The path unfolds just outside the window of the room.
The boy becomes frightened. He refuses to follow her.
Ilya does not stay.
Four months in the place beyond the path.
Ilya studies many things, magic, history, and the natural time dilation between her world and the place beyond the path.
Ilya returns the following morning, as planned, only to find that soldiers came in the night and took several children.
She never sees the red-haired boy again.
Ilya does not find the path again until the following summer.
* * *
Ilya discovers her father tending a garden in the fort’s square. He tells her that Isaac and her mother have gone east to another camp. Ilya refuses to leave his side, even as the children are called away. Soldiers come to take her from her father, and the path unfolds f
