Noli leads the way, taking us around the side of the house, past the workshop, and onto a faint trail that slopes up a hill. I consider stopping in the workshop before we leave to see if there’s anything else that might be useful for our journey, but Noli doesn’t seem intent on lingering, and I don’t blame her. I’m not sure what I’d be looking for, anyway. I already don’t even know if what I brought with me will be of any help.

After days in the cabin, the outside world seems so exposed and open. I never realized what intense details my fish-eyed vision could pick up from my limited vantage point on the desk. Out here, everything feels staggeringly wide. There’s a valley beneath us, and clouds miles above—mountain peaks misting into the distance. I’m overcome by a sudden and inexplicable feeling of vertigo, as if gravity flipped and I’m about to fall into the sky. I shrink lower to the ground and keep walking.

The trail weaves through knee-high stalks of grass that stretch far overhead. Maneuvering this unfamiliar terrain is surprisingly easy, despite its uneven surface. My glass sinks into the earth with each step, providing sturdy footholds, unlike the slick hardwood floors of Trenevalt’s cabin. I still wish I had properly-sized pieces of glass for walking, but I’d rather put as much distance between us and that cabin as possible before I Attune anything else.

Noli doesn’t say much as we walk, using her signing limbs to help navigate the trail. Her silence is uncharacteristic, but I can understand why. The blood—that hole in Trenevalt’s chest—it’s an image I don’t think I’ll ever be able to burn from my memory.

Rather abruptly, shade falls over us as we pass into the shadow of a forest. The trees seem to start all at once, clustered close together, extending miles and miles overhead. And though our path seems broad, Noli and I comfortably able to walk side by side, it now occurs to me the trail would barely be wide enough for a single human-sized traveler. I wonder if anyone else has used this road besides Trenevalt, when the last time was he’d walked this path, and if anyone would ever find him out here in the wilderness. Or would the cabin just become his tomb, both left to decay beneath weather and time?

“We should find some shelter before nightfall,” Noli abruptly signs.

I have to stop walking and reposition my glass to ask her, “Why?” It’s not like we need to sleep.

“Dark creatures about,” she says. “I saw signs of them the past few days when I could get out to scout the area. Nightbanes, I think, which gives me an idea of where we are, but… Well, anyway, I don’t know if they’d try to eat something like us, but if we’re in their territory, probably best not to chance it.”

I’d forgotten she’s a ranger. Thank god for Noli. I don’t know what I’d do without someone else to keep me sane through all this—and, you know, keep me from being devoured at night by some kind of evil-sounding fantasy animal in a strange forest.

“When?” I ask.

“Less than an hour before dark,” Noli signs. “Maybe half that. It’s so hard to gauge from down here… Ugh, and the eyes in this thing are terrible. How are yours?”

I don’t think I’ve heard Noli say two negative things at once before. I just shrug in response; mine might be a little too good. I can make out the leaves in the trees, I catch every flit of bugs through the grass, I can peer far into the woods, where our trail vanishes behind a curtain of trunks, I can count the bits of cotton fluff drifting on the breeze… and I also have a far-too-close-for-comfort view of the dirt rushing beneath me, providing dizzying contrast to the much slower parallax of movement in every other direction. Not for the first time, I wish I could turn portions of my sight off; most of my left side currently has a blind spot where Trenevalt’s blood has dried, but that doesn’t exactly provide the comfort I’m looking for.

“At any rate, I’ll keep an eye out,” Noli signs, starting forward again after I pick myself up.

The silence that stretches between us becomes oppressive. I miss the optimistic and talkative Noli—though I’m finding it equally difficult for my thoughts to not dwell in dark places. I’m such a mess of emotions. I’m free from Trenevalt’s Commands, at least. No more being forced to do anything against my will. But was the cost worth it? Did he deserve to die for his screw up? Did he even know he’d screwed up at all? Was all this just a terrible culmination of mistakes he made due to an aging and degrading mind? That sucks. This all just sucks.

Not to mention, he might have been the only one who could have undone our predicament. Will we be able to find anyone else who’ll know the magic that might get us back in our bodies? And will we even have enough time before the spell keeping us out of the Between ran out?

I guess that should be our first priority. Figure out how long we’ve got, then find someone who can help us in time.

Framing it like that makes it sound easy—it also pointedly ignores the fact we’re more likely to get stepped on than find someone who can understand us.

The sky has deepened from an orange-red to a twilit purple. Still heading along the path, the distant trees vanishing into the gloom, I’m starting to worry about these nightbanes Noli mentioned. Weren’t we supposed to find cover?

“Ah.” Noli stops, gesturing off the path. “I think that’ll work.”

I don’t really see anything that could be considered shelter, but when Noli starts to forge off the road, I quickly follow before the stalks of grass can pop back up and knock me over.

I yearn for the days when grass did not pose a threat to my wellbeing.

Noli stops before a fallen branch, arched and propped up like a makeshift tent. “Sorry, I know. It’s not much,” she signs, “But I think it’ll work for tonight. The leaves will provide some cover. What do you think?”

I think not much is an astute assessment, but the arrival of dusk isn’t leaving us much of a choice. I follow her beneath, and what little light we had soon becomes obscured by our makeshift roof of twigs and leaves.

“So.” Noli wrings two of her limbs together.

Now that we don’t have walking to keep us busy, the fact that we’re still not talking about everything has become especially loud. But we have to talk about it. We need to be on the same page here; we only have each other.

“I figure, we make it to the nearest city first,” Noli signs. “Then we can figure out where we really are—and how far home is. If we can make it back there, Rezira should be able to help us.”

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Rezira? Who the heck is—it doesn’t matter. Any allies at all would be amazing, but Noli still doesn’t know about the time limit of our spell. I need to get her in the loop.

Echo, remove the beaded bracelet from my inventory, I say.

[Affirmative.]

The bracelet appears abruptly between us, causing Noli to hop back.

“A little warning next time!” she cries, and I feel a bit bad about startling her. I guess we’re both a little jumpy, given the circumstances.

The bracelet lights up our shelter with a soft purple glow. Two of the beads are dark, and a third one is significantly dimmed. I tap my glass on each of the lit ones, counting them out. Nineteen. And if it had been about three days since we were summoned, that means each bead roughly corresponds to a day’s worth of time. A sickly unease settles in me.

Three weeks on the spell, and two days are already up.

Noli creeps forward to nudge the bracelet. “You took this from the wizard. Is it important?”

“Yes,” I sign.

“What’s it for?”

Sheesh. How do I even begin to explain? “You and me,” I sign haltingly. I need more words for this.

“It has to do with us?” Noli repeats. “How?”

My signing arsenal is depressingly empty. But maybe I don’t need to know all the words.

I shuffle back, away from Noli, and she starts to follow. “No!” I quickly sign, shooing her back. She tips her head, curious, but gives me space.

Echo, summon one of Trenevalt’s books.

The spell book bursts into reality beneath our flimsy cover, scattering leaves and twigs with a gust of displaced air. Noli still jumps but doesn’t seem as startled as the first time.

“Sorry,” I sign.

“Don’t worry,” she assures me. “I’m sure we can patch up the shelter later.”

Oh yeah, that.

The book is already open, how I’d found it in the midst of the debris, and I’d hazard that several pages are missing as well. But I’m not as concerned about which page I’m on, so much as what I can find on it.

First, I crawl around the book to get Trenevalt’s bracelet, which I drag up onto the page. Attempting to not skewer too much of the paper, I nudge the bracelet over the text, reading what I can make out in its dim ring of light.

There.

I tap my glass on a word, urging Noli over to look.

She reads it. “Spell?”

I watch her signs carefully, and then tap the page again, prompting her to repeat the sign. Next, I try it, though with my four limbs, it’s not nearly enough to replicate the more complicated shapes and movements Noli is making.

But she catches on. “Spell. Okay. Yes. I’ll teach you how to do that better later—you’ll need at least three more pieces of glass. But good try!”

I continue my search down the page, looking for more relevant words, and I find one.

“Time,” Noli reads. “Oh, that’s a tricky sign—no, don’t even try, oh that’s terrible, please put your glass down. What’s next?”

Nothing else on this page I want. Noli excitedly helps me move the bracelet over to the other side of the book, and we find several more words I need: End. Limit. Day. I’m missing the grammar, but that’s enough to string the idea together.

Noli slowly repeats my embarrassingly basic attempts at the signs. “Our… spell… end. Our spell’s going to end? When? Oh, sorry. Limit… Day… Wait, today?! Oh, no—sorry! Okay, I’ll let you finish.”

I haven’t learned my numbers yet so I just scratch out nineteen lines in the dirt.

Noli puts it all together. “Our spell has a time limit. Nineteen days.”

I tap the bracelet, pointing to the dark and lit beads in turn. She takes a moment to count them.

“The bracelet’s tracking it?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Noli sits back, clearly digesting all this. “Oh. Wow. Okay, so this is a lot. What does the end of our spell mean, though? Which spell are we talking about here?”

I just gesture between us, too impatient to go hunting for more words.

“Us. Our bodies? The spell that keeps us in our bodies.” Noli is silent for a moment. “So when the time’s up, we should be released, right? I’ll go back to my body?”

I shrug. Maybe. But we don’t know. And besides that…

I sign, “Big.”

This seems to thoroughly perplex Noli. “I need more to go off of than that.”

I mentally sigh. I doubt there will be the word “Predator” or “Between” on this page. I start with one of the new signs. “Day.”

“Day?” she repeats.

“Yes.” Then I go back to the dirt, smoothing out the marks I made before. I draw a crescent moon.

“Night?” Noli guesses.

“Yes!” Nice job. Now, gotta extract that one further.

I make a crude approximation of her “Night,” and then gesture around us. She considers for a moment.

“Night time?”

“No.”

“Erm. Stars? Moons? Dark?”

“No!” She’s getting further from my point. I tap our shelter, shaking the leaves.

“Night shelter. From… the nightbane?” she finally guesses.

“Yes!”

“Nightbane,” she repeats, seemingly confused. “You are worried about the nightbane?”

Existentially speaking. But she’s still not getting it. I use two pieces of glass to mimic an alligator mouth, opening and shutting on end like biting jaws. Noli chuckles a little at the display.

“Eating? Hungry?”

I guess that’s close enough; I squash a few of the new signs together. “Hungry night.”

“You’re worried about getting hungry at night?”

I press my limbs against my glass surface in the closest approximation of a face palm I can achieve. “No.”

But Noli doesn’t seem dissuaded, listing out all her guesses as I confirm or deny. “You’re worried about the nightbanes being hungry? You’re worried about me being hungry? You’re worried about the night being hungry—”

“Yes,” I quickly sign. So close.

She pauses, digesting this. “But the night can’t be… Oh.” She seems to grow a little smaller. “You mean that monster from Between.”

“Yes.”

“I see.” Noli nudges the charmed bracelet. “So you think the spell that’s keeping us bound to our bodies will expire in less than three weeks. And at that time we’ll return Between, where that creature will be waiting for us.”

“Yes.” That about sums it up.

Noli can’t sigh, but I can see the tension wind up and release in all her limbs. “Well, that’s quite the predicament, isn’t it?”

I’ll say. “Time small,” I sign.

“There’s not much time,” she corrects, slowing the signs down so I can try to mimic them. She’s right; I need to Attune more glass if I want to start communicating clearly. “But I agree: There might not be time to make it home to Rezira. And I’m sure she’s already plenty worried by now. We might at least have enough time to make it to the nearest town. And then from there…”

…From there, then what? It’s a good question. We still don’t understand the first thing about how to get back in our real bodies—or if that’s even possible. Which means our first priority should be to buy ourselves more time. Figure out how to extend our spell’s time limit a little bit longer—at least, just long enough to learn if it’s safe to move Between, and if doing so would really get us back to our original bodies.

And if that’s even something that would be in my best interest. My body had a broken neck, last we’d been together. Noli’s might be whole and intact—assuming it’s still even in this plane of existence—but how long would it last without food and water?

Or a soul?

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter,” Noli signs, completing my thoughts. “We just have to focus on one problem at a time, right? Get to a town first, then we can worry about the magic. Sound good to you?”

“Yes.” It doesn’t help either of us to worry about things we can’t know or control. Then again, easier to say that than feel it.

Noli nods. “Well! Glad that’s all settled. I feel much better about all this, don’t you? There’s something comforting in knowing what you need to do next.”

I would laugh if I could. Feel better? Noli, I’m stuck in a glass bottle. You’re living as a tiny clockwork toy. The only wizard who knows how we got here was murdered by a monster that’s equally likely to eviscerate us upon our spell’s expiration, and I’m covered in his blood. Comforting is not the word I would use to describe this situation.

“I’ll take watch,” Noli signs, moving to the edge of our feeble shelter. “You don’t really know what to look for anyway, right? Don’t worry about it. Maybe practice some of the signs I taught you.”

And yet, there is something comforting about not going through this alone.

I return Trenevalt’s book and bracelet to my inventory, and bring out four pieces of glass instead. The sign practice was a good suggestion, but we’ll be on the road again tomorrow, and I’ll need better legs to make the journey.

Alright, Echo, I say. Let’s get some Attunements started.