Midwinter

"We never found out what that guy's name was," said Linda, pointing at the truck. "No wallet." She shrugged. "When we buried him, we called him Joe, because that's what it said on the side of the truck, but he didn't look like a Joe to me."

Satterly said nothing, only goggled at the truck as he walked past it.

"This is my car," she said, pointing. A Volvo station wagon rested on its end in a ravine, its taillights pointing skyward. From where Satterly stood, he could reach out and touch the rear bumper.

"You're from Georgia," he said stupidly, pointing to the license plate. Then he noticed the registration tag on the plate. It had expired in June of 1994.

"How long have you been here?" he said, turning toward her.

"Fifteen years," she muttered. "We've been here fifteen years."

As they neared the top of the hill, Satterly began to notice a light emanating from there, steady and blue. It cast long shadows through the tree trunks. Glancing to the left, Satterly noticed that the ravine that held Linda's Volvo continued up the hillside, carving an ever-narrower depression into the earth. Curiously, as the ravine neared the top of the hill, it grew more rounded, more regular, smaller, until Satterly would have sworn it was a drainage ditch, something man-made. The source of the light was at the top of the ravine.

It was a blue sphere of light embedded in the ground, the size of a softball. It glowed with its own radiance, its makeup uncertain. Satterly took a step back and tried to comprehend what he was seeing.

The ravine narrowed even further, becoming shallower as it ascended the slope, finally diminishing in size to a perfectly rounded trench the size and shape of the blue patch of light. The glowing circle was nestled at the top of the depression, as though someone had been rolling it through the mud, leaving the ravine in its wake.

"There it is," said Linda simply. Satterly reached forward to touch the circle and she grabbed his hand. "Careful of the boundary," she said. "It's sharp; it'll take off your finger if you're not careful."

"What the hell is this thing?" said Satterly, kneeling and peering into the circle. He looked back at the ravine. "Did this little thing dig out that huge hole?"

She nodded. "It used to be much bigger," she said.

"What is it?"

"That, Mr. Satterly, is the blue sky of the planet Earth," said Linda. She knelt next to him, laying the pistol across her knees. "Or at least what you can see of it from here."

convertible

"Why couldn't you just walk back through?" said Satterly, gazing into the blue orb. "When it was bigger, I mean."

"I'll show you," she said. She picked up a stick from the ground, illuminated by the sphere's light. She poked the end of the stick into the light and they watched as it was torn to splinters by an unseen force.

"According to Hereg," she said, "the same force that's causing it to contract is distorting the membrane between the worlds. His spell is going to enlarge and smooth out the boundary." She dropped the stick and wiped her hands on her pant legs. "That's what he says, anyway. Who knows how much of it is true?"

"He's been in that cage a long time, I gather."

"Yes, we caught him trying to steal food from us about eighteen months ago. We'd built the cage to hold some of our more precious belongings, but with the storms and the cold weather, we had to move them. Again, locking him up like that wasn't my choice, but without him, we'd probably be dead by now."

"I gather that you and Jim Broward don't always see eye to eye," said Satterly, turning away from the light.

"You gather correctly," she said. "I don't think he's a bad man, we're just… very different. He's got his people, his son Chris, who was guarding you just now, and Meyer and jenny, they're a younger couple. My son and I, we tend to see things differently from them."

"Sounds like it's been a long fifteen years," said Satterly.

"You can't even begin to imagine. There have been bad times. My husband was… he died in an argument with Jim about five years ago. Some times the Fae come; there's a city about a day's ride from here, you know. A place called Sylvan, in Seelie territory."

"Yes," said Satterly. "That's where we're headed."

"And the girls, the children." She bit her lip. "I worry about the children, the ones that were born here. All the time."

"Why do the girls all have bandages on their ears?" Satterly asked.

"I don't want to talk about that," said Linda.

"Tell me how you got here," said Satterly.

"It's a long story," she said. "Ancient history now."

"Up to you."