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zero.
    Later, at base camp, he mentioned it.
    Venn managed a wintry smile. “We can never get away from our nightmares” was all he said.
    Jean Lamartine,
The Strange Life of Oberon Venn
    W HARTON STRODE THROUGH the silence of the midnight Wood.
    It had never looked more beautiful.
    Above the leafy canopy of the trees, the sky was darkest blue and scattered with stars. An owl hooted; below, to his left, almost hidden in its deep bed, the Wintercombe rippled over rocks and lichened boulders, its surface glinting with bubbles.
    The path he walked was ridged with tree roots, the undergrowth on each side sweet with night-scented flowers and ghostly foxgloves. Moonlight slanted in brilliant diagonals through the dark masses of the trees, and once, when he stumbled and put his hand against a trunk, the moss was so deep and wet that his fingers sank into it.
    Of course, the Shee knew he was here.
    At first it had been the lightest of touches, on his hair, his face, as if he had snagged invisible cobwebs. Then a moth landed on his shoulder. A gnat bit him gently on the cheek.
    Grim-faced, he walked on. Moonlight lit the depths of the forest, showing him green, treacherous, enticing places off the path, secret clearings, the glimmer of dark crags.
    On midsummer night the Wood scared him, maybe more than any place he’d ever been. Its stillness, its watchfulness, its complete Otherness, crept into him. Nothing here was human. It was ancient and unconquered and he knew it would watch him live or die without the slightest vestige of emotion. Just like the creatures that lived in it.
    He stopped.
    Quite suddenly the path divided before him into three, each track twisting away between the trees.
    He cleared his throat.
    â€œIs anyone here? I need to speak to Venn. Oberon Venn.”
    Stupid. They knew who Venn was.
    Only a high rustle answered him. Looking up, he glimpsed a scatter of dark bats, circling the branches.
    He caught hold of a tree branch to duck under it.
    It became a long, slender hand
.
    Wharton yelled, leaped back. A shock of sweat broke out all over him. His heart slammed in his chest.
    â€œI’m so sorry, sir,” the tree said. “It’s just that I heard you call.”
    It was an ancient, crooked specimen, maybe a rowan. Now he looked carefully, it seemed a bit like a wizened old man, all bent up, the bark crumbling like leprous gray skin. A few sparse leaves clung to it.
    â€œYou can speak?” he said.
    â€œIndeed. My voice is all that is left to me.”
    Wharton glanced around. The Wood fluttered with moths. “Left of what?”
    â€œMy mortality, good sir. Of my human life.”
    Fascinated, Wharton edged closer. The voice was a faint breeze in the branches. One gnarled knob of trunk watched him like a blinded eye.
    â€œSummer did this to you?”
    The tree rustled with anxiety. “My Lady Summer was good enough to be angry with me, yes. But I deserved it.” A leaf drifted sadly down. “It happened just a few days ago. I am a monk of the Abbey here. They warned me, the Abbot and my brothers, but I still love to leave the precincts and wander in the Wood. And so I began to encounter the fiends.”
    Wharton nodded, grim. “You poor devil.”
    â€œNot that They are, in fact, true demons. Some of the holy Fathers say these beings are angels that fell between Heaven and Hell. Neither good nor evil, they infest the waste places. And she . . . she is so beautiful. No mortal woman could so have tempted me.” The tree bowed a little. “In sooth I became besotted, and for days have lived wild and crazed here in the Wood.”
    â€œBut what made her turn you into . . . ?”
    â€œI saw her bathing unclothed in the stream.”
    Wharton winced. “Ah. Right.”
    â€œYou can imagine her anger.”
    â€œI’d rather not.”
    â€œThey saw me and dragged me forth. Then—”
    â€œYes. I’m