The Wizard of Oz, she knows, having read a few of the books years ago, but the story Charlie describes sounds like and unlike anything she can recall. It sounds exactly like the kind of thing she'd be drawn to even now--maybe more so, with everything she's learned and done and felt in the last few years. All the times she's tried, and sometimes failed, to shape the way her own story's gone.

Which Charlie knows, of course, better than anyone. "That sounds perfect," she says, her smile just a little wry at the edges. "Magic and everything."