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“Once upon a time,' I whispered, "there was a girl who got away.' The light burned a little less brightly through my lids. Maybe. 'Once upon a time there was a girl who changed her fate,' I said, louder. The words ran together like beads on a string. Like a story, or a bridge I could climb-- up, up, up, like a nursery-rhyme spider. 'She grew up like a fugitive, because her life belonged to another place." I held my fingertips out, feeling the ice of them melt the wall's fine, hot fizzing. 'She remembered her real mother, far away on an Earth made of particles and elements and /reason/. Not stories. And she ripped a hole in the world so she could find her way home. And she lived happily ever after in a place far, far from the Hinterland,' I said. I begged. 'And the freeze left her skin. And she found her real mother in the world where she had left her.' Slowly, slowly, I opened my eyes.” — Melissa Albert