You will recall that Philomena Bucket had discovered Durosimi O’Stoat using sorcery in order to intimidate the liminal fissure, known as Not-Hopeless, into supplying him with copious amounts of single malt whisky.

Although she felt it her duty to set things right, Philomena had never thought of herself as being anyone’s idea of a heroine. Such people tended to be loud, and she preferred her magic like her porridge: not too sweet, quietly effective and entirely unremarkable. Yet there she was, slipping through the predawn murk toward the fissure, with Pyralia Skant’s amulet in one hand and a battered hip-flask in the other, and feeling every inch like a woman about to complain to the management about something that was totally beyond its control. 

The woods were still. Even the drizzle seemed unwilling to make a sound.

The fissure throbbed faintly, like a pulse beneath the earth, awake, restless, and in no mood for nonsense. Philomena felt the tension rising from it. Not-Hopeless had become a place stretched too far, and pulled like wet dough under Durosimi’s greedy thumbs.

She took a breath, squared her shoulders, and stepped through.

Dawn in Not-Hopeless was always peculiar. The light came from nowhere in particular, like an afterthought, illuminating things that had not existed yesterday and might not exist by teatime. Today that light was weak, strained by the world’s recent indignities, courtesy of Durosimi O’Stoat.

Philomena walked slowly, respectfully, the way one approaches a wounded animal. The air shivered under her touch. She felt it recognise her, not as its master, but as someone who understood rules and the reasons why they mattered.

“Good morning,” she said, softly. “I’m here to fix what the sorcerer broke.”

A ripple moved underfoot; it was, at least, an acknowledgement.

She placed her offering, a small loaf of coarse bread and a pinch of salt,  upon a stone that was only a stone if you didn’t look at it too directly. Then she uncorked the hip flask.

“Real whisky from the Gannicox Distillery,” she murmured. “An honest libation.”

The scent drifted upward, warm and familiar.

Philomena caught her breath as she felt  something undefinable in the landscape gently ease. Then the impressions came, not as words, but as a rush of feeling, a tightening of the air, a cold prickle up the spine. Philomena understood it as clearly as if Pyralia Skant herself had spoken:

“Return what was stolen. All of it.”

Philomena knew instinctively that Not-Hopeless was patient, but this patience was not limitless, and certainly not forgiving of the insults it had suffered. She looked toward the shelves of impossible whisky Durosimi had pulled into being. They stood gleaming in the rising light, neat rows of fantasy dressed as liquor. Every bottle radiated something she could only define as wrongness. They had no provenance, nor origin. They had no lineage, nor place in memory. They had to go.

She touched Pyralia’s amulet. It pulsed once, warm against her skin, reminding her of the mysterious friend who had entrusted her with this task, and also with her final secret.

Philomena raised her hand, found the thread of unreality running through the shelves, and spoke the word Pyralia had warned her never to use lightly.

“Unspool.”

The bottles didn’t shatter; that would have been far too mundane. Instead they simply decided to give up the whole business of being. They loosened from existence like stitches pulled from a badly mended hem, dissolving into motes of light, sighing away into the air, and leaving only the faintest smell of spring water and peat.

A deep tremor rolled across the ground like an unmistakable sigh of relief; the balance had been restored. Not-Hopeless was not quite done, however.

A new impression pressed against Philomena’s thoughts: it spoke to her about consequences and their rightful owner. It spoke about Durosimi O’Stoat.

“Oh, I see,” she whispered. “You want him to feel it, don’t you?”

The fissure hummed.

Philomena sighed. “Well, I won’t argue. Actions have outcomes.”

She gave the landscape a small, respectful nod.

“Thank you. This has been an honour,” she said.

And with that, Philomena stepped back through the fissure, leaving bread, salt, a small splash of Gannicox whisky, and the faint promise of equilibrium behind her.

Durosimi discovered the consequences two days later, when he attempted to pour himself a triumphant dram in front of Doc Willoughby.

The whisky in his glass turned into a watery gruel that smelled vaguely of wet porridge.

He tried again. And again. Every bottle he touched mutated into the same dull swill.

By the fourth attempt he was roaring like a man who had been personally insulted by the universe. 

It was early evening when Doc Willoughby ambled into The Squid and Teapot. Philomena listened to his puzzled lamentations with a perfectly straight face, as she polished a row of tankards, exhibiting the serenity of a woman who had absolutely no idea how such a thing could have come about. Doc muttered something about “mysterious transmutations of the alcoholic spectrum,” and scribbled an illegible note into his book.

Later, she  quietly served him a bowl of stew that actually contained recognisable vegetables.

Drury sat by her feet, tail thumping, giving the definite impression of a conspiratorial wink through his eyeless sockets. 

Balance had returned. The island was safe.

Or, being Hopeless, more or less safe for now.