There is nothing remarkable about the bag when she finds it half-buried in soil and autumn leaves by the side of the road. It’s just a coin purse, slimy with red-loam mud. It could be surprising that it’s still full of coins, but Georgiana has found, while walking home on this road, fast food bags thrown to the ditch with burgers or nuggets or salads untouched in them; she’s found whole books, wedding bands, an iPod ruined by the rain. Something about Stewart Street makes its drivers careless, even by litterbug standards — not to mention the wrecks. The purse itself is nothing special. The coins are a different story. 

Georgiana doesn’t recognize them at all. They’re silver metal rings around a core of gold, which she’d assume to be pesos — they show up sometimes at work, though she can’t accept them — if not for the embossed designs around the scalloped edges: roses and tiny feathers as delicate as the bones of a sparrow she once found dead on Stewart and boiled clean. She’d wired it together and framed it in a shadowbox, then hung it in an eternal flight up her dirt-speckled, yellowing wall.  

She appreciates the company. The sparrow is quiet, and it doesn’t expect much of her. 

She washes the bag so that mud doesn’t drip all over her apartment. There is a limit, and while she may be too tired to clean the dirty carpet or wash the walls, she’s unwilling to make it any worse, either. The coins all look the same, but they come in at least three sizes. Georgiana doesn’t know if her sample is exactly representational. At their biggest they’re as big around as a chapstick cap. At their smallest, they’re a pen cap wide. Georgiana tries taking a picture of them on her phone and reverse Google searching it, but all she finds are pesos, again. She can’t even imagine using a coin this small; she can barely fathom using pennies, and they’re not even small, just worthless. Except to people far too obsessed with handing her exact change. 

Her feet hurt too much to putter around anymore. She calls it a night and leaves the bag on her desk, on top of piled, long-neglected fantasy books and papers and empty wrappers she hasn’t had the energy to throw away. At around three in the morning there’s a heavy thump on her window that jerks her awake, out of the restless thrash she calls ‘sleeping’ most nights. Nothing is out there when she looks, though, other than the occasional flash of car lights speeding down Stewart. Her childhood self flashes through her mind—seeing car lights on invisible cars pass by and thinking they were ghosts fleeing through the night. It gives her the creeps. 

In the morning, she ignores the coins and eats three packages of generic strawberry toaster pastries. She knows it’s not healthy, and that she’ll be irritable and hungry again before three hours into her shift, but they’re warm and easy, and they taste good, and frankly that’s enough for her most mornings. When she heads outside, there is a sparrow lying dead in the dewy mud in front of her window, and the lower pane is smeared in blood and a few crushed down feathers. Georgiana glances towards Stewart instinctively, and shudders; she’s not sure why, but something about the twisted bird leaves an achy sort of nervousness sliding down the nape of her neck. 

Her walk to work is uneventful. Her shift is also uneventful, save for the entirely-usual events of the cooks yelling and the guests asking for endless refills as she’s hunting down their complimentary bread, their bills, the food she was told was on its way out but seems to have gotten lost. A blister on her foot cracks and bleeds into her sock on her way home, turning her gait into a rather squishy limp. There is nothing interesting in the ditch alongside Stewart today. Instead it all seems to have congregated outside her window, where the sparrow from this morning has vanished completely. Even the glass is cleaned. There’s just a pile of fast food bags, beer cans, and one large loam-stained paperback The Da Vinci Code. 

Georgiana considers being concerned—what will the landlord think? — but puts it off as too much work right now. Her feet hurt, particularly the blistered one. She unlocks her door and goes inside to take care of it. There is a small flock of horned sparrows hopping around her kitchen counter, piping away in squeaky voices. Georgiana drops her keys. 

“You,” chirrups one tiny bird with horns. Horns. It has tiny curling horns on its head, lustrous black. Like a ram. Georgiana has never seen a ram, but she thinks maybe that’s what they look like. “You thief.” The rest echo the sentiment. 

Georgiana stares at it for a long moment. She hopes her subconscious would at least only accuse her of things she’s actually done, so this is … real. Probably. 

She thinks fleetingly of books she’d read long ago, when she’d still had the focus to lose herself in them. Stories like this — where the impossible converged on dreary-dull reality — had always been her favorite; portal stories or visitations or magical masquerades breaking down were her bread and butter. Though she’d never read about horned sparrows. 

“Thief?” she asks, after she’s had time to remember how she’d always imagined comporting herself in that scenario. “What do you think I’ve stolen?” 

The spokes-sparrow fluffs itself up indignantly. “People’s coins!” It glares at her awfully fiercely for a bird whose hornless cousin hangs skeletal on her wall. “Stole money. Terrible theft. Must return. People want to buy food, summer warm, safety. For nesting. Folk in the Hill only take coins or blood. You stole People’s coins! Give!” 

Georgiana frowns and goes to her bedroom. She brings out the coin purse—no longer muddy since she washed it, one can actually see the pretty roses picked out from its black surface in scarlet and azure thread. 

“These?” 

The flock immediately takes flight and loops around her living room — all except their leader, who is bouncing around nearly as quickly. On her wall the sparrow skeleton trembles in the rush of air. “Coins!” seems to be the general consensus. 

“I didn’t steal them,” Georgiana says. “They were in the ditch on the side of the road.” 

“You stole, you return,” says the head sparrow. “People need to nest. People have no blood to give. Need to pay.” 

“Is that your mess outside my window?” It would make sense, if Stewart is their territory. If they think picking the coins out of the mud is theft. 

“People live here til People buy safety. Folk in the Hill love blood.” 

Georgiana frowns. She doesn’t particularly want a flock of talkative birds in her apartment. The issue of the trash only compounds the matter.  

“Get rid of your trash, and I’ll give you a coin,” she says, at first only thinking of getting the task done before the landlord comes home for the day. 

Immediately half the flock flutters into action. One of the birds only has to land on the knob and it turns, the door drifting inwards. They dart outwards. Georgiana catches a glimpse of four of the sparrows managing The Da Vinci Code between them. 

True to her word she offers one of the medium coins to the leader. It pecks the coin. She’s glad it’s not her fingers. 

“Will work for coins,” it says grumpily. “Need to nest. Still thief.” 

“Take better care of your belongings, and no one will pick them out of the dirt,” Georgiana says. She’s beginning to see a glimmer of potential to the idea, though. These birds—whatever they actually are—are strong. “Can you clean?” 

***

By the time she comes home from work the next day, the horned sparrows have built nests between her cabinets and the ceiling out of threads, pine straw, and fluff picked up from her carpet. Beyond the detritus of her life they’ve turned into beds for themselves, however, her apartment is sparklingly clean in a way it wasn’t even when she first moved in. The walls are ivory-clean. The cabinets gleam with the sheen of varnished not-quite-wood. The carpet is back to burgundy rather than old-blood-brown and the tile is smooth underfoot. Grit and dirt have been digging into her poor torn-up feet so long she’d forgotten what clean smooth tile felt like. 

The horned sparrow’s leader is feasting on a beetle Georgiana doesn’t want to look at too closely when she hands over the coins she promised for the work. 

“Thank thief,” it says, after it’s tilted its head up and swallowed a beetle bigger than its head down a gullet that shouldn’t have had the space. Then again, the birds have horns. Georgiana doesn’t think it’s fair to question the one and not the other. “When People get other coins?” 

“When you’ve earned them,” she says. “Tell me about the People. And the Folk.” 

She winds up having to pay in coin for their stories, but still, barely cuts into the purse’s stock—she’s not entirely sure that bag is actually as large as it seems. Horned sparrows — the People, they call themselves—are a thousand times more interesting than the customer she had at lunch who refused to believe her that their boneless wings were, in fact, boneless wings. They’re scavengers in the woods, the closest to the human world of all the forest-dwellers they tell her about. And there are many.

Goblins. Pixies. Redcaps, still wearing the centuries-old blood of unimportant battles, human and otherwise. The elementals, primal beyond the rest — the undines and the dryads of the forest itself, the dragonish salamanders who are born of lightning’s eggs (or these days, sometimes cigarette butts) and live trapped in an old dry well so that they can’t set the forest alight. The Folk in the hill, who made the coins for their magical markets, are the strangest of all — the sidhe, the royalty and aristocracy of the wood, a wild court to hold the smaller things like the sparrows in an iron grip. And Georgiana drinks up the stories of them like water. Everything she’d ever read about, dreamt of. Magic. Here, in her own apartment. In the town where she’s lived her whole life, because Stewart Street attracts them, apparently—all the weird things that the sparrows tell her about. It’s some sort of line, or a veil: they aren’t clear. Georgiana listens and gives them more coins for the knowledge than she meant to.

When she goes to sleep that evening, the nesting flock’s chirped reassurances and soft shifting sounds soothe her mind. She dreams of beautiful men and women dressed in flowers, stalking the dusky woods. 

***

Within a few days she finds a pair of sparrows riding in her bag to work with her. 

“I don’t want anyone to see you,” she says, but the sparrows cheep defiantly at her. It’s not a sound she ever expected to hear. 

“Can’t see,” the bigger one says. “Stupid human eyes. You touch coins, you see People.” It has a pale spot on its head—Georgiana is very aware of how cliché the name is, but she hasn’t had any luck finding out what, if anything, the birds call each other, so Spot will do. The other one of the pair has much lighter-colored wings than any of the others she’s looked at closely. Angel, she decides.  

“See human work,” it says. “See human coin. Thief buys summer warm and nest.” 

“I don’t think I’d call a broken heater summer warm,” Georgiana says ruefully. Her apartment only gets up to 68 Fahrenheit at the best of times. She’s not looking forward to winter. Hopefully holiday tips will buy her repairs. 

For a moment she considers the birds — but she can’t imagine her little flock attempting mechanical repairs. Besides which she’d have to explain to the landlord if he ever followed up on her complaint. She barely registers that she’s started thinking of them as hers until she’s put her things in her locker and visited her first table, Spot and Angel sitting on either shoulder and drawing no notice whatsoever from the rest of the world. 

They do cheep and rustle their wings at the community bulletin board, with its local events section pitifully bare next to the wanted/missing section. Rings; bracelets; two dogs; the police’s own printouts of four missing people. Some of them look vaguely familiar — Georgiana thinks she’s seen them at Danny’s before, especially the teen girl with the roses tattooed up her throat. 

She wants to ask if they know about any of that jewelry. It looks like the sort of random shiny thing they seem to like to collect. But she’d rather not be seen talking to her invisible bird friends.

***

She names the rest of them. And to her surprise, they usually answer. The leader becomes Queen, just for its imperious antics—its dignity when the rest of them are swarming the air, its insistence on arranging everything beforehand when she pays the birds to work. She’s not sure they have any concept of gender. Queen certainly doesn’t care enough to dispute it. Angel and Spot become her regular workmates; they’re both paired off to birds she names Devil and Stripe, respectively. 

“Why don’t your mates come to see me work?” she asks one morning, before a passing car splashes her with reddish-muddy puddle water. 

Angel flaps its wings as though it’s trying not to fall off her shoulder, though even when the jostle of the kitchen has shoved Georgiana into walls it’s never had any trouble before. In a moment her uniform is dry and cleaner than it was. 

“Mates not interested,” Spot says. It chirps. “Mates are not interested,” it corrects itself. “Think humans are beneath People. We think, People live on a human road along a power line.” The birds and the Folk mean something different by ‘power line’ than she usually does, of course. “People should understand humans. Steal enough of human stuff!” 

“Uh-huh,” Georgiana says. She’s not convinced it’s a good idea for the sparrows to get too smart. She’s been doing some reading—the Internet’s a wonderful thing — and can’t find anything to tell her what the odd birds are. Certainly there’s nothing about horned sparrows — but the basic models, apparently, are signs of death, or alternatively birds of fertility — soul-catching psychopomps, or else emissaries of Aphrodite. Georgiana doesn’t know what to make of the dichotomy. Her life has no draw for love-omens. 

A dry part of her mind reminds her it’s probably not good to accept her life as deathly, either. But Georgiana likes to think she lives in the real world, and if she’s quite honest, waitressing is not the life she wanted. 

***

Waitressing is not the life she wanted, she thinks bitterly as she’s cleaning up later from a milkshake lobbed at her when she dropped the bill “too early”. Apparently she “ruined Bobby’s birthday dinner with rushing”. God help her. 

“Humans mean,” Angel chirps. It pokes its beak into a splatter of whipped cream adorning Georgiana’s cheek. “Sweet!” 

She hopes the bird doesn’t acquire a taste for whipped cream. It’s probably not good for sparrows. Even faery sparrows. 

“That’s just the way things are, I’m afraid,” she says ruefully. Her blouse is dripping with malted chocolate milk. She gives it up as a lost cause. There should be extra uniform shirts somewhere in the boxes of miscellaneous restaurant goods heaped haphazardly around her, and she’s been here long enough — they won’t begrudge her an extra shirt. At least, not more than going back out into the fray sodden with dairy products. In some of the establishments she’s worked in, management would kick customers out for attacking a server. Not here. Danny’s isn’t so discriminating. 

“Shouldn’t be,” Angel says. It’s lapping up cream like a feathery cat. Georgiana tries not to giggle as its tiny bird tongue shivers over her skin — God, but it tickles. She shoos it away from the spot and gives it a napkin covered in cream. “Not fair.” 

“Life often isn’t.” 

“Humans are like Folk,” Spot chimes in unexpectedly. It’s been picking up sprinkles Georgiana trailed through the break room when she retreated. Now there are rainbow crumbs staining its beak. “Mean. Want everything.” It ruffles its wings and puffs its feathers as though it’s cold. “Take blood and coin,” it adds like an afterthought. 

“Blood and coin,” Angel says, as though it agrees. 

“What do you mean blood and coin?” 

“Should take blood and coin for service,” Spot says. “Be like Folk. No one disrespects Folk.”  

“Not exactly how it works for us,” Georgiana says. “We just take coin, and we trade our blood for it.” She laughs a little, because she’d meant it as a joke, but it doesn’t come out like one. “If I don’t keep the job, I don’t get to buy summer warm.” 

“Not worth your blood,” Angel announces. It flies off and catches the door opening as Georgiana’s manager bustles in through it. Georgiana only has a moment to worry about what the tiny bird is thinking before Jillian’s motor-mouth churns up a distraction. 

“Oh, Georgie, Julianne just told me what happened, awful,  just awful, we’ll see if Kevin will institute a policy for that sort of thing—you know corporate has one, but with business like it has been lately he’s a little twitchy about throwing people out, understandably, I mean — regulars are so important, they’re all we really get—”

“I understand,” Georgiana says, just to get her to stop talking. Kevin’s not going to institute any sort of policy, and she hates being called Georgie. She’s told Jillian that about twelve times now. Jillian, all Southern church graces and overweening friendliness, has never let it get to her. 

“I’m so glad,” Jillian says. She does indeed sag with relief. If Jillian Baig is anything, she’s at least genuine. Georgiana has always thought it must be exhausting, feeling so many…feelings so actively all the time. She certainly can’t remember being so volatile. 

“Can I get a new shirt?” Georgiana asks, gesturing down at herself. Jillian’s mouth curls upward in thought. 

“Has it been thirty days since your last one? Only I don’t want it taken out of your paycheck, dear.” 

“Yes.” More like twice that. To be fair, she already owns four, and she didn’t really need any more of them, but she thinks she’s entitled now. 

“Picky picky,” Spot twitters in her ear. Georgiana has to resist laughing. 

“All right then, go ahead. Get yourself dried off.” 

Georgiana wipes her hands off on a napkin plucked from the stack at the center of the folding table that occupies most of the space in the break room. She knocks over the bottle of shea butter lotion sitting atop the pile, but she’s not too worried about picking it up. That bottle has been here longer than she has. Using it might actually be a health risk. She certainly never sees anyone test it out. Once her hands are as close to clean as they’ll get without soap and water, she starts hunting for uniform pieces. They’re not as hard to find as the new box of menus she had to track down two weeks ago, thankfully. Symptom of Danny’s turnover rate: the outfits have to be accessible for the newbies who haven’t learned where to root around yet. 

Jillian hangs around awkwardly until Georgiana clears her throat and holds up the new M-size ‘Danny’s’ blouse she’s retrieved. 

“Sorry, Georgie, wasn’t even thinking, you know me, always off in space — I’ll watch the door for you, shall I?” she stammers, blushing like a stoplight. She darts out before Georgiana can say anything more, like ‘no one’s actually going to have time to come in here, they’re all in the weeds’. For all the bad reviews it picks up online, Danny’s attracts quite a crowd on Friday nights. At least the tips add up — when she’s not ruining birthday dinners, that is. 

Georgiana starts to change. Angel’s weight is negligible—tiny, hollow-boned thing that it is — but it still startles her when it lands inconveniently on her arm. She hadn’t even seen it flutter back in. 

“Found mean humans,” it announces with pride, though its voice is muffled as though there’s something thick in its throat. When it hops off of her as she lifts her arm to put on the new shirt, it sheds glittering dust in its wake. 

***

Finally, at approximately two in the morning — closing time — Georgiana is allowed to go home. She waves off Jillian’s offer of a ride—somehow, with Angel and Spot still riding on her shoulders, watching the proceedings with cocked heads and bright eyes, Georgiana does not fear the dark of Stewart Street or anyone that might proceed along it. 

***

There are ethereal glimmers in the woods. They could be fireflies, only they’re blue. 

“Wisps,” Spot says helpfully. It flaps its wings. “And geists. Folk have a harvest party tonight.” 

“Halloween isn’t for a week more,” Georgiana says. She wants to follow those lovely lights, pulsing with a shade she’s never seen in human lands. Cerulean, cobalt, sapphire. Some of them edge more towards green — viridian, maybe, teal, wintergreen. None of the words she has seem quite right.

“Getting ready,” Angel says. It tucks itself into the crook of her neck, fluffing its feathers up. “Big Hallow’s Eve party in the court. Big.” Before meeting her tiny little birds Georgiana had never thought to wonder if birds could shiver; now she knows they do. She can feel how fragile they are like this. It frightens her and awes her at the same time, just how breakable they are. 

“What’s that like?” 

“Pretty,” Angel says. “Scary. Folk get wild at parties.” 

Georgiana nods. She wishes she could imagine it. It must be exciting. 

***

Danny’s fires her over the phone in the morning: her work has been ‘unexemplary’ lately, which she thinks is unfair as a firing reason. She wasn’t extraordinary, but she got everything done just fine, didn’t she? More than half the staff who’d outlasted her could brag. 

It’s been years since she had a lie-in, though, and she’s grateful for that. She knows she should start looking for other jobs — and Jillian at least should be good for a reference, which is something—but her bed is soft and warm and the sparrows’ peeping is just as comforting now as it is in the dead of night. And she’s just so very tired. Now that she lets herself notice the poison fatigue stewing her bones, she’s so tired. She lies there curled in her worn-out duvet and threadbare pajamas until the sun hits her window head-on, at which point she only rolls over and pulls the duvet over her head before going back to sleep, lulled by the cool half of her pillow and the friendly weight of the blanket. 

Georgiana doesn’t get up until evening, when the sparrows’ noises have intensified into shrill cheeping. 

“Hungry,” Queen commands when she comes out to tell them to stop. 

“What have you been doing before this?” 

“Berry pastries,” Queen says. It points with a wing to the box of toaster pastries, which Georgiana now realizes is completely empty but for a handful of missed crumbs. She rolls her eyes and dumps them into a dish from the drying rack, then offers that to the birds. They set upon it like famine-struck children. “Bugs from outside.” 

“Then keep doing that,” Georgiana says. “Hunting bugs, I mean. I can’t be feeding you all the time. I have to find another job. Especially if you’re going to eat all my food.” Her stomach rumbles, belying her words. She supposes she should be feeding herself, at least. The fridge is mostly empty, but she still has some cheese slices and some relatively fresh bread on the counter beside it; grilled cheese will do. There’s a can of tomato soup in the pantry that she fetches out to have with it. That’s like a vegetable, isn’t it? 

Her toaster has a broken timer, but she’s never minded charred food anyway — it reminds her of camping, when she was small — and she lets the cheese melt as it will. Then she sits at her counter and shares crumbs with the birds, enjoying the way the sunset turns her walls ruby and orange and lavender, and it’s the first time she’s felt like peace in a long time. 

“I want to go to the Folk’s Halloween celebration,” she says, once it’s gone dark and the room is spangled by the intermittent light of the streetlamps turning themselves on and off. 

Angel cheeps. “Bad idea. Bad. Folk scary on Hallow’s Eve.” The rest of the birds twitter, some of them tucking heads under their wings or puffing up the way Angel did before. Only Queen remains still, head tilted to one side, watching her intently. 

“I can handle a little scary,” Georgiana says. She’s almost excited by the idea of it. It’d be different, at least. When was the last time she did anything for Halloween? She can’t remember. 

“Not just little!” Angel insists. Devil hops over and nudges its mate with its head. “Not little. Folk celebrate dark on Hallow’s Eve. Not nice like summer festivals.” It shudders. 

“We take thief,” Queen says unexpectedly. It warbles at the others, and Angel subsides with as unhappy a face as a tiny horned sparrow can muster. Georgiana has become rather an expert in reading the little creatures by now. “We take thief for rest of coins.” 

Georgiana doesn’t hesitate. “Done. I’ll give them to you when we’re on the threshold.” 

“Was interesting here,” Queen says, which is the nicest thing it’s ever said to her despite the friendliness of its subjects. “Enjoy Folk’s court.” 

It sings again, and this time, all the birds take up the primitive trilling. Georgiana listens raptly, despite the fact that they aren’t particularly musical and especially not in a group. 

***

The days between her firing and Halloween don’t pass idly. Georgiana invests more money than she should in an outfit — a short dress in velvet the colors of flame, and black petticoats to fluff it out, and boots and a black-jeweled tiara to go with it. She feels the part of the magical adventurer when she puts it on, like someone off the television if she weren’t quite so chubby.  

She tries her hand at makeup, wanting to make herself look still more wild and mysterious, but winds up ringing her green eyes like a raccoon. This is not the impression she wants to make. All her foundation is too old and cakes heavily on her skin, so she has to take it off just to feel like she can breathe. Eventually she gives up. Maybe the Folk will take pity on her. After all, she’s coming as a subject, humble and grateful. 

Thinking she could give it as a guest-gift — after all, it seems like the proper thing to do, to bring her host a present when she’s turning up uninvited — Georgiana takes the sparrow skeleton off her wall. It’s the only thing the sparrows didn’t touch when they cleaned the apartment. She dusts and polishes the glass herself until it’s shining like just-bought. The sparrows cheep nervously and  huddle on the opposite side of the counter from where it sits. 

The sparrows are silent through the night now. Already they’ve started dissembling their nests. Georgiana is a little sad to see them gone. She’s come to appreciate their company, particularly Angel and Spot, but she’s not sure she’ll be coming back either. Not for the reason they think — Georgiana is certain she’ll be fine, but she doesn’t think she’ll want to come back. In the stories, the sidhe keep mortals in their lands for hundreds of years at a time. She just has to eat their food and drink their drink, and she’ll be trapped in a lush world of magic and unearthly beauty. “Trapped” isn’t the word she’d use, though. 

However, she does overindulge on her final grocery run. One last feast before she goes.

***

Halloween dawns crisp and, if Georgiana is honest, just the wrong side of chilly for her dress, but she finds some black leggings that haven’t pilled too badly to make up the difference in her closet. 

The birds will not take her until the moon is high. Georgiana hates the waiting; her apartment feels too small, the road outside too loud and mundane. She can practically feel herself itching out of her skin. Funny how slowly time passes now. It’s always felt too fast to her before. Minute by minute. Second by second. She counts. She just wants to be gone. 

She putters. She packs up everything she owns, to make it easy on the landlord. Finally it’s late enough that Queen comes to her and lands on her shoulder. Its posture is as regal as ever—beak lifted slightly, chest puffed out. “Time,” it says. “Go, go.” 

Georgiana tucks the bag of alien coins into her purse on the very top and heads out. She tucks the key under the mat before she walks down the street. 

***

Queen guides her across the street and into the woods in a low whisper. It makes her do a funny little side-step as she crosses the center of Stewart, which is just off the painted line, and then — with a tingle she realizes everything is different. A car speeds down the road, high beams on and blasting bass like thunder. It passes right through her. 

Georgiana can’t help but laugh with wonder, even as most of her flock scatter into the night. Queen is the only one that stays with her. The geists and wisps are out again tonight. They swarm around her, touching her fingers and the tips of her nose and ears before zooming off again to bob just in front of her and Queen. This is magical — more magical than her birds, who, after all, are just sparrows with horns. 

“Careful,” Queen says scornfully. It cheeps at the geist drifting towards it. Startled, the little greenish light flies off. “Lead thief astray. Follow me.” 

She does happily. The woods behind Stewart always seemed sparse and dull before, typical highway-copse stuff, all dry with dead pine and cleared to half its size. Now Georgiana’s walking in a forest that must be twice the age of the town itself, past trees thick enough around for her to hide behind and through rustling underbrush green as a dream of emeralds. She takes a step and an albino doe as soft and fragile-looking as an angel’s pet startles from the leaves, bolting in a luminous streak. She has to stop for a moment and soak it all in. 

“Go, go!” Queen orders. “Don’t keep Folk waiting.” 

Georgiana falls back into step, only barely able to keep her eyes on the path ahead of her instead of gaping at every wonder she passes by. 

***

A door is set into the side of the grassy hill. The arch is a ring of stones set without mortar. Ivy grows around it, holding it in place, and covers the heavy wood of the door itself. 

“Delivered,” Queen says briskly. “Pay People. Need to leave.” 

Georgiana gives it the purse. 

“Knock on door, see what Folk want from you,” it says. It grips the bag tight between its tiny claws and flutters away, obviously having trouble with the weight. 

Georgiana does what it said. The door opens. 

Music like nothing she’s ever heard spills out into the tranquil air, a fast-paced song with cruel keening tones she knows instinctively is meant for dancing. Her feet move without her say on the matter, down a hall Georgiana would swear was painted onto the world with brushstroke perfection.

The hall opens out onto a huge ballroom drowning in light—light from the candles ensconced around the walls, light shed by couples and quartets of beautiful dancers, and most of all light from a throne in the back of the room, throwing a glare on the extravagantly-framed windows behind it. Georgiana has to fling a hand over her eyes to shield them while they adjust. The Fair Ones, she thinks, even her internal monologue breathless: mirror, mirror, on the wall … In a breath the music stops, and the dance halts. 

“What have we here?” The voice is music itself, lilting and lovely. 

Georgiana curtsies. It seems like the thing to do. “The People brought me, Your Grace,” she says. There are titters around the room. 

“Oh, a human!” The figure on the throne rises and descends from the dais. “Tell me, what did you have to do with those savages?” 

“I found their stock of coins, Your Grace.”

The royal—dressed Napoleonically, taken straight out of a Renaissance faire’s wet dream — slips a finger under her chin and lifts her face for inspection. “Hmm. Brave. You’ll do, I think.” 

The tittering grows louder. Georgiana withdraws the shadowbox from her purse and offers it to the Fair One dressed like a king. 

“A gift,” she says, more bravely than she feels in the midst of this shimmering sea of laughter.

The king takes it and thankfully lets go of her. “Beautiful work,” he murmurs, and lifts it to the court. “Shall we reward such craftsmanship?” 

He snaps his fingers. Immediately a tray borne by a tiny wizened figure — a child, though a wrinkled and gnarled one—appears beside Georgiana’s elbow. 

Georgiana takes the silver goblet she is offered and sips.  The wine tastes incarnadine — an essence of red, sweet and dark, something barely hidden beneath the surface. Georgiana drinks and drinks, trying to find that secret, to swallow it into herself. That secret would make them keep her, she’s certain of it. There is more laughter. Her eyes pulse in their sockets, starting to strain against the surfeit of light. The room swirls, changing as she watches. Velvet and lace disappear, replaced by fallen autumn leaves, by berry-laden edges of bramble and thorn shedding juice in dark puddles on the moss-strewn floor. Shadows flicker where they shouldn’t. In the whirling dance she sees vulpine faces, snapping teeth, kisses of fog blown towards her. 

“A gift for our new mortal friend,” the king announces, and a cool metal band is placed into her hands. Red tracery, like lace in filigree, glimmers over its white-gold surface. She holds it to her neck as though testing the look, because it’s obviously a necklace. 

“These are reserved for our favorite humans,” the Folk king says with a smile dazzling as the sun. Firelight writhes on his tongue, which she sees now is wrought of gold itself. And indeed, when she looks around she sees half a dozen people jarringly normal in this illustration of a chamber wearing similar bands, sitting at the feet of the Folk, or dancing with them, or else exploring the food being carried around by butlers like the one that brought her that marvelous wine: pomegranate seeds, apple slices drizzled with spice-strewn honey, cakes of herbal bread with butter, spun-sugar marvels, abundance that whispers to Georgiana’s blood of archetypal autumn. She isn’t sure if she’s hungry, or if the wine is, or even if she makes sense thinking that. “Be welcome.”

When she puts it on, it fits perfectly, slipping around her neck with the chilly rasp of October air. Which is only natural, of course. It’s metal with no time to have soaked in warmth from her hands. And when she’s caught up into the dance in the fold of an ink-blot wraith’s wing, along with one of the other humans who smells like tears and whose panting throat undulates with thorny roses winking above their own choker, Georgiana forgets the cold altogether. She forgets the cold, and her partners’ thorns catching at her skin, and the fangs in the beautiful faces. She forgets everything, in fact, but the red red wine and the dance. 

[Hesper Valentine (they/she) earned their B.A. in English 2017 from Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina, having edited for Wild Goose Poetry Review. They have published short fiction under the name Kati Waldrop with the now-defunct Frith Books (Night Shades #1) and Spirit’s Tincture Magazine, and poetry under the name Hesper (SoFloPoJo).]