The Lake
- Meena pretends to be annoyed that she's got to walk all the way home (19.1). The Ropemaker's not sure what he's going to do next, but he plans to talk to the magician Aileth and sound her out, then go help Lananeth, Zara, and their unknown friend—perhaps—manage magic (19.4-6; 19.22).
- Tilja wonders aloud if she might come back to the Empire one day, but she wants to hang with Meena for a bit (19.13). Meena says that Tilja should return to the Empire because the Valley has no magic and Tilja needs to follow her powers; that's what she was made for, and she'd hate to let them go to waste (19.14). Tilja wonders if Ropey can fix (old) Meena's injured leg, but he can't tamper with time any more (19.18-20)—he doesn't want to mess up the rope of time until it's finished.
- Ropey says he'll be back soon and then unleashes his firey hair by removing his turban, making him look like a fox-wolf hybrid with an orange coat (19.22-23). He runs off, returns with a deer he killed, turns back into a man, then cooks the deer up (19.24). After putting a magical ward around their camp, the Ropemaker, who finally looks like a really powerful dude, wishes Meena and Tilja well, then vanishes (19.26-28). The next morning, Tilja dissolves the ward (19.30) and they head out.
- Meena and Tilja walk through the forest at Meena's direction; the grandma uses her magic to find the lake (19.32). When Meena spots a unicorn hoof print, they follow it (19.36-37), and Meena begins to sing to the unicorns (19.38) like she did on the raft south. Since she's realized her own powers, Tilja feels the forest magic as they walk (19.39). They stay the night in a hollowed-out tree trunk (19.44-45), but Meena wakes her up by squeezing her arm (19.46). They hear a horse snorting—it's a unicorn (19.48-49). They shine in the dark. The cedars are finally talking, too (19.50). Happier, they continue on their journey until they see a unicorn (19.52) in the flesh.
- Meena nudges Tilja to glance, but not stare, at the unicorn (19.53). It's small with an ivory horn, and very beautiful—then a whole herd appears, and Meena sings to its members (19.55). They continue on through a darker, deeper forest, finally reaching the clearing where they found Tilja's mother so long ago (19.56), and then the lake. Meena stops and holds her hands out in front of her; Tilja can stay and watch Meena sing to the unicorns (19.57). The animals have been waiting for Meena to get to the lake, and twenty-three unicorns pop out in the open and stand quietly along the lake "like a team of dancers entering to begin some stately dance" (19.59). They circle around her and get close, a very special type of magic (19.60) that Tilja feels grateful to witness. Finally Meena bids them goodbye, blessing them as they leave, but something startles the animals while Meena is in a trance near the lake (19.61-62).
- That something is Tilja's mother and sister. Anja cries that the cedars, who have woken up, told her they had arrived, and that their father and the boys have gone to fight (19.63). She doesn't recognize Meena.
- Tilja doesn't answer at first, hugging them close instead (19.63). She asks about the war, and her mother says men came through the passes (19.66). Soldiers, including her dad, went to fight them off, and the ladies came to the forest to see if the cedars had any news. Ma recognizes Meena before Anja does and realizes that all the magic they've already seen—a flying horse, for example—makes something like reverse aging easier to believe. The various females of the family reunite in their own special ways, but Meena is now the age of Ma's daughers (19.70). The two embrace and Ma jokes that she has a third kid (19.71), dispelling the tension, and Meena snaps back like usual.