"Oh," you murmur, still feeling kind of hazy (whether from the crying or the snuggling, you're not sure,) "looks like it's about time." You disentangle yourself from Jessica, and the two of you stand up. Mike isn't far from where she was when you left her, and the only difficulty is concvincing her to wrap up her conversation with the local flora. Aaron, on the other hand, seems to have wandered off.
Jessica takes the lead as you try and find her, but seems to get lost after a little while. "I don't understand it," he says. "I know this area like the back of my hand, but it's all changed around. I recognize a lot of different locations from my hikes, but they don't connect to the places they should."
"Like a puzzle with the pieces fit wrong," you mutter, and he nods, plainly confused.
"I think," Mike offers, "that this isn't actually the same place. I spent my first year or so here looking for the way back to my house, and I never found it. It's just woods and ocean for miles in every direction, except for this huge canyon off to the north."
"Ocean?" Jessica asks, surprised. "I live in Ontario."
"And I live in Minnesota," you say, equally surprised.
Mike nods. "Oregon," she says. "But that's what I'm saying. This place isn't any of those, even though parts of it look the same. It's like a patchwork copy of all the above, only in some other place. I don't know exactly how we got here, or how you can get back, but I do know that we're somewhere else entirely. But c'mon, we really need to find Aaron." She slips into a nearby tree for a minute, then takes off at a brisk walk, obviously sure of where she's going.
Sure enough, she leads you right to Aaron, who's standing on the seashore, watching something in the water. You walk up next to her and follow her gaze. Floating in the water a few hundred yards offshore, gradually making its way out to sea, is a small white object. You turn to Aaron.
"Is that...?" You trail off, unsure if she wants to talk about it, but she nods.
"It didn't seem right to just smash it or throw it away," she says. "I mean, it's not a baby, but it could've been. It's not the sort of thing you toss like a used Kleenex or something."
"So you sent it to sleep with the fishes?" Jessica asks.
Aaron shrugs. "I couldn't keep it," she says. "It would start rotting and break and then it'd stink like nobody's business. This way, I don't have to watch it decompose." She sighs and turns away, the egg still bobbing on the moonlit waves. "I suppose it's time, isn't it?"
You nod, and the four of you make your way back to the witch's cabin.
You offer again to go in Mike's place, but she refuses. "None of you stand anywhere near as much of a chance as I do," she says. "I appreciate the offer, but I'm not letting my friends risk themselves when I can do it almost risk-free." She skips up to the building and slips inside the wall.
Jessica lets out a low whistle, and Aaron nods in agreement. "How can she be so spacey and yet so together?" she wonders.
"Beats me," you say, "but you've gotta admire her for it anyway. I just hope this works."
"She'll be fine," Jessica says, putting a hand on your shoulder. You feel a little weirded out, but it is kind of comforting, and anyway, you're too busy watching the door for a sign from Mike to react.
It only takes about fifteen minutes for her to show up, but it feels like an eternity. But she does show up at the door of the cabin, grinning gleefully and holding a jar with soething in it. You rush up to the door, first chucking a rock through to make sure the toad-ification field is no longer in effect.
Once you're inside, Mike shows you the jar, containing an obviously enraged garter snake. "I didn't even have to break the bottle," she giggles. "She slept with her mouth open so wide, I just poured it down her throat and hid in the ceiling while she changed!"
The three of you congratulate Mike on her success, and then you turn your attentions toward exploring the cabin. "Let's note anything that looks promising," Jessica suggests. "It's probably going to take a while for us to be sure we know what we're going, but it'll help if we single out the obvious leads first."