“You start off with short jumps so you can see where you’re going—like this,” he said, gesturing down the hill. “It makes it easier to visualize. Next, you practice jumping to that place without looking at it. Then places you’ve been to before but aren’t close enough to see. Eventually you try places you’ve never been, though that’s hardest of all. Onlysome of the wizards who teleport can manage it, and many wizards don’t teleport ever.”
“So I should stare at the spot where I’m going.”
“Yes.”
“And then …?”
“That’s where our paths diverge because I don’t think my spellword is going to help you. But I assume you need to concentrate in the same way a wizard does. We have to truly commit tobeingthere, wherever it is we’re going. Sometimes wizards take it at a run and cast the spell mid-jump.”
She laughed again, eyes dancing. “Does that really help?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“OK. Focusing … focusing …”
She looked at the grassy expanse for a while, her gaze slowly turning into a glare. Finally, she let out a long sigh. “I’m not getting anywhere. I mean—obviously.”
“Don’t give up,” he urged. “It takes wizards ages to get the hang of it.”
A smile ghosted across her lips. “What about you?”
“Teleport, and I’ll tell you.”
“Incentive indeed.”
Time was a concept that didn’t entirely carry over to dreamside, but it certainly felt as if she stared into the distance for an hour before she threw up her hands. “This is absolutely infuriating.”
“If you get yourself over there,” he murmured into her ear, “I’ll make it worth your while. Right there in the grass.”
Her breath hitched.
The next instant, she was no longer standing beside him. She was down at the edge of the forest.
He gaped at her. Then he focused until he’d willed a red into his hand and followed her there.
“I cheated,” she said sheepishly. “I rearranged the world instead of myself.”
He started to laugh. “That waseasier?”
“In here, it is.” She looked at him, lips quirked. “But I haven’t earned my reward. I suppose I should get back to concentrating on the task at hand.”
They both needed her to do that. But dayside and its worries seemed more distant now. There would be other nights to practice. He pulled her closer and gave real life no more thought until he woke in his bed the next morning, to dark, and cold, and winter.
CHAPTER 15
Peter frowned at the pile of leaves in the basement. It was looking awfully small. He ran up the stairs to consult his indispensable Brown’s for a leaf-counting spell, then returned to cast it—and grimaced.
When Beatrix arrived and the house was sealed up again, he told her the bad news. “We’ve got only a bit more than seven thousand leaves left downstairs.”
Her eyes went wide with alarm. He quickly added, “It’s not a disaster, but I’d really like to avoid buying more. This is the time of year when they’re the most expensive. We’ll just need to be mindful of what we’re using until spring. Assuming two more months before we can harvest more, that’s a maximum of a hundred-twenty leaves a day.”
She cleared her throat. “What do you think we’re using now?”
“Haven’t a clue. I’ll do a count every day so we’ll know how much we have to cut back, if that becomes necessary.”
“Right,” she murmured. She held up four lockets. “Did you want to charm these now?”
He gave a moment’s thought to waiting until the evening. Because the spell required temporarily demarcating the entire town, it took about an hour to set up and break down, an hour she would be left alone in the house. But then he remembered it might snow later. So he gave Beatrix his locket keyed to the property and left the house using his five-second procedure—drop the spell, squeeze out, recast. That took four leaves. Onward to burn up a dozen more.
