Tobias steps back from the seam and turns to the fairy. He opens his mouth — but what words fit a question like this? She drifts closer, violet eyes unblinking. He tries anyway: "What's down there?" She tilts her head and opens her mouth in a soundless laugh — not mocking, but delighted, the way someone laughs at a question with a very long answer. Then she floats level with his temple and presses one small hand against it. He doesn't hear words. Something else arrives instead: a vast hall beneath the roots of things, its ceiling swallowed by dark, and two enormous figures of woven light sitting across from each other as though in the middle of a game that has lasted since before the forest was a forest. The image dissolves as quickly as it came. The fairy withdraws her hand, shakes it once as if dusting away crumbs, and points at the gap — then at Tobias — then at the gap again.