Khalil agrees with me, and we both split up, him heading back into his home to try and corral Silas and calm him down, and I jog away quickly to try and help Khalil by not reintroducing Silas' overwhelming anger every time he sees me. I don't go to my house. Instead, I jog straight past everyone towards Aria's home. She keeps maps of locations in the Wilds and the human divide, so if anyone knows where and what Asheville is, it'll surely be her.

I knock on her front door carefully when I get there and then take a step back to wait. About twenty seconds passed with no answer on the door, so I knocked a second time a little more insistently. There's a clamoring noise around the side of her house, which sounds like wood being dropped, so I jog around the side to look. Sure enough, Aria just dropped a load of freshly split wood in front of her stack of wood for her fireplace and is currently putting the pieces up onto the rack with the previous ones.

"Hey, Aria."

She looks up and over at me, then drops another piece onto the wood rack.

"Hello, Orion. What are you doing?"

"I came to see you, if you got a couple of minutes you could spare for me to bother you about." I move closer and start helping her put the wood onto her rack.

She watches me carefully as I help, and her eyes take on a bit of a suspicious glint.

"It's nothing bad, Aria; I just need to try and locate a place–a city, actually–in the human world that I don't know where it is. Figured you might have an idea since you have those big map books from different places."

"The human world is bigger than you realize. One place will be hard to locate. Might not even have it."

"Well, you're the only person I know who might be able to find it, so can we just go check?"

"Yes, but I want to know why first."

"I think I know where those Wilder villagers went when drawn through the seam."

"How?"

"I made Silas tell me more than he initially shared with us."

"Made him?"

I nod at Aria, and she tilts her head, looking over me more appraisingly and even more respectfully. The facial expression she takes on is one I haven't seen her use with me before, and it makes me a little self-conscious for a moment.

"What?"

"You are not a wean anymore. You are coming into your own as an elf-kin. Not many can say they can force cait sidhe to answer their questions truthfully. Not many at all. This is an extraordinary gift you have, Orion. You must keep knowledge of it to yourself; it can be dangerous for you right now if many others know you can control the Wilds creatures as if they were common animals."

For a moment, I'm shocked. That's the most I've heard Aria talk at once, maybe ever.

"People keep telling me that it's rare, yeah."

"What people have you told this?" If I weren't careful, I'd think Aria was suddenly worried on my behalf.

"I've told you, Hannah, Jorge and Khalil. Maybe Lani, too; I don't remember exactly what I told her the night I got drunk recently." I cringe a little bit as I add the last drunk part. Then I remember the Blackham and cringe for a second time. "I think some of the Blackham know now, too. Initially, they thought Khalil would be the one to talk to Ranger, but then I made him obey me in front of Kline."

"Do not share this with anyone else if you can avoid it."

"Okay, but why?"

"Use your brain, Orion. What would you–" She pauses, her dark eyes focusing on me, then she starts again. "–I forget that you were not around during the bad times. Some powerful fey will do many things to gain control over things they did not have control over before. This includes making young elf-kin do things they can do against their will, yes? Be very careful about this."

I slowly nod my head to her.

"Let us go see if we can find your mystery city."

"Cool, let's do it."

Aria leads me around the front of her house and then inside. The wood comprising her flooring, walls, and ceiling is dark and unpainted, giving the small home a gloomy and cellar-like appearance. Aria has a few lights illuminating the rooms but not giving them a well-lit ambiance. Still, she doesn't seem to care much about decor, and there isn't anything on the walls, save for the occasional tool or weapon, which looks like it's placed there for convenience more than anything. For instance, a broom is hanging on the wall next to the back door. She leads me to what looks like her dining room, with a simple table and three chairs. With a little shift around the room, she increases the illumination so we can easily see while we sit at the table.

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"What is this place you want me to find?"

"Asheville. A-s-h-e-v-i-l-l-e." I carefully spell it out for her. "I guess it's also called 'land of the sky' or something? Silas mentioned that, too. Not sure if it will help. Oh, and it's apparently around a valley with mist-covered mountains."

"Very descriptive, but the human maps only use names, so we will see if we can find it."

She disappears for a couple of minutes, and right when I'm considering getting up to see if she needs help, she returns to the room carrying a horde of thick books. She drops them with a thud and a huff of effort onto the tabletop. I look at the front of the fairly worn-in book on top of the pile and read it off.

"Road atlas, 2018, Err-o-pee."

"Europe." Aria corrects my pronunciation. "There will be a list of city and town names in the back of this. If you find Asheville, it will tell you a page and location so you can find it on one of the other pages of maps."

"These books are huge…"

"Yes, this will take some time, Orion. I will let you get started. I have more wood to split. Come and get me if you need aid."

I start to say something and ask her for her help, but I stop myself. I can do this without bothering her more. I finally nod and say thanks to her before she heads outside to continue the chore she was working on before my arrival. Her night is just getting started while I've been up all morning, and now it's looking like I will be here all night, too.

"Well, there's no time like the present to get started," I mutter to myself as I flip open the first book, that old, worn edition of the European road atlas, and skip right to the back, where they list the points of interest.

Not finding anything by the name of "Asheville" in the first book, I set it aside into the start of a separate pile and picked up the second one, taking care to be gentle with the books that don't belong to me.

"Or-e-gone. Almost like Orion." I read off the strange name on the front of the thinner second book to myself, not realizing that I'm going to butcher the name pronunciation of almost every book I will pick up. After not finding Asheville in the lists in the back of that book either, I set it aside to pick up a third.

On and on it goes; I shift through book after book, looking for the elusive name. This continues for what seems like hours until the book stack starts to look really, concerningly thin. I exhale and close my eyes, hoping I didn't just mess up and let Silas lie to get out of it again. No, I reaffirm to myself, I was controlling him and he answered. I just have to continue until I find what I'm looking for. Two more books are shifted through, looking for the diamond in the rough, before finally I pick up a thick book and rest it in front of me, expecting more of the same failure.

My fingers flip to the back of the book, and I start from the top of the list. My fingers carefully go line by line, and I'm thankful that they seem to keep their books' lists in relatively good alphabetical order. As I head through towards the endpoint of the A's under a heading called North Carolina, my finger passes by "Asheville," and a moment later, I stop with a gasp and go back up to the name. There it is! Finally! It exists!

I whoop in triumph before I can stop myself, then settle down and look at the information listed on the page. I carefully flip to the page and look for the area it references on that page. My fingers trace the numbers and letters of the grid layout all the way until it lands directly on a crossing of many roads that reads ASHEVILLE. My fingers trace to the right of the city–the east–and see a section labeled "Black Mountain" a little distance from the city, but between the city and Black Mountain, it looks like a large tract of land with not a whole lot going on past a certain point. I tap the page in that spot a few times and lean back in my chair.

"This has to be it," I murmur to myself.

A little noise rustles up from the back door as Aria lets herself in from her backyard. Her dark eyes are pitch black now, with the moon long since at complete ascendancy for the night.

"I heard a loud yell. I see you are okay."

"Aria, I found it, pretty sure."

"Show me."

She walks over, and I lean forward, putting my finger back in the city's center.

"It's in a place called 'North Carolina,' and there are mountains to the east and a valley, so it matches up pretty much to what Silas said."

"I do not know this place, but I will find someone who does. I need possibly a few nights to track down the person I am thinking of. Then, we can go."

"We?" I ask questioningly, not having planned to have much company when I went.

"As if I would let you travel into the human divide without me."

"What? It's more dangerous here."

"No, Orion. No, it is not." She says with some degree of finality that brokers no argument. Her tone is fearsome, and I have no desire to disagree with her after she uses it.

She picks up the books and road atlases that aren't the winning ones and shuffles them out of the way before returning to the table I'm still sitting at.

"Orion, have you eaten tonight?"

"I ate earlier in the day. Everything kinda happened, so I just came here."

Aria walks over to a small jar and pulls out a fistful of meat jerky, which she then sets on the table in front of me.

"You need to eat. If we go into the human divide, it is unclear how long we will be there."

"If you're coming with me, should I also see if Khalil and Lani want to come too?"

"You will not like what I say."

"Is that a nah?"

"Yes."

"Yes, they should come, or yes, that's a nah?"

She loudly sighs at me, pointedly showing me her annoyance at my being purposefully difficult. And I was being difficult. I knew what she meant, but I wanted her to speak clearly about it.

"You will leave Khalil and Lani behind. It will be you and I, possibly the third, when I locate him. You will need to get your human-divide clothing. With the hat to cover your ears. And no bow."

"Aria, come on, I know. I've been there before a few times."

She huffs, looks at the jerky on the table, and then back at me. I scoop it off the table and slowly move to stand up next to her.

"Thanks," I murmur.

"You are welcome."

I smile at her faintly, my eyes studying her nearly shimmeringly white skin and black hair. A little tug starts in my chest, but I swallow it and step around her to head out of her home. I glance momentarily over my shoulder, then let myself out of her house, immediately heading to my own house to get my travel gear ready.