The year stretched out in front of them, magical and enormous and entirely unwritten.
It was marvellous.
“Do you think it ever breaks down?” Gansey shouted over the sound of the not-engine.
Henry began to laugh.
“This is going to be a great trip,” he said.
Depending on where you began the story, it was about this place: the long stretch of mountain that straddled a particularly potent segment of the ley line. Months before, it had been Cabeswater, populated by dreams, blooming with magic. Now it was merely an ordinary Virginia forest, green thorns and soft sycamores and oaks and pine trees, everything slender from the effort of growing through rock.
Ronan guessed it was pretty enough, but it was no Cabeswater.
Off along one of the banks, a scrawny hooved girl crashed merrily through the undergrowth, humming and making disgusting chewing noises. Everything in the forest was interesting to her, and interesting meant tasting it. Adam said she was a lot like Ronan. Ronan was going to choose to take that as a compliment.
“Opal,” he snapped, and she spat out a mouthful of mushroom. “Stop dicking around!”
The girl galloped to catch up with him, but she didn’t pause when she reached him. She preferred to form a lopsided perimeter of frantic activity around his person. Anything else might give the appearance of willing obedience, and she would do a lot to avoid that.
Up ahead, Chainsaw shouted, “Kerah!”
She kept hollering until Ronan had caught up with her. Sure enough, she had found something out of place. He kicked through the leaves. It was a metal artefact that looked centuries old. It was the wheel off a 1973 Camaro. It matched the ancient, impossible wheel they’d found on the ley line months earlier. Back then, Ronan had taken that to mean that at some point in the future, they would wreck the Camaro in the pursuit of Glendower, and the ley line’s bending of time would have sent them back in time and then forward again. All times being the same-ish on the ley line.
But it looked as if they hadn’t got to that place yet: They had future adventures waiting for them on the ley line.
It was a thrilling and terrifying prospect.
“Good find, brat,” he told Chainsaw. “Let’s go home.”
Back at the Barns, Ronan thought about all the things he liked and didn’t like about Cabeswater, and what he would do differently if he was to manifest it now. What would give it more protection against a threat in the future, what would make it better able to connect with other places like Cabeswater on the line, what would make it a truer reflection of himself.
Then, holding these things in his head, he climbed up on to the roof and gazed up at the sky.
Then he closed his eyes and he began to dream.