipped between pirate ships that floated and dipped in midair. His mind already fraying, gooseflesh rose on his arms at faint pops overhead. He looked up in time to see another wave of miniature cannon balls shooting from portholes on the ships, the splitting of wood singing the air as they hit home. Mat peeled himself away from the wall and walked through the warfare, ducking every time he heard a squeaky order issued. He paused on the far side of the battlefield, beside the shelf that hoisted the frog band above much of the mayhem. This time, the amphibians didn't cease playing at the sight of him; in fact, one gave him a cheeky wink. Distracted by the fanfare, Mat didn't notice the mosaic dragon with the golden scales and eyes and horns the white-hot color of tempering metal until it was digging its talons into his shoulder. He winced and jerked away, but the dragon held fast, digging deeper and flapping its wings to maintain its balance. Frozen with indecision, Mat wasn't sure whether he should keep up this tactic until the creature grew bored like the cobra had, swat at it, or scream for Elis. Instead, he slowly turned to a giggling Snow.

"All the serpents seem to really like you."

He felt his face flush and swatted at the dragon with a newfound confidence only to snatch back his hand when it snapped at his fingers. A clucking reverberated deep in its throat, and Mat wondered if it was purring or readying to cook his face. Snow brushed its wedged head with a single finger.

"Maybe it's your hair," Snow offered. "Think they're flying close to the sun."

You're sure taking this all in stride. "Or an unruly nest," he said sourly.

A growling ball of fur broke open on Snow's ankle. Two wolves shook their heads and stumbled up onto their hindlegs before the one wearing a tattered old gown and bonnet, leapt onto the other wearing a red cloak and hood with holes for the fuzzy ears. As they tumbled away again, Snow followed.

This is what he had wanted to happen. For Snow to cross the threshold of the shop and put something grand in motion. For Elis to prove himself a confidant so their lives wouldn't be such suffocatingly big secrets anymore. The best case scenario had happened, and yet Mat couldn't shake the apprehension he had walked in here with; it ate at him.

Fearing he wasn't getting rid of the snappy serpent anytime soon, Mat started back toward Elis' worktable. A toy here and there raised its head to watch him pass but most kept at their antics. He had to leap aside only once to avoid stepping on a rolling green head with googly eyes. By the time he reached the back, he was thankful for the pain of the claws digging into his shoulder; it kept his wit from curdling.

"I see you've gained a new friend."

"How do you know he's not sizing me up to eat me?"

"Aloys' stomach is much too small for human men, and luckily for you, toy dragons never hunger." Elis' hand faintly twitched and Aloys flew from Mat's shoulder and onto a worktable drawer handle. The dragon wound its slender form around his perch, its forked tongue tasting the air until Elis' index finger jerked and the dragon froze, nothing but an ornament once more.

"The black one spit fire at me."

"Dalibor's the feistiest of them all."

"So, what are you then, a wizard?"

"To put it simply, but the truth is much more enigmatic; to say it conspires in us all the same is simply not true."

"But you have faery blood?"

"So, the stories go," Elis said, lips crinkling at the corners.

"And you've met others like you, then?"

"Very few and with widely varied skillsets. It conspires in us all differently."

Their attentions were sharply diverted when a humanoid box on a single wheel whirred to the end of the corridor and smashed into the wall, breaking into tiny pieces, all smaller than a thumbnail. As quick as it had shattered, it reassembled, then shook its clawed first in a mocking rage before throwing itself back into the fray.

"I'd say you've mastered yours."

Mat couldn't fathom someone having so much power yet choosing to hole themselves away at the edge of a hamlet no explorer would ever bother to sketch on a map should he stumble across it.

"Don't you ever tire of being the old tinkering hermit?" he asked Elis who snorted. "This is the stuff the rest of us only dream of—"

"Nightmares, yes. Come boy, you're old enough to know of the Great War and sharp enough to know why it happened."

Right. Like the faeries, humans had hunted sorcerers and witches into (evidently near) extinction.

"I wasn't always so sportive with my abilities," Elis said distantly, looking to the space above his worktable.

Mat had always left Elis' worktable alone and never lingered to admire the mural there: a portrait of a woman that ended below her bare clavicles. She looked down on them with soulful, violet eyes—Elis' eyes. Her angular face gave way to a manicured widow's peak, thin lips, a slender nose and a frame of golden-white tendrils fanned out over the mortar, like she was lying down or falling. It struck Mat that he had always imagined any lost child of Elis' to be younger.

"Your daughter."

"Yes."

"She was beautiful."

"She is."

The use of the present tense not lost on him, Mat waited for the tinker to continue. He didn't.

"You lost her," Mat guessed. If she was alive, she didn't visit.

"I can guess about where she is, give or take a continent or two.

"But I'm getting ahead of myself," hecontinued before Mat could inquire about the prospect of anyone sailing beyondHelithica, when any map he had ever seen ended with the West and East seas."For you to understand your current predicament, you need to know who I am, andfor that, you must learn who I was."