“Do you have a great deal of money?” she asked, valiantly ignoring the heat blooming in her cheeks.

“A great deal?” he said, eyes wide and surprised. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. Not any more than most people, I imagine.”

Alice bit the inside of her cheek and swallowed back all the things she nearly said. Much more than me, she nearly said. I’ve never touched a stoppick in all my life, she nearly said.

“Oh,” was what she actually said.

Oliver wore a pained expression, his cheeks warmed by a truth neither one of them wished to acknowledge, and Alice was surprised to find that his discomfort bothered her. Embarrassed her, even. So she changed the subject.

“The town of Still seems so small compared to Slumber,” she said, staring at the colorful barricade Oliver had built. “Where are we now? Why isn’t anyone trying to eat us anymore?”

“Right! Yes!” Oliver said too loudly, relieved to be discussing something new. “Well! The villages in Furthermore are all built differently.” He nodded. “Some are big, some are small, some are very, very tall. But Still isn’t a proper village—and it’s not meant to be. Still is only home to one person.”

“One person?” said Alice. “But what about all the ladies who just tried to eat us?”

“Ah, well—the ladies of Still are just a security measure,” Oliver explained. “They’re here to protect the land from unwanted visitors. But the person we’re here to meet has no interest in eating anyone. In fact, he’s one of my few good friends in Furthermore.”

“Who is he?” she asked. “Who are we here to meet?”

Oliver met her gaze, the moon glinting behind him.

“Time.”

Alice sat there a moment longer, waiting for Oliver to tell her he was joking, when he tugged on her braid and said, “Narrow-mindedness, Alice, will do us no good.”

Alice scowled and slapped his hand away from her hair. “I’m not narrow-minded,” she said. “It’s just difficult for me to believe that we are actually about to meet Time.” She nearly rolled her eyes.

Oliver gasped—and very loudly.

His eyes were wide and horrified, and he dropped his voice to a whisper. “Listen closely,” he said. “Do not let those words leave your lips again. You do not disbelieve in Furthermore. Do it enough times and you’ll end up there.”

“End up where?”

“In Disbelief,” he said, and shuddered. “It’s a horrid town.”

Alice was afraid to ask him why, so she only nodded and said nothing more, keeping her disbelief to herself.

After their lungs had rested awhile, they walked on tired legs into the Still night, where birds were free to sing and crickets were free to dance and frogs would happily croak. They walked through grass that grew up to their knees and ponds that kicked quietly at their shores. Oliver stomped on and smiled at nothing in particular, while Alice distracted herself by peeking into the dark woods that crept just beyond, wondering all the while where everyone had gone, or if anyone had ever been, and what Time would look like, and would Time be nice, and what would happen if Time grew old? What would they do if Time died? And then she had a thought that wasn’t relevant at all, because she was reminded in a quiet moment that she’d been hungry—very hungry—not too long ago. Strange. She didn’t feel it at all anymore.

She mentioned this to Oliver.

“That’s not strange,” he said. “Eventually you’ll stop being hungry ever again.”

“Really?” she asked him. “But why?”

“Because the longer you stay in Furthermore, the farther you get from Ferenwood.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

Oliver hesitated. Tilted his head.

“Back home in Ferenwood,” he explained, “we have to sleep every night and eat frequently throughout the day, don’t we?”

Alice nodded.

“Right. So, life without those two things,” he said, “would be impossible.”

“But not in Furthermore?”

Oliver shook his head. “In Furthermore you sleep for the dream and eat for the taste.”

Alice hesitated, considering his words.

“So when they eat people,” she said, “they do it only for the taste?”

Oliver was so caught off guard by her question that he laughed and coughed at the same time. “Well—no,” he said. “Not exactly. I have heard that humans have a very particular taste, and that the magical ones give the meals an extra kick”—Alice shuddered at the thought—“but,” Oliver said, holding a finger up in the air, “they eat people because their souls are empty, not their stomachs.

“Here, hunger and exhaustion don’t exist the way they do back home. The infrastructure of Furthermore was built with so much magic as to make the very air we breathe work differently—it makes it so food and sleep are no longer a necessity, but a luxury. It was an irreversible decadence that magically bankrupted the land. Now people can indulge in dinners and dreams only in the pursuit of pleasure. Because doing so for any other reason,” he said simply, “is considered a waste of—”

“—time,” she finished for him.

Oliver stopped walking and looked at her. He nodded slowly. “Yes.” He smiled, just a little. “You seem to be catching on.”

“You think so?” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“No?”

“No,” Alice said. “I don’t think I’m catching on at all. I haven’t the faintest idea why we need to meet Time, not a clue what it has to do with the pocketbook, and not the tiniest inkling what any of this has to do with finding Father.” She sighed. “Oliver,” she said, “I have never been more confused in all my life.”