Lanie and Nips exited the village and fled into the forest south of town. Lanie kept her spell going for as long as she was able, but eventually her prana pool ran dry, leaving her gasping for breath and feeling hollow inside. The trees hid them, and Lanie felt safe enough slowing down to catch her breath. Her improved endurance meant that she wasn’t gasping for long, and after only a couple of minutes she picked up the pace again, this time moving at an easy jog.

  “Hey, Nips, can you take a look at that compass and see if you can figure out how it works? Gidul’s directions weren’t exactly nuanced. I get the feeling we’re going to need it.” Lanie itched to play with the compass herself, but she had to keep her attention on the woods around her. Even at a relatively slow jog, dodging roots and low branches was a constant effort. She had the energy to go faster, but the woods were no place for an all-out run.

  “Sure.” Lanie felt the bag shift as Nips rummaged around in it. A few moments later, his head popped back out, and he held the compass in his hands. When she glanced down at him, he was only holding it, looking off into the woods with a thoughtful expression on his face. After a moment, he asked, “Um, Lanie?” Nips asked, a note of uncertainty in his voice.

  “Yeah, Nips? What’s up?”

  “I was wondering… well, as a Brownie… as your Brownie, it’s my job to care for your home, and my powers give me a certain… leeway, I guess you could say, to affect whatever place you consider home. You told me at one point that you pretty much live out of this bag… What I mean to ask is: Do you have a place that you consider home?” The meandering question wasn’t like Nips. Lanie’s brows drew together as she considered the question. Usually, she’d pop off a quip, but Nips’ hesitant way of asking made her take the question seriously.

  “Hmm… Yes and no. I’ve got a room over Jorge’s garage back in Minneapolis. I mean, we call it the garage, but it’s more of a warehouse. There were offices on the second floor, and Jorge had them refitted as… well, not quite full apartments, but as places where his guys could crash if they needed to. But, there's people in and out of there all day, bangers and shady characters. Jorge is pretty strict about who’s allowed on the second floor, so it’s safe enough, but it’s always felt temporary to me. I’ve been crashing there off and on for nearly three years now, and I store a lot of clothes and spare gear there, but I wouldn’t really call it home.

  “Jorge is the closest thing I have to family, so I guess, in that sense, it’s home, but no, the room itself… I haven’t put down roots there, if that’s what you mean.” She snorted at herself and then voiced the thought out loud, “Yeah, I guess you could say that this bag is more of a home than my actual room is. I’m attached to it. Kinda like a security blanket, I suppose.”

  “I see. That opens certain possibilities, then.” His voice trailed off, and he got a thoughtful look once more.

  “Nips? What are you planning? You’ve got the sort of look on your face that I get when I’m planning a heist.”

  “I’ve got an idea, but I’m not certain it will work. Your bag isn’t technically a house, so… give me a little time to try some things. I may just have a surprise for you later.” He waved a furry little hand as if to brush away the topic, “Anyway, the compass.” He propped it against the edge of the bag so that it was lying more or less flat. “All I have to do is push the tiniest bit of magic into it, and the needle starts to move. It takes a few seconds to settle down, but when it does, it’s pointing towards that peak over there.” He raised a hand to point off to Lanie’s right, “Which, I’m pretty sure, is where we arrived. If Gidul was right about there being a Way in the southern pass, at some point we’ll be closer to it than to the spider cave, and the needle should swing that way.”

  “Ok, then. Keep an eye on it. I think we’re going to be in for a long walk. I should have bought more food from that baker.”

  “He did make a very good meat pie.”

  Lanie ducked under a branch and angled a little to the left to avoid a tangle of brush. “Keep me heading south. It’ll be too easy to get turned around in these trees.”

  Lanie kept up the pace as the sun edged towards the peaks in the West and the shadows lengthened. Her Shadow Sight ability let her avoid hazards even in the deep gloom of the forest, but it would soon be too dark for jogging, and she’d have to slow down further. Nips’ prediction proved true as, a couple of hours into their flight, the magic compass did swing its needle to point south.

  Nips had retreated into her bag, and she could occasionally feel him bumping around in there. He would pop out occasionally to check the compass and correct her heading, but otherwise, he seemed preoccupied. Lanie was lost in her own thoughts for most of the night as she kept putting one foot in front of the other, so she let him have his secret. It wasn’t easy. She wanted to ask him every time he popped out, but she made herself hold back. She had decided to trust him. She could give him some space.

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  The forest seemed to go on forever, and eventually, Lanie was forced to slow to a walk. She was thankful for her unintentional nap in the cell, as she didn’t intend to stop for the night. Dieter and his goons kept finding her. She felt like a fox with a pack of hounds on her trail. She couldn’t afford to let them catch her out in the open. As she pushed on, she turned over ideas for ways to trap them or ambush them. She’d have to lure them to a place that favored her, but she didn’t know this land well enough. If she were in a city, it would be a different story. Without a terrain advantage, she didn’t have any confidence in her ability to face down three opponents at once. All she could do was keep moving until she figured out how to outfox them for good.

  The temperature dropped in the early hours, and, just as the sky was starting to lighten from the velvet black of full night to the deep blue of pre-dawn, a mist started to coalesce among the trees. Lanie shivered and reached into her bag for her sweater. She was shocked to find that her arm kept going in—far past where the bottom of the bag should have been.

  She snatched her arm out like it had been scalded and stared at her hand, turning it over and wiggling her fingers. She ran her thumb across the pads of her fingers, testing her sense of touch. There was no loss of feeling. She hadn’t felt the bottom of the bag, though. Her brain felt like it had stripped a gear as she tried to figure out what had just happened.

  Nips popped out of the bag, the grin on his face so wide that Lanie was certain that if it got any wider, the top of his head would fall off. “It. Worked. I wasn’t sure that it would, but it worked!”

  “What worked? What did you do?”

  “Expanded it. Sometimes, the only way to keep a cluttered house tidy is to expand the storage a bit. An inch or two extra in every cupboard and closet can add up without being noticed. But in this case? I don’t have to hide it. It’s about six times bigger on the inside than it used to be. I think, with a little time, I can make it even bigger. Right now it’s…” He glanced down into the bag, judging the size of the space he had created, “About the size of a kitchen cupboard, I’d say. Maybe a smidge larger.”

  Lanie froze and stared at Nips, replaying what he’d just said, her eyes going wide as the implications hit her. She whispered, “It’s bigger on the inside.” Then, a little louder, she said, “It’s a bag of holding. Nips… you turned my bag into a bag of holding?” She stuck her arm back into the bag and watched in wonder as it kept going. “That’s amazing!”

  She felt around in the bag, and her brows pinched together as the amazed smile faded a bit. “It’s going to be a bit awkward to get stuff out, though.” She pulled her arm back out.

  “Just think about what you need as you reach in. If I did this right, the item you focus on should be right there at the top,” Nips explained.

  Lanie focused on her sweater, actively picturing it in her mind’s eye instead of the half-distracted way she’d reached in earlier. Her smile returned as he felt the soft knit of the sweater under her fingers. She pulled it out. “Hah! Nips. This is wonderful!”

  Nips grinned, proud as a peacock. “I thought you might like that.”

  Lanie took a moment to pull on her sweater and wrap her green scarf around her neck before setting off again. The mist was making navigation more difficult, forcing her to slow even further. The forest had gotten denser as they’d moved away from Crossing, and the canopy was thick enough to block out the light of the moon. Her Shadow Sight was enough to see by in the darkness, but it couldn’t do anything to cut through the building fog.

  She’d seen no sign of her pursuers, but she was sure they were still on her trail. Even crossing to another world hadn’t been enough to shake them. If Gidul’s directions were accurate, she’d have two more Ways to cross. Maybe that would be enough, but she wasn’t going to count on it. With that thought, her pace picked up. She wished she could use Akayma’s wind spell again. The way it had felt to move with the wind had been exhilarating, and she could cover so much more ground with it, but it would be suicide in these woods. All she could do for now was to keep moving.

  The sky continued to lighten, bringing a watery gray dawn to the shaded woods. Lanie was amazed that she’d been able to keep going all night. Her new endurance was amazing, but the long hours of movement and stress were catching up to her. Her thoughts started to wander, and she found herself turning over the events of the past few days, thinking about her life back in Minneapolis, and wondering what her life would be like in the future with magic and whole new worlds open to her. She was so lost in thoughts and daydreams that she was caught off guard when the forest thinned around her and she stepped out into golden morning sunlight shining onto an open grassland, dotted here and there in the low spots with islands of mist slowly burning away in the light of a new day.

  The green and gold grass spread away from her, rippling in the light breeze. Kyma’s memories bubbled up, and for a moment, she expected to hear the creak of the wagons, the bellows of the tribe’s cattle, and to hear Akayma call to her. She shook herself, pushing away the life of the long-dead girl that she’d once been. It was disconcerting to remember two childhoods, each so different. It made her feel like she was unstuck from time, unmoored from her own life. It was both frightening and strangely freeing at the same time.

  The mountain pass rose in the distance, but it was hard to judge how far away it was. The grasslands gave her no sense of scale. It was so wide open, there was nothing but a sea of green. At least she could move faster now. With a tired grin, she told Nips to brace himself and cast Steps of Akayma.