Gemma checks and rechecks the stories and songs, but she can’t find anything that says you have to go back.

There’s a lot of stuff about how you should, but most of it is about souls, and Gemma is pretty sure she doesn’t believe in that shit. Souls are for people who fit, and she never has. Souls are what they threaten when you don’t do what you should. When you don’t think what you should. And she never. Ever. Has.

None of the old songs about how terrible it is to stay in Faerie—there’s the f-word, better not: to stay under the hill, then—none of those were by people who did. At least, not that she can find. It’s hard to be sure who wrote songs that old. New songs don’t talk about it, they talk about your lips, ooh ooh baby, or about your soul, ooh ooh Jesus, not about true Thomas awaking on the cold hillside. But for all that Thomas was supposed to be the rhymer, none of the songs she can find are signed by T. Rhymer saying, “Wow, was this a bad idea, I definitely would not do it again.”

Which is good to know.

Because Gemma does not plan on coming back.

She knows what the people who talk about kinder, küche, kirche want for girls like her—for anybody, really—and it is nothing good.

Also, they didn’t make Dorothy Gale come back. She remembers that part of the Oz books: Dorothy and Toto came back briefly, they picked up her chicken Bill and Uncle Henry and Auntie Em, and they fucked off back to Oz forever and ever. Which Gemma thinks is pretty badass, and if she gets the chance to take Aunt Marie with her she absolutely will. But not if she has to stop first. Not if there’s a chance she’ll miss it.

A part of her thinks she should live without attachments. So that when she makes it happen, the tornado or whatever it is, nobody misses her. Then she thinks: actually, isn’t it better that she misses her piano teacher who died, that she misses her college friend who moved to Denmark and never has time to video chat. And it is. So she goes ahead and makes friends as they come. She has a knitting circle and a brunch group. They’re nice, but she’s waiting for her moment.

It’s not a tornado, and it’s not a door. It is, improbably, the end of a rainbow, and a pot of gold. When she plunges her hand into the gold and looks up again, the world around her is changed.

It is much colder than she expected.

The gold in her hands gets very cold, very quickly. She thrusts it in her pockets, but then there’s nowhere to put her hands as she walks. This is not what she expected at all. Except that also it is, because everything has a little sparkle to it, everything shines, everything smells fresh. Gemma can’t stop shivering. She also can’t stop smiling.

She finds a town, which is radiantly blue and purple, with everything slightly bigger than home. The nearest building looks like an old-fashioned general store. When she steps inside it still looks like one, but more than half the people there are seven and a half feet tall, with green skin and four arms.

Okay. So this is the real deal. The gold, the snow, the sparkles, all of it felt faintly unreal, but this—this is the most deeply real and the most bizarrely unreal thing she’s ever experienced. She takes a deep breath but one of the green people speaks first. “New here, I see, no coat.” They flip a purple striped greatcoat at her. She fumbles it, almost drops it. Graceful first impression, Gem. “What’s your name?”

“Aar—Gemma,” she says. No one will argue with her real name now. She never has to use the other name again. Too late she has thoughts about telling your real name to the magic people and all the warnings the stories have about that. But most of the warnings the stories give are about not doing things so you don’t have to stay, so—no worries. Gemma it is. The coat settles around her shoulders like the best embrace she’s ever felt. It fits with improbable perfection.

Someone else offers her a piece of fruit. It looks like an apple. She takes it. It tastes great, like a cross between an apple and a raspberry, and she is not the least bit worried. The other humans don’t look worried, either, or blissed-out, or . . . really anything other than chill, and slightly chilly, because she’s let in a draft with her.

“Right, so somebody’s got to show Gemma where the newbie housing is,” said the coat donor. “Magic lessons at noon. That’s when the sun is overhead, in case they messed up time where you’re from.”

Magic lessons at noon. They had messed up time where Gemma is from, but this? This is exactly what it’s supposed to be.

The magic lessons are harder than she expects, and while she doesn’t get tired of the apple-raspberries, exactly, there’s less variety of food unless you learn to do stuff with it, which takes longer than she expected. The other thing that isn’t quite what she expected is that none of the green people really . . . talk to her. They’re not shunning her, per se. They answer questions, they’re perfectly polite. They just . . . are done talking, when they finish with business. And then they go into their own houses. And Gemma is not invited.

With the perfect purple striped greatcoat she’s brave enough to venture into the surrounding lands, which are great. There are weird flying fish-birds. There are terrifyingly bold purple squirrel things that maybe speak a rudimentary form of language? Or maybe not? Some forms of water flow uphill and she does not touch them, not yet. She’s going to wait until she can bring a friend who can tell her whether they’re safe, what the heck they’re doing, what the difference is in kinds of water, if there is one.

She’s going to wait until she has a friend.

That’s taking longer than she expected.

Finally she approaches Chris, one of the tannish-brown two-armed humans, and says, “What am I doing wrong?”

“Hmm?” says Chris. “I think you’re not straightening your wrist on the follow-through but you’re doing okay. Isn’t the spell keeping your feet warm? I thought it was working for you.”

“I don’t mean that,” says Gemma. “I mean with the people here.”

Chris lets out a big full body sigh. “Oh. Oh, that. I forgot about that.” Gemma is about to despair when they say, “Come on around to my house. We can talk.”

Chris makes toast. Why has Gemma never thought of toast? It’s the best toast. So they both eat their toast, and they drink some tea, which tastes like the tea from home if it was infused with lemons and dreams.

“Okay,” says Chris. “The people here take a minute. It’s not anything you’re doing or not doing. It doesn’t occur to them that you might want something they’re not doing. You’ve got a house, you’ve got food, you’ve got magic lessons, eventually you’ll know them enough better that they’ll start to notice other things. They just take longer. Everything happens slower here.”

“Oh,” says Gemma, feeling silly.

“How long have you been here? Like, Earth time?”

“Four months.”

“That’s maybe one month. Okay? Do you like it otherwise?”

“Yeah! Yeah, I really . . . yeah.”

“So just be patient. Maybe do some things to show them you like them.”

“I don’t even know what I have to offer here,” says Gemma, a little desperately. “Their feet are already warm, they know that spell.”

Chris laughs. “Not like that. What did you do at home? Like, hobbies?”

“I had a knitting circle?”

“Oh, great!” says Chris. “That’s always welcome. Hats, scarves—”

“Mittens!” says Gemma. “They have four hands, they must always need mittens!”

“Now you’re getting it! Make your neighbors some mittens.” Chris peered at her. “Did you . . . forget that you knew stuff, back home? Magic is great, but it’s not the only thing. The other stuff you did still counts. Use it.”

Gemma thanks them fervently, for that and for the toast. She goes home, to the newbie quarters that feel less new and less shaky. Maybe she should have asked Chris about going for a walk to look at the water. Maybe that can come later. Maybe the first scarf should be for Chris, as a thank-you.

“Mittens,” she repeats. “I can make them mittens. I am learning magic. But I can still make them mittens.” The spell to keep her feet warm is very reliable. Toast here tastes better than toast did at home, and if she’s good with the mittens, maybe somebody will give her something to put on the toast, although it’s great plain. There’s all the time in the world to figure out the water, the fruit, whatever she hasn’t found yet.

It is month two under the rainbow. And Gemma is just getting started.