The city of Belath can only be found by those who do not seek it. Riding in through the northern gates, weary travellers can be heard to exclaim: “Ah, this cannot be the place. The streets are too cramped,” or “The squares are too busy,” or “The sunset is too dull.” And always “I will keep searching tomorrow,” or “Perhaps it is further along the coast,” or “Maybe I misread the map?” In cafes on cobbled streets, old men tell stories of Belath – stories of a place that is clearly not the place where they sit. The building of the old cartographer’s guild lays abandoned, more out of awkwardness than anything else. Even the mayor is not confident enough to write the name on the sign outside city hall. And yet, to the wanderer on the way through to somewhere or anywhere, the streets are cozy and winding and the squares are exciting and lively and the sunset is magnificent.

There are a number of misunderstandings about how magic works. That is not a coincidence; keeping the uninitiated in the dark keeps the balance in check, so long as it is done carefully. A lot of what we do is not magic anyway, it is knowledge and understanding and attention to detail. A lot of what we do could be done by anyone, but then they might do it wrong and kill somebody. You will learn those things. I will teach you. But first you need understanding and attention to detail.

Magic is simpler, in some ways. When you came to me, when you struck the bargain, the potion I made for you must have seemed simple. A river rock, a clover leaf, a sparrow’s feather. Some of the villagers believe the power of my spells comes from in me; but, no, all I gave were my eyes and my hands and my time. Some believe that with a river rock, a clover leaf and a sparrow’s feather anybody could do the same. The truth is somewhere between the two: the river rock held strong magic, but you could gather a thousand such rocks and find nothing but the mundane; a clover with a leaf so powerful is far more rare than one with four leaves; a host of sparrows passing overhead might have not a single feather with a shred of magic in it. Any of these I could spot at thirty paces, through the water or the trees or the air. The power of the magic in me is the power to see, and I see it in you.

If you really don’t want your children going somewhere – if you are honestly and legitimately afeared for their life, the last thing you should do is forbid it. I wonder sometimes whether the people of this village know that. They are good people. Kind people. Competent people, even, though on the whole not what I would call wise. I suspect they see wisdom as outside their purview. When I am out foraging I come across them often, the children forbidden to play beyond the hedge. The first few times they will gasp and hide, hoping I did not see. Hoping I will not scold them, or tell their parents. After three or four times, when it becomes clear that I will not, the gasps will turn to giggles. I have no reason to tell their parents. I am not afraid of the forest; we are the most dangerous things here.

We climbed the slopes at an easy pace, checking around outcroppings and ducking under overhangs to read a few titles here and there, or leaf through some front matter. Bare globes cast yellowed light almost uniformly, but the occasional shadowed alcove or the back of a low shelf might hide some rare treasure. It would have been impossible to check them all but folly to ignore them completely, so we cast about us as we went, spending a few minutes crouched in a crevice tracing spines with our fingertips, or perched on a footstool with a small stack of interesting finds. The dark vaults overhead were beyond the reach of the light and admitted no evidence of time passing, but pass it did and eventually we began to grow weary. In an unspoken agreement, we started looking for a place to stop and rest. Soon enough we came to a shallow cave, set in one wall with a wide, low bench, softly cushioned, and on the shelves opposite a rich seam of magical realism. We shucked our packs, fished out some blankets and a bottle of wine, and began to set up camp.

The afternoon air had a heavy slowness to it. Perhaps it was the low-angled golden sunlight and drifting motes of dust weighing it down, or perhaps it was something less tangible. Something unusual. The green wooden door opening off the alleyway was not unusual – at least not in its greenness or its doorness. That it was open at all seemed odd, for never in all the mornings passing it on her way to work had she seen it so, but then of course this was not a morning and so it was not unthinkable. The shop itself didn’t seem unusual – not any more than every other small bookstore that she had ever wandered into. It wasn’t actually small, to be sure, but then who was to say it wasn’t simply a property of bookstores themselves that the owners of bigger stores mostly managed to stamp out. The books were not unusual at all, though if pressed she would say that a book never could be unusual. That it was a property or a lack in the reader, not the pages. But this air – this light – to find it here so deep in the city, where you were more like to find garbage trucks or traffic lights or spreadsheets, that was unusual. That was worth investigating.

I have been away for a long time, out in the heathen lands with not a charm nor a cantrip in my possession. Scores of miles from the nearest stone circle, in villages where the locals perform a sort of ersatz “natural” magic with gathered herbs or mechanical devices. It is strange what one comes to accept in such circumstances. By the time I returned to civilisation the dull throb in my skull of a broken connection was almost imperceptible, and I found myself certain that I would be able to survive out there, beyond the range of magic, indefinitely if I wished. And then I crossed a ley line onto the Northumberland grid, and it flooded into me, and I was home.

I arrived this morning before dawn by the Western dock, tumbled ashore by a sudden and violent wave – the first and only such I encountered in my entire journey across the sound. Perhaps I am no longer welcome here. These cliffs and caves and fells are forbidding enough on the best day, and so I am ill at ease. I find myself wondering how it was that Donnelly first came to the island all those years ago. I have always pictured a storm – sea and sky in an upheaval so violent that it becomes impossible to tell them apart, and Donnelly’s boat swimming through the churn of water and air to land on this very beach.  But isn’t it more likely that the island welcomed him? That he alighted on the tide pools with the morning gulls from a gentle fogbound crossing?

Once, very long ago, silk barges plied the sunken canals in the Caverns Beneath out of necessity – trade embargoes and restrictions had quite literally pushed the business underground. After a decade or two the city realised that it could make more money on taxes and tariffs than the regular bribes its councilmen had come to expect to look the other way, but by that stage a romantic view of the silk canals had taken root in the minds of the populace and out of tradition they are still used to this day. With the silk trade legitimised, a certain type of man used to hiding even amongst thieves was forced still further underground, down in the dark, below the Caverns Beneath.

In the Lost Tales of Kalhar there is a creation cycle myth that tells of a “World Tree”. For many years only known in oblique references, Arc historians hypothesised a connection with Norse mythology across a vast gulf of time and space, but when the text in question was finally found it proved to be a cautionary tale more relevant to our future than our past.

The Gommen home trees were a cheap, efficient solution to the problem of sheltering a population rapidly spreading into an uninhabited wilderness – a single genetically engineered seed would grow, within mere days, into a comfortable dwelling for three, then die, wooden walls and floors becoming harder and more durable than stone. The seeds were sterile, unable to germinate on their own. Unable, that is, until a particularly hardy ground shrub managed to cross-pollinate with a home tree while it was still growing.

A single flowering of ornate gazebos and a stiff breeze was all it took to spread the hybrid across tens of miles, which soon turned into hundreds then thousands of miles. Within a year every continent was choked and overgrown with second bathrooms and third bedrooms – here and there even the occasional conservatory or powder room – all twisted and tangled with branches and corridors and tied together into the great World Tree.

The house had a tidy front lawn, neat hedges and footpath and white aluminium mailbox. From there, in the daylight, you could almost imagine you were in suburbia. Back in Phoenix maybe, if not for the absent heat. From the wide rear porch it was a different story. Tidy lawn, still, but that gave way to dirt, then leaf litter and the forest beyond. Definitely not Phoenix.

After a month of hating it, just on principal, she hated it for another week or so because she was lonely. Then Imogen had called, Imogen that she had left behind, with the news that her family was heading through on their way to Nebraska for the holidays, and suddenly she was excited. Wanted to show off the house and the forest to all her old friends. Went exploring and found knick knacks left behind in airing cupboards and quiet glades full of fairy rings.

Imogen had hated the place. Called it “positively ghastly” and said she was surprised that it even had electricity. It was sweet, really. The sympathy should have made her feel better. But it just made her feel protective, and Imogen seem shallow.

She had never been quick to find friends, but growing up she had always been told “You can’t make yourself lucky, but you can make yourself brave.” So, when school started again – that new school with those new people – she knew she would have to find herself a confederate.