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* * *
“Where are we going?” Jane asks Steen.
Where would you like to go?
“Someplace that isn’t challenging,” Jane says, “for either of us.”
Steen walks her back up the staircase, then along a road crowded with small houses. A snaggle of children runs past. Someone is frying something that smells like bacon.
“I’m hungry,” Jane says. “Are you hungry?”
We could go back to your aunt, he says. She’ll have money.
“I’ll survive,” Jane says, “if you will.”
I know where there’s fruit, he says.
“Do strayhounds like fruit?”
This one does.
The street bends sharply to the right but Steen continues straight, into a patch of gnarled trees. He leads her through thick grass and fallen branches. Eventually the land begins to slope downward and they end up in a grove of stocky trees heavy with a rose-colored fruit that looks somewhat like, but decidedly isn’t, apples.
The Zorsteddan word for it comes to her. She speaks it aloud.
Yes, says Steen contentedly. The duchess owns the orchard.
“Are we stealing?”
Not with me here, he says. I live in the duchess’s mansion. She takes care of us. Her food is mine.
“Are you sure you’re still welcome in the duchess’s mansion, now that you’ve found your person?”
You don’t have a residence here, he says significantly, so I’ll still live with the duchess. If you establish a residence here, that will change.
He doesn’t look at her, and Jane carefully doesn’t look at him. She fills her deep trouser pockets with fruit and continues to follow him down the slope, which grows steeper. Stepping out of the orchard, she finds herself on a small, crescent-shaped beach of pale sand. The sun is strong and her Zorsteddan clothing blocks the chill of the wind. Steen trots to an outcropping of rock and shrubbery and settles in beside it. She joins him there; she sits beside him, watching the water rush onto the sand, then pull itself back. The fruit is crisp like an apple, but sweet, like a pear.
“It’s such a strange feeling, being in Zorsted,” Jane says. “I feel like I’ve died and been reincarnated in a different body, a different life, except they forgot to wipe my memory of the life that came before.”
I don’t believe in reincarnation, says Steen.
“Don’t you? If there’s more than one world, why shouldn’t there be more than one life?”
There are many lives in every life, he says.
“You and Aunt Magnolia are both very fond of obscure philosophical pronouncements,” Jane says. “Tell me, is there a market in Zorsted for umbrellas?”
It certainly rains. Though it never rains frogs.
“Another oddity,” Jane says. “Where would umbrellas be sold?”
In the public market, he says. If you sold enough umbrellas, you might be able to open a shop. Might I ask why you’re asking these questions?
“I don’t know,” Jane says. “Maybe because umbrellas are less scary than existential philosophy.”
Steen passes her a prim look. I saw a strayhound once with a curious umbrella hat, he says. I thought it was quite fetching.
Jane tries not to smile. “Would you like me to make you an umbrella hat, Steen?”
That’s entirely up to you, he says with dignity.
“Would I be making it to fit Jasper the basset hound, or Steen the strayhound?”
He hesitates. I guess that’s also up to you.
Yes. I guess that’s one of the big questions of the day, isn’t it? Tu Reviens or Zorsted?
See? he says. I told you you could talk to me without speaking out loud.
Yes, I see.
Do you— He hesitates, and she feels his eagerness. His vulnerability. Do you like it?
She lets out a breath. I can’t say yet, Steen.
He burrows his nose in the sand, as if it’s a way to stop himself from saying what he wants to say.
This inlet is an awful lot like the one you took me to at Tu Reviens, Jane says, after a pause.
I like to come here, he says.
Do you go to the inlet at Tu Reviens because it reminds you of this one?
I found the one at Tu Reviens first, he says. I guess I like this one because it reminds me of that one.
That’s confusing.
Yes, he says. Home is. After all, it’s one’s headquarters, one’s backdrop, one’s framework. One’s history, and also one’s haven.
Are you good at Scrab
ble, Steen? Jane asks, smiling.
Steen sniffs. We have a much superior game here. It’s like Scrabble. You win by putting the highest-value words down. But the words you put down also tell a story, and you have to take care, because that story will play out somehow in your day.
Seriously? The game changes your day? That sounds dangerous!
You’re interpreting it too extremely. No one has ever been seriously hurt.
Oh! Just minor injuries, then!
The story plays out metaphorically, usually in some harmless and amusing manner, he says soothingly. I can see it sounds strange. But I promise you, Janie, this world is no more dangerous than yours.
It’s so different here, she says. Do both Zorsted and Tu Reviens feel like home to you?
Yes. And no. In Tu Reviens, I’m mute, and no one understands me, or anyway, no one did before now. In Zorsted, I’m lonely, or, I was before now. He pauses. Don’t you think it’s the people that make a place feel like home?
This does make sense to Jane. It explains why nowhere has felt like home, ever since she got that phone call—fake phone call—from Antarctica.
On the distant horizon, a tall ship with brilliant white sails comes into view. It’s too far away to guess if it’s coming or going.
If I’m a seeker, Steen, I don’t know what I’m seeking, Jane says.
Steen hesitates again. Well, he says, I’ll keep you company while you figure it out.
The long, difficult morning is tugging at her limbs. Her unfamiliar body is asking for the sleep it missed in the night. Yes, please, Jane says.
She curls on her side in the sand with an arm around Steen, and allows her Zorsteddan self to rest.
* * *
She wakes to a night lit by two enormous yellow moons. Both are bigger than her moon. Together, they cast far more light. The sky is streaked with stars.
Steen is nowhere to be found.
“Steen?”
There’s no answer. She pushes to her feet groggily, turning in circles, then suddenly wakes with a violent shiver, thinking about Zorsteddan hunters, or predators, or stones that decide they don’t like you. “Steen!”
I’m coming, he says, the message faint in her mind. Turning, she sees his dark form trotting toward her, across wet sand that’s bright with reflected moonlight.
