Midwinter

Satterly followed the stableboy into his horse's stall sullenly. He tried to keep up with the boy's motions, but this was clearly a task the young Fae had been doing his entire life and his hands moved more quickly than Satterly could take in. "Can you slow down a little?" Satterly asked, feeling ridiculous. "Show me again how you hold the bridle before you put it on."

The boy looked at him a bit incredulously. "You've really never done this before, have you?"

No, Satterly thought. No, I've never saddled a horse. No, humans don't possess the Gifts. No, humans can't feel re. No, humans don't know the hundred million goddamn rules of propriety that every single Fae takes for granted.

"No, I haven't," he said.

"Well, it's not so hard once you get the hang of it," the boy said, chuckling under his breath.

"Fuck you," Satterly said, but in English.

Could anyone blame him for not knowing this stuff? Satterly was a physicist, and a theoretical physicist at that-he barely knew how to use the microscope he'd borrowed to bring with him to Faerie, let alone something as outre as saddling a horse. If he'd been born a hundred years ago, maybe.

"All done," said the stable boy, grinning. "Do you know which direction to face in the saddle, or can I help you with that as well?"

"Thanks," said Satterly. "I think I can figure that one out on my own."

* * * *

Satterly's unexpected acquaintance with the world of Faerie had begun the night that his two-year-old niece set his sister's house on fire. Satterly had been in his office at Caltech, grading undergraduate physics papers, when Angela called. Since her husband had left, Satterly was used to getting upset calls from Angela at all hours, but this was something altogether different.

"Brian! I need you. Come quick!"

"What happened?"

"It's Leila. Just come, okay?" Angela had sounded petrified; he'd never heard anyone sound so frightened.

The drive to Irvine seemed to take hours. Satterly spent most of the time imagining his sister's little girl dead or hospitalized or kidnapped. He tried a dozen times to call her on his cell but she never picked up.

When he arrived, the inside of the house was a shambles. It looked like a tornado had hit. Angela led him into Leila's room, where Leila was sitting on her bed, playing with a doll. The blue curtains on the wall-the ones with ducks, Satterly recalled-were now singed and black. The dresser was charred, the plastic piggy bank on top of it melted; coins were scattered on the floor. There was white foam everywhere from the now-empty fire extinguisher that lay on the floor amid the chaos.

"What happened?" said Brian.

Angela took him out to the hall. "I was in her room. We were playing with dolls, just like any other day. Then she told me she wanted to show me something, something wonderful."

Angela started crying. "She started singing, Brian. She started singing in some weird language and then there was this wind and suddenly there was a fire and Leila got scared. She said, `Stop it, mommy! Stop it!' but I didn't know what to do. So I ran and got the fire extinguisher and sprayed it all over.

"Leila was crying, I was crying. None of it made any sense. And then it just stopped."

"What happened then?" said Satterly, holding her tight.

"Then she said, `I'm sorry, mommy. I won't do it again.' And she went right back to playing with her dolls."

Five minutes later, Evelyn Yeoh appeared on Angela's doorstep. She was a petite Asian woman with a serious face dressed in jeans and a sweater. She was carrying an odd little device that looked something like a compass but glowed with a hazy blue light. She explained about Leila, but it wasn't anything that Angela or Brian were ready to hear.

"Don't worry," said Evelyn. "When it happens again, you'll call me." She left her card. Angela wanted to throw the card away, but for some reason Satterly kept it.

The next time it happened, Angela ended up in the hospital with seconddegree burns. Standing in her hospital room, with Leila asleep in his arms, he called Evelyn Yeoh.

The scene at Satterly's apartment a few days later hadn't been pretty. Evelyn arrived, in jeans and a different sweater, this time carrying a black jewelry box. Angela was still in pain and was furious that Satterly had allowed this strange woman into their lives with her little devices and her ludicrous claims. Satterly was skeptical too, but if there were even a chance that Evelyn could help them, what could it hurt? They were way off the map already.

"Get ready," said Evelyn. "This will be the worst part. Removing the glamour, that is." She sat Angela down at the kitchen table with Leila in her arms. Then she took a small metal bracelet from the box and slipped it over Leila's wrist before Angela could object.

The instant the bracelet touched her skin, Leila shrieked. "Get it off? Get it off!"