Longtooth theorized that magic itself leaked from this place to ours. She called such soft spots ‘portals’. Clatwitt disagreed on the name, he preferred ‘thresholds’, but agreed on their function. He went on to theorize that thresholds inhabit the ‘tween’, as in places "in between", so that they’re not really one place at all, like a hallway, stairwell or doorway, or even the lip from a pathway to the rest of the woods. If one knows where to look, Clatwitt wrote, then thresholds are as numerous as days and nights, and just as scarce.
A powerful Queen rules the other realm. She is said to be ever youthful and beautiful, and if she suspects a portal is particularly thin, so that a window to the other land opens to mortal man, then she sends a …show more content…
Then Alcants drifted over to them, most likely suspicious of their whispered conversation, and James was forced to work it out on his own. Though he couldn’t pinpoint why, he felt the symbol was important, like a guide to link larger pieces in a puzzle he couldn’t see so much as feel. In the end, he choose the shortest path. He wouldn’t trick or truck with partial fact--he’d ask the newt directly. It had worked with magic and it would work again, even if the light between straight talk and twisted agenda seemed slimmer by the day.
James spent the morning surveying distances between himself and the newt, the newt and Alcants, their party and the Sphinx, and all points on, above, and parallel to the Earth’s surface. Although he hoped to find a calm and private moment, he quickly found that he may as well hoped to find cake and pastries. Since their morning conversation, a certain nervousness had descended, and everyone clumped together, jumping at the merest rustle or scratch of