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“Hmm, I think you might be slightly biased. I kept a very low profile in the human world. Being noticed wasn’t my thing.” A big gray cat trotted out to meet us on the road. He instantly wrapped himself around Raina’s legs and stared up at me suspiciously with clear green eyes.

“Now, you just wait till we get back to the cottage, Enzo, before you start swirling around my ankles. You’ll trip me right down on my face.”

“He’s yours? Hello, Enzo.” I lowered my hand. The cat sniffed it warily and then decided I was all right. He started swirling around my legs, too.

We reached a squat stone cottage that looked similar to most of the others we passed, only this one had pretty yellow and green vines growing up and over the stone façade. The door was adorned with a dried wreath of leaves and small pinecone-looking objects, and the whole thing was tied off with a yellow bow. A stream of fragrant smoke rose up from a stout chimney in the middle of the thatched roof. “Here’s home,” Raina said proudly.

I stopped just inside the wooden gate and smiled at the cottage. “It’s perfect.”

“Raina, hello!” A woman with hair nearly as red as Austri’s was planting floppy orange flowers in a soil bed next door. She smiled at me and nodded once politely. “So, they’re back?” she asked. I figured she was talking about the trio, but I couldn’t help but feel like she meant me, too. “I’ll have to see what my cousin has been up to all these years.”

“I think he headed straight to the Black Dragon, Beva,” Raina chortled.

The woman laughed. “That sounds like Austri.”

I followed Raina and Enzo up the three uneven steps to the front door. She opened the door, and an aroma drifted toward us that made me instantly nostalgic. “Is that your sage and potato soup?”

“I know it’s your favorite. It’s been simmering on the fire just waiting for your return.” Enzo trotted ahead to the hearth and curled up on a rug in front of it.

The kitchen and living area along with the large stone hearth were all one room. It was simply furnished and looked comfortably lived in. Raina ladled bowls of soup from the pot on the hearth. We sat at her small kitchen table. I was exhausted, and my body was screaming for food. I hadn’t realized just how hungry I was until she set a platter of warm fry bread in the middle of the table. I lunged for it like a starved animal.

Raina laughed. “I suppose you’ve worked up an appetite on your travels.” She reached far more demurely for her bread.

I couldn’t respond because I was already heavily engaged with dipping the wonderful bread into my favorite soup. I pushed the drenched piece into my mouth and hummed in appreciation. I tilted my head at Raina. “I know it’s been a while, but it tastes different than I remember—in a good way. It’s got more of a peppery kick.”

“That’s because the herbs and vegetables we grow here in Norvale are fresh from the soil. They haven’t sat on a store shelf wilting their lives away before reaching the soup.”

I tore off another chunk of bread. The glow of the fire radiated through the entire room. The soft crackling noises only add to the coziness. “Raina, I missed you so much. Why did you leave so abruptly?”

The roundness in her cheeks vanished. “It wasn’t my choice, Rafi. It was very hard to leave you. But your powers started getting stronger, and my presence would only alert them faster. We’d managed to hide you for your whole life, but once your powers strengthened⁠—”

“You mean my ability to see five seconds into the future. Hardly a power, and why can I only see that far? Not that I think I’d want to deal with any more than that.”

“The five-second future sight is one thing, but also your power to go back in time. Surely you’ve had many episodes where you found yourself suddenly back in time, in an unfamiliar place. Morga never touched that part of your power.”

“Yes, trust me I’ve experienced an unsettling number of glitches.” To clear the confusion from her brow, I continued. “That is what I call them. They feel like a mind glitch and a time glitch all balled up into one frightful mess. I thought I was losing my mind.” I’d shoveled in so much bread and soup, and on such an empty stomach, I sat back with a sigh, as if a bowling ball sat in the middle of my belly. “Madigan gave me the quick primer on my condition, or power, as you call it. It tracks with everything I’ve experienced. But who is Morga and why was she after my power? Why am I here? Why did you never tell me about Norvale? Why am I back now? For that matter, why did Mom take me away from this world and shoehorn me into a life in the human world? I never fit in there. And, Raina”—my throat tightened—“what really happened to Mom?”

Raina’s expression was calm and serious. “That’s a lot of questions, Rafi.”

She got up to carry the dishes to the washtub. Her round shoulders were tense, but she moved smoothly, slowly. “I think I can help with some of them, but it will be better if you experience it firsthand.”

Raina left the washtub and shuffled out to the front room. Indoor wooden shutters were pulled back from a large front window. Outside, thin slivers of light were seeping between some of the clouds. The misty air clung to the window in tiny droplets. Raina opened the lid on a large wooden trunk that she’d been using as a coffee table in front of a tattered sofa. She rummaged through the contents for a moment and then her hand emerged with something that had four wooden, hand-painted sunflowers dangling from a bigger sunflower.

She closed the lid on the trunk. Again, her expression was unreadable, sober. She walked back to the table and held the sunflower mobile up in the air. The brightly painted flowers were like sunshine in the dimly lit cottage. Raina flicked one of the flowers, and they danced as if in a circular parade. As they followed each other through the air, a tiny bell lent its sweet sound to the display.

“Do you remember this?” Raina asked

“Should I?”

She shook her head sadly. “No, I suppose not. You were only two weeks old the last time you saw it. Your mother made it. She hung it over your cradle.”

My hand pressed against my mouth to stifle the flood of emotions her short story had evoked. I reached forward with my free hand to touch it, but Raina pulled it out of my reach.

“Wait,” she said with enough force to cause me to sit back like a chastised child. “I’m sorry. That came out too abruptly. It’s just that when you touch this it will no doubt take you back in time, back to that day when the neighbors came to bring you their gifts, the day that changed our lives forever, the day when we learned your fate.”

I pressed an arm against my stomach, wishing I hadn’t shoveled in the food so fast. “My fate? That doesn’t sound good. Fate generally means bad, no?”

“It can go either way. Let’s go out and sit in front of the fire.”