The birch danced in the storm winds, shaking off droplets that glittered in a momentary ray of sun. The familiar scents of pine and oak wafted through the air to mingle with the smell of coming rain. Lonely atop its little knoll, the sapling was only just big enough to shade them whenever the sun appeared.

Nathan thought it was a great place for a picnic, even with the storm approaching. Maggie was rooting through her satchel while her horse glared daggers at him. A few hours ago that might have bothered him, but now he just ignored the old nag.

They'd retraced his steps to the path. At least, Nathan thought they did. They passed a few spots he recognized, but just as often they went past something he hadn't seen before. Once they passed a pine with several branches broken off where they would have overhung the trail. He remembered that spot. The unearthed roots of a gigantic tree that had fallen just off the path beyond it, however, escaped his memory. A cluster of them arched over the path, thicker than Nathan's waist. Smaller roots dangled like cobwebs, leaving trails of dirt on his clothes as he pushed through them. He would have remembered that.

A few minutes down the trail they came to the little knoll. The patch of sky overhead was like an island in the sea of trees. Maggie declared it was time for lunch, and Nathan was not about to argue.

"You, sir," Maggie said as she pulled several parcels out "have got to be the luckiest person ever to walk through this forest."

"Really?" Nathan asked with a grin, still keyed up on his adventure. "Why is that?"

She scowled, but there was little heat to it. "You wandered off down a marked path, wound up in the deep woods, and survived."

"So?"

"So it's weird that you made it past the edge of the forest. Paths turn back on themselves, trees shift to block the way; the woods keep people out. You noticed, right?" She didn't wait for a response, handing him one of the parcels and rushing on as though she couldn't keep the words in. "You shouldn't have made it in. You shouldn't have survived. What happened?"

"Something chased me. Followed me for a long while." Nathan opened the parcel and inspected the contents; a small loaf of bread, a wheel of cheese, and some mushrooms. "I think it was a zombie or something."

"Don't be an idiot," Maggie said. "Zombies aren't real."

Nathan smiled and considered pointing out that fairies hadn’t been real either a week ago, but held his peace.

She rolled her eyes after a moment. "Alright, you win. What did this 'zombie' look like?"

"Like a half-eaten corpse that crawled out of its grave before it had time to rot." Nathan replied with a shudder. "It didn't have much of a face left, but the damned thing smiled. It smiled, then dicked me the way a cat dicks a mouse."

"It sounds like a revenant."

Nathan took a bite of bread and waited patiently.

"A revenant is a possessed animal or person," she explained peevishly. "Someone draws a spirit from beyond into a living body. It's to put the spirit in the summoner's power, but if the revenant escapes and the spirit inside can’t break out it will go insane. Over-stimulated by the experience of being alive, I guess."

"Whoa whoa whoa," Nathan threw up his hands. "Beyond? Spirits? Summoners? Bears, oh my. Maggie, you have to slow down here." He shook his head. "I'm still trying to process all this. You can't keep dumping things in my lap I don't understand."

The horse snorted, and Nathan scowled at the animal while Maggie laughed. "Fine. Why don't we take turns answering questions?"

"Okay." Nathan pointed at the nag. "Why is your horse so mean?"

Shaking her head, Maggie sighed. "Of all the ...alright. Fairies are real, though they prefer to be called the fae. She's a fae horse, and she's helping me for a bit."

"Helping?"

"She agreed to help. She... she sort of works for the person who patched you up. I asked her to help getting you back."

"What's her name?"

"Hasn't told me."

Nathan grunted and mulled that over for a bit, looking with a bit more respect at the mare. He offered her a piece of the loaf he was eating, and she ambled over and eyed him until he handed her a larger piece.

"I smelled blood when I found you." Maggie said. "I'm guessing some of it's yours, but what about the revenant? What happened to it?"

Nathan rattled his bracelet, unwilling to talk with his mouth full.

"Can't you... oh. Oh."

He swallowed. "Yeah, like out of Bram Stoker. Explain that."

"It was evil?" Maggie said with a shrug. "You attacked it with an icon of faith. If the spirit inside was... yeah, revenant for sure. How'd you figure that out?"

"I didn't. The revenant touched it while trying to take a bite out of my neck. Cross burned it, and by that point..." Nathan shrugged. "I was willing to try anything."

Maggie leaned forward, intent on the story. "And you killed it..."

"I..." Instinct made him pause. Maggie was... well, she had pulled him into something that he didn't understand. That had nearly got him killed. While it wasn't precisely her fault, she was an unknown in an unknown world. He couldn't trust her.

Nathan frowned. Why not?

You can't afford trust. Not after all this. Not yet. Play this one close; it'll keep her on her toes. If she thinks you killed that thing on your own, she'll not know what to expect out of you.

Ooookay... fine, he thought. Who am I to argue with myself?

Maggie waved her hand in his direction. "Well?"

"My turn. How did you find me? Excuse me for saying, but you're blind. You couldn't track me." A thought occurred to him and he pointed to the horse. "Uh... did she track me?"

Maggie accepted the change of topic with cool grace. "Like I said, the forest doesn't like humans."

"You make it sound as though the forest is alive."

"No, that's..." Maggie paused, thinking. "Well, it's complicated. It... responds, I suppose you could say. Not hard for her to figure out where you were."

"Why didn't it respond to you?"

Maggie smirked playfully. "It's your turn."

He grinned. "Fine, we can both keep secrets. Where are we?"

"It's a forest!" Maggie responded brightly. "It covers most of the island, so people simply call it 'The Forest,' but the locals call it the Weymaerii."

Nathan frowned slightly and tried to pronounce it. "Waymarr−"

"Weymaerii." Maggie ran her hands over a small wheel of cheese, then broke it and offered half to the horse, who sniffed and then took it with a pleased grunt. Satisfied, Maggie took a bite of her half and spoke around the mouthful. "But that's not what you meant, is it?"

He shook his head. "No. What is..." he waved his hands all-encompassingly "what is all this?"

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Swallowing, she grinned. "It's Avalon, of course."

Maggie explained as they finished eating that Eden, Shambala, Asgard, even Neverland worked just as well when it came to names. It was an invisible part of Nathan's world, hiding just out of reach. She began to explain the connection in more detail, something about "intrinsic codimensional interdependence" that Nathan didn't follow when she suddenly stopped, frowning.

"What?"

"You're taking this pretty well."

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean?" Maggie asked, incredulous. "Isn't this where you tell me this is impossible?"

"Eh. I'm here, aren't I?" Nathan shrugged. "There were stories all over the world about this kind of thing. It is a big deal that it's true, I guess, but it's not new. Just forgotten."

Maggie blinked and then nodded, looking thoughtful. "Guess so. But not so much forgotten as walled off." She stood up. "We should get going."

Nathan moved to help Maggie onto the horse. "Walled off? Why? And if it's walled off, how do people move from one side to the other?"

"That's complicated. And you can't move."

"You did," he said, slinging his guitar over one shoulder.

"I can, you can't." she rubbed the bridge of her nose as though she had a headache. "It's complicated."

"You keep saying that. Think we'll run out of time to talk it over?"

She laughed, but there was a touch of exasperation in it. "I'm sick of questions. Besides, you're the one who started keeping secrets." Something like guilt flashed across her face as she said that. "And distance isn't quite what you think it is in these woods."

"Fair enough, but don't change the subject," Nathan said. "How do I get home? Can't we just crack open another oak tree?"

"Nothing so simple." Maggie grimaced. "Look, enough questions. We can get you home, but I don't really want to talk about it right now. I promise to tell you later, just... not now."

"Fine."

"And keep an eye out for a willow." she said as she started down the path.

"What?" Nathan asked. “Why? Do they turn into doors too?"

"No," she said over her shoulder. "Because your questions are giving me a headache."

"Willow helps how?" Nathan asked with a grin, hurrying to catch up.

"The bark's good for headaches."

"Ah." Nathan nodded. "I keep aspirin in my backpack."

"Really?" She smiled. "Can I have some?"

"My backpack is in my dorm room. Get me there and I'll give you some."

The horse made a noise uncannily like a laugh as Maggie groaned. "Ass."

"Meh." Nathan raised a hand, palm flat, and peered at the sky. "Think it will rain soon?"

"It won't, actually. This is about as bad as it'll get."

"It'll rain somewhere."

"Shut up."

According to Maggie, the folk who lived on the outskirts of the forest told stories that would make the Grimm brothers flinch. Demons that lusted for hot blood running in mortal veins. Roots and branches that snatched at passersby, pushing them onto paths that led nowhere if they were blessed and into an early grave if merely lucky. The unwelcome felt eyes at their backs with every step, eyes that glowed with the fires of hell when you chanced to see them. After the revenant, Nathan was willing to bet that most of those stories were true.

Now, however, he had a guide; every step the mare took was as if they were on a paved road. Branches that might have snared her mane or scratched her flanks seemed to bend from the path and even smooth the way. A few times he even had to jump forward to avoid them as they shifted back into place.

Anything that might have troubled them melted away like dew in the morning sun as she approached. Some of the denizens even showed themselves, and as he described them Maggie told him what they were.

Wind-fairies waved cheerily as they flitted through the air, catching raindrops and dropping them on Nathan's head with a wink of mischievous, rosy light. A monstrous face snarling from the trunk of a tree proved at a second glance to be the mask of a dryad. Delicate, bark-skinned hands lifted it away to reveal a lovely girl, smiling at Nathan through astonishing curtains of shaggy brown hair. He looked away in time to see a bone-white stag, the creature impossibly large and graceful, slip through the trees as easily as the horse.

Of course, not every being they saw was friendly. Once, the horse snorted and Maggie leaned forward, whispering in the animal's ear. She tossed her mane and Maggie quietly warned Nathan not to look back, that they were being tailed. A few nervous minutes later, she leaned down. "They're ahead of us now,” she whispered. “Don't react."

Nathan caught a glimpse of what could only be elves leering down from the branches ahead, one idly fingering the quiver of bone-tipped arrows at its back with long, leaf-stained fingers. Tolkien had been too good to them: they were utterly inhuman, with pupil-less eyes, tapered ears, and two-fingered, two-thumbed hands that propelled them through the canopy with an eerie, insectile grace.

They lost the elves only when the bundles appeared. They sagged in the air, silken lumps dangling like ornaments just off the path. Just beyond them was a great funnel of webbing suspended between two massive oaks. Nathan heard a chattering murmur behind him and turned to see the elves staring at the tangled net of strands. They whispered amongst themselves and then fled hand over hand through the trees. What had spooked them became clear when several great legs languidly clawed out of the funnel, followed by a gigantic spider that peered after the elves for a moment before withdrawing, tugging one of the bundles into its lair.

Nathan shuddered, some of the more unpleasant passages from the Hobbit running through his mind. Not wanting to look but unable to resist, he stared at the bundles with sickened fascination. There was a foot sticking out from one, still twitching at odd moments.

He came to a halt and pointed. "There's someone up there!"

"Keep it down!' Maggie hissed. "Do you want it to come after us?"

Nathan lowered his voice. "No, but shouldn't we help them?"

"Be my guest." Maggie said coldly, flicking her wrist toward the web in an 'after you' gesture. The horse nickered softly and kept moving. After a few seconds Nathan followed, trying to tell himself he only imagined the pleading murmurs fading into the distance.

"What are you?" Nathan whispered.

He could hear the bitter smile on her lips. "You don't want to know."

The ancient woodlands slowly melted away, massive trunks and tangled roots gradually replaced by dense underbrush and the narrow stems of young trees. The magic faded by degrees, until finally there was nothing to indicate the forest was any different from the ones at home.

Maggie told him as they went that the hunters and shy beauties of the fae world kept to the Weymaerii, Heart of Forests. It was instinct to some, a tradition so old that it was very nearly the same thing to others. The invisible borders of the fae were not lightly crossed from either side, and seldom willingly.

The sky was beginning to darken when they came back to the hut. The horse stopped and Maggie slid down without a sound, heading for the door. Nathan was so relieved he nearly curled up on the ground then and there. He started after her, eager for a warm bed.

"We're not stopping here."

Nathan frowned. "But−"

"I was only borrowing the place, and I'm already indebted again." Maggie waved a hand. "There's a road about a mile down the path, and an inn a few miles after that. We're walking there."

"Are you sure we can't−"

"Not unless you want to get stabbed again. Quit complaining, it's not that far."

Nathan stopped arguing. Judging by her tone, Maggie might actually consider doing it. "What about the horse?"

"We're leaving the horse here."

"Huh..." He glanced at Maggie. "You need help? Guiding and such?"

"I'll be fine, thanks," she said with a shrug, plucking a slender staff from the side of the hut and leaning on it. "We might end up moving off the road pretty fast, so be ready."

"Why can't we stay on the road?"

"Bandits."

He marinated on that for a while. "You're kidding."

"Nope. You might say we're in the boonies." She probed the way ahead with the staff and started walking. Nathan had a sudden urge to pull out his guitar and play 'Dueling Banjos.'

"Please don't."

Nathan blanched. "How do you keep doing that?"

"Let a girl keep her secrets."

He let it drop, unsure how to put words to what he was feeling.

The way she'd dealt with Tyler, her cold indifference at the spider's nest, her ongoing silence about herself and the way home, the way she knew what he was thinking... in some ways she was worse than the revenant had been. She was playing games with him, and what made it worse was that she seemed so human.

Human. Nathan mused. Interesting choice of words, that.

She might not be, though.

"What's so funny?"

He stared at her. "Don't you know?" Can't you read my mind?

"No, I don't." Maggie said. "How would I?"

"Huh." Your mother was a hamster, Nathan thought, and your father smelt of elderberries.

She didn’t react. Might as well be honest. "I was wondering if you can read my mind."

She laughed out loud. "No, no, I can't read your mind. I'd have to be touching you for that."

"What?"

"I told you, I'll explain later. I don't want to talk about this on the road." She turned to smile at him. "I swear on my sire's grave I'll explain everything at the inn. After a night's sleep, anyway."

"Inn? Sleep?" Despite himself, Nathan found the energy for a hopeful smile. His misadventures had left him covered in dirt, sweat, blood, burns, and other, less quantifiable stains. He undoubtably smelled even worse than he looked. "Bath?"

"Possibly," Maggie's smile widened. "I think you'll like this place."

A few minutes later they reached the road, and Nathan was taken aback. It looked for all the world like a highway lost to the ages, a wide strip of once-seamless stone, long since worn down by rain and root. Stone. Not concrete, not brick or asphalt, not even cobblestones or packed dirt. When he'd asked about its construction Maggie had said 'magic' and left it at that.

Hours passed and the stars finally came out. Here, Nathan received another shock. The moon wasn't out, but the starlight alone was enough to see by. The sight was spectacular, as if someone had scattered gemstones over a sheet of black velvet. He stared, then glanced at Maggie. "I wish I could share this with you."

She didn't ask what he meant, she just held out her hand. "Then share it with me."

He hesitated and then took it, prepared for something horrible to happen. His hand tingled and there was a sense of flowing, a movement of energy from his mind to hers.

Maggie gasped, tears glistening in her eyes as she smiled. There was a wild happiness there, happiness that clearly hadn't been set loose in a long, long while. "Thank you."

"For what?"

Maggie molded herself to his side and wiped her cheeks. "The stars. I haven't seen them since I was seven."

He paused for a moment, surprised at the sudden hug, and then asked in a small voice "Are they the same?"

"Yes, they're the same stars."

Nathan shivered and, before he could think about it, felt his arm move across her shoulder. "That's sad."

"I know."

They stood like that for a while, wound together like trees grown from the same patch of earth. Nathan hadn't forgotten how frightening Maggie was, or the things she had done.

At that moment, he just didn't care.