the Mender urged again.
I reached out, fumbling for the tightly wound strands of reality. I caught several and managed to pull them a few inches. The illusionary box lid cracked, not opening, but a seam at least. Small wounds sprouted on my fingertips, the strands cutting deep into my flesh. I winced, pulling back my stinging, bleeding fingers.
The Mender tsked under his breath. “You’re going to seriously injure yourself doing it that way.”
“How would you suggest I unravel them?”
“You intuitively touch all the planes. You have consistently had no issue extending those planes to other beings. Extend these planes in much the same way. Push them out among the planes that already exist here. But weave them into the planes, not into a thing or a being.”
“I . . . What?” Extending planes to beings? “You mean when I pull ghosts close to mortal reality?”
The Mender’s youthful face took on a put-upon expression, as if he were annoyed that I was missing something that should be obvious.
“You don’t pull ghosts or my collectors across to mortal reality—they never leave their plane as they can’t exist outside it. You weave the two planes together, making the fibers of both realities touch, and you wrap those joined planes around them. You visualize it wrong, but you do it instinctively.”
My mouth formed a small O but I furled my brow, thinking about what I did when I dragged ghosts across the planes. Or, I guess, thrust the planes together, if the Mender was correct. I’d assumed it was an evolution of my grave magic, admittedly supported with my planeweaving. I’d only been able to do it by touch initially, extending my magic through me and into the ghost or Death. But in the last few months I’d become rather adept at making ghosts manifest at a distance.
I considered what it felt like to reach with my magic and pull across—or weave—the planes, and I reached for the ball of reality on my palm in the same way. Nothing happened. My magic had encompassed the ball as soon as I’d touched it. It was already mine, for lack of a better word. I glared at it.
“So jump to the next logical conclusion,” the Mender said, his voice sharp and impatient.
If he was going to sit there, read my thoughts, and snap at me, why didn’t he just give me the damn answer?
He lifted his eyebrow, obviously having caught that thought as well. Oh well. He was the one snooping. Not my fault if he didn’t like what he heard. But as to what he’d said, what would the next logical conclusion be with the ball of reality?
Well, if my magic had made it “mine” and poking it with more magic did nothing, then maybe I needed to reach with it. I could feel the ball of reality, so I focused on it, and then tried to reach out the way I would to a ghost. Except there was nowhere to reach to. The ball of reality wriggled, but it didn’t unfurl.
I considered how my magic had felt when it had enveloped the ball. Like a wave lifting from the ocean and pushing outward. Focusing on the ball of reality, I tried to simulate that feeling of magic flowing out, forward, and filling space without ever leaving the greater collection of magic.
The lid of the box flipped open. The threads of reality rolled out, spreading with the wave of magic.
“Very good,” the Mender said, and he gave me a grandfatherly nod, as if I’d made him proud. “That ocean analogy you visualized was a good one. It will limit you eventually, but for now it is helping you.”
I looked around. I still couldn’t see the actual threads of reality, but I could feel them. I was far more aware of all the planes I was touching—and that they were touching everything around me. Including the chair I was sitting in and the rug below my feet, both of which were rotting from their contact with the land of the dead. Damn it.
“Now pull it back.”
I frowned at the Mender. “You make it sound easy.”
“I never said it was easy. Though this you should probably be able to do as automatically as breathing.”
Wouldn’t that be the definition of simple?
I tried to focus on the magic. To concentrate on the strands of reality that needed to be pulled back apart. The Mender made a sharp clicking noise under his breath.
“You’re trying too hard again. Go back to