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was no boon, to see the Gossamers' true shape. And this fiery halo—had she always sported such a thing, and simply been blind to its existence? Was this what the Fey saw, who had looked upon and desired her?
    Something moved beyond in the mirror, resolving into gently waving tentacles. She glanced to once side, and saw the door to the bath room move suggestively.
    "Of course," she said aloud. "I will bathe now, thank you." She walked toward the doorway. "Please send for Nancy," she said, coolly, as one spoke to servants. "I'll want her to dress me when I'm through."
    She paused at the edge of the deep tub, and closed her eyes. The Gossamers disrobed her with their accustomed gentle efficiency, then took her by the arm—she forcefully snatched her imagination away from the thought of tentacles surrounding her wrist—and led her into the water.
     
    Elizabeth Moore had filled his pack with all manner of savory things to eat, as if she expected him to be gone on walkabout, or thought him unable to feed himself adequately from the land. After a brief struggle, and only a little prompting from the elitch, he recognized her gift as kindness. He thanked her for her care before turning toward his work, steps measured deliberately, so as not to overtire the elder Newman Jack Wood.
    "I won't slow ye long," the Newman said. "Just want to point ye out the way."
    "Your care is appreciated." Meri repeated the same courtesy that had won him a sideways smile from Elizabeth Moore. From Jack Wood, he gained an edged chuckle and a shake of the venerable head.
    "My intrusion into bidness you know better'n any is being tolerated with patience, is what you mean to say." He raised his stick and pointed to the right. "That'll be it, right there."
    "There" was a stand of larch, slender trunks showing swatches of vermilion, which was a sign of great age among those trees.
    Good growing, Elders , Meri sent politely, as he and Newman Wood approached.
    The larches did not answer; indeed the whole area seemed unnaturally quiet. No birds sang from their graceful limbs, no tree-mice scampered among the leaves. And about the larches themselves, there was—a silvery nimbus, more like ice than proper kest , with no such flickers as might even attend a tree's aura.
    Meri frowned slightly, and glanced at the Newman.
    "Caught it, have ye?" The elder nodded his hoary head. "Took me a month or more o' passin' 'em by before I twigged there was something off. Can't say what it is, though. Just . . . off."
    "Recall," Meri murmured, straining to make sense of what he was seeing, "that my life has been devoted to trees. Any . . . oddity will be immediately apparent."
    What , he asked the trees silently, do I find here? Is the entire wood afflicted, or only this stand?
    Jack Wood laughed. "That's exactly what I said to Lucy when I first spotted it. 'Whatever's going on with them trees,' I says to her, 'it ain't natural. An' if it is natural, it ain't nothing I'm able or willing to take on.' "
    Ahead, the larches remained silent and solitary. Meri sighed and looked away, to a neighboring pine, whose venerable branches were hosting a boisterous game of tree-mouse tag, to the tree's sleepy amusement.
    "You were," he said to Jack Wood, "wise to send for a Ranger."
    "Well, that's a comfort," the old man said dryly, and jerked his head at the lightsome, unnatural trees. "What is off? If you don't mind saying."
    The trees were silent, as if they, too, awaited his answer. Meri sighed.
    "I don't know," he said, and turned to look into Jack Wood's old and canny eyes. "I've never seen anything like it."
     
    Nancy was waiting when she emerged from her bath, dried with soft towels wielded by deft tentacles, and swathed in a robe of sunshine yellow brocade. It was a relief to see her as she had always seemed—an absurdly tiny creature, wings folded like a garnet and green cloak along her thin back, as she perched on the mirror's frame.
    She leapt into the air as Becca