Amber, a teenage girl in a Midwestern town, stumbles across a portal in the woods. Crawling through the portal, she enters into Mere—a utopian, fantastical world whose inhabitants are granted a finite amount of magic to use throughout their lives. Amber does not use her magic sparingly, even though upon its depletion, she must leave Mere. Instead she entertains herself and her tour guide, Zef, a shapeshifter who leads Amber through Mere and introduces her to the village where she is to spend her time. 

Interrupting this narrative is Amber’s author, a middle-aged woman who speaks directly to the reader, reflecting on her desire to make Mere into a real utopia and place of escape. As Amber explores Mere and asks Zef questions about the parameters of the world and the limits of its magic, Amber’s author interjects to tell of her own life, detailing the complexities of her coming out as asexual in her marriage. The author and her husband agree on an open marriage and “stumbl[e] upon certain accommodations” in their love life which satisfy the author’s husband but not the author; instead, she imagines herself stepping into a portal much like the one that leads to Mere. 

The author’s reality and Amber’s world begin to increasingly mirror each other. Amber accidentally returns to the real world, learning that portals only appear twice and she has wasted her second moment of travel through one. In the real world, she enrolls in university and meets David, a library assistant. The two begin to date, and Amber wonders how David will react to knowing she has visited a fantasy world he can never know. When the two kiss, Amber goes through the motions and the author interjects, saying that “[p]retending can be a bridge…[a]t least, that was once someone’s advice to me.” 

Amber and David elope and have two children. After Amber tells David about Mere, he insists that she relinquish her fantasies— both through throwing them out in a ceremonious burial and through insisting Amber take a pill, called Horiza, which makes the user want only that which is in front of them. Horiza appears next in the author’s storyline, as her husband and their couples therapist suggest it as a remedy to both her asexuality and desire to escape her current life. Lines between fantasy and reality blur as the author calls into question the reality of Horiza and Amber and the author’s lives grow increasingly similar. Both David and the author’s husband insist that they up their dosages of Horiza—and the two eventually acquiesce to their husbands’ demands, hiding their fantasies and true feelings from their partners. The narrative ends on a down beat, as the author’s husband asks if she is happy and she contemplates the never-ending winter outside her window.