Chapter One | The Girl in the Yellow Mittens

Marblecake arrived in Thimbletuck on a Tuesday, which everyone knows is the least suspicious day of the week.

She wore yellow mittens even though it was spring, carried a lunchbox that hummed faintly if you pressed your ear to it, and blinked just a bit slower than everyone else. Not enough to alarm, just enough to notice—if you were the noticing type.

Mrs. Featherly, the landlady with too many cats and a fondness for mismatched tea sets, handed her the keys to Unit 2B and said, “You look like someone who’s seen things.”
Marblecake just smiled and nodded. She had, in fact, seen a nebula erupt and eaten soup made from a comet’s tail, but she didn’t think Mrs. Featherly meant it literally.

The apartment was small and slanted, with a window that faced the alley and a kitchen that smelled like cinnamon and possibility. Marblecake unpacked quickly: a photo of something no one here would recognize, three jars of stardust (sugar, to everyone else), and a recipe book written entirely in symbols.

At school, she didn’t talk much. But she listened.
She noticed that Milo at lunch only ate the crusts of his sandwich and that Petra doodled antennae on every character in her notebook. She liked them both immediately.

No one asked where she came from.
They just accepted that she was there now, and that she knew an unusual amount about wormholes and sourdough.

On her third night in Thimbletuck, the radio began to hum.

It was an old dial radio she found at the thrift shop, nestled between a broken toaster and a mug shaped like a possum. When she turned it on, it crackled, then cleared—just for a moment.

And then a voice.
Not in words, exactly. More like a sound that wrapped around her spine and whispered: “Not alone.”

Marblecake didn’t panic.
She poured herself a cup of marshmallow tea, sat cross-legged on the floor, and smiled.

“About time,” she said softly. “I was starting to miss the weird.”