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felt a new and powerful magic in my senses, for I could see them clearly, while realizing that they should be too far ahead and out of sight. By visualizing my way, I gave chase, and the trees and branches that had confused me before now seemed no obstacle. I whipped through the woods the way a sparrow flies through the openings in a fence, without a thought, folding up its wings at the right moment, gliding through.
    When I caught up, I found they were standing behind the rough pines short of the forest edge. Before us lay a road and on that road a car had stopped, its headlights streaking through the misty darkness, broken pieces of the metal grille glistening on the asphalt. Through the open driver’s door, a small light shone in the empty cab. The anomaly of the car pulled me toward it, but the strong arms of my friends held me back. A figure emerged from the darkness and stepped into the light, a thin young woman in a bright red coat. She held one hand to her forehead, and bending slowly, she reached out with her free arm, nearly touching a dark mass lying in the road.
    “She hit a deer,” Luchóg said, a note of sadness in his voice. She agonized over its prostrate form, pulling her hair back from her face, her other hand pressed against her lips.
    “Is it dead?” I asked.
    “The trick,” said Smaolach in a quiet voice, “is to breathe into its mouth. It’s not dead at all, but in shock.”
    Luchóg whispered to me. “We’ll wait until she’s gone, and you can inspire it.”
    “Me?”
    “Don’t you know? You’re a faery now, same as us, and can do anything we can do.”
    The notion overwhelmed me. A faery? I wanted to know right away if it was true; I wanted to test my own powers. So I broke away from my friends, approaching the deer from the shadows. The woman stood in the middle of that lonesome road, scanning in both directions for another car. She did not notice me until I was already there, crouching over the animal, my hand upon its warm flank, its pulse racing alongside my own. I cupped the deer’s muzzle in my hand and breathed into its hot mouth. Almost immediately, the beast lifted its head, shouldered me out of the way, and rocked itself up into a standing position. For an instant, it stared at me; then, like a white ensign, its tail shot up a warning, and the deer bounded into the night. To say that we—the animal, the woman, myself—were surprised by this turn of events would be the most severe understatement. She looked bewildered, so I smiled at her. At that moment, my comrades started calling to me in loud whispers.
    “Who are you?” She wrapped herself tighter in that red coat. Or at least I thought those were her words, but her voice sounded alien, as if she were speaking through water. I stared at the ground, realizing that I did not know the true answer. Her face drew close enough for me to detect the beginning of a smile on her lips and the pale bluegreen of her irises behind her glasses. Her eyes were splendid.
    “We must go.” From the darkness, a hand grasped my shoulder, and Smaolach dragged me away into the bushes, leaving me to wonder if it had all been a dream. We hid in a tangle while she searched for us, and at last she gave up, got in her car and drove off. I did not know it at the time, but she was the last human person I was to encounter for more than a dozen years. The taillights zigzagged over the hills and through the trees until there was no more to see.
    We retreated back to camp in a cross silence. Halfway home, Luchóg advised, “You mustn’t tell anyone about what happened tonight. Stay away from people and be content with who you are.” On the journey, we created a necessary fiction to explain our long absence, invented a narrative of the waters and the wild, and once told, our story endured. But I never forgot that secret of the redcoated woman, and later, when I began to doubt the world above, the memory of that bright and lonely meeting reminded me