The speaker was a tiny girl. She looked about four years old. She wore an ill-fitting black dress, and was propped up in a chair and surrounded by plump old cushions. Ward wondered if this was some kind of elaborate prank.

The girl burrowed into her dress with one small pink hand. The hand emerged with a baccus, then a pouch of blackleaf, which items she lay in her lap.

"What'd you want to ask her?" Slops said to Ward.

"Oh I'm a her now am I?" the child said, pinching some blackleaf into the bowl of the baccus.

"Sorry, your om-omniscience," Slops said.

"That's better," the child said. "I may be a hundred n' sixty-five, but I'm not (unprintable word) deaf."

"You're a Reverser," Ward whispered.

"Ah-huh," the child said to the baccus, which it was now expertly lighting. "Thought I was off the hook, didn't I? Even though me mere was one. Don't know when I started coming back – in me eighties I guess." She breathed twin plumes of smoke out through her nose. "Going to snuff it soon I guess. Got me a hundred-and-ninety-seven great-great-great-grandkids – you think any of them give a (unprintable word) about me?" She snorted. "To Eden with em all anyway."

"Why do you live up her all by yourself, your omn-omn-" Ward said.

"Oh stop it, you're going to choke yourself. Just call me Maude. Better for the sight, isn't it? Can't see much from down there. Too much noise. Air's clearer up here, or somethink. 'N some places're just thinner than others. This is one of em. Besides, I don't get bothered too much up here, and do I ever hate bein' bothered." She gave the boys a meaningful look.

"I heard you travel between worlds," Ward said.

"You heard wrong."

Ward's heart sank.

"I see into em," the child went on. "Crossin – you wouldn't catch me doin that even if I could."

"Why not?"

"What could go wrong eh?" Maude cackled. It was a strange sound, like that of a child imitating an old woman, which, Ward supposed, was exactly what it was.

"How do you know you're -" Ward began.

"Seein into another one? You just know it. You know you're somewhere else."

Ward found himself nodding inside his head. He had not needed anyone to tell him he was in another world. He had just known. He looked at the tiny person before him with renewed interest.

"Heard of the Cosmic Wheel?" she said.

Ward shook his head. He looked over at Slops, who shrugged.

"Some cove come up with it ages ago. He reckoned all the worlds are on a wheel, spinning round. One world at the hub; all the others out on the end of the spokes. Can't just travel from one to the next. Gotta go through the hub. Right? But if you're at the hub you can get to any of em."

Ward thought about this. "Have you only ever seen into one other world?"

"Ahuh."

"That means we must be on a -"

"Spoke. Right. You're not's stupid as you look."

"So the one you're seeing is -"

"The hub world. Right again. Could all be a load of cobblers though. Nobody's ever seen this wheel. How could you?" Maude took another puff on the baccus and watched the boys thoughtfully for a moment.

"Why wouldn't you do it?" Ward said. "Go to the other world?"

"Could get lost, right? So you're in the hub world. All you'd have to do is choose the wrong door and you'd be out on the end of some other spoke. Could be somethink eats you up soon as you pop out. Could be there's not even any air to breathe there. Okay, that's reason one. Reason two, now. Reason two is you don't know what your jumpin between worlds might do to em. There's a (unprintable word) load of space between them spokes. What if the spoke isn't strong enough to carry you? What if it cracks? What if something from out there slips in?" 

You might release into the world a horror from beyond space and time, like the standup comedy of Amy Schumer.