End of Excerpt.

Do not step on the cracks. The girls will forgive you, but the floor will not.

We begin our travelogue at the Wicker Gate, which opens only at dusk. The gatekeeper is a girl named Primrose, who has been seven years old for eleven thousand years. She does not remember her mother’s face, but she can recite the names of every bee that has ever visited the lavender hedge. “You’re late,” she says, though you have arrived exactly when you always were going to.

The travelogue ends here, not because there is nothing more to see, but because the girls have invited you to stay for supper. Supper is always bread and jam. The jam changes flavor based on your most secret wish. The bread is slightly burnt.

No one leaves the Nursery. Not really. The girls have tried: walking out the front door, climbing down the ivy, growing old on purpose. But every exit leads back to the Wicker Gate. Every attempt at aging turns, at the last moment, into a game of hide-and-seek.

“Tell them we said hello. Tell them the Nursery is real. Tell them the dolls are watching, but kindly.”

Travelers are advised not to ask which doll is favorite. The last person who did is now a rocking chair.