f course, now that I had my peace and quiet, I was stumped regarding particulars: I gave myself up to the faeries and then dot dot dot fizzle out. Without knowing precisely what the faeries would do to me once I was in their clutches, the only way I’d succeed required planning for each and every possible outcome. And to write down all these possibilities, I needed my notebook.

So, I took a detour from planning to go retrieve my notebook from the farmhouse. Then I took a second detour to go back and get my pencil before finally settling myself back down right at the end of the drive. I needed to hide myself from view while at the same time being able to see a fair distance down the road; I assumed I’d be faerie-bound before Amber returned, but if not, I wanted to spot her before she spotted me so that I could skedaddle. To accomplish this (the hiding part, not the skedaddling part), I needed cover.

I wrenched a branch of dried leaves off the tree felled by Amber the previous evening and tried to prop it up in front of me. It fell over. I propped it up again. It fell over. I propped it up again and affixed it with my steeliest, steadiest, intrepidist gaze.

It fell over, catching a few of my notebook’s pages and flipping it partway over the tree-demarcated protection line. Instinctively, since my notebook, filled with pure Enid thoughts, merited as much protection from the faeries as my body, I kicked the branch away, grabbed the side of my note-book that was still firmly in my sector, and yanked my book back in. Cradling my notebook in my arms, I waited for my other voice to chastise me for wasting my time with all my foolishness and tell me to focus, Enid.

Chastisement did not arrive. Right, I’d annoyed my voice by not listening to my own advice, and it had stormed off in a huff. Fine then. I didn’t need my own voice of reason. I would be my own voice of reason myself.

I grumpily lowered myself back down to the ground. As always, I’d dog-eared the next blank page in my notebook so that, when the muse visited, one flip and I could write again without delay. My notebook opened, pencil poised, ready to go: I’d get captured by the faeries and dot dot dot everything would magically work out because magic.

Sigh.

I decided to read over what I already knew about faeries to get my neurons zapping and paged through my earlier thoughts: seeing faeries, protecting your house, all those letters my mother had doodled in when she was secretly reading my private notebook, then back to the mocking blank page.

Wait — where was my discussion about physics? I slowed and forced myself to look at each page for my “Aside for those unfamiliar with the basics of physics,” but it was gone. Not noticing the scratches on the road and now having very precise memories of having written something down only to find that I’d imagined doing so — maybe Amber was onto something with her being crazy. Maybe I was crazy too.

I found the page before my notebook devolved into nonsense and read to the bottom, the last line telling me that “if Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary didn’t require a treatise to,” with the balderdash beginning on the top of the next page. Relief hit me like a sucker punch: I must have seen the nonsense, decided to take a break, and fallen asleep, wherein I’d dreamed I’d finished writing the rest.

Wait. I turned some more pages of my notebook. I knew, 126.437% knew, that I’d detailed my exploits in the field yesterday. I distinctly remembered taking the time to do so, not wanting to rely on memory after the fact. I’d done it, I’d written it down, and now, like my physics thoughts, it was missing, replaced by this mess of letters and lines and squiggles, which seemed less nonsensical the more I stared at them, a few tentative words (LOOK, FRANGIPANI, MOZART) tossed in now and then.

A hunch thrummed in my brain. I ripped a clean piece of paper from my notebook (wincing as I did so, since there’d now permanently be a little edge of paper attached to the binding, and the remaining pages would now always sit just a nanometre unevenly along the spine) and proceeded to throw the page on the road. This worked as well as expected on a gusty day, in that the paper blew immediately back towards me and landed on my feet. Attempt number two: I used the branch to push the paper along the ground, out onto the road, counted to eight (ten seemed too obvious), then dragged the paper back in.

Blank paper. A bit dusty from the road. Zero words, illuminating or otherwise. So much for my hypothesis that it had been the faeries who had made the word jumbles, both the earlier ones I’d blamed on my mother and the ones on the pages that had just flipped onto the road. So much for the idea that the writing on the road was in part to show me the faeries’ affinity for the written word.

But (light bulb) perhaps the faeries hadn’t written in my notebook. Perhaps they had rewritten. Perhaps the faeries couldn’t create or destroy letters, only repurpose them. The letters for LIES could have come from the phone book the telephone company left underneath the For Sale sign, and, as for my notebook, this hypothesis explained both the word jumble pages and my missing notes. Of course, since I’d found their last missives bewildering (LIES? Sheets of random letter combinations?), I was going to help direct their rewriting by posing a question of my own at the top of the page.

WHO, I wrote, IS LYING TO ME?

This time I counted to seven before dragging the paper back in with my branch.

M WISHLING TO YO

Well, M WISHLING TO YO was right up there with LIES and LOOK FRANGIPANI MOZART in terms of comprehensibility. But TO YO did seem on the way to TO YOU and WISHLING might be interpreted as LYING (wishing for something to be true, but you’re lying to yourself, plus an extra L to distinguish the word from plain old WISHING). That seemed believable. Sort of.

Clearly, we weren’t going to get anywhere unless I gave the faeries more letters with which to work.

I began filling the page, a string of As, a string of B’, all the way down to Zs (I probably could have skipped the Zs, as well as Xs, but perhaps the faeries needed to warn me of ZOOTOXINS or something needed to be OXIDIZED with the American, rather than British, spelling; I had to be prepared.)

Then, on the top, in the space I’d left blank for just this purpose, I chose to get straight to the point. LEAVE ME, I wrote, AND MY MOTHER ALONE.

And I figured it wouldn’t hurt to add PLEASE.

I pushed the note out onto the road and then pulled it back in. Pure, wonderful, unadulterated success: the faeries had replaced what I’d written and left a chaotic tumble of letters at the bottom of the page.

As much as I wanted to celebrate, I couldn’t waste any time; communication was afoot!

SHE IS BEING LIED TO THEY WILL HARM HER PUNISHMENT FOR THE THIEF, said the faeries’ note.

I assumed the SHE was my mother, but just in case, I, in note form, asked. The reply was neither yes nor no, but I couldn’t see how it applied to anyone but my mother:

CHANGELING IS TROJAN EQUUS TASKED WITH VENGEANCE

Equus meant horse, but why use HORSE when you can use a word with two Us instead?

In any case, from this exchange I inferred that the changeling was not being given to my mother out of the goodness of the faeries’ hearts (perhaps this was one of the lies the road had warned me of), but rather she was being given to my mother in order to exact some sort of retribution for my mother’s theft.

WHAT DID SHE STEAL? I asked.

SONG FOR THE HATCHLING NOW HER POWER EXCEEDS

Well, that was as clear as storm-swirled-up mud in a pond.

The top of the page, having been erased and rewritten too many times, was a damp smudge of tearing paper. I ripped another page free (wince × 2) and rewrote my alphabet list on the bottom.

WHAT’S THE PUNISHMENT GOING TO BE? I asked. Faeries were such nonsensical creatures; they were probably only going to do something like make her keys never stay in the place where she set them down.

BREATH HEART OURS

Hmmm. That sounded more ominous than HER KEYS NEVER STAY IN THE PLACE WHERE SHE SET THEM DOWN.

WHEN YOU SAY THAT HER BREATH AND HER HEART WILL BE YOURS, IS THAT MORE OF A FIGURATIVE GESTURE OR SOMETHING LIKE DEVELOPING ASTHMA (I hoped the faeries were well-versed in human ailments) AND A HEART MURMUR?

SHE WILL BE LIKE THE BRANCH AND NOT LIKE THE TREE

SO, SMALLER? ATTACHED TO A TREE TRUNK?

THE BRANCH IN YOUR HAND

Oh. The branch in my hand, the one I used to push the paper back and forth, was dead. It was a lot of other things too (desiccated, rotten, brown), but dead struck me as what the faeries were getting at with LIKE THE BRANCH.

YOU’RE GOING TO KILL HER BECAUSE SHE STOLE SOMETHING?

NO TOO POWERFUL

SHE’S TOO POWERFUL TO KILL?

NO TOO POWERFUL IS REASON

BUT YOU SAID SHE WAS BEING PUNISHED FOR BEING A THIEF?

THIEFING GAVE HER POWER

WHY CAN’T YOU JUST ASK HER TO GIVE WHAT SHE STOLE BACK? Not that I had any clue what it was.

SONG

Right — the earlier note said she’d stolen a song, and I doubted that what my mother had stolen was a page of sheet music that could be easily handed back. So, my mother stole a song that made her powerful. I could see that, what with her recent increase in magical skills. But to kill her for it? That was extreme, too extreme, and I was done with this; it was time for me to put those faeries in their place.

I AM NOT, I wrote as forcefully as I could, GOING TO HELP YOU KILL MY MOTHER. Yes I was mad at her. Furious. Incensed. Livid. Her willingness to give me up wrenched my heart so violently that it was taking all my willpower to keep myself from vomiting up all my internal organs. But there was no way I was going to engage with the faeries the way she had, for my own ends.

WE DON’T WANT YOUR HELP TO HEART BREATH OURS HER

THANKS FOR THE HEADS-UP THEN. The tone didn’t come across. *SARCASM* I added before pushing the note back.

HELP US

I groaned when I saw this.

YOU JUST SAID YOU DIDN’T WANT MY HELP.

HELP US STOP THEM

But they were them, weren’t they? The next section in my faerie book was obviously going to be called, “Faeries Need to Take a Basic Writing Class Because Their Written Communication Leaves Much to Be Desired.”

Third wince. In as small a print as possible, I filled a new page with letters.

EXPLAIN, I wrote, NOW. EXPLAIN EVERYTHING.

SHE STOLE FROM HER HER NEEDS

I dragged the page back in, mid–faerie sentence, and added a bunch of periods, commas, and semi-colons down the margin.

PUNCTUATION, I wrote, IS THE MOST VITAL COMPONENT OF COMMUNICATION. I made my period thick and round and drew an arrow towards it for emphasis.

PUNCTUATION INCONSISTENT IN YOUR EARLIER SENTENCES, the faeries pointed out.

As if I had the time to have a pedantic discussion with the faeries regarding why I was insisting on them using punctuation when I had slacked off using it myself earlier. I chose, however, to be ingratiating, in an attempt to get us back on track.

I APOLOGIZE FOR MY EARLIER LACK OF PUNC-TUATION. BUT NOW, PLEASE, JUST WRITE. I NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON.

WILL TAKE TIME.

I’LL WAIT.

I did, letting my mind wander. A breeze whipped through the trees, and the paper flew out down the road because, in my wandering-mind state, I obviously hadn’t been holding the branch down as forcefully as I should. Without thinking, I stepped out past the tree line to grab the paper before it blew away further and found myself on the wrong side, out on the road, where any faerie could grab me. How could I have been so stupid? After everything, how could I forget the one big thing I was trying to avoid? This is what happened when I lost my voice of reason. Stupid Enid. Foolish, moronic, brain-dead Enid.

My only hope was that faeries, like bears, wouldn’t notice me if I stayed perfectly still.

The wind switched directions, and the paper fluttered up against my legs. Slowly, I moved my eyes from left to right, up to down.

A bird twittered somewhere in the trees.

Three clouds, all puffy, strode purposefully across a clear blue sky.

And no faeries latched onto me, stealing me away to faerieland and giving my mother a changeling assassin for the vengeance of faeriedom.

The page hit my legs again. Slowly, even more slowly than I had moved my eyes, I bent at the waist and gathered the paper up to an appropriate reading level.

WE ARE PROTECTING YOU FROM THOSE THAT WANT TO SPIRIT YOU AWAY. THERE ARE FAC-TIONS. THE OTHER FACTION. SEE.

It was as if the note had an arm that pointed. I knew exactly where it wanted me to look, down the road whence Amber was returning. She was giving me an overenthusiastic wave (the type you give when trying to get your friend’s attention in a crowd when the friend has no idea that you are there. We were not in a crowd. Her overenthusiasm was one of Amber’s typical attention-grabbing moves.)

But behind Amber, where the faeries meant for me to look, the world shuddered slightly after every few of Amber’s steps. Not even really a shudder. More a ripple, like in a shallow pond. There was no scenario where such shuddering was a positive sign.

The note swung in my hand. I looked down.

THAT FACTION BREAKS OUR PROTECTION. PULL US INTO YOURS. SPELL IN THE TREE ROOTS OLDER THAN THEY CAN BREAK.

So much for punctuation being the issue in my understanding.

WHY CAN’T, I wrote, YOU SIMPLY TELL ME EXACTLY WHAT YOU’D LIKE ME TO DO, BECAUSE I DON’T UNDERSTAND A SINGLE THING YOU SAY.

NOT SAY. WRITE.

“For goodness’ sake!” I shouted. “Stop it. Just stop it. Stop focusing on all the wrong, tiny, insignificant things!”

Amber’s steps slowed as I shouted, but then she broke into a trot. Great, she thought I was yelling at her, that there was an emergency, that I needed her back here faster. Behind her, on the other side of the ripples, the world’s colors muted. Who knew that such a slight color shift could be so terrifying.

“I’m going back where it’s safe,” I told whatever faeries were listening.

Off to the side, I saw something glimmer. I turned to a ray of sunshine, pure, almost perfectly tubular, that came down through the branches and around the other shadows.

LIGHT HANDLE, my paper read. PULL US IN WITH THAT.

It did look like a handle, like a sleek chrome one, a long bar rather than the old-fashioned curved ones adorned with weird brass curlicues.

PULL US IN PAST THE ROOT MAGIC.

“I don’t trust you.” Because I didn’t.

YOU ARE IN OUR WORLD. WE LEAVE YOU HARM FREE. WE NEED NOT HAVE DONE.

True. Unless it was some sort of long con, once I stepped out onto the road these faeries could have whisked me away instantly, but they hadn’t.

YOU WILL WRITE ALL THIS IN YOUR BOOK

Again true. I could write all this in my faerie guide, making it a first-hand account of faerie-human collaboration.

“This better not be a trick,” I said, just in case that would guilt the faeries into admitting that it was.

I put my fingers around the sunbeam.

“Hopefully this is what you meant,” I whispered.

I closed my eyes, stepped backwards, and, with all my might, pulled the sunbeam in towards me. I kept my eyes closed because it seemed more likely that this would work if my eyes weren’t watching to tell me how what I was doing was impossible, and I kept going backwards until I tripped over a root. My hands shot out behind me to break my fall, and I lost my grip on the sunbeam.

With the thud of my bottom on the ground, I opened my eyes.

Around me now, the trees glistened with a cool light. Rocks and bits of gravel on the drive sparkled like diamonds. The farmhouse no longer sagged with broken windows and rotten boards. It was flawless, a pale pink, window boxes filled with orange and yellow flowers. The whole space was backlit like an electric flea market painting of a Catholic saint.

“I did it, didn’t I?” I whispered. “You’re in here with me now.”

Then I looked a bit further up, back out at the road. The outside world, at the far end of the driveway, was black like the night sky when it’s cloudy out. Worse than that. Like what a black hole must feel like to your soul.

And stepping through the darkness, Amber came.

“What were you yelling about?” she demanded. “Are you okay?”

“I’m good.”

“You can’t just yell for no good reason.” Her voice was tinny, like she was distant and her larynx had morphed into an old-fashioned Tannoy.

“I stubbed my toe,” I offered. “Studies suggest that yelling upon hurting yourself actually lessens the amount of pain —”

“Enough.” Amber held up her hand. “I don’t care. And here.” She thrust a small, shiny packet at me. “I bought some chips from the vending machine at the campsite. I know I said I’d go back to town for supplies.” I didn’t remember Amber saying she would. “I will, too, but maybe this afternoon.” She cracked her neck. “I’m sore all over. I’m going to sleep some more.”

The static overlaying Amber’s voice grew. I struggled to make out what she was saying. Added to the noise, my mouth, in this new, faerie-merged world, was parched. All I could think of was drinking.

“Can I have some of the water?” I asked Amber. She was swinging my aluminium water bottle in her left hand.

“I’d prefer not.” Crackle crackle. “Germs,” Amber said.

“I gave you my last juice box,” I protested.

“Well, go take an empty juice box and fill it up at the potable water pump at the campground.”

I looked out into the darkness. That wasn’t an option.

“Stop eyeing the water bottle, Enid,” Amber growled.

Fine. I’d just steal back my water bottle once she fell asleep and drink the whole gosh-darned thing. I’d also sneeze in Amber’s sleeping face to ensure maximum germ spreading.

Then Amber was gone, like she’d never been there at all, and I was alone with the faeries. Trapped, you might say, as I stared out at the rest of the world’s blackness.

“So,” I said as my vision blurred. “Now what?”