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Finn cracked the door open and stuck his head out. There was a ranger out on the visitor center floor who was supposed to be keeping interruptions away while Finn tried to decipher the paperwork involved in people having gone missing in the park, so for someone to actually be disturbing him was pretty unusual. "Uh, hi," he said, looking the man outside the door over.

He recognized him from the Otherworld. How could he not?

"I expect you've got some questions," he said. "You'd better come in."

"Sit wherever," said Finn, showing Algernon into the office. It was cramped, with paperwork balanced on nearly every available surface that wasn't laden with aging desktop computers. A few stray desk chairs loitered in the center of the office, like sheep without a collie to direct them. "We're slammed right now. Spring trail maintenance, weather's been a ********, and all this paperwork. But enough about why my day sucks. How can I help you?"

Finn shot Algie a wry look. "Are you kidding me?" he asked. "I'm dying of boredom in here. I have two miles of paperwork to do. You are doing me a kindness, good sir. Also."

He picked up a photo frame on his desk and turned it around, holding it out to show the other man the picture - an exceptionally blonde toddler smiled for the camera, an enormous frog clutched between her hands. "That's my daughter. Ori. She just turned one. I got that picture this morning, have to show it to everyone."

He set the frame down. "Anyway," said Finn. "I'll do my best to help you. Ask away."

Finn nodded, taking the book and glancing over the passage in question. "Oh, yeah," he said. "Everyone knows that one if they grow up around here. It's like Pocahontas, but with less statutory rape and more starcrossed tragedy. White dude shipwrecks in Ipswich, White dude meets Indian Princess, White dude drowns. That's the cliff notes, anyway. The book's got a pretty fair retelling, from what I can tell."

"If you take the train up to Ipswich, you can see the princess's gravestone, so, I mean, as far as local legends go, it rings pretty true," he added, handing the book back. "Jury's out on whether she was actually a princess or if it's just embellishment. Like, if you want to get into the ghost story, her spirit's still waiting for her drowned love to return - but that's probably bullshit. I mean, it's ******** Ipswich."

The Otherworld, the hub of all things magical in the Boston metropolitan area, did not extend to Ipswich. He'd tried.

"There's nothing magical in ******** Ipswich," said Finn. "You try to go there in the Otherworld, you start to feel like a boiled lobster."

"But, like, if it means anything to you, it's more likely to be true than ******** man door hand hook car door."

Finn raised an eyebrow slightly at how easily Algie was able to flip to the pages he needed, but said nothing on the subject. "I mean," he said, "We're living on Wampanoag land. You ever hear of, um, Squanto? His people. They had all of Connecticut, all of Rhode Island, most of Massachusetts, part of Long Island. Nearly got wiped out in the 1670s, but they're still around."

Finn reached around under his desk, and then produced a paper state map. He smoothed it out over the top layer of paperwork. "You want to talk to a real Wampanoag, you've probably gotta go South. They've got a reservation at Aquinnah out on Martha's Vineyard. Decent community in Mashpee. Couple of people in Plymouth. If anyone still lives in Ashdown, I've never met them. They might have some myths about the area, but... I've never heard 'em."

Something crossed his mind. Finn shot up from his desk, crossed the room, and yanked Adoelle's missing poster off the cork board. "Doe's Wampanoag," he said. "So I lied. There are some left in Ashdown - but I'm not sure how talkative her parents are going to be feeling."

Finn shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "Not much to say. I don't know anything about them." He'd never had reason to check out the library. Until a few days ago, he'd thought the Otherworld was just an oddity. Now he suspected there was something more sinister going on. A bigger storm coming.

"Why?" He asked. "Do you know something about the books?"

Algie probably didn't know how to travel to the Otherworld. Not as easily as Finn did. "I mean," he said, "I can take you back there. Probably. I think. We could check stuff out."

Finn didn't need to think very hard about the question. "Since October, 2014," he said, "so almost a year and a half now. Aleksy's been going for about as long, if you know him." It was a coincidence that they'd both started walking between worlds at the same time - wasn't it?

"At first," continued Finn, "I was only going there in dreams. Then, I was going there accidentally. I'd walk through a door and I'd be there. And now I can go back and forth at will. I can find doors in and out just by thinking about it. And my car never runs out of gas. Pretty sure that's related."

"Sunny's not human," he added, after a moment's consideration about the books. "She's super up-front about that. I don't know what she is, exactly, though. Maybe some kind of God."

Things were accelerating, he thought. That was for sure.

"Aleksy sees things," replied Finn, rearranging some papers on his desk. "And it's harmless to make deals with Sunny as long as you don't leave any loopholes open. I bring her kreteks, she never lies to me. It's a simple exchange. I wouldn't try to make any complicated bargains with her, though. Too much space to get ******** over."

He shook his head.

"It started there," said Finn. "In the Otherworld. You heard Pax. It's older than civilization on this continent. It didn't start with the kids. Not by a long shot. It started in the Otherworld, thousands and thousands of years ago. The only place you're going to find answers is there."