It's time. You scrape together the change you've picked up recently and go searching for a breakfast place. But most are crowded, and your nerves are on edge. You find an obscure little nook called Byzance, owned by a plump and eccentric Turkish woman with rings on every finger. The shop looks seedy and chintzy, like she stole the decor from an Arabian Nights-themed gogo club, but the baklava is peerless. Since you actually have a choice in the matter now, you start the day off drinking—
Coffee.
Tea.
Cocoa.
Orange juice.
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When you were left alone, both before and after your First Change, you'd sometimes make bagged cocoa. Terrible, too-sweet stuff, soupy and gritty. This cocoa is the exact opposite: creamy and flavorful, but without any aftertaste except a sense of gentle warmth. Assuming you don't die this afternoon, you're going to have to find a way to make more money, so you can keep drinking cocoa like this.
When you pay and get up, the owner gives you a doggy bag full of yesterday's pastries.
You walk due north, cutting through streets and parks, heedless of how the People of the Map navigate their environment, until you pass along the edge of a Walmart parking lot and reach the woods.
The day is cold and blustery, and the wind bitter. Cold mist hangs over the grim marshland around Broad Brook. The defaced standing stone rises over the mud as you check the Field Notes again and get your bearings. Then you head down the hill, between two hillocks of dead yellow grass, into the marsh.
You move cautiously, so it's over an hour before you notice how warm it's getting—so warm that you're sweating under your coat. Unhealthy-looking flowers bloom and wrist-thick vines sprawl and writhe like odalisques in the vegetal heat. As you climb up onto a low, wide hill covered in pale green grass, you check David Banicki's notebook.
Climbing the gentle, grassy slope, you pass more standing stones, all defaced or toppled, before you notice an odd indentation in the center of the hill.
It's a door.
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