Later, Margaret set about preparing a measly supper, noisily putting on the table no fish (Minka had tossed it out the window) but bread and ale and turnip soup. Reflected in the murky broth, Margaret’s face looked back at her in a very un-magic way.

“I know what you’re thinking, Mags,” Minka said with a sidelong glance, “but the mirror is mine, and I’ve hidden it away. For what if the magic has a limit?” she wondered aloud. “I must be sparing. I must mete it out like salt.” She spent the rest of the evening planning how best to conserve the magic.

Maggie said nothing and bided her time.

When the hearth fires were banked and the lights extinguished, Margaret dressed in both her kirtles, the russet and the gray, and quietly put into her satchel her few belongings: an extra pair of hose with a hole she’d yet to mend, the scrap of soft green velvet from the dress she’d been found in as a babe, a pretty blue feather, and a cup. Up in her sleeping loft, Margaret lay on her straw pallet, clutching the satchel, and waited for Minka’s snoring to begin.

There. Like the snort of the peddler’s nag.

A quick search turned up the mirror under Minka’s mattress ticking. Another moment and she had it in her hands. She peered into its surface but could see nothing in the dark. She shoved it in her satchel. Minka groaned and rolled over. Margaret froze, but Minka slept on. She thought to shove her hand again beneath the mattress, and a slow smile spread across her lips as her fingers found what they sought: the little horn comb. Into the satchel with it.

Grab the food, don the cloak. Done. Margaret reached for the latch, pulled open the door, turned. Her gaze moved slowly about the room, blue-lit by the moon: the table and the hard bench, the heavy cauldron on the hearth for brewing day, every common thing silvered and softened in the indistinct light. She fancied this must be like looking out from inside the mirror.

She swallowed hard. The silence of the house seemed a reproach. By what faith did she believe herself fit for such a journey?

An arrow of guilt shot through her at leaving the one who, though bitter and mean, was nevertheless her caretaker and companion. She would have liked to explain. To say, after all, farewell and Godspeed. If she could write, she would have left a message. But Margaret could not write, nor could Minka read.

Minka gave a fart and snorted in her sleep. Margaret would not be sentimental. Pinning her cloak close about her throat, she lurched crookedly out the door into the dark night. Even without her crutch she felt unexpectedly strong: if she ran afoul of Thomas the miller’s son this night, she did believe she’d box his ears.

Margaret kept to the shadows and hastened to Market Cross, for it was late and the taverns would be closing. Her plans went only as far as finding the peddler Bilious and hoping he could be persuaded to travel west, the way toward Knightsbridge.

Bilious was not to be found. A blow, to be sure, and again Margaret thought to turn back. She saw a couple of travelers and asked them where they were going; when they referred to cities and townships she thought to be east, she hurried away without answering their questions.

But a new scheme presented itself soon enough. Margaret listened to the men outside the tavern, most of them drunk on ale and chatty as geese. The tinker who spoke of Bumbles Green, he would be traveling west. It was a simple matter to find the man’s cart, with its collections of shears and snips and nippers for patching pots and things. Simple enough to climb into the back and conceal herself there beneath a heavy canvas. Simple enough to pray she’d not be discovered, for what else could she do?

She must have slept, for the movement of the cart woke her some hours later. Dawn neared, and she was on her way.

Margaret’s thoughts bounced along with the cartwheels, rolling over and over her circumstances. She was a fool to venture out alone and without protection on the road. What if she never found her way to where she was bound? What if she was wrong about the man being in Knightsbridge? Minka would never take her back. Margaret was terrified to end like Beady Bone, wandering and begging, beaten and bloodied. She could leap from the tinker’s cart even now and soon be back at home on her bed of straw in the attic, and no one the wiser, including herself. She sat up straight in the cart and held her satchel to her chest, watching the road run away.

She might still jump from the tinker’s wagon! Should she?

As if deciding for her, the horse gathered sudden speed; the resulting jolt pitched her onto her back in the wagon. The clomp of the horse’s hooves, the ka-lump of the rolling cartwheels, and the very beating of her heart carried her farther and farther from everything she knew.