Publisher's Synopsis
Hickory feels the town of Portla change as messengers from Baltimore's ship, the Posteritas, arrive with new plans for a contraption from Before. Wearing the vest of an apprentice, Hickory has a hard time balancing his new responsibilities with school and visits with his Eidolon. When he asks the Eidolon about this "typewriter" they were going to try to build, she lets him know things about it that no one would have figured out. By force of hand, he lets his colleagues know that he gets information about Before from an eidolon, and he feels deepening distrust from the Baltimorians of the group. Discomfort turns to hope when he becomes a part of an exploration team with his enemy's brother and the man he always thought of as the enemy of his father. Together with the Portla Rangers, they travel across the Bog's End Bridge, where those who were banished had been sent to try to survive in the Further. To his surprise Hickory, finds trust in new places and more artifacts from Before, and he sees his Eidolon on the other side. For her, he closes a circle that was waiting to be complete for a thousand years.
