Growing up, I loved The Phantom Tollbooth. The book and the animated film, but for the sake of this anecdote, I'm talking about the book. It was one of the first "long" books I read, and I re-read it at least once a year. Often more! Even as I got older, I found new wordplay I didn't understand as a child, new themes that I could only perceive with the mind of a teenager. And as an adult. (I'm not ashamed! It's still a great book.)

One of the things about living in the Illway - you realize very quickly that what you might have once considered "normal logic" doesn't quite apply anymore. I'll go rummaging through my little library, looking for a book on how to grow rockcress plants. I pick out a book on gardening - and sometimes I'll find I'm reading The Phantom Tollbooth instead. Because my mind was hovering on Milo's little adventure rather than planting flowers that day.

The Forest always seems to know... or should I say the library does? It's all probably the same thing in the end. The library was already a part of my cottage when I arrived, because I'd always wanted to set aside a whole room just for books! Every book I could ever want is in there, despite it not being very big. But of course, the book I want and the book I'm trying to find are not always the same thing!

Yet, the library is always a library, I suppose because that's what I expect it to be. I've never walked in there and suddenly found a sauna instead, even if I was thinking of how nice a sauna would be. (Well, it hasn't happened so far, anyway. I guess you never know with this place!)

If I invite someone to visit the library, the same thing happens to them. Nash has a particular love of books, so I brought him over. (And let me just tell you, watching a hulking great werewolf fit himself in my little cottage is not a sight I'll soon forget!) I was trying to encourage him to try out this marvelously satirical fantasy series I read once, and he kept picking up things like Gulliver's Travels. One thing we did figure out, at least - if I pick up a book, verify what's inside, and hand it to him, it remains the book I chose.

Likewise, if I want to read something new - like the aforementioned gardening book, or some novel I've never read before, they'll appear too. I'm pretty sure they're real books, not just something I'm dreaming up, because I don't think my imagination is quite that good! And if someone else wants to recommend a book to me, I simply invite them over to pick it out. So it is possible to bend the rules, once you can figure out what the rules are. Think of it like a puzzle.

Because the Forest of Illway is full of quirks like that.

I talked before about how traversing the Forest can be just as tricky - how no matter which way you go, traveling long enough will lead you somewhere familiar. There are a couple more things I wanted to mention, though - things that work in the "real world" that just don't cut it here.

Relying on landmarks is no good, since there's no guarantee they'll always be in the same place in relation to each other. There are some minor deviations from that rule - you'll always find the tavern's lamp within sight of the Crossroads, for example, and the pumpkin patch is almost always near the church ruins. I'm pretty sure the layout of the village stays the same, but there are always enough just enough homes for the people who live there, so even that might be a trick of the mind, of memory. Like how there are people who've lived here for years before me, but swear they always remember my cottage being there. Sid says it appeared when I did, though.

Honestly, he might be the only one who knows for sure, but he's never been able to explain it in a way that made sense to me.

There's a mountain you'll be very tempted to try and use as a wayfinding tool. Judging by the way the sun moves, conventional wisdom would say the mountain lies to the north. But try as I might, I've never been able to reach it. It's just... there, a single, massive, snow-topped cone, sloping out of the fog in the far distance. Likewise, trying to use the stars as a guide will do you no good at all - they move. That one freaked me out the first time I noticed! It's easiest to tell if you look for a certain set of stars and then try to find them again later, but if you're patient and watch long enough, you'll see them moving. It's just very, very slow, like watching the clouds. Sid says it's been that way as long as he can remember.

I've always considered myself to be a fairly logical person. I like explanations. But this place? If there's an explanation for some of this stuff, I sure haven't found it yet!

Still, it doesn't stop me from trying to figure it out. I find myself wondering... if I learn to fly - when I learn to fly! - what happens if I try to fly to the mountain? Or straight up? Will I find answers, or just more questions?

Speaking of which - I think I may have been wrong before, because I met an elf.

Okay, in the Illway, that doesn't really sound that unusual - we have gremlins and werewolves and I once saw a gryphon lady with fur that blazed like it was on fire! But something about the elf seemed different, so I had a chat with him.

He's a newcomer, says his name is Uldavar. He looks for all the world like he stepped out of some medieval fantasy movie. He's about my height, slender, with slightly overlarge eyes and distinctly pointed ears. His armor looks like it's probably leather and some kind of metal chainmail. He was very cautious of me at first - apparently he tracked me for over an hour before he decided to show himself! He said he'd never seen anything that looked like me before, and wondered if I was some kind of monster or demon. Fair enough - I doubt I'm the strangest thing he'll encounter if he decides to stay. But the thing is, he just came here, and he's an elf.

As in, he says he was already an elf when he got here.

So what does that mean for my theory? I assumed everyone here started out human, plucked here from Earth, but that doesn't seem to be completely true. Or maybe it is, and he just doesn't remember? He says all he recalls from before was some kind of very loud noise, like an explosion or a building collapsing. Little else. The Illway does do funny things to memories, after all.

Assuming he is really an elf, though, did he come from somewhere else? Or were the old legends about faefolk in the ancient places of Earth actually true? I'm pretty sure I remember reading that human-like elves with pointed ears were a much more recent idea, though. Alternate realities? Other worlds forged from pure imagination and will, as I feel the Illway itself must have been?

I haven't figured out a polite way to phrase, "So, are you real or did someone just think you into existence?"

I do hope to speak with him again, but in the meantime, it made me think of Abigail, so I invited her over for a chat. We've been friends for a good long while (Of course, in the Illway, it's hard to figure on exactly how long! At least a couple years now, I think?) Truth-be-told, I'd always gotten a similar sense from her. Like she just didn't quite fit my theories.

It was the first time we've really spoke of her past. She says she remembers Earth, and she's certain that's where she came from. From the vague memories she describes, though, I think she must've lived in a very different time, at least - a world filled with vast forests and roads, bustling cities with gardens and marble columns and bright, colorful statues. Ancient Greece, maybe? I think I read something about all those white Greek statues probably being a lot more colorful than we see them today. Strangely though, she insists she's always been a unicorn, and that the Illway did little to change her.

She also says she came here of her own volition.

Now, that sparked my curiosity even further! I thought people always just appeared here, but she says she was in danger, looked for somewhere safe, and found it here. When I asked if she could travel back and forth between the Illway and Earth like I think maybe Sid can do, she shook her head. I think she looked a little pensive then - maybe even sad, though I could've been imagining that. In any case, I wasn't eager to press the issue.

So, a few possibilities - for one, everyone in the Forest of Illway is from Earth as I surmised, but there are beings living on Earth that defy the science of my time... or maybe there's more than one version of Earth where the things I would once have considered fantasy are not only real, but commonplace. Several people I've talked to remember roughly the same world I do - late twentieth or early twenty-first century, but Abigail may in fact come from a much different time. Did that relate to how long someone's been in the Illway, or could someone be plucked out of time at any point? So many questions. After all, the Illway itself already defies everything I thought I knew about the nature of existence, so it's hard to say any theory sounds completely crazy.

Sid says I'm overcomplicating things again. And yeah, sometimes I wish I could just accept how things are without wanting to question it all - I might sleep better for it - but it's just so damned intriguing! I asked if he really thought I should just stop trying to figure it out, though, and he grinned and said I wouldn't be me if I did.

Oddly reassuring, I suppose.

Nash's answer was, of course, a quote: "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

I told him to read something past the turn of the twentieth century.

So he winked and said, "More things in Heaven and Disc, then."

And, well, it took me a second to remember which book that was from. How the bloody hell did he read through all of Discworld that fast?

With paws?

I tell you, the Forest of Illway is full of weird mysteries. It's enough to keep a gal busy for an eternity.

Fortunately, I seem to have time to spare.