"Okay," Alexandra said slowly, "let's suppose I am interested in the World Away. Why should I believe anything you say?"

"I have never lied to you, angry witch," said Sees-From-Laurel.

"If you don't count lies of omission." Alexandra's clenched fists belied her cool tone.

Sees-From-Laurel answered quickly and smoothly. "I took you to the jimplicute's lair and told you it was the only way out. I warned you that it is very fast. What more should I have told you? That no one who has faced it has ever survived?"

"Actually, yes," Alexandra said. "You really should have told me that. Then I might have known I was walking into a death trap."

"Yet you did not die."

"Only thanks to my Seven-League Boots." And Charlie. "Anyway, maybe with the right spells, I could take it out. Unfortunately, I don't happen to be Questing with my, um, combat wand."

Sees-From-Laurel squinted again. "I thought wizard-folk only carry one wand."

"I thought elves were nice and helpful and jimplicutes were mythical."

The two of them stared at one another. Then Sees-From-Laurel shook his head. "We can be helpful. But I told you, we are not your house-elves. The Ozarkers seek the World Away, and their legends say that Troublesome will open the way. We too, wish to be free, and that can only happen after the Ozarkers leave this world behind."

"I don't think they're ready to go yet," Alexandra said. "I mean, it seems like they've been talking about it for a long time, without even knowing if it's actually possible."

"If they see it is possible," said Sees-From-Laurel, "then perhaps they will stop talking about it. I do not know. We cannot say what wizard-folk, Ozarkers or Colonials, will do. But I can show you the way, Troublesome, and then you can show them the way."

"Fine," Alexandra said. "Show me."

Sees-From-Laurel shook his head again. "It is not so simple. There is an obstacle."

"Of course there is. What is it this time?"

Sees-From-Laurel's image, melded with the laurel bush, seemed to fade slightly. "An underwater panther."

Alexandra stared at the elf, and was glad he was not really there, because she felt a sudden urge to kick him. "You've got to be kidding."

She remembered the terrible creatures who dwelled beneath Charmbridge Academy — or more precisely, beneath Charmbridge's gate to the Lands Below that Alexandra and Maximilian had passed through. They had almost been eaten by several panther cubs, each of them the size of a mountain lion, and when Alexandra had returned, without Maximilian, the mother cat, a horned, golden beast the size of a dragon, with flaming breath to match, had almost devoured her whole. Underwater panthers, according to Maximilian, were virtually unkillable, their hides capable of reflecting spells and blades alike. They were among the most terrible beasts known to wizards.

Sees-From-Laurel said, "I do not jest or deceive you, angry witch. An underwater panther guards the way to the World Away. It is a fearsome beast, with —"

"I know what they are!" Alexandra yelled. "I almost got eaten by the jimplicute, and you want me to fight an underwater panther? No way!"

"What if you did not have to fight it?" Sees-From-Laurel asked.

Alexandra laughed. "What should I do, say 'nice kitty' and make friends with it?"

The elf shook his head, either missing or ignoring her sarcasm, as usual. "They are terrible creatures. They cannot be befriended, and even wands are said to be useless against them. However, there is one sure way to kill even an underwater panther."

"Which you're going to tell me?" Alexandra turned her head right and left to keep an eye on the woods around her. "Not that I'm promising I'll do it."

"According to legend, the surest way to kill an unkillable creature is the song of the Thren."

Alexandra glanced at Charlie, sitting on a bush next to the one from which Sees-From-Laurel was addressing her. "I've never heard of a Thren. Is it some kind of bird?"

"Yes, it is a kind of bird. The Thren's song is so beautiful, it kills all who hear it."

"So, I'm supposed to find and capture this bird — without listening to it sing — and bring it to the underwater panther's lair."

"I know where a Thren nests," said Sees-From-Laurel. "It lives very high in the mountains atop a cliff, next to a laurel bush."

"How am I supposed to get up there, capture this bird, bring it to the underwater panther's lair, then get the panther to listen to it without it singing me to death?"

Sees-From-Laurel smiled. "You are a witch. You escaped the jimplicute."

Charlie said, "Wicked clever."

Alexandra shook her head. "I'm flattered by your confidence."

Sees-From-Laurel said, "There may be one thing I can do to help you."

"Oh?" Alexandra waited.

"As I can appear in this laurel bush, so can I make you disappear in one."

"You mean, I'll be invisible while I'm hiding in the laurel bush? The Thren won't see me?"

Sees-From-Laurel nodded. "But you must make no sound and remain perfectly still. This 'invisibility' is of a limited kind."

"Most invisibility is." Alexandra remembered that from her Magical Theory classes. Invisibility was one of the hardest feats of magic. "Can you transport me through laurel bushes? 'Cause it would be really convenient if I could get up there without having to climb a mountain."

"I am not actually present here," said Sees-From-Laurel. "As I cannot transport myself, neither can I perform this feat of moving you."

"Figures." Alexandra tried to decide how much she believed the elf. "So, tell me about the World Away."

"I can show you the way," Sees-From-Laurel said. "But only after you defeat the underwater panther."

"Why haven't you escaped there?" Alexandra asked. "Because of the underwater panther?"

"What makes you think we want to go there?" Sees-From-Laurel replied. "I told you, we are bound by other oaths, and by the Compact. And it was the hill dwarves who lured the panther, to keep your folk from leaving. They are the ones who trapped you underground in the first place, Troublesome. If not freedom for us or obtaining the object of your Quest, are you not motivated to give the smelly hoarders cause to gnash their teeth?"

Alexandra didn't reply, but in fact, she did like the idea that getting something that might fulfill her Quest would also settle a score with the hill dwarves. Actually, it would only begin to settle the score. She didn't figure letting their rivals out was nearly enough to pay them back, but it was a start.

"Okay," she said, "tell me where this Thren is."

Alexandra craned her neck. "That is one steep cliff." She drank from her canteen, trying not to think about bears pissing in streams. At least there weren't bugbears out here.

Before her, a cracked rock face rose to a misty summit. She had already hiked up a mountain some miles from where Sees-From-Laurel had first spoken to her, and that hike had not been an easy one. The Seven-League Boots had carried her to this mountain quickly enough, and they were some help in the ascent, but once she reached the point where she was crawling over rocks and up switchback trails and narrow ledges, it was all physical effort unassisted by magic. She had tried an Ascendio spell a few times, but her basswood wand flung her haphazardly upward, and after the second time she landed hard and skidded back down the slope she was trying to bypass, she decided not to try it where she might get killed.

From the base of the uppermost cliff, she could see across what seemed like the width and breadth of the Ozarks, though she knew this was only a corner of it. Miles and miles of green hills cut with blue ribbons of water, overlaid with a shimmering golden haze. The sun was well past its zenith, but still some distance from the horizon, and Alexandra's clothes were damp with sweat. She'd refilled her canteen at every stream she came across and drunk it dry every time, and yet hardly had to pee at all. The Ozark heat was oppressive and dehydrating, and it wasn't a bit cooler up here on this mountain, because for all its relative height, the Ozarks were nothing like the mountains of the Southwest or the Rockies, in whose foothills she had climbed during her adventure in Dinétah.

The view was beautiful, but when she turned around to look up the cliff she had yet to climb, she wanted to go back the way she'd come.

"Do not fly up there," she said to Charlie. "If there's a bird that kills anything that hears it, I don't want you going anywhere near its nest."

"Pretty bird," Charlie said.

"Dead bird," Alexandra replied.

Charlie made a harsh sound, like "kk-kk-kkk!"

Alexandra surveyed the cliff. She was going to have to climb it without a Skyhook, and she wasn't sure how much confidence she had in a Falling Charm with her Grundy's wand. The cliff wasn't sheer and it was not quite vertical — there were ledges and outcroppings and large fissures — but it looked like the sort of cliff face rock climbers would ascend with ropes and pitons. Assaulting it bare-handed was obviously stupid and dangerous.

"Stupid and dangerous," Alexandra muttered. "Well, what else should I expect from a Quest?"

"Stupid!" said Charlie.

Alexandra looked around for any laurel bushes, but she'd left the last one behind well below her. "Sees-From-Laurel?" she called out. "Can you hear me?"

An answer came from one of the many cracks in the gray dolomite half-dome on which she was standing: "He cannot. There is no laurel here."

Alexandra peered into the shadowy crack, and saw a small wrinkled face peering back at her.

"Hello," she said. "Are you a friend of his?"

"We are kith," said the small creature. "You may call me Crack-Dweller."

Alexandra put a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh, but didn't entirely succeed. Charlie added a few raucous caws. Crack-Dweller's large eyes widened at Alexandra's sniggering, then thin lids slitted over them in disapproval. "What is so funny, angry witch?"

Alexandra cleared her throat. "Shh," she whispered to Charlie. "You aren't helping." To Crack-Dweller, she said, "I'm sorry. Uh, you might want to use another name if you ever speak to Muggles."

"Why would I speak to Muggles?" Crack-Dweller's eyes remained slitted. "You are supposed to be a witch."

"Yeah, I am." Okay, Alexandra, grow up. "Do you have a message from Sees-From-Laurel?"

"Yes," said the elf. "The Thren is not in its nest. It will probably not return until dusk."

Alexandra studied the cliff face again, and then the sun's position in the sky. She was not optimistic about climbing to the top before dusk. "I may have to camp out overnight, and try reaching the top tomorrow. The Thren isn't nocturnal, is it?"

"No." Crack-Dweller wrinkled his tiny button-nose. "As you wish. Do you have a plan?"

"Yes." Alexandra stared steadily back at the elf. See if I'm going to tell you more than I have to.

After a moment, Crack-Dweller shrugged. "The Thren spends most of the day away from its nest, but it does sometimes return. Tomorrow, Sees-From-Laurel will watch over its nest, and I will do what I can to relay any warning."

"Thanks," Alexandra said.

Crack-Dweller faded like an image whose contrast had been turned all the way down.

"Well, Charlie," Alexandra said, "looks like we're camping."

Charlie cawed.

"And this Quest is going on three days now." Alexandra sighed. In all her trekking over and under these hills, she hadn't seen a sign of human habitation. It was like she was in some other Ozarks, before people arrived here. Her sense of time was off too — when was the great celebration to end the Jubilee?

Camping out in the open on hard rocks seemed like a bad idea, so she hiked/slid back down the mountainside until she reached a creek she'd passed on the way up, and walked along it until she found a quiet bend where the water became still and deep.

Here, she unrolled her blanket and started a small fire. She shared some more pemmican with Charlie. She was getting tired of pemmican, and it was running low as well. That was one of the reasons she'd chosen a spot by a creek where fish might bite.

She rummaged about in her backpack and found her survival kit. It had an ordinary fishing line with a magical bob. She attached a hook and lure to the line, tied it to the bob, and placed it in the water. She hadn't done much fishing before. The owl-order catalog she'd ordered the bob from had advertised magical fishing rods as well, for reeling in larger and more "challenging" fish, but she hoped the bob would be enough to catch something edible.

Hairs prickled on the back of her neck. It was the same feeling she'd experienced when she first embarked on this quest — the feeling that someone or something was lurking just behind her. She spun around, but saw nothing. She stared into the trees, but if the jimplicute was lurking there, it was extraordinarily good at camouflaging itself. She brandished her wand, and shot a few sparks from it, hoping that what Sees-From-Laurel had told her was true about the jimplicute fearing wands. She experimented with conjuring a fireball, and managed to throw a tiny ball of flame halfway to the trees. Nothing stirred.

She really wished she had her yew wand. It might not have been particularly reliable, but it would certainly put on a better show.

"Clever!" said Charlie.

When Alexandra turned back to the creek, all of her senses on edge, the bob was dragging several inches underwater. She pulled the line up and found a fat catfish on the end of it. Charlie screeched in delight.

"Behave and I might share some with you," she said to Charlie.

"Greedy-guts!" said Charlie.

She stayed by the creekside as she took out her knife. She had gone fishing with Archie a few times, but he'd cleaned the fish afterwards. Gutting and cleaning a fish wasn't one of the skills Max had taught her, and it was more awkward trying to do it with the knife in one hand, her wand in the other, always keeping an eye on the trees. She did her best. The catfish flopped about for a while even after she cut off its head.

Grimacing, she tossed the head toward Charlie, who plucked out its eyes like savory treats, then continued to feast on the rest while Alexandra gutted the slimy body. She kept having morbid thoughts about what she'd look like, torn open and gutted. She looked at the trees again. She didn't still feel herself being watched, but she wasn't sure whether she'd really felt it before.

Soon her fingers were slippery with red-black ooze. Charlie picked over the raw guts she tossed away. Alexandra worried that she was cutting off as much flesh as she was scales and fins. Eventually, she had more or less edible chunks of fish, and she proceeded to cook it.

Shortly after sunset, she heard a distant birdcall from high overhead, lovely but eerie. It sent a shiver through her that caused her entire body to convulse for a moment. She glanced at Charlie, who was now full and sleepy after gorging on all the parts of the catfish she didn't want to eat. The raven seemed unperturbed.

"Hmm," she said. She noted that for future reference. Then she put out the fire, took off her boots, pants, and long-sleeved shirt, and slid into her bedroll. The temperature dropped after dark, and there were mosquitoes everywhere, so she huddled under her blanket and tried to get some sleep.

Her arms and legs were stiff and her back was sore the next morning. Sleeping on the ground with only a blanket beneath her hadn't been comfortable. The bruises she'd accumulated from her encounters with the hill dwarves and Geegowl now ached fiercely. And one hand that had slipped out from under her blanket was covered with mosquito bites. It itched fiercely.

Alexandra put on a change of clothes, rolled up her blanket, ate a breakfast of half her remaining pemmican, and put some lotion from her first aid kit on the mosquito bites. It didn't help much. She used a dab of ointment from her magical supplies, which helped more.

She placed everything back into her backpack, and hiked back up to the cliff. She began stretching while surveying the rock face she was about to climb. As cliffs went, it wasn't the most unclimbable she'd ever seen. Witches' Rock, in Dinétah, was worse. She could never have gotten up it without her Skyhook. This cliff she could probably climb — it was just going to be arduous and dangerous. One loose stone or slip, and that would be that. This was exactly the sort of dangerous undertaking Julia would tell her she should walk away from. After all, what did she care about the World Away? What was she going to get out of this Quest? A new wand? Did she really need to die on this mountain?

Alexandra stood there for a long time, thinking. Charlie, acclimated to her moods, sat on her shoulder like a silent advisor who offered no advice at all.

"I really could die this time, Charlie," she said.

Charlie bobbed and brushed against her cheek.

"It's really hard to explain to my friends," she said. "They always think I'm being reckless and stupid. Sometimes I am. But sometimes you just know you have to do something."

If she turned back from this challenge, she would be a different person than the one who had faced it. She understood this on a level she could not explain. It wasn't mere fear of being cowardly, or a stubborn refusal to turn away from a challenge, though she realized both of those things were a part of it. Her life often seemed prescribed in ways she didn't fully have control over. She had choices, and this was one of them, but there was a certain inevitability about the choices she was given. She was on a Solemn Quest now, and you didn't just throw up your hands and say "Nope, too dangerous" on a Solemn Quest. If she did that — well, she would not be who she was.

You could be someone else, whispered a voice in her ear. Would that be so bad? For a moment, Alexandra almost thought it was a voice speaking to her, and it sounded a lot like Anna. This caused her eyes to shift to her wrist, where she wore the snake and raven charms Anna had given her.

Was Anna somehow communicating with her? No, that was silly. Surely Anna would have mentioned it if the charms had any such powers. Still, she put one hand against the small charms, and murmured, "Don't worry about me. I'll be all right. I always come back."

Charlie made an uncharacteristic chirping noise, for once not attuned to her thoughts and confused by her pensiveness.

"Let's go, bird-brain," Alexandra said.

"Fly, fly!" said Charlie, spreading wings and taking flight.

"I wish," Alexandra said. She walked up to the cliff and began her climb.

It took almost four hours. Alexandra told herself that if she were really being reckless, she could ascend the cliff in half the time. But she moved cautiously, pausing and reconnoitering when her grip wasn't solid or the footing was uncertain. She moved up, down, and sideways, from ledge to foothold to fissure. She was tempted to try using an Ascendio spell, but knew if she missed her target, she'd fall to her death. And she'd sworn to Julia to be careful. What I really need is a Spider Climb spell, she thought. She decided to look that up if she ever got to a wizard library again.

Sometimes she only found a crevice barely large enough to wedge a foot into. Once Charlie cawed a warning to her, just before a blood-chilling buzz emitted from the crack she was about to use as a handhold. A shiver went down her spine and she almost slipped, but she held her breath, then slowly withdrew her hand from the crevasse where a rattlesnake was hiding from the late morning sun. She drew her wand and said, "Petrificus Totalus!" At least the basswood wand was able to manage a Body-Bind Spell on a snake.

She had to stop often to drink water. Charlie glided nearby, no longer offering sardonic commentary.

Close enough to the top that she could hear the wind blowing through the brush atop the summit, Alexandra stopped on a rocky ledge and eased herself into a sitting position, carefully turning her back to the cliff. She had just enough room to let her legs dangle. It would take a single careless motion to propel herself off the ledge and down. The steep drop before her terminated with nothing but hard rocks.

From where she sat, the Ozarks were spread before her like a magnificent green and brown oil painting with its clarity sharpened beneath glass. Absent were roads, highways, power lines, or towns. She wasn't quite sure how being in this place made the Muggle world fade away so completely. She knew there was no real barrier between them — they had not walked through a barrier or even a Muggle-Repelling Charm when Constance and Forbearance led her and Julia from the A&W into Furthest. Yet somehow there seemed to be two Ozarks. The world where Constance and Forbearance dwelled apart and away from Muggles, and the world that was criss-crossed, dotted, paved, and cemented, where it was hard to find more than a few square miles, even within the large national parks and forests, that were empty of human marks.

Alexandra removed her backpack, which seemed to grow more burdensome as she climbed, even though its magic all but nullified the weight of whatever it contained. She was hot and soaked with sweat, but her back especially was sore and wet. She ignored this as she took a canteen cup and one of the candles the twins had packed for her out of the pack.

"Let's see if I can manage this," she said to Charlie. She cast a Warming Charm to melt the candle.

She didn't flinch when the hot wax flowed out of her fingers and dripped into the cup. When it lay there in a soft, white, congealing pool, she rolled the burning wax that still clung to her palm into a small ball. She pressed the ball of warm wax deep into her left ear and filled her entire ear canal, until when she snapped her fingers next to her ear, she could only hear the sound from her other ear.

She collected another clump of melted wax from the bottom of her canteen cup, rolled it into another ball, and filled her right ear with it.

She couldn't hear the wind, or the distant sound of birds and animals, or the not-so-distant sound of insects.

"Say something, Charlie," she commanded.

Charlie's beak opened soundlessly.

"Almost as good as putting a Silencing Charm on you," she said.

Charlie's beak opened again. Alexandra had no doubt the raven was emitting some choice sounds. Still she heard nothing. She grinned at the bird. "Works like a charm. Literally."

A Silencing Charm would have worked better. She remembered making fun of Angelique Devereaux, back at Charmbridge, for casting a Silencing Charm on herself to deafen herself to her jarvey's curses. The problem with that was that a witch who was Silenced could not cast verbal spells, and Alexandra didn't think non-verbal magic would be enough to capture the Thren. Not with her Grundy's wand.

She resumed her climb, which seemed more perilous without the sound of wind and animals, nor Charlie's flapping wings. It was as if she moved in a dead, still world. Her hands were covered with cuts and her fingernails were torn and bleeding. Her knees and elbows hurt from repeated scraping against rocks. All the soreness of the past two days of abuse was catching up to her.

The sun was almost directly overhead when she dragged herself over the edge of the top of the cliff. She lay there for a while, ankles still hanging over the edge, head resting on a pillow of rough reddish-gray rock. She didn't move a muscle, even her head to look around, until Charlie hopped onto her elbow and pecked at her ear.

"Ugh. Stop it, Charlie." She could hear the sound of her own voice only because her vocal chords vibrated in her own body. Whatever nagging words Charlie might be croaking at her, she was blissfully unable to hear. The raven pecked again, and she lifted her head with a scowl.

Two feet from her face, Sees-From-Laurel glared at her from a scraggly bush of laurel, hands on his hips, tapping one foot.

"Can't hear you," Alexandra said, pointing at one ear. "Wax."

For a moment, the elf's face displayed unguarded bemusement. Then he made a beckoning gesture with his long fingers. Alexandra crept closer to the laurel bush, and closer still as the elf kept beckoning, until she was practically sitting on top of it. The elf, whose ghostly image drifted immaterially through the branches, edged away from her until he had almost faded from visibility himself.

Alexandra said, in a hushed voice, "So the Thren won't be able to see me now?" From her perspective, she was an arm's length from the nest and quite obvious, sitting in the middle of a bush that wouldn't even reach her chest if she stood up.

The elf nodded. He made settling gestures with his hands, which Alexandra took to mean "Hold still."

"So I have to just sit here for the next… however many hours?" She looked at the sun, still many hours from sunset.

Sees-From-Laurel nodded again.

"Okay, then."

The elf glanced at the cliff, back at her, and raised his eyebrows.

"I have a plan," Alexandra said.

Alexandra couldn't read the elf's expression, but he vanished, leaving her alone with Charlie on the mountaintop.

"You," she said to Charlie, "fly away."

Charlie cawed at her, or at least she thought Charlie cawed at her. She reached out and stroked the raven.

"I'd have to Silence you if you stayed with me," she said, "or its song will kill you. And you can't help catch it. So go away. Shoo! Come back when I call you."

Charlie gave her a beady-eyed reproving glare, then cawed soundlessly again and took off.

Sitting in one place for hours was almost worse than climbing the cliff. One thing Alexandra had not packed was a book, so she had nothing to do, and she was afraid to get up and stretch her legs for fear that the Thren might return just when she had broken the charm of invisibility Sees-From-Laurel had put on her. So she sat there, legs cramping and back becoming sorer and all the injuries and mosquito bites from the past few days tormenting her. Worst of all, she was bored. It was a hellish sort of wait, but she endured it, thinking about all the ways she might have better prepared herself for this adventure.

Near dusk, she saw a black spot on the horizon, wings flapping in a steady beat against the air. At first she thought it was a hawk or an eagle; she had seen several of those flying about. Then she thought it was Charlie. But as the bird came closer, the reddish sunlight reflected off of brilliant plumage that belonged to neither a raptor nor a raven.

The bird approaching her was a brilliant robin's egg blue. As it got closer still, she saw that it was also quite large. She was expecting a small bird, but the Thren had a form that was vulture-like, with a craning neck tilted forward beneath wings that folded against its back like hunched shoulders.

It landed on its nest and spread its wings, turned about, and for a moment, peered directly at her. Alexandra had been frozen in place since she first spotted the blue feathers, and now found it almost impossible to believe that she and the Thren could be staring at each other like this, her nose barely a foot from its beak, and it could not see her. But it folded its wings and turned its back on her, settling into its nest and looking out across the sky, which was a lovely pale pink with red clouds on the horizon, shading to magenta and then purple further from the setting sun.

Alexandra felt a strange shiver go through her. She still couldn't hear a thing, but as she watched the Thren fluff its feathers and bob its head back and forth, she realized that it must be singing.

It sat in its nest and sang, and even through the wax in her ears, Alexandra felt a subliminal tingle that was deeply unnerving, as if notes were penetrating her skin and thrumming against her skull.

It must be trying to attract a mate, Alexandra thought. She wondered how many Threns there could be in the Ozarks.

She had no time for these speculations. There was no point in waiting — either this would work or it wouldn't. She pointed her wand, mustered all her concentration and tried to think of the stubborn basswood and goat feathers as an extension of her will, and said, "Incarcerous!"

She intended to tie up the bird completely, hopefully without harming it, but only one thin cord whipped out of the end of the wand. It wrapped around the Thren's legs, but the bird flapped its wings and launched itself into the air. Alexandra reached out and grabbed the other end of the cord. Her lunge almost unbalanced her, which would have toppled her into the Thren's nest and possibly over the edge of the cliff.

The Thren flew about wildly, tethered by the cord Alexandra held. Its beak opened and Alexandra felt more shivers, but she managed to cast another Incarcerous Spell, this time binding the Thren's wings. It fell to its nest, and Alexandra put a hand gently on its body to hold it down.

As she reached into her pack, the Thren began pecking at her wrist, hard enough to hurt. It wasn't an owl or a parrot, but it did have a sharp and pointed beak, and by the time Alexandra had pulled out the gleaming metal cage Livia had given her for Charlie, the bird had drawn blood. Alexandra grimaced, opened the door, and as gently as she could, forced the Thren inside. Its vicious little beak had opened several more small wounds on the back of her hand and her fingers before she finally got the door closed and latched.

It took two tries to dispel the Incarcerous Spells. When the cords vanished, the Thren beat its wings and threw itself against the bars of the cage. Alexandra worried that it might hurt itself in its desperation to escape, but after a few minutes of frantic struggle, it folded its wings again and sat huffing and glowering.

"I'm sorry," Alexandra said. "I only need to borrow you for a little bit, and then I'll let you go."

She doubted the Thren was even half as smart as Charlie, and was certain it didn't understand a word she said, but her voice didn't calm it — it flapped around inside the cage some more, pecked at the door, and then raised its head in what Alexandra imagined to be a despairing cry.

She activated the Silencing Charm on the cage, then dug one bleeding fingernail into the mess of wax in her right ear and carefully began prying it loose. It took a few minutes to pull all the wax out, and it was as if the curtain fell away from the world once more. Wind blew, birds hooted distantly, cicadas buzzed, and the cage made a slight sound as it rocked back and forth with the Thren's motions. But from within the cage, no sound emerged. The Silencing Charm was perfectly effective.

"Charlie," Alexandra murmured.

By the time she had cleaned the wax out of her other ear — a somewhat more difficult task, as this time it didn't want to all come out in one piece — Charlie had landed atop the cage, provoking more outraged commotion from the bird within.

"Don't tease him," Alexandra said. She assumed the Thren was male; bright plumage and a nest waiting for a co-occupant made that likely.

"Pretty bird," Charlie said.

"Yes." Alexandra rose to her feet. She picked up her backpack and put it on. Then she picked up the cage, and stood on the cliff looking at the steep drop below.

"Crazy!" Charlie said, perhaps surmising with some avian instinct what she was about to do.

"I've done it before," Alexandra whispered.

A Falling Charm was simple magic. The basswood wand made casting even simple charms like stirring oatmeal with a straw, but it was better than doggerel verse. She made the motions and spoke the words twice as slowly and carefully as usual, and then, without giving herself an opportunity to second-guess herself or double-check her work or undo the magic by trying to redo it — since she would never actually know whether it worked until she was falling — she stepped off the cliff and fell.