Alice’s eyes went wide at that last line.

Fifteen tintons was more magic than she’d ever seen. She couldn’t even imagine what she’d do with it all. (Though that was nonsense, wasn’t it? Of course she could. She’d use it all to find Father.) Not for the first time, Alice wished she was old enough to earn a few stoppicks of her own and not have to rely on Mother’s unreliable ways.

Alice tucked the newspaper under her arm.

Ferenwood never had much news to tell; things were always predictably lovely. The most recent trouble their little town had encountered was losing a few pigs to a particularly strong gust of wind, but that was a few days ago. The worst thing that had ever happened in Ferenwood was losing Father, of course. That had been the strangest thing of all, because leaving Ferenwood was something no one ever did. Not really.

Alice had certainly never left Ferenwood. None of the other children had, either. Being tasked was the one great exception —it was an adventure on which every Ferenwood citizen was expected to embark—but everyone always came home in the end. Besides, they were surrounded by sea on every side but one, and to get out to the great unknown they had to pass through Fennelskein, which, as I mentioned earlier, no one ever visited, for obvious reasons. (I should note here that these reasons were not readily obvious to me, an outsider, but try as I might, I couldn’t get anyone to explain why, exactly, they never visited the town of Fennelskein. I think the unexciting answer was that they found the town unbearably dull, but we may never know for certain.)

But the simple reason no one ever left Ferenwood for very long was that Ferenwood folk needed magic to survive. Father had been gone for more than three years, a length of time that was considered unsurvivable. The children of Ferenwood were taught—from the moment they could talk—that leaving for long would never do. Magic was what they ate and breathed; it was the essence of all they were. Their relationship with the land was entirely symbiotic: They lived peacefully among the plants and trees, and in return, the land helped them thrive. The seed of magic inside all people of Ferenwood was nurtured and sustained by the land they tilled and harvested.

Without that, they’d be lost.

And this was the real problem, the real heart of the hurt, the truth that made Father’s loss so much more painful: that there was no magic outside of Ferenwood. Certainly not anywhere anyone had heard of. There had been rumors, of course, of other distant, magical lands, but there were always rumors, weren’t there? Rumors bred of boredom and nonsense born of recklessness. And everyone in Ferenwood knew better than to believe nonsense. Ferenwood didn’t hold with nonsense. At least, Alice didn’t think they did, but she was never really sure. Losing Father to the great unknown had made Alice a believer in all kinds of nonsense, and she didn’t mind that it made her odd. Maybe Father had found a bit of magic elsewhere, and maybe he was holding on. Maybe, she thought, he was still trying to find his way home.

Alice lived in a time before proper maps, before street signs and numbered homes. She lived in a time when leaving home meant saying good-bye and hoping you’d be able to find your way back.

Hope, you see, was all she had, and she would hold on to it, come hills or high water.

The center of town was always a bit of a shock for Alice no matter how many times she’d wandered through, and I can’t say I blame the girl. It was a bit of a shock at first glance. The endless sequence of bold buildings appeared to be shoved together in what was, apparently, a fine show of geometry well studied. Curves shook up and into straight lines, tops capped by triangle or dome or dollop of roof (depending on the storefront) while walls were textured by octagonal, triangular, and starlike tile work. Chimneys were spirals of brick charging into the sky, doors were tall as walls and nearly as wide, and—as you might have already imagined—colors were sharp and bright and endless. (Indeed, one might occasionally be pressed to wonder whether the aesthetic of Ferenwood wasn’t a direct answer to the question, How many colors might we fit in one place?) It was a string of streets woven together in no particular fashion and for no particular reason other than to accommodate the buildings that appeared to have sprouted straight from the ground.

Alice’s family was one of the very few that lived so far from town, and though it was sometimes hard to be high up in the hills and far from the heart of things, she was also seldom bothered with the business of seeing old schoolmates or nosy grown-ups who thrived on the buzz and babble of crowds. For the most part, Alice relished her occasional ambles into the middle of the middle; but though she was eager for a peek at the excitement, she was always swiftly reminded of her place within it.

Alice stood at the very edge of it all and let herself be swallowed up by the sounds and scents of city life. Rainlight ensured that the day was warm and the flowers fresh, and bells rang out while friends called to one another. Fathers clasped hands with mothers who called for children to please be still while shopkeepers stood on stoops and waved their wares. Alice felt the weight of the single fink in her pocket as she stared and wished, as always, that Father were there to hold her hand.

But no matter.

Alice held her own hand, one clenched tightly in the other, and pushed her way through the throng. She wasn’t tall enough to see very far ahead, but she was certainly short enough to be knocked into by strangers and occasionally snapped in the cheek by a windblown skirt. The air had been tousled by the hands of careful spicekeepers, and Alice tasted mint silk and snips of coconut and nearly everything she touched left her smelling like saffron.

A gaggle of children had crowded around Asal Masal & Chai, eagerly testing samples of a tea that guaranteed they’d grow a full inch by morning. Teenagers were digging through ornate tubs of temporary enchantments—

FIVE FINKS TO FALL IN LOVE

SEVEN FINKS TO GROW YOUR HAIR

A STOPPICK TO DISAPPEAR

—while the older crowd was found relaxing at a series of tables and chairs pressed with intricate patterns of colorful glass. The ladies and gentlemen old enough to indulge puffed on curlicued gold pipes and smiled, blue and red and purple smoke escaping their lips as they laughed. Alice snuck a sniff as she tiptoed past and felt her head go sideways with the weight of it. She smiled despite herself and, not for the first time, found herself wishing she were old enough to do more interesting things.