"More than a year now. There's a city outside that room you're in, designed for us to live in, but inescapable. And escapes have been tried. We hear from our abductors from time to time, but they are unreasonable."

He observes her a moment, wondering at the wisdom of telling her everything, but knowing it's ultimately impossible not to do so. "Would it frighten you, Mattie, to know that our captors are not of our world? That we are, as far as we know, no longer on Earth?"

He hopes it doesn't, but for all her apparent strength, Mattie is a young girl from Yell County, Arkansas, in what looks to be the late 1800s or early 1900s. Godric doubts she's ever concerned herself with matters beyond her home, much less her planet.