Midwinter

Mauritane seemed to take a moment to recognize him. The influence of the steel bars was worsening. "What?" he said, keeping his distance from Satterly and the bars.

"It's just that these people have found a way back to my world," said Satterly, looking into the dirt. "And that's all I wanted, was to go home. And also, you know, I was never much help to you anyway. It seemed like I was always getting in the way or getting yelled at or laughed at by somebody. So, I think I'm going to go ahead and leave with these people. Back to my world."

Satterly looked up at Mauritane. Mauritane's face was tired. The lines in his face were deeper and the number of gray hairs in his head seemed to have doubled since they'd met.

"You betray me as well?" said Mauritane. "I should have expected it from you. I never trusted you. I trusted Mave."

"This isn't easy for me," said Satterly. "If that's any consolation."

Mauritane laughed and staggered away, his right hand constantly reaching for a sword that was not there.

"Come on!" said Chris Broward. "We don't have all day!"

Chris and Meyer Schrabe opened the gate to the cage, shotguns at the ready. No one in the cage moved. Raieve glared out of the bars at Satterly and spat into the dirt.

The two men took Gray Mave beneath the arms and dragged him out of the enclosure, his boots making double lines in the muddy ground.

"God, this guy is heavy," said Meyer. "We should have brought my car around."

Satterly waved, awkwardly. "Bye," he said. "I'm sorry."

Only Raieve watched him leave. Silverdun and Mauritane sat with their eyes cast downward, their fingers drawing idly in the dirt.

Hereg had been painting symbols all morning long. He carried a handful of brushes, painting on every available surface in blue, green, and black. Meyer's wife, jenny, followed him around with a collection of earthenware jars, each containing a different color of ink. Slowly, methodically, he worked. By midday he'd covered most of the small clearing with Fae runes, their multicolored angles and curves covering the stone ground, the rocks, the tree trunks. Even the flowers of the magnolia tree at the top of the hill had been painted. Meyer complained when Hereg began applying paint to the LeMans but relented after a withering stare from Broward.

As the day wore on, Satterly helped push the cars into place and attach the chains to the makeshift harness that Paul had built for the Hole. When sent down the hill to retrieve something from the huts, he studiously avoided his former companions in their cage. Several times he stopped and spoke with Linda. She was flushed and nervous; she continuously moved her hands. Satterly understood how she felt. As Hereg's spell came closer and closer to being cast, Satterly found himself remembering his own home, his own past. He started opening doors in his mind he'd long assumed shut for good.

"Do you know what?" he said to Linda. "I can't remember my phone number. I can remember my locker combination from tenth grade, but I'll be damned if I can remember my phone number. Can you?"

Linda thought long and hard and eventually gave up. "It started with a three. I'm pretty sure of that. But we'd just moved, so that's hardly my fault."

Satterly laughed. He threw his arms around Linda and hugged her. She hugged him back. What the hell? They were going home.

Hereg finished lighting his candles and approached Satterly, plucking bits of dried wax from his fingertips. "Your companions will survive," he said in halting English. "I will release them once you have gone."

"Thank you," said Satterly in Common. "I would hate for anything to happen to them because of me. I don't know how you survived so long in there."

"I am schooled in the mind and body art of meditation," Hereg said. "I taught them a few lessons. It should keep them."

"You seem much improved," said Satterly.

"One thing," said Hereg, still in English. "The children. Will your companions take them once you are gone? I know nothing of children, and they would not be welcome in the Unseelie lands."

Satterly squinted at the tired scholar. "Why do you say that? The children said the same thing. Aren't they coming with us?"

Hereg smiled, a broken, wasted gesture. "You'll see."

"The thing begins now!" he suddenly shouted. "Bring the wagons! Pray to your gods. The thing begins now!" He swept his robe around him and began chanting in an ancient dialect of High Fae. "Kho felas she annas! Kho fel ess biret! Kho felas ananaar!"

Hereg walked to the ravine, where the blue sky of Earth glittered like a sapphire. He knelt before the sphere, where it rested in the center of his runic scrawl. Satterly tried in vain to follow what Hereg said. Something about naming the axes of motion, calling out for the true names of something, a plea to something deep within. Satterly could not understand it.