Although it had gone up and away and out of sight of the Gibbses' house, the carriage did not quite make it among the clouds. Partway into its ascent, Lucian looked back from his driver's seat and delivered the news.

I'm afraid we have a problem.

What is it, Lucky?

The unicorns are very unhappy. They say we're carrying too much weight.

Excuse me?

I didn't mean to imply-

I know what you meant. Don't worry, this always happens with outsiders. She'll get lighter as we go. In the mean, hold true until we approach the town line. From there, we can go by the Moat.

At your word.

And indeed, he followed her instruction to the letter. And the unicorns too played their part so that, soon enough, the whole carriage was brought into the great mists surrounding the town of Tolemac proper. As they bounced and raced and tumbled through the wood, Cindy looked out her window and saw, through the blur and the mist, some little creatures she had never seen before. Some swung from tree to tree. Others crawled, or more skipped, across the ground. Others flew, although not so high as to go beyond the ceiling of the mist. That said, however they moved, it was perfectly clear, even through the blur and the mist, that they were following the carriage as best they could.

Before long, the carriage began going uphill again, and the creatures stopped following them and Cindy got the sense that it was because they somehow stopped being able to. In fact, after a certain point, the creatures seemed as though they could no longer see the passing party.

As they went up and up above the mist, Cindy could see more clearly, the grander scheme of things. The town, de facto, sat on a very large tableland that rose above a very large forest which was itself seemingly nested inside a cloud. The clean, white puffs raced, encircled and danced around every tree like autocars in a metropolis. In that course, some were rather solidly parked in awkward spaces but since you could move through these clouds, they were less of a nuisance. The trees themselves- the skyscrapers of the woodland city -were of many different heights and shades of green the tips of the trees of darkest green- the very tallest among them -only stretched as high as the base of the tableland.

The borders of the misty forest stretched from horizon to horizon and the only piece of proper earth which could be seen to rise above the mists was the tableland of Tolemac proper. This was why the land was called Tolemac since the word meant something like "Land from the Mist" in Old Arduskan. As a matter of fact, the whole wood was technically part of the same domain as the town but the mists were so troublesome that the Old Lord Moran and his fellows contented themselves with settling only on the tableland, which they then called Tolemac after renaming the region itself Greater Tolemac with the intention of leaving the forest (more or less) alone. That isn't to say that they didn't go out to hunt or chop down trees or collect stones or rescue stupid little children who wandered off, but the general practice was to stay in the safer, elevated lands and avoid the wilderness which would later be called the Moat.

From higher and higher ground, Cindy could see the train which had been built by a certain Master Pelton who was the great-grandson of the original Captain Gibbs; the one who had been granted amnesty by a Who-ish King of old in exchange for- actually, that is quite another tale; and, in any case, none of the Gibbses after the good Captain knew of their heritage on account of aristocratic secrecy. The train itself, to keep the mist from being a hassle to the conductor, ran over a great bridge of greystone bricks which had been built up from the forest floor to a little higher than the surface of the tableland so that the path it offered its passengers looked over even the tallest of Tolemacan trees.

From the very beginning, when they took flight, Cindy's reactions to the journey had been nothing short of merry. And though Chainbreaker no longer had that gift of surprise which cast a spell of beauty over every new thing, she suddenly found herself once more able to delight in the homeward route by way of Cindy's delight. Then Cindy's delight changed into sheer terror and so too did Chainbreaker's delight change- only hers to amusement. The incline of the hill- which had taken them far above the Moat -proved itself terrifically steep and actually- for the first few minutes -it became steeper still with every passing moment of ascent. And more frightful was the fact that the girl had no clue where such a hill- or, to be more accurate, cliff -had come from.

How could any climb so ridiculous be invisible from town?

And, indeed, she had never seen it before. Not even during the flight before the carriage's descent into the Moat, did she once notice any wall of so absurd a height. In time, the incline became- indisputably -a vertical line upwards. That was when the climb stopped becoming steeper for a time. The floor which had been beneath them had become a very large wall far behind them, and yet neither the unicorns nor the carriage seemed to have any trouble not-falling as they raced ahead until the former ground and even the highest points of the tableland and town disappeared entirely behind the new horizon.

Then they arrived at the penultimate part of the climb: a ledge stretching out from the mountaintop and reaching out over the edge until it had become- in the case of the vertical passengers -a forward (and technically, upward) wall. Arriving at the foot of the wall, a change took place which was not unlike the change from up-hill climb to vertical drive. In a matter of moments, the carriage and all inside were (in comparison with the Whos then walking about in Tolemac) upside down and passing atop the bottom side of the ledge. Then they arrived at the edge and over the edge they went as if it were merely the tip of a hill. And when they had gone over the tip, and they had become (again) right-side-up in relation to the Moat, Lucian and the unicorns proceeded to go ever faster and faster to the other side of the mountaintop by a straight and long and narrow way. Though they were moving faster, then, than Cindy had ever remembered moving before, it was still quite some time before they reached the other end and when the terrifically bumpy and windy and heart-racingly jolly sprint had ended, the unicorns- and the carriage after them -leapt, at full speed, off the edge and over the other side. At the thrill, Lucian let out a series of triumphant shouts. No matter how often he made such a journey, he never got bored of it.

Heeee-raaaaaaah!

What a strange person! (and she meant it in the best way)

Then a peculiar thing happened- and by peculiar, I, of course, mean peculiar to Cindy since Chainbreaker and Lucian fully expected it to happen -the unicorns and the carriage kept on going right-side-up. Although the mountaintop had ended, and there seemed to be no hint of solid ground for miles beneath them, the ride kept on at level and- oddly enough -at a smoother pace than it had been on the mountaintop. So it was that Cindy, after mustering the courage to poke her head out of her newly reopened window, began to wonder if they were not driving on some sort of glass road.

With her head out of the car, she saw, in its fullness, the twilight sky from on high. Indeed, she and the sky beheld each other and both parties blushed at the sight; for just as the blue of the sky turned to a sun-brushed pink, so too did the weak and pitiful pale of the girl's cheeks turn to spring-time rose. Then the girl noticed it. Turning to her left, she saw it straight ahead: a very large cloud of grey interrupting the romantic decor and seeming certainly large enough to engulf them all. In a panic, she quickly retreated her head into the vehicle and raised up the window again, for fear of being drenched in an ocean of rain. However, the cloud was no ordinary cloud of rain or snow. In actuality, passing through it was rather like going through a tunnel; the main difference being that when the passing party arrived on the other side, there was nothing behind them but open air- not even the same very large cloud of grey.

Looking through her window at the world beyond the grey, she saw an open, night sky littered with twinkling stars in clusters and waves, and hues of purple and green and pink and blue painted precisely all around in a fashion which seemed wild but which felt exactly correct. And there seemed to be no ground beneath them. Only open sky. Curious, pulled her shoulders to the edges of the window and looked down to find the sun- having set -but it was gone.

Oh but it is a shame we did not make it through the cloud in time for sunset proper.

Perhaps tomorrow, I'll catch the sunrise.

Sweet girl! Look and see! We've come to Stallion's Rest!

At the very centre of it all, there hovered a grand floating island surrounded by spiked rocks on all sides of its perimeter and with a pool of very comfortable looking grass all around its surface. Between some of the rocks were roots which crawled all the way under and through the island (the underneath was quite like an upside down mountain) and met at the centre of the surface as they swirled together to form a massive tree trunk belonging to a very large oak tree. Even the smallest part of the trunk looked to be easily more than a battleship's length, and all its branches were stretched out to smaller islands with little houses on them. Then, crowning the whole thing was a dome of leaves sprinkled with diamonds which sparkled in witness to the evening sky. The dome of leaves called to the carriage, bringing it lower and lower until it looked as though a collision were about to occur. But when they came close enough, the leaves and diamonds parted for them and they passed through into the dome and landed on a pavement of white stone (with crooked rivers of black stains) which formed a sort of crossroads on the surface, dividing wide quarter-circles of grass- greener grass than Cindy herself had ever seen.

At the very centre of the leafen dome's insides stood the mighty Overseer palace- that echo of the Underground. The main part of the palace was a rectangle of sorts which looked like it could be used as a box to store four houses like her own. Then, on the north, south and west sides, were additional compartments which were not quite as long or as tall as the centrepiece but which were also rectangular. The eastern side also had a sort of compartment in the form of the entrance which was as long as the side it was on (it was on the narrower side of the main rectangle) but, by far, taller. In fact, it was mostly hollowed out and it only had three walls (one which it shared with the centrepiece). The side looking out of the entrance was completely open and revealed two passive pillars reaching all the way from the white stone pavement to the same level as the roof of the centrepiece. When the pillars reached the same level as the roof of the centrepiece, they stopped reaching and began bearing the load of the tallest part of the eastern compartment which stretched two or three more floors above the centrepiece.

The perimeter of every roof was lined up with battlements, as if archers once stood atop that palace to fight off hordes of enemies, and beneath the battlements (almost supporting the battlements) was a thick trail of leaves, scarcely littered with every colour of shining jewel, which made the whole palace look as though it were wearing an imperial diadem.

Every corner looked as though it were being held up by the wood of the tree reaching up from the trunk to hold up the two ends of every wall. And all the walls between the pillars of wood were made of stone, white as the pavement, and covered with ivy in their bottom half. Half, in this case, being an estimate since the parts of the walls literally covered varied from place to place with the effect of making the whole building to be an ark set upon open waters, with the greenery rising and falling like waves and tides against the open air of the fairest of stones.

At the centre of the tallest part of the eastern compartment, coloured light beamed forth from a round window of stained glass depicting two one-eyed serpents circling one another. One of the serpents was of a very deep blue and its eye was of a very light pink while the other was the reverse with a very light pink body and a very deep blue eye. And the trail of leaves wandered from the outline of the battlements only to encircle such a window.

When the carriage landed at last, Cindy was so wonderstruck that she forgot to wear her shoes after they slipped off during the drive through the Moat. When she dipped her foot down on the pavement, a jolliness came over her. After rubbing her sore feet against the stone, she felt her aches being soothed even through her gloves. Then she looked, and she saw the palace, and she became in awe of it. Its luminosity, its majesty, its whispers of history. Yet, of these things, she was not allowed to be in awe for very long.

Almost as if a competition were being conducted for her affections, the breeze came in between her and the palace and then it embraced her very tightly like an old and very darling fellow- sending the cloak round her neck into a flutter -and when she shut her eyes and breathed in the new atmosphere, she felt more awake and yet more at rest than she had ever remembered feeling her whole life.

Hullo there! Good to meet you too!

The temperature too was just right. It wasn't the sort of very cold winter breeze that made you shiver from head to toe (not that Cindy needed to be afraid of shivering). Nor was it the sort of hot air that, on a summer's day, made you wonder why you even bothered with a fan at all. It was the sort of gentle and cool breeze that made you feel as though you could go out in a sportshirt or in double layers and still be perfectly comfortable. And riding on the wind was a fragrance finer than any flower or perfume Cindy had ever known.

Furthermore, she found the grass and leaves dancing in accordance with the wind. That was when an idea came over her that really stole her attention from everything else. With a gentle press of her left foot, she began on the grass and though it was a little ticklish, it was the kind of ticklish that made you squeal with laughter for a moment before disappearing and allowing a feeling of running to take its place. And run she did. At once, she ran all around the northeastern quarter-circle as the wind appeared to be chasing her around like a dog after its master. At last it caught up to her and lifted her up ever so slightly so that her feet were a foot above the ground. She laughed as she flew and bowed her head to the wind upon her landing. All the while she played her games, Chainbreaker and Lucian stood by the carriage, watching the girl enjoy what they had gotten used to, and they were both very grateful for the chance.

Curious... It seems our Island is in love.

Is it curious? The Rest has always been more affectionate than Kai and she has won his heart.

The Overseer gave no reply but a swift glance and a raised eyebrow.

I didn't mean to imply-

I know what you meant. And to be quite honest to you, I have my own suspicions.

Do tell.

Not much to tell per se. I suppose it will all depend on how this visit turns out.

To that end, shouldn't we be bringing her inside.

In a bit. Let her be delighted for a little while longer. Besides, the children will need all the time we can give them.

Indeed.