She left the bakery tidy, the next morning. It was the least she could do. She even scraped the latest sludge off the shelf below the mother-of-bread.

  How the hell did that stuff keep getting so big, anyway?

  Not her problem. Not her business. Not her nothing.

  When everything was as clean as she could make it, she stood in the middle of the room, supplies at her feet, hands on her hips.

  “Not like you ever came out and said hello, but this is goodbye, I guess.”

  The bakery was silent. Even the red embers in the oven seemed to be holding their breath.

  Runa waited another moment, then sighed and bent to pick up her gear. “All right,” she said, to no one in particular. “Best of luck with it. Whatever it is you’re doing here.”

  She slung the bag over her shoulder and headed out. As she passed the threshold, she thought she picked up on the slightest hint of disapproval emanating from behind her.

  Outside, the pre-dawn light seemed… different. She lifted her head to sniff the air. It smelled different, too. In a good way. Sweeter, greener.

  Or maybe she was making it up, because she was finally getting out of here.

  She tried to feel good about it. Tried to muster a bit of energy. Instead the weight on her shoulders seemed to get heavier, which was ridiculous, because she was leaving with barely more than she’d stumbled into town with. A few extra blankets that could double as cloaks. Inedible bread that could double as snow-shoes.

  She squared her shoulders. Tavern first. Then she would leave Pothollow behind her.

  The tavern was quiet. Runa let herself in, scanning the floors before she opened the door fully. No one had slept in the dining room that night.

  Good, she told herself. The thought that the damage caused by the Cauldron tempest had been fixed felt… tidy. The same as tidying away all trace of herself in the bakery.

  She realized she was frowning, and got control of her expression before she rapped on the door to Junilla’s quarters.

  “The world had better be ending,” the innkeeper growled as she opened the door. “Oh. Runa. No bread today?”

  “I left it in the front.”

  “Ah…” Junilla peered at her. “Something’s different, though.”

  “I’m heading out,” Runa explained. “Corvin fixed my arm, so there’s nothing keeping me here. So, uh. Look, I’ve left the fire banked in the bakery. Didn’t know if anyone would be moving in after I left, but figured I might as well leave the place warm.”

  “No one’s going to set foot in that place,” Junilla said, rubbing her eyes. For the first time since Runa had met her, she looked tired. “Place is haunted—ah, forget I said that. I can’t change your mind?”

  Runa shook her head silently. It didn’t seem like enough. The people of Pothollow had welcomed her in a way that was so strangely… welcoming.

  And here she was, vanishing before dawn.

  “This isn’t where I’m meant to be,” she grumbled at last.

  “Hm.” Junilla narrowed her eyes. “Well, if your path ever brings you back this side of the Cauldron, you know where to find us.”

  Outside, the air was another shade or two closer to light enough to see by. The village was quiet. A cat stalked along a rooftop, pawing at something in the thatch; birds poked their heads up, saw either the cat or the lack of sunlight, and decided the morning chorus wasn’t worth it.

  The Pothollow of a week ago was unrecognizable. As changed as though it was a part of the Cauldron itself, transforming from snow-bound winter to hot summer. Where the ice had snap-frozen green and living things, green and living things had grown back with a vengeance. Cottage gardens burst with plants Runa might have recognized if she’d ever been a gardener. Small, un-cursed animal noises came from the places where, un-cursed small animals made their homes—chicken coops, front steps, rooftops.

  It was as though the snow had never been there. And once Runa left, it would be as though she’d never been here, either.

  She passed the final house on the way out of the village, and realized she wasn’t the only one up before the dawn. A shuffling figure was making its way up the mountain road.

  “Morning, Runa, girl! You’re up early.”

  “Morning, Tremblewood. I could say the same to you.”

  “Say I’m up late instead.” The old woman cackled. “No point wasting time on a day like this, is there? And where are you off to?”

  Runa swallowed back a sigh. “Down the mountain. My arm’s fixed now, so—”

  “Down the mountain? Why would you go down the mountain?”

  Runa frowned. “Because that’s the easiest path back to the Cauldron.”

  Tremblewood laughed. “Not anymore, it isn’t. Did you forget to open your eyes when you fell out of bed this morning? Turn around.”

  The hairs on the back of Runa’s neck prickled.

  She turned around.

  And behind her, the sun was shining not on a wall of ice, not over a towering range of mountains clustered too close together—but over the rocky lip of the Cauldron, with only sky behind it.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “The Cauldron stirred.” She stood, mouth slightly agape, and shook her head. “The—how? When? Why didn’t I feel it?”

  “By Vellugar’s kindness, we are not hurt nor harmed by the evils she imprisons within the Cauldron,” Widow Tremblewood recited with absent piety.

  “That wasn’t the case with the snowstorm!”

  “Ehh.” The old woman waved her complaint away. “Can’t have everything, can we? Then we’d forget to be grateful when things do work right.”

  And if it’s the Starfire Seas next time? Runa worked her jaw. Widow Tremblewood was awfully casual for someone who lived on the edge of the Cauldron.

  Everyone in Pothollow was.

  “All right,” she said out loud. “Up the mountain, then.”

  And she’d better start off by making sure whatever had replaced the ice wall wasn’t a worse neighbor to show up on the village’s doorstep.

  The village was starting to wake up now. Runa pushed away a prickle of self-consciousness as she headed back up the road, past the too-low village wall to where the lush greenery that surrounded Pothollow thinned out to volcanic rubble. Loose rock shifted under her boots. The hillside ahead cut off suddenly, but instead of the ice wall that had blocked it before, the Rim fell away below, revealing the patchwork of the Cauldron in all its glory.

  Not glory. All its… cursedness.

  Her stomach tightened for more reason than one. With the ice gone, she got her first good look at how close Pothollow was to the rim.

  The answer? Really bloody close.

  She’d thought it was the ice looming overhead that had made the village look ridiculously close to the edge. Nope, it just really was that close. They’d been a handful of yards from being pulled into the Cauldron itself.

  It did happen. Buildings or dwellings got caught in the magic that pulled cursed lands in, and ended up in the pot. They bobbled around by themselves or trapped within the region they’d been dragged in with. The same magic that kept the separate lands from combining kept them from being absorbed by whatever curse they’d ridden in. It made them good campsites. But always… wrong. Curseless things weren’t meant to be in the Cauldron.

  And that had almost been Pothollow.

  Runa mentally paced out the distance. Thirty of her strides from the inanely short village wall, up shingle and dirt to the point where the rocky ground broke suddenly away. She looked back. The join where land that had once been sitting pretty down in the plains now nestled in with the caldera was clear. One side, weedy grass and the occasional dandelion. The other, rock and scree.

  Runa shaded her eyes with one hand. In the distance, mountains rumbled gently against once another. The Greensward slithered between them, eel-like, disappearing into the Night.

  Just beneath the Rim, though, only a short jump away? The verdant slopes, the criss-cross of silver brooks… she knew these lands.

  “The Meadowsweet,” she murmured.

  “As beautiful as ever,” Widow Tremblewood replied, echoing her gentle tone.

  Runa shot her a sideways look. “You know half the vegetation in there will kill you?”

  “Ah, but half won’t. And if my count’s correct, at least one in three of those wee bubbling brooks are not home to clawed monstrosities just waiting to pull you down into surprisingly deep depths.” Widow Tremblewood rolled up her sleeves. “D’you see this? Can you believe it?”

  Runa wasn’t entirely sure what she was meant to be seeing. She gave a noncommittal grunt.

  “Six months at least since we’ve seen the Meadowsweet, and no one even up to see it! We’ll soon fix that!” Blazing with determination, the little old human marched off, banging on doors and shouting to her sleeping neighbours to stop wasting the day.

  Runa barely heard her.

  The ice wall was gone. The mountains had receded. Assuming the black fortress had muscled them out of the way in the first place, this must mean that the geological politics of the Cauldron had evened out again.

  Despite her warning to Widow Tremblewood, the Meadowsweet was one of the Cauldron’s least fatal regions. Sure, you had to watch your step, but that went for a lot of places outside of the Cauldron, too.

  Where the Meadowsweet went, the Bay of Teeth often followed. Runa’s mind bounded ahead, effortlessly stitching together possible routes. People thought the cursed lands trapped in the Cauldron shifted around each other at random, but that wasn’t true. There were patterns. Some regions seemed more compatible with others. Some hated each other. Some behaved like wary cats, circling and circling, never getting closer but never letting the other out of their sight, either.

  She’d left her group in the Thornwaste, or what was left of it. There was no sign of it now. It could be hiding behind the Night, though that seemed unlikely. The Night preferred to flit around places with gentler, more beguilable edges.

  She counted and discounted regions in her head. Meadowsweet, Teeth, Screaming Anguish or Bonesetter’s Landing… Greensward. Where could she go first, that would give her the best vantage point to see where the Thornwaste was hiding?

  If it was even there.

  She absently pulled the charms from under her shirt and held them in one hand. No point avoiding the facts. The last she’d seen of the Thornwaste, it had been cut to ribbons.

  Then there was the fact that even if the Thornwaste had lumped itself back together, her clients might not be on it. She was no stranger to adventurers thinking that a month or two in the Cauldron made them experts on the place. They could have wandered themselves into all sorts of trouble.

  Come to think of it, she wouldn’t put it past them to have wandered straight into that creepy black fortress. Wizards loved that shit.

  Behind her, the village was waking up. Lights flickered behind shutters, shutters were thrown open, and people stared blearily out into the morning sun, bright and unfiltered through magical ice.

  She was leaving in a hell of a better state than she’d arrived. The gate was in better condition, too. Not that she knew what it had been like before she battered it down, but Fennewic and her boys had repaired it well enough that it looked like it might put up a fight against her shoulder next time.

  Not that there would be a next time. And on the slim possibility she found herself on this side of the Cauldron again, she would jump the fence, not resort to property damage to get into town.

  The town gate was fixed. The bakery door was fixed, and the bakery was as tidy as though she’d never set foot in it. Tidier, even.

  Again, she thought: It would be as though she’d never been here.

  Her chest wrenched strangely at that, and she shook her head at herself. What, was she upset about the fact that all the damage she’d done had been fixed? Did she want the villagers to look at their busted town gate and think, ah, that’s from when that bloody half-troll came to visit?

  She perched on the edge. There were the mountains—some of them, anyway, trundling slowly around each other deeper down in the Cauldron. Pockets of smoke and eerie green fog smudged the patchwork of the lands around them. Blackened bone rising from jewel-encrusted caves, dunes that hunted each other slowly across the landscape… Runa adjusted her mental map. That might be the Thornwaste, out beyond the fog. A small stone bridge bumped along the border between a noxious swamp and dense forest, one of those tagalong uncursed structures. She could camp there, if she made it that far before nightfall.

  It was all so familiar. And closest of all, the Sweetmeadow lay rolled out before her, a few feet and a whole world away.

  Runa jumped.

  Her boots hit soft earth.

  There I am. Right here where I belong.

  A burgeoning flower suckered onto her shin. She smacked it away with her lightstick, and found a patch of clear grass. Something odd caught her eye over the next rolling hill—a strange straightness to the greenery.

  She bet Anklopher would have something to say about that. About how it was impossible, probably.

  Runa sighted her route—south-west towards the highest of the Sweetmeadow’s gentle hills, to start with, and then she’d see what the swamp was up to. She bent to dig her fingers into the soil.

  And stopped, as magic crackled around her neck.

  This wasn’t the irritating buzz of injured client. It was more definitive than that. A single, decisive snap.

  Enchantment ended.