Most anybody with a knack for somnomancy would set wards against jet lag on this trip, but Elihu prefers to feel the edges of time zones batter his mind: Wellington, Fiji, Nuku’alofa, then the great crash of the IDL.

“It’s a buffer,” Elihu explains later, red-eyed, to a fellow traveler at a guarana bar. “It’s a kindness, to blunt the edge of travel.”

“That’s a weird attitude,” she grumbles. “I’d wave my hands and just be adjusted, if I could.”

“Jet lag makes the place you’ve left a little more magical,” says Elihu. “The spells just use the magic up.”