I came to rest against the beveled surface of a building, gasping for air. The wind howled angrily back at me, as if disappointed that I had given up so easily. The rain soaked straight through to my bones and caused my stubborn hair to cling to my cheeks. I took a deep, steadying breath. The more upset I let myself become, the worse the storm seemed to be. I needed a few moments to think, I told myself, bringing my hands to my face.

I had to go back to North. It wasn’t a choice; no matter how many times I stormed away, it did not change the situation in Cliffton. What was I running toward? Soldiers? A village that was no longer standing?

When I closed my eyes, I could see everything so clearly. The sun-bleached mud houses, the shadows the foothills cast over the valley, the mountains that scraped the very sky—those things were a part of me. I had spent so long dreaming about the day I would leave, but I had never imagined the world to be as it was. For so long I had thought of those mountains as nothing more than the barrier that kept me from my freedom…but the truth was, they had kept so much of the world’s wickedness out. Times had been hard before the rain, but we had managed. There had been no angry crowds, vile wizards, or drunken brutes. There had been family and love.

But there hadn’t been hope. There hadn’t been a dream to keep me there. There had been only the same of everything I had known, and a suffocating familiarity.

I needed to escape the storm.

Across the street, a small OPEN sign hung on the outside of a great wooden door, clattering noisily whenever the wind brushed by. Thank you, Astraea, I thought, wiping the rain from my eyes. I struggled to pull the door open against the wind and barely managed to slip inside before the storm slammed it shut behind me.

It took me a few moments to gather my wits enough to recognize the shop I had wandered into. I had been in this particular building earlier in the day, making a delivery of sand to Mr. Monticelli, the glassblower. He had been so completely involved in his work that he hadn’t even looked up as I dropped the sack of sand on the floor.

He was still working, hours later, though this time he did spare a glance in my direction.

“I see you have come back to me,” he said, in a strangely accented voice. “Terrible storm we are having, no? Come in, come in.”

I nodded, taking a few steps closer to his fire. The rain, dripping from my hair and clothes, collected in a puddle on the stone floor.

Mr. Monticelli’s careful hands curled around one end of a large staff, expertly shaping a glowing ball of molten glass against a stone table. I stood there and watched as the shape of a cat began to emerge.

“You do it so perfectly,” I said. “Sometimes it takes me three or four tries to get a blanket right on my loom.”

He laughed. “I’ll tell you my secret: steady hands, eyes always on the art, mind always on the art. No matter how many times I’ve done it. Steady hands, careful focus. Remember that.”

I nodded, and Mr. Monticelli held up the small figurine for my inspection. There was still a faint pink glow at its core, but the edges had been pointed and darkened by ancient tools. A slant of light struck the glass figurines in the shop and set the whole place aglow.

“It’s not so different from weaving,” Mr. Monticelli said. I nodded. Focusing was so difficult when I wove; my hands knew exactly what to do, but my thoughts and emotions were usually somewhere else.

“Do you know any of the master weavers?” I asked. He took the cat back and held it up to the fire to examine it.

“Mr. Monticelli?” I said when he didn’t respond. His thick black eyebrows drew together with his frown.

“Thinking, thinking,” he said. “I am thinking.”

There must not have been many master weavers in Fairwell if he couldn’t think of even one. Maybe they had moved on to another, quieter city? I knew from experience that it was difficult to concentrate with the noise and bustle of the streets.

“Ah!” Mr. Monticelli slapped his hand down on the table. “We will go ask Colar!”

“Colar?” I repeated.

The glassblower lifted his heavy apron over his head and used it to wipe the sweat from his face.

“He is my sister’s husband,” he explained. “Bit of…how do you say…bit of air in the head. No, head in the air?”

I shrugged.

“Bah,” he said, taking my arm. “Let me tell you, where I come from, a man who does not use his hands for his job is no man at all. Books! Bah! My sister must have air in her head, too, to marry such a man.”

I looked down.

“No? Not even a smile for me?” he asked, studying my face.

“Not today, I’m afraid.”

He patted my head fondly, the way my father sometimes did, and the knot in my stomach became unbearable. The only thing keeping me from tears was the confusion and anger I felt toward North. About the way he had treated me, about what was plaguing him, about why he had taken me in the first place.

For a moment I was afraid we would be heading back out into the rain, which was still coming down hard enough to flood the deserted streets. Instead, Mr. Monticelli led me through the maze of shelves and cases in his dark shop to yet another door. This one, however, he kicked open, taking obvious pleasure in the way his brother-in-law jumped at the noise.

Connecting shops, I thought as I stepped through the doorway and into a different world. Where Mr. Monticelli’s shop had been dark and smoky, I had to squint my eyes against the sudden onslaught of brightness in Mr. Colar’s shop. Gone was the smell of fire, replaced by the familiar, comforting odor of old parchment and leather-bound volumes and bookshelves lining every wall. A bookshop and a glass shop were not an obvious pair—but, then, neither were their two owners.