Perhaps the night they celebrated Alloria’s tenth birthday was not the correct time for Thomas and Bessy Merryweather to reveal that they were not actually her parents. Perhaps they should have told her years before how they discovered her in the cellar of their cottage, bare-footed and clutching under her arm a rag-doll she called Saphjrina. Perhaps they shouldn’t have hidden away for seven years the amulet she had around her neck, with the promise of gifting it back to her when she reached the age of ten. Had they told her sooner, had they told her when she was less spirited, she may not have ventured into the cellar with her friend Nat and discovered how the amulet opened up a mysterious labyrinth. Had they kept it from her altogether, their lives would not be in danger; their lives may not have, but the plight of an entire planet would have been.