Excerpt: Snowberry

In about five minutes, they had reached the castle proper. It was surrounded by another, lower wall, also white, with a grid-woven portcullis that showed the way through to a large, spacious keep. Miss Snowberry sighed.

"They could have left it open, I suppose," she said, snorting. "Oh, well. Come inside, Lucy." And, taking Lucy's shoulder again, Miss Snowberry walked forward, passing directly through the wall to the right of the portcullis. Lucy had no choice but to follow, admiring the smoothness of the magery as she did so. The stones slid cool around her, and she caressed them with her hands as she passed, feeling them sleepilly greet her as well-- they had a sort of magic in them, nothing active, only a general defensive charm that left them resistant to conventional attacks. They should have had an anti-mage charm on them, as well, and Lucy wondered why or how Miss Snowberry was passing through them so easily. Wondering too hard, however, would negate the ability, and Lucy didn't want to be suspended where she was, so she kept quiet.

It was then that she realized that there were passageways in the stone. They were invisible to the naked eye, but Lucy was aware of them as smoothwalled wormholes-- black, twisting away to the right and left, while the one that she followed with Miss Snowberry forked and buckled ahead of them. With her physical eyes she saw only brown stones, lit by the glow of Miss Snowberry's magical presence, rolling smoothly away to left and right. Perhaps the wall's outer color was only whitewash? She desperately wanted to explore some of the side-passageways herself, but knew better than to wander off by herself in a strange environment heavy with magic.

She had no idea how long they had been walking, but it seemed much longer than the seconds it would have taken to pass across the twenty-food width of the curtain wall.

Then she had it. They had passed through to another dimension. How suddenly the idea struck her, and how obviously true it was. Lucy nodded, pleased with herself, and continued calmly forward now that that point had been cleared to her satisfaction.