As they approached the sparkling bubble of golden light in the heart of the land below them, Snowpepper panicked. She hovered in the air, her hand to her mouth.

“I can’t!” she squeaked. “I can’t go to her! I’m afraid!” She was visibly trembling.

Uh-oh… guess we’d better hide—quick! Sylvie said. Look out!

A yawning mouth had opened up in the air a few feet away. Snowpepper darted away from the glowing bubble, and streaked down toward a welcoming hole in the ground. Sylvie wasn’t so sure. Not there! she cried.

Snowpepper swerved away from the hole just as it grew teeth and snapped shut. Yikes! said Sylvie. Better stay on our toes!

Snowpepper looked frantically, but could find no place to hide that didn’t also offer a perfect lurking nook to some toothy monster. Behind them, the mouth, which came complete with sharp teeth and was attached to a large black bird with shaggy feathers, was getting closer.

“Aargh!!” Snowpepper shrieked. “I hate this! This is NOT okay with me!” She turned on the bird and screamed, “You go away! Leave me alone right now!” The bird, shocked, backpedaled in the air.

“Don’t do that!” it cried in a gurgling, throaty warble. “You startled me something awful!”

“You were going to eat me!” Snowpepper accused.

“Well, of course I was, I was hungry,” the bird explained.

“Why were you going to eat me, Sootwing?”

“Why not? You smelled delicious. I couldn’t resist.” The bird poked its beak tentatively toward Snowpepper. “Couldn’t I try just a little taste, Snowpepper? Look, I’m salivating!” It was true. Clear goo hung in viscous streamers from its beak. “You could spare a wee bit of thigh, I’ll bet!”

“No! Keep your pointy face out of my thigh, you bad thing!” Snowpepper cried indignantly. “I haven’t done anything to you! Why don’t you go eat a piece of fruit or something?”

“Oh, fruit is the worst,” the bird complained. “Why, as soon as I open my beak for a nice bite of apple, it screams at me louder than you did. You’d think I was doing something wrong. I’m just hungry! What’s wrong with that?” It closed its beak and looked at Snowpepper with large glistening black eyes. With its horrible teeth covered, it seemed almost pitiful, Sylvie thought.

“Isn’t there anything you can eat that won’t mind, Sootwing?” Snowpepper asked. “There must be something!”

“If there is, I haven’t found it,” the bird sighed. “Why, I’ve been hungry for simply ever and ever! I do manage to snatch the occasional bite, but you’d be surprised how assertive most food is these days.”

“Gee,” Snowpepper said sympathetically. “That sounds hard. Why don’t you ask the Queen to help you find food that doesn’t care about being eaten?”

With a terrified squawk, Sootwing flung itself back in the air. “Awwwkk!! The Queen?! No! I couldn’t do that! She doesn’t talk to the likes of me! Why, she’d turn me into something delicious and eat me herself! I—“

This speech was cut short by the advent of a much larger mouth, with a triple row of vicious teeth, attached to a massive flying powder-blue shark which swallowed the black bird in a single gulp. “Hey, thanks, Snowpepper,” it belched in a satisfied manner. “First meal in gosh, I dunno how long. Treat!” It gave her a wink, and without waiting for a response undulated lazily away.

Boy! It really isn’t safe to be scared here, is it? Sylvie thought, mentally raising her eyebrows for Snowpepper.

“Oh, poor Sootwing!” Snowpepper cried.

Hey, Sylvie said. How did you know its name? And how did it know yours?

“Gosh,” Snowpepper said. Her feathery brows quirked together as she thought. “I don’t know. His name was just there in my head, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he would know mine. Why?”

I dunno. It’s just not natural where I come from at all. Then she recalled Quickfoot’s agonized self-introduction. Oh, that’s right, she realized. He said that here everybody knows everybody’s name—but he hated having to say his own. She mentally shrugged. What was one more strangeness?

“But oh, Sylvie,” Snowpepper wailed, “It’s so sad! They’re all hungry and nobody wants to be eaten! Why is it like this?”

I haven’t got a clue, Snow. I guess you’d have to ask the Queen.

“No way, uh-uh,” Snowpepper said. “It makes me way too scared to think about going to talk to her, so I don’t think I’d better even try. I’ll just have to look around and maybe we’ll find Quickfoot again.”

Oh, but Snowpepper! The Queen could help us! I know she could!

“Maybe she could,” the faerie replied, “but if she scares me so bad that we get eaten on the way to see her, how will that help?”

That was a good point, Sylvie had to admit. With singularly bad grace, she agreed. Okay, okay. Jeez. I guess we have to, then. But which way will we look? We don’t have a clue!

“That’s okay. Any direction is as good as any other. Oh, look at the pretty flowers!” Snowpepper was delighted.

The flowers in question were the size of table tops and came in a rich variety of colour; it was a veritable jungle of various hues, ranging from palest cream to rich velvety nearly-black purple.

They were directly above the flowers when Snowpepper noticed them. When she dipped closer to admire their beauty, a chorus of chiming voices rose from the floral chaos.

“Ohh, look, a visitor!” “Hello, new person!” “A white faerie, welcome!”

They were welcoming her! Snowpepper was smitten by this novelty and before Sylvie had a chance to respond, she responded, “Oh hello, pretty flower faeries! How are you today?”

The faeries flooded out of their floral homes in a commotion of fluttering wings and surrounded Snowpepper. Petting her, tugging at her dressand hair, they each tried to coax her toward their flower. “Oh, come visit me, dear Snowpepper,” they cooed and sang. “I’ll feed you nectar and stroke your hair. Please, come to my home…”

Snowpepper, Sylvie said warningly, Something doesn’t feel right. I think we’d better fly now.

Hey, it’s okay, Snowpepper thought back. It was the first time she had communicated wordlessly to Sylvie. I’m not afraid or anything. How could they be dangerous? They’re friendly. They like me! What’s wrong with that?

Maybe nothing, Sylvie said. I hope… But be careful. Don’t go to any of their homes. Please? Remember the hole you thought would be a good place to hide? Remember I’m the one who had a feeling about it? You listened then and you weren’t sorry, were you?

Yeah… okay. Snowpepper was reluctant, but agreed. You do seem to know things. Okay, I won’t go to any of their flowers. But let me visit a while, okay?

The closer they got, the more the land below looked like a bright-coloured patchwork quilt, rippling in a breeze. Sylvie wondered about the nature of this place. It didn’t look like anything she had ever seen or imagined. Certainly it wasn’t the Earth! There was no roundness, no oceans, no clearly defined horizon; the edges of the quilt seemed to fade into the mists. The impression of constant, rippling movement was impossible to avoid. Even though she knew they were looking at the ground, it seemed anything but solid or static. How could such a place be, she wondered? It seemed to obey none of the natural laws that she was accustomed to thinking of as being immutable.

Snowpepper had no issues with the nature of the place, since it was all she had ever known. Being fresh and newly born, she was curious, though. She wondered aloud, “I wonder what this place is called?”

They call the place where I’m from ‘the other side’ here, Syvie replied. I suppose when we’re back on Earth, then we will call this the ‘other side’. I guess we could call it Faerieland, or Elfland or something like that.

Snowpepper said testily, “I don’t want to talk about being over there. I don’t want to go there. I don’t care what Quickfoot says. I belong here.”

But, Snowpepper, you must know that I belong over there, Sylvie reminded her gently, trying to hold back her desire to push the faerie harder. If she did that, she knew that Snowpepper would dig in more stubbornly. She had to be tactful about her approach. If I go back there, then how will you stay here?

“I don’t know and I don’t want to think about it now!” Snowpepper’s face crumpled and she began to cry. “Please, it’s not fair, I don’t want to!”

Sylvie felt a burst of compassion for Snowpepper’s plight. All she had thought about until now was how to convince Snowpepper to co-operate with the inevitable necessity of returning to the other side so that she herself could go home. It hadn’t occurred to her to question how it must feel to the faerie. She had never known anything but this magical place where she flew so freely. Sylvie could certainly see the attraction. Why, if it wasn’t for her own overpowering desire to find her brother, she might be tempted to try to stay herself.

Then she was reminded that Quickfoot had said that would be impossible anyway. Reality, as he called it, was going to pull them back, it was only a matter of time. Ultimately Snowpepper wouldn’t have a choice in the matter. This was too bad for the faerie, but it reassured Sylvie and she breathed more easily. She didn’t have to convince the Snowpepper. Circumstances would take care of it for her.

Time was an issue, though, she suddenly realized. She had no idea how long they had been here or how much time might have passed at home. She had the vague idea that time passed strangely in faerieland. She remembered stories of people spending a night partying with the faeries and returning to find out that a hundred years or more had passed. Her thoughts froze in terror. She had to get them home as soon as possible, and Snowpepper would just have to deal with it.

It’s too bad she had no power to speak out loud, she fretted. She could communicate only in the form of thoughts and only to Snowpepper. What was it Quickfoot had said? “…it’s the vibration of sound that actualizes a thought and makes it magical.” If she could just speak her name out loud, that would create the spell necessary to pull them back to reality. But no way was Snowpepper going to allow that!

The Queen would help her get home. She had to!

The trouble was, that was exactly what Snowpepper was most afraid of.

Immediately, Snowpepper was faced with a dilemma. Which way to go? If she closed her eyes and floated, she just hung where she was. The small glowing carpet of colour had faded into the mists and she had no idea in what direction to look for it.

“Oh, dear,” Snowpepper said. “Sylvie, you’re the smart one. Can you help?”

Sylvie looked through Snowpepper’s eyes at their surroundings. It was a disorienting sensation. She felt certain that if she looked in the right direction, she would see the bit of glowing colour, but which was was the right direction? She had never realized how many directions there were in a sphere of space. There was no up, no down, no over or under—there was just all around. She had an idea.

Let’s try an experiment, Snowpepper, she thought. Close your eyes and spin around, just dance in all directions, any old which way you want, but let yourself know that you are dancing the way home. Let that be the meaning of your dance. Then when you open your eyes, we’ll look in the direction your eyes are pointing. Don’t open your eyes until it feels right, okay? Can you do that?

“Ooh, yeah, I like that!” Snowpepper said ecstatically. How smart Sylvie was! Dancing was just the thing! She closed her eyes, curled her arms slowly out and allowed the feeling of ‘the way home’ to infuse her body. As the feeling took over her consciousness, she began to move, slowly at first, but faster and faster as the dance progressed. She spun mid-air somersaults and sideways pirouettes, losing all sense of orientation. What joy!

She gave herself completely to the passion and flow of the dance, nearly forgetting what it was for except for the theme of ‘finding home’ which was the dance itself. It was almost an anticlimax when she slowly spun to a graceful stasis. She opened her eyes when all motion had ceased, and just as Sylvie had predicted, directly in her line of sight, barely distinguishable through the intervening mists, was the glowing colour of land.

“It worked, Sylvie,” she said blissfully, still caught up in the rapture of dance. “It was a good idea.” She kept her eyes focused on the patch of colour.

Okay, let’s go find Quickfoot and Barkley! Sylvie thought jubilantly. Great dancing, Snowpepper! You are so awesome! I always wanted to dance, but…I was never good at it, not like you. She created an image in her mind for Snowpepper to see of a frightened little girl who stumbled over dance steps the other girls seemed to learn with ease.

“But I am you, silly girl!” Snowpepper giggled. “Remember? If I can dance, then you can too! Besides,” she added with an edge of contempt, “Learning steps isn’t dancing. Those people were silly. You knew better.”

This novel idea struck Sylvie with some force, and she mulled it over as they made their way through thick swirling pearly mists packed with elementals. These now ignored her, going about their elemental business, as she ignored them. Snowpepper flew gracefully, languorously, feeling cool mists swirl over her body, moving her arms and legs like a long-distance swimmer while her wings drooped behind her. The ethers here were so thick that actual flight was unnecessary, and she took pleasure in the novel, sensuous exertion of swimming.

As they approached the scrap of colour, it grew to become a teeming land with no indication of where they might find Quickfoot and Barkley.

“Oh, dear,” Snowpepper sighed. “I don’t think I can dance my way to them this time.”

Wait, what’s that glowing patch in the middle there? Sylvie asked her.

“There?” Snowpepper peered more closely. “Why, I think that’s the Queen’s Court. At least, that’s what it seems like it ought to be. It looks all golden and sparkly like she was.”

Let’s go there. I’d like to see Her again. I’ll bet She can help us find Barkley and Quickfoot.

Snowpepper was doubtful. “Are you sure? She might be mad at us. Quickfoot said she was unpredictable. What if she turns us into a toad?”

I think she liked me. She must have. She turned me into you, didn’t she? And… well, what choice have we got? I have a feeling we could be lost down there for a long time.

The faerie shrugged. “So? It might be fun. Maybe we’d meet somebody helpful. Maybe we’d meet somebody more fun than Quickfoot!”

Remember what Barkley said? There are dangerous things there. Predators. Scary monsters. Maybe even werewolves. Sylvie showed Snowpepper some images from her childhood nightmares. She was afraid to tell Snowpepper her real urgency. She wanted to get back to the other side so she could go back to looking for Carl. She had to find him! She couldn’t spend the rest of her life in here, but she had a sense that in this area, at least, she and Snowpepper were not going to see eye to eye.

She put that worry aside for another moment, focusing on convincing the faerie by other means. Barkley did say we’d do okay as long as we had Quickfoot to help us. But if we don’t have Quickfoot… the thought trailed off.

“Hmph!” Snowpepper sniffed. “Quickfoot was going to tie us up! Don’t think I’ve forgotten that.”

Still, the Queen could help us, don’t you think? Sylvie thought.

The faerie hung in the air, feeling undecided and rebellious. Something about the Queen intimidated her terribly, and she was still burning with resentment about the tree’s ‘good idea’ to tie her down—to prevent her flying! Why they may as well try to prevent her breathing! She had felt that threatened. She knew Sylvie didn’t understand how flying was for her, and felt she was being far too quick to forgive Quickfoot’s horribleness.

Still, maybe there were dangerous things out there. Maybe Sylvie knew best. She sighed.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go see the Queen.”

Snowpepper, a pure ball of rage, rocketed up and up, shrieking wordless defiance and frustration. I! will! not! I! shall! not! Never! No! NO!

Her thoughts were adamant, her heart impervious to logic. It did not matter that Barkley and Quickfoot had only her best interest at heart. She cared nothing for the reasons behind the offering of the imprisoning cord. She felt condensed into essence of pure refusal. Only escape occupied her now. She flew, as she had before, straight up, but this time cometlike, alight with rage and purpose. If there were a moon, she would be headed straight for it. Her every instinct screamed, fly! And fly she did.

“Hah!” she shouted in an instant of angry clarity, remembering what Quickfoot had said about emotions, “I bet I’m obvious NOW!” The thought sobered her so that she slowed her headlong flight to check whether any predators were about. But, she wondered, how would she recognize them if there were any?

When she looked, she was shocked to find how far she had come. Back in the direction from whence she came, she spied a tiny glowing carpet of colour a dizzying distance away. She had no particular sensation of height or thinning of atmosphere.

The sheer wonder of the sight overcame her and she floated free, gazing raptly about her. She noticed that the pearly texture of the air, when she looked closely, was made up of myriad swirling beings, from tiny to massive, practically invisible but obvious once she began to notice them. These, she conjectured with a flash of alarm, must be the wind or air elementals she had been warned about.

At the moment, they appeared more frightened than dangerous. Where she had rocketed upward, she saw a clear path left open around her silver-lit wake. It seemed even the largest elementals had moved aside to avoid her ragey flight.

Then, she heard a voice speaking inside her head. Hey, Snowpepper, can you hear me?

Snowpepper reacted to this intrusion with confused alarm. Around her, the elementals stirred in response. A large one nearby extruded garish fangs and smacked its lips, then began surreptitiously manoeuvring closer.

Hey, the voice hastened, it’s okay, it’s only me, Sylvie, your otherside self, remember?

Yes, Snowpepper remembered. Quickfoot had told her about an otherside self. She hadn’t liked the idea then.

Sylvie’s voice continued. Come on, Snowpepper, we have to get serious and think about this. Quickfoot said that there was danger if we were radiating fear and confusion, like we were before. He said fear draws predators, like this big-butted character here. But when we were angry, it seemed to scare these guys. Right?

Snowpepper wasn’t partial to this sort of analytical thinking. She preferred pure impulse and movement. These complicated ideas annoyed her. She shook her head and cried, “Go away! Stop!”

Sylvie stubbornly continued. Look, we’re in this together, okay? Somehow you’re me, and I’m you, so let’s deal with it. We have to. Look, I want to check something out. Bear with me for a minute! Try to scare that big guy out there away, okay? It shouldn’t be too hard–you’re already mad at me. Just shake that anger stick at Mr. Big Teeth out there.

This seemed like a fine idea. Snowpepper pulled a horrible face and flew angrily at the encroaching elemental, shrieking, “What are you looking at? Hah? Go away, big dummy!” The elemental seemed taken aback by this assault. It rolled its eyes at her, then shrank back, fangs disappearing behind pouty lips, muttering to itself. The sky roiled as the nearby elementals jostled in reaction to Snowpepper’s rage and communicated their reactions to the ones farther away.

Hah! Sylvie crowed. See? I can help! I’m good at this kind of stuff. See, we’re supposed to find balance with each other, like Quickfoot said. It’s taken me a while to figure out how to make myself heard. Will you listen now?

Sylvie had a point. Sulkily, Snowpepper agreed. Good, good faerie. I know this is hard for you. It’s pretty weird for me, too, trust me! But I think I’m getting a handle on it. Now, this emotions thing is important. Anger gives us power and scares away the baddies, fear and confusion makes us weak and attracts them. That’s how it looks so far, so it’ll do for a place to start. Okay?

Snowpepper nodded. “Okay.”

So we have to watch out when we’re scared and make sure that we don’t go off half-cocked and put ourselves in danger. It’s not your fault, cause you didn’t know any better, but I’ve gotta say, if had been up to me, if I was scared, I wouldn’t have flown up in the sky like that. No way! I would’ve ducked under a tree or hidden someplace. That’s my way. So I can help keep us safe, like the Father, er, the rabbit Quickfoot said. I’m good at being careful when I’m scared. I’ve had to learn to be, with Scotty for a brother.

Snowpepper didn’t understand all the words or concepts, but she felt reassured by Sylvie’s confidence, and by the way her advice had served to frighten off the potential predator. It was strange, discovering a whole other person inside herself, but something felt right about it too, like first making the acquaintance of someone who is destined to become a close friend. She liked Sylvie and she sensed that Sylvie liked her.

Yeah, that’s right, faerie, Sylvie thought, and formed the image of a big smile in Snowpepper’s mind. I do like you. I think you’re just so cool and hot and amazing, and it totally rocks my world to be on the inside of somebody like you. You’re exactly what I’ve always wanted to be. I’m glad to be you! Sylvie’s thought hesitated. And…I hope you won’t mind being me when it’s my turn.

Snowpepper beamed happy reassurance at Sylvie. She loved to be liked, and if Sylvie liked her, that was entirely good enough to win her over. Beaming and bouncing, she performed an ecstatic aerial dance of blessing and gratitude for Sylvie’s sake, who laughed and applauded in her mind.

When Snowpepper’s dance had finished, the air elementals all across the sky were swirling and whirling in their own dances.The whole pearly wash of mixed beings looked like a pastel dance party. Ah, I think I get it, Snowpepper, Sylvie thought. These guys are totally reactive. Whatever we feel gets reflected back, sort of like a mirror. Happiness gets us celebrated, fear gets us attacked, anger gets us feared. All right! Now let’s get back to Quickfoot and Barkley, they must be worried about us.

Snowpepper balked angrily. “No! They wanted to tie us down and stop us from flying! I don’t like them!”

Sylvie said, Look, Snowpepper, they were trying to help. They didn’t want to tie us down. They just thought it was the only way. But now that we know what we know, we don’t have to be tied down anymore. I’m here now, remember? I’ll help. I’ll explain what we’ve learned to them and they’ll see that they don’t need to tie us down. Besides, we’re fast. If it seems like they want to try, we’ll be able to get away, just like we did already. She formed the image of a wink in Snowpepper’s mind.

Though reluctant at first, Snowpepper agreed. She wanted to please Sylvie, and now her quicksilver emotions remembered feeling good with Quickfoot and Barkley. “Okay!” she beamed. “Let’s go!”

She flew, but the frightening new thought stayed with her. The name, try as she might to avoid it, rose like a bubble from the base of her mind. Sylvie… my otherside name is Sylvie, the thought informed her. As the name hit her consciousness, she spasmed in terror and spiraled down like a leaf, wings furled. Before she touched earth, she spread her wings again, darting frantically hither and thither like a dragonfly. Still, she remained who she was, a fey. Her wings did not disappear.

Finally, she returned to where the rabbit and the tree awaited her. “I thought the name,” she informed Quickfoot indignantly. “My otherside name! I thought it out loud in my head, and nothing happened. I thought you said it would take me back to the other side if I did that.”

“Oh no, dear child, your thoughts are quite sacrosanct,” Quickfoot hastened to assure her, relief evident in his tone. He had been wringing his paws in acute anxiety. He watched her ascent with his heart in his throat, fearing that a rebellious wind elemental or a wandering hedgewitch on a broom might be drawn to the confusion and terror that radiated from her like heat, and he would not be there to protect her. Not for the first time, he regretted his winglessness.

“You see, dear Snowpepper, it’s the vibration of sound that actualizes a thought and makes it magical,” he said. “Your thoughts are contained within the field of your own inner being. Why, you can think whatever you like. It’s perfectly all right to think your other name, and to remember your otherself. In fact, it’s necessary in order not to forget yourself, as I have said.”

“Oh…” she laughed, a tinkling sound. “Oh! I can think what I like! How lovely!” She lifted into the air again, and spun in place in front of Barkley and Quickfoot. She gave herself to the feeling of spinning, the whole great everythingness whirling about her, her head thrown back so that she gazed at the rabbit and the tree upside down as she spun. She could think what she liked! What freedom!

Slowly she allowed her spinning to wind itself down until she stopped again to face the rabbit. A new thought had occurred to her.

“Okay, Quickfoot, what were you so frightened of, then?” she asked suspiciously. “You were afraid, I could see you being afraid. You were afraid for me.” She stood scowling in the air before him, her lower lip protruding, tapping one foot impatiently against the other.

Quickfoot heaved a deep sigh and pulled a red spotted handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket to mop his furry brow. Forehead fur suitably disarranged, he tucked the kerchief delicately back into the pocket and sighed again.

“Oh dear… dear Snowpepper, yes, I was frightened, worried for you that is, because what you were doing was dangerous. I don’t refer to your thoughts, but to your flying wildly about while experiencing turbulent confused emotions as you were then. There’s no telling who you might have bumped into, or who might have been drawn to your turbulence, like a fish to the ripples a fly creates on the surface of the water.

“You see, dear Snowpepper, this side of things is really no safer than the other. There are dangers to beware of here, as well, and you are too new to know what they all are. That’s what I’m to teach you.”

“What did I do?” Snowpepper spun frantically in the air in front of him. “You said it was safe to think my own thoughts, so what did I do that was dangerous?”

“Why, I’ve just told you!” Quickfoot blinked his wide pale eyes. “It was your flying wildly about while feeling such turbulent and confused emotions. Word-thoughts are contained here, but emotions radiate rather tangibly, they flow from us in a constant stream, like water in fact. Such vulnerable emotions as fear and confusion are very attractive to those who seek the vulnerable and weak for their sustenance. They serve as signposts, saying, ‘here is prey’. You were making quite a splash in the ethers and any predatory elemental in the vicinity could have made short work of you. Eaten you right up, and spit out the seeds, in fact.”

He raised a furry paw and pointed a stubby forefinger at her. “You were very lucky, young faerie, very lucky indeed. O yes, I was frightened.” He nodded vigorously, then shook his head, frowning. “In future, when you are feeling frightened or confused, why, dear Snowpepper, stay where you are—don’t broadcast it to the heavens!”

“But… but I couldn’t help it,” she said pleadingly. “It just happened. I was scared and confused and I just flew, that’s what my body wanted to do. My body has all kinds of impulses in it and I just have to give in to them! How can I stop it?” As she became agitated, she danced, bouncing in the air, rising a little into the air with every word. The rabbit reached up to grasp her slender ankle and pull her back to earth.

“Hm, oh dear,” the rabbit said. “I see, there are disadvantages to having wings. Flying makes you terribly visible. Myself, when I am frightened and confused, my impulse is to run and hide, or to freeze in place if I feel well hidden. Flying is flaunting, dear one. You need to have powers to match your impulses.”

He paused, considering. “I wonder… perhaps you do, but we don’t know what they are yet,” he mused. “And not knowing what they are is the same thing as not having them, I’m afraid.”

“If I might make a s’gestion,” the tree rumbled.

“Oh please, dear Barkley, do,” the rabbit pleaded. “I would so appreciate a little advice. It’s rather trying having to be the wise one all the time, you know.”

“I’d say tie the fairy down until she gets a handle on herself.” Barkley paused, considering. His eyes rolled up and his lips moved, muttering inaudibly. After a moment, he opened his eyes, smiled and said, “I think… yep, here we go.” Overhead, his branches quivered and rustled, and to their feet fell a length of fine, thin, strong-looking cord. “Jes’ tie that roun’ her ankle, and she won’t fly very far ‘thout you pullin her back t’earth,” he said with satisfaction.

Quickfoot picked up the length of cord gratefully. “Why, dear Barkley, that is an excellent solution indeed!” he said happily. “Do you see, dear Snowpepper, what a wise alternative our dear treefriend has…” he looked around, but Snowpepper was nowhere to be seen.

As the sound of her name echoed in her ears, Snowpepper felt a profound change in her being, as though she were waking for the first time from a long incomprehensible dream. She felt a quickening inside her—ripples of awareness, of life, thrilled through her entire being, and she began to move her body with the feelings. Her fingers stretched gracefully, her arms moved, she spun slowly, raptly, and her wings extended. Joy!

She rose into the air on a wave of astonished delight. Oh yes, this was herself, her real and true being! As she spiraled through the sky, leaving a silvery trail of light behind her, she heard Quickfoot’s happy shouts from below.

“Yes, yes, dear Snowpepper, did I not tell you? Such a delightful surprise for you! Wings, dear faerie, wings! How lovely for you, how lovely you are!”

Barclay’s deep creaky voice rumbled a bass counterpoint, “Way to go, Snowpepper faerie. Proud to have you lean on my face. Always knew you’d make it.”

All this was mere background in the powerful upward, surging wave of discovery, of birth, as Snowpepper the faerie awakened into herself and danced in the air with the joy of flight. Sylvie as she had been vanished utterly, leaving not so much as a questioning voice in the back of her mind.

When at last she lighted, soft as thistledown, on the ground beside Quickfoot and Barclay, she was incandescent with delight. “Oh, how wonderful to be me!” she trilled, as she whirled, danced and spun, unable to be still for a moment. “How lovely to be alive! How joyful to fly, to be!”

Quickfoot dabbed at a teary eye with a furry forefinger. “Oh, my dear Snowpepper, you’re making me nostalgic,” he burbled. “Why, I can almost remember… but no. Was that me? I’m not certain at all. Memory is such a tricky thing here.” He cleared his throat and continued, “But now that you’ve received safe passage and been given your true form and name, it will be much easier to teach you,” he said. “You’ll be able to understand things now, you see.”

“Oh, yes,” Snowpepper breathed. Every pore tingled with astonished delight, joy, bliss and utter awareness. She breathed deeply of the almond-scented air and gazed raptly at the varicoloured delights around her.

Then Quickfoot’s words caught up with her. “Teach me?” she said.

“Why yes, dear faerie,” the rabbit nodded eagerly. “Didn’t you hear the Queen? I’m to continue to teach you about the way of this side of things, and the balance between. You’re picking up your new form nicely, but there’s much more to it than that, you know. You’re still a product of the otherside and you’re going to have to return there, so we have to make sure you don’t purge the self that belongs there. It’s crucial to maintain the balance.”

A fine line appeared between Snowpepper’s pale, flossy eyebrows. “Why can’t I just stay here?” she asked dreamily, dancing in slow pirouettes. “I like it here. I like to be me here. I don’t want to go anywhere else.”

Quickfoot sighed. “Ah, that doesn’t surprise me at all, dear Snowpepper. That’s how they all are. It seems so much more pleasant here than on the other side, which looks rather grim and grey by comparison, doesn’t it? But it’s a fact and it can’t be changed that you belong there. Reality will pull you back into it whether you wish it or not. The choice is, do you go back with more of yourself, or less? If you leave too much of yourself here, you won’t be able to survive properly back on the otherside.

“The ideal is to return home with all of yourself intact, then you can carry at least some of the magic you’ve gained here back with you. That’s what our Queen wants—She is determined to seed the other side with magic and She depends on those of us who cross over to help Her with that. Trust me, it’s the best way. And that’s what I’m to teach you.”

“How do you know all this, Quickfoot?” Snowpepper was struggling. Quickfoot’s words stirred vague discontent in her mind and she wished with some irritation that he would stop, but at the same time her curiosity was awakening and stirring desire to know more.

“Why, my dear faerie,” the rabbit said deliberately, “I know because I have been doing it my own self for longer than I can remember. I’m one of those who cross over. That is how we met in the first place, after all, isn’t it? Do you remember the other side of things?”

“What other side?” she said, petulantly. The line between her brows deepened. “I want to always have been here. I don’t like to think about another side of things. It hurts my brain.”

“And when you are back on the other side, it will hurt your brain to think of this one,” Quickfoot sighed. “It’s not such an easy crossing, sad to say. Would that it were easier. It’s only been getting more difficult as the magic has been forced from of the otherside and dissipated into the void. Balance has been lost, along with magic. Our Queen is desirous of restoring the balance. But She is not exactly being met with friendly co-operation by the rulers of the other side, I’m very afraid.”

Snowpepper rolled her eyes and appealed to the tree. “Barclay, do you know what he’s talking about?”

“Oh, some of it, lil Snowpepper faerie, some of it… us trees do hear things, y’know,” the tree confirmed. “’Course, we don’t get around much. I’m not one of those who cross over, but I’ve met a lot of them and I tend to like ‘em, except for the bad ‘uns, watch out for ‘em. But this rabbit, Quickfoot, I’d believe what he says if I were you.” His voice sank to a rumbling, confidential whisper, and his great eyeballs rolled in all directions as if to confirm that they were not being overheard. “Not everybody here is trustworthy. So far you’ve only met good ‘uns. You’ve been lucky.”

His voice resumed normal volume. “And now you’ve got your safe passage, been granted your powers, well, yer pretty safe. Y’ just have to watch out for being fooled, but with ol’ Quickfoot on your side, that’s not so likely, long’s you listen to ‘im.”

Quickfoot beamed at Barclay and patted his nose affectionately. “There’s a good fellow, Barcley, appreciate the support, very kind of you, dear tree,” he said.

He resumed his teaching tone. “Before you came over here, dear Snowpepper, you were a person, an othersider, a young girl looking for her brother. I shan’t name you, because it is forbidden to use otherside names here once your true name has been given, but your otherside name was not Snowpepper. When you hear your otherside name again, you will know you are home.” After a pause, he continued reluctantly, “And… if you hear or speak your otherside name before you go home, you’ll find yourself home in a hurry. It’s one of the ways to return. There’s great power in names, you see.”

Snowpepper was taken aback. What he said rang a bell in her mind. Yes, another name… was it…? No! She shook her head wildly and flew straight up to escape her strange, perilous thoughts.

“Mm? The Queen?” The rabbit said nervously. “Oh… oh, dear. Well, she’s rather difficult to explain. But then, everything is rather difficult to explain, isn’t it?”

“You said she’s coming here?”

“Oh, yes. She needs to give you safe-passage before you go anywhere here. If not, well, you could be in serious trouble, I’m afraid.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Much better for you not to know, dear Sylvie. Let’s just say, if the Queen fails to give you safe passage, I suggest you get to know dear Barkley rather well. In that eventuality, it wouldn’t be wise to move from this spot. In fact, it would be better for you to stay right here until reality pulled you back into it. ”

“Do you think she will give me safe passage?”

The rabbit sounded worried. “The Queen is rather unpredictable. It depends entirely on whether or not she takes a fancy to you. Perhaps she will like what you’re wearing. Though that’s not likely,” he said, eyeing her jeans, t-shirt and plain grey sweater critically. “It may be that you will do or say something to intrigue her. Or she may take a fancy to you for no discernible reason.” He took his spectacles off and polished them on his furry thigh. “Or not.”

At that moment, Sylvie felt a tingling on her skin, then the air about three metres away from them a began to sparkle with tiny scintillant golden lights.

“Oh, my,” the rabbit sighed, “We’re about to find out, aren’t we?”

Sylvie watched wide-eyed as the coruscating gold sparks grew brighter and more distinct. The sparkling lights coalesced to become a glowing oval portal through which stepped the tall, elegant silhouette of a woman followed by several more figures, equally tall and graceful. The golden light made it impossible to make out any features. Along with the silhouettes, the tiny yellow fay who had gone to fetch the queen zoomed out and darted back into her flower as though eager to escape.

The Queen, for Sylvie assumed that was who this must be, was very tall, slender and elaborately festooned, from her hair to her long prehensile-looking toes, with gaudy gold and silver baubles, jewellery, spangles, glitter and gauze. It made Sylvie’s eyes hurt to look at her, so she squinted a bit and shaded her eyes with her hand. The accompanying courtiers, or whatever they were, were each equally outrageously costumed in different colours.

“Ahhh,” the Queen said musingly, looking Sylvie up and down, one impossibly-long, beringed and glittering finger tapping the side of her sharp chin. “So this is our new little othersider. What’s special about you, I wonder?”

Sylvie flushed. She didn’t like the way those eyes were inspecting her.

“There’s nothing special about me. I’m just a girl.”

“Oh, a girl, is it?” One elaborately curlicued eyebrow lifted. The eyes which examined Sylvie with such interest were large and orange-gold, with slitted pupils like a cat’s. “And pray, how is one to tell? Is this costume the norm for girls on the otherside?”

“Yeah, sure, everybody dresses like this,” she shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s just jeans and a sweater.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” the Queen spoke decidedly. Pulling a wand from somewhere among her spangles and layers of glitter, she flourished it dramatically in Sylvie’s direction. A cloud of glittery mist swirled from the tip of the wand and settled over Sylvie. She coughed as the mist cleared, then jumped in startlement. “Hey!” she cried.

She was wearing new clothing. A floating white dress swirled around her limbs like mist or fog and felt like warm rippling water over her body. She was not at all sure she enjoyed the vulnerable accompanying feeling of near-nudity, but oh, how beautiful it was! She lifted a section of the fabric and brought it close to examine it, and gasped in wonderment. It was not quite sheer, but was made of thousands of infinitesimally tiny glittery white specks, like minute snowflakes woven together.

Every nerve, every muscle in her body felt tautly, vividly alive. The myriad new sensations made her hair stand on end. She reached her hand up to discover that her hair was standing on end, quite literally—it grew straight up from her head like grass. She wished she could see how she looked. As though reading her mind, the Queen said, “Here, child, see yourself.”

A large oval mirror appeared directly in front of Sylvie and she saw a faerie in white, with shimmering snowy hair that swooped up and swirled forward like seafoam. Her face was different. She didn’t recognize herself at all, which frightened her terribly.

She raised her hands to her cheeks, shivering, speechless.

“Well?” the Queen snapped, not unkindly. “You can thank me, can’t you? Don’t they teach girls manners over there?”

When she saw Sylvie’s expression, wide-eyed and trembling, unable to speak, the Queen softened.

“There, I see,” she smiled gently. “You’re quite overwhelmed with gratitude. That’s perfectly nderstandable! It is one of my lovelier creations. I’m feeling rather good today, and feeling good looks good, when you can see it. You’re quite lovely, child.” She leaned forward and tipped Sylvie’s chin up with one long, glitter-enameled fingernail. “Yes, even without my help you were nearly passable. Now you’re fit to be here.”

“Oh!” Sylvie gasped, suddenly comprehending. “Thank you, ma’am, I mean, Your Highness, um, whatever! Does that mean I have safe passage?”

“Safe passage, yes, certainly.” The Queen made a moue of distaste. “But you mustn’t mention such things. You’re not well trained at all. Quickfoot!” she snapped.

“Yes, Your Majesty?” Quickfoot hopped nervously from foot to foot.

“Have you been teaching this othersider?”

“Some things, not too very much yet, Your Majesty, I’m afraid. One hardly knows where to start,” he said. “Things are so very different here, after all.”

“Well, keep it up.” She nodded vigorously, her elaborate headdress quivering perilously. “Good work, rabbit-fay. She’ll do, I think. She has a sweet heart. I can always tell.” With an imperious gesture, she waved the oval golden portal back into being, and she and her court departed as precipitously as they had come. “I would stay, but busy busy busy,” she chortled, her voice hanging in the air after the rest of her had vanished completely.

“The thing is, she can, you know,” Quickfoot told Sylvie confidentially.

“Huh? What?” She was still dazed.

“Always tell. She can take one look and she knows what’s inside you. It’s uncanny. And the shape she comes up with is a true one. If she finds a shape for you, that’s your safe passage. If she had left you as you were, you’d be fair game.”

“Finds a shape… but I’m still the same shape, aren’t I?” Syvie looked down at herself. She did seem different but she couldn’t put a finger on the difference. She remembered the strange face in the mirror, and shivered. “Isn’t it just a costume? Do you mean the hair?”

Quickfoot laughed. “Oh, no no, you’ve changed form rather thoroughly! Try to take the dress off and you’ll see! And oh my, you have a lovely surprise still to discover, dear little faerie. I don’t think I shall spoil it for you! It’s something, though, you’re guaranteed to enjoy. Othersiders almost always do. You’re one of the lucky ones.” He nodded judiciously, his forefinger tapping his large incisors. “You see, She might have turned you into a frog or a porcupine. But it’s because of what she saw in you, really. You did it yourself.”

She heard the Queen’s disembodied voice, thin and musical, like bells ringing from a great distance. “One last thing, little faerie,” she said. “Your name is Snowpepper!”

The rabbit blinked its round eyes at Sylvie and sighed. “Why, my goodness, dear girl, where shall I start? You can see that things are very different here, can’t you?”

Sylvie certainly could.

“Here, of course, I’m not called Father James. That was never an actual name, more of a convenience, what the people on the other side like to call me. Now, though, I suppose I ought to tell you my name.” He seemed oddly reluctant.

“Sure, Fa… I mean… yes. Whatever your name is, I’d like to know.”

“Keep in mind that things are very different here. Do you understand?”

“I guess. Well, duh!”

“My name is… my name…” the rabbit nervously removed a lacy handkerchief from its waistcoast pocket and mopped its brow, causing the white fur to bristle and flatten in odd patterns. “My goodness, this is difficult. I can’t remember when I last had to actually introduce myself by name. Why, here everyone already knows the right name of everyone and everything else. It’s so simple! But I mustn’t forget, you’re from the other side, and things are very very different here.”

Sylvie nodded impatiently. “Sure! I get it.” What’s the big deal? she thought.  It’s not like your name is Rumpelstiltskin, is it?

Muttering worriedly to himself, he pulled a used-looking carrot-end out of his waistcoast pocket and nibbled delicately on it. Swallowing, he tucked the carrot-end back into his pocket, took a deep breath and looked at Sylvia with renewed determination.

“My name…is Quickfoot!” he said, expelling the last word in a gusty wheeze. He briefly squinched his eyes tightly closed, sighed dramatically then slumped, as though the effort of self-introduction had taxed him beyond bearing. “Oh dear, none of us find it at all easy here to speak our own name. To speak the name of another is not difficult, we do it all the time. But to name oneself… Please, dear Sylvie, remember it,” he panted weakly. “I shouldn’t like to have to go through that again.”

“Okay, uh… Quickfoot,” Sylvia agreed dubiously. “Sure, I’ll remember.” Quickfoot? What kind of a name was that? Well, she shrugged to herself, I guess like the Father, er, Quickfoot said, things are very different here.

She looked around again. The tree she was leaning against had an intricrately carved-looking surface. When she looked closer, the carving appeared to look like a… yipes! She jumped and moved away as a great, woodbark-lidded eye opened and stared at her. The beautiful, glowing moss-green iris focused itself on her.

“Hey, what’s the big deal?” a deep, creaky-sounding voice inquired. What had looked like a carven mouth proved to be a real one. The rough wooden lips curled into a friendly-looking grin. “Ain’t you never seen a tree before?”

“Oh, this is too much!” Sylvia shrieked, jerking herself away from the tree and looking frantically around. “Look, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to lean on your face, I just needed a place to rest! I’m not used to trees having faces, I, oh jeez! Father, I mean, Quickfoot, is there noplace that’s safe to just be here without making somebody mad or stepping on somebody or leaning on somebody’s face?” She was close to tears.

“Hey, don’tcha cry, there,” the tree said placatingly. “I never said ya couldn’t lean on me. It’s ok. C’mon back. Lean away. I don’t mind.”

Quickfoot patted the tree’s nose gently and said, “There’s a good fellow, dear Barkley, that’s very friendly of you, I’m sure she thanks you very much. It’s extremely hard for these othersiders when they first arrive here. They get so overwhelmed.”

He hurried to Sylvie’s side. She sobbed into his arms for a moment, then he led her back to the tree.

“Sylvie, dear, this is Barkley, he’s a very good tree, and they aren’t all, you know. He’s just offered you a free lean, no strings attached, and that’s a friendly offer indeed. I think you ought to take him up, don’t you? Have a bit of a rest. Don’t worry, it’s quite safe, and we’ll have to wait here for the Queen in any case.”

Sylvie allowed herself to be led back to the tree and gingerly curled herself against the rough bark.

“Mind the nostrils, that’s a good li’l girl,” Barkley said. “Wouldn’t wanna stop them up, not a nice feeling at all.”

“No, I suppose not,” Sylvie agreed, a little numbly. She tried to be careful not to press against his nose, mouth or eyes, leaning instead on his broad round mossy cheek.

“Thanks, Barkley,” she said. “I mean it. I’m really grateful, it can’t be very comfortable having strange people leaning on your face. I don’t mean to bother anybody. It’s hard when everything is somebody, you know?”

“Aw, that’s gracious o’ you, kiddo,” the tree smiled. A leafy branch bent down to brush her head gently. “You got manners, more’n I can say for everybody. Yer welcome here as long as you want.”

She sank gratefully against the rough, moss-covered lower trunk. She had nearly drifted off to sleep when a thought woke her abruptly.

“Fa… Quickfoot, wait! Who’s the Queen?”

Sylvie lay huddled on the ground, eyes closed, hands over her ears. She felt a tooth-chattering terror of what might be out there. Something profound had changed; the strange quality of the light told her that. It could be anything! She remembered the stories she had read in her mother’s lurid magazines of UFO abductions, and she experienced a horrifying vision of a mothership hovering over her that very minute, ready to suck her up with its tractor beam and subject her to unspeakable experimental tortures. She waited a long moment in cringing dread but nothing happened.

She couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. Cracking her eyes slightly open, she chanced a brief look above her. To her immense relief, the sky overhead was empty of spacecraft, but there was something strange about it, though she couldn’t immediately put her finger on it. Puzzled, she opened her eyes and looked again, longer. That was it—there was no moon! The full moon in all its silvery glory had vanished utterly. The bright, vaguely purplish light seemed to have no source. The sky seemed covered with a thin, shiny mother-of-pearl haze that hid the moon and stars completely without dimming their light in the slightest.

She shook her head and hoisted herself to a seated position, then leaped to her feet with a strangled cry of terror at the sight of a person—a creature—a thing, watching her intently, close enough to touch. It looked like something out of a Muppets version of Alice in Wonderland.

The creature was a white rabbit nearly her own size, wearing what she guessed was a waistcoat, richly coloured in a reddish-orange brocade pattern. It wore a black suit jacket over that, and nothing else. Its pink nostrils twitched and its mouth stretched wide in a grin, revealing incisors that could be used to cut down trees. It wore a pair of rimless spectacles perched on its twitching nose, behind which blinked small beady black eyes. Its long ears stood straight up then flopped over near the top.

As she stood gaping at the rabbit, gasping in shock, it spoke in a familiar, soft voice. “Sylvie! Dear, dear Sylvie, you found your way here! I’m so glad! Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Father James? Father James, is that you? But… how? Where are you, really?” She looked around to see if he were hiding nearby.

The rabbit smiled and reached out a soft white paw to pat her arm gently. “Oh, it’s me, dear girl, none other, truly,” he said. As soon as it touched her, she knew it really was him. A profound relief swept through her and she fell into the rabbit’s comforting embrace.

“Oh, Father James, what is this place? I’m so scared!” she sobbed.

“These, dear child, are the twilight lands, also known as Faerie. Have you looked around? Have you seen?”

“No,” she admitted. “I’ve been so scared to look. I saw the sky, and I saw you. But the moon is gone, and everything is so strange.”

“Oh, Sylvie, it’s so grand and gloriously beautiful. Please, give your eyes a treat and let them see!” He swept his paw over what had been the Stanley Park seawall in an expansive gesture. Her gaze followed, and she gasped.

Her first impression was colour. While the sky was misty, pearly palest purple, everything else was a riot of bright colour. The grass was vivid emerald, so bright it seemed each blade was lit from within. Flowers were rampant, each one glowing softly. There was so much strange detail she couldn’t take it all in. She focused on one small yellow flower growing near her foot. Bending down, she peered into its cup. A tiny yellow face peered back up at her.

“Hey!” a small voice shrieked. “What are you looking at? Don’t you know it’s not manners to stare into a person’s house?”

The tiny winged creature darted up and into Sylvie’s face, screaming in indignation. “Why, how would you like it if I poked my face into your house without even knocking? You wouldn’t like that very much, would you!” This was screamed, piercingly, from a distance of about two inches from her nose.

“Oh, I’m, I’m, I’m terribly sorry,” she stammered. “I had no idea. I didn’t know it was your house. I’m not from around here. I’ll try to be more polite, I promise.”

“Not from around here? Where ya from, huh?” the faerie, mollified, sat cross-legged in the air in front of Sylvie’s face.

She glanced helplessly at the rabbit, who winked at her. “Um, I was in Stanley Park a few minutes ago, and I’m not exactly sure where I am now.”

“Stanuhlee Pack?” the faerie considered this, rubbing its tiny chin. “Never heard of it. Is it over on the other side of things?”

“Yes, yes, that’s exactly it, dear little fey,” the rabbit confirmed happily. “the far other side of things indeed. I’ve been spending a good deal of time there myself, and I will be pleased to escort this young visitor around our demesne. Please inform the Queen that a visitor has arrived.”

“Hm, she’s not going to be pleased about that,” the faerie muttered, “Remember what happened last time…” but it darted off obediently.

Sylvie was stunned. She was afraid to move lest she step on another faerie’s home or offend some tiny resident of this strange place. “Father, help! What is this place?”

Father James grew silent as they walked. Accustomed by now to his near-constant loquaciousness, Sylvie felt uncomfortable at first, but slowly drew into her own experience of the night, dreaming her dreams of finding her brother and living happily ever after.

At length, she noticed something rather odd. Every few hundred yards, there was a person standing very still on the rocks near the water, facing the sea. One or two wouldn’t have seemed out of place, but the regularity of their positioning struck her as purposeful and connected. She didn’t think to ask the Father for his opinion, feeling constrained to respect his silence.

But as they approached the headland, Sylvie was quelled by a sudden feeling of dread, and her step faltered. As she opened her mouth to suggest to Father James that perhaps it was time to turn around and head back, an odd sound stopped her. She gazed at him dumbly, not comprehending. The Father was staring up at the Moon, his expression utterly rapt. He appeared to be transported in some sort of glorious ecstasy… or lunacy, she thought wildly, with a twinge of guilt at her cynicism. Wasn’t that where the word lunacy came from? Craziness caused by the full moon?

To her horror, Father James’ outline had become vague and indistinct. She had the crazy impression that she could see right through him. Before she could more than gasp, “Whaat?” his form had faded and vanished altogether. She rushed to where he had stood, just a foot away from her, and frantically waved her hands through the air, feeling nothing. She remembered—or did she only think she remembered?—did she only wish she had heard this?—his soft voice as he faded away, faint and distant, whispering reassuringly, “Don’t worry, dear Sylvie. I will return.” She grasped at that memory as though it was a promise. She would not panic. She would not. She was just a kid, lost and abandoned, all alone in the middle of the night in a dark and lonely park in the middle of one of the country’s biggest cities, but she would not panic.

The idea of not panicking suddenly seemed so absurd that she burst into giggles. She sank weakly onto the sidewalk, laughing. After a moment her giggles turned to sobs. She crawled off the hard concrete of the walkway into the moss under the trees, and cried and cried. She felt rocked and shaken with a storm of emotion, profound shock and overwhelm. She might have shrieked and howled with abandon, but she remembered the unknown people out on the rocks and instead sobbed hard into her sweater sleeve. She wanted the ground to engulf her body, to bury her alive. She wanted to disappear as though she had never been. The strangeness of the past week, the misery of the past two years, was all compiled into a grievously burdensome weight that pressed her into the soft coastal soil. She thought she was dying. She was convinced of it.

By the time she realized that she was not going to die after all, the storm of emotion had abated. Disappointed to find herself still alive and still sans Father James, she rolled to her side and looked about her. The moon rode low in the summer sky, but its light was strong enough to wash out all but the brightest stars. In its white glare, she thought she could have read her book, but she wasn’t interested in reading just then. She wiped her tear-swollen eyes and sat upright, wondering what she ought to do now. If she had been at all sleepy, it would have made sense to curl up and dream the rest of the night away where she was, while she waited for Father James to return. But she felt tinglingly, almost uncomfortably alert. She began to notice a disconcerting itch in the back of her brain, as though a tiny feather was tickling her there. She shook her head hard, but failed to dislodge the sensation. How do you scratch your brain? she wondered.

The itching increased and became quite hideously uncomfortable. Soon, it was accompanied by a visual impression. She saw a light inside her head, a dim purple at first, but slowly brightening. As the light intensified, the itch grew stronger, and then a sound began to be heard as well. These phenomena were internal—she slapped herself on the head a couple of times but nothing changed. Soon, the sound became recognizeable as music. She thought she discerned flutes, pipes, and a high lilting voice singing in a strange language. It ought to have been pleasant, because the music was eerily beautiful, but it was not—it was horrible, intolerable, she would go mad, she had gone mad. She spasmed and fell to the ground, lost, out of control, thrashing in the moss, clutching her head and moaning.

Then… something happened. She felt a sort of soundless ‘pop’. Then, the music was still there—the bright purplish light shone all around her—but the itch was gone, and the light and sound were no longer confined to the inside of her head.