Vigdis will be about as fast as slow people can be, which is still pretty slow.

Catherine shows her son around the town, and around the castle, and appreciates the novelty of being able to enter and leave as she pleases. She visits the empty feast hall, just to do it again. It's about as large as she remembers. It's both less terrifying and less grand, now that the world reliably contains more places than those inside the castle walls.

"Do you think I should head back over to where I met you and see if they're bringing your son? It's a month's round trip but we'll have about a month's notice from when people step in the forest heading in the right direction."

"That makes sense. I suppose you'll travel significantly faster without us."

"Yeah. We could all go if you'd like, though."

"Probably better to let the children rest a while. Do come right back, though."

"I will."

He's back in only twenty days. "They haven't started going to the forest yet. How about here -"

"On their way. Not quite in the forest itself yet."

"Oh good. Okay. - want to show them to me?"

"Sure."

There are two girls and a boy, aged from eleven to eight, on a path. The oldest is leading the other two towards the forest.

"Awww."

"She'll be very glad we asked her. The other two will be... somewhat less glad."

"Because they don't want to choose?"

"I don't really know what they'll do. They may decide to turn right around if we explain everything. And - I hate to try to make them, I just also hate to leave them behind with no one but their father."

"I could tell them a story, when they get there. And then - we could still disentangle them eventually if you thought it was best but they couldn't walk out right away."

Nod.

"And we should have a nice place set up. So they know they can be cozy even sped up."

"Yeah. We should do that. I've never really built anything before, but if you can tell me how to help I can try - "

"You can bring materials and things! We can have a little treehouse with four levels and a fancy roof and things, I've built those before."

"That sounds excellent. All right."

They find a suitable tree and he explains what kind of wood they'll need and where it will all go and they arrange a pen for the babies (who shouldn't wander into the construction) and then they can start building it.

They can! 

It takes the children another thirty sleeps to spot the fairy ring and head towards it.

You can get a lot of construction done in thirty days. There's a little spiral staircase and a fancy roof thatched with the scales of pine cones and a room for him and Catherine and a room for the younger kids full of flower petals and little carven toys and a room for the bigger kids with soft leaves for beds. There's a dining table, where they accumulate a growing pile of food.

And eventually -