"Tell your friends that the first one of them that makes a sudden move gets buckshot in his face," said Broward. "Tell them that if anyone moves their hands funny or reaches for a weapon, or starts to chant or anything like that, we shoot first. Tell them."

Satterly repeated Broward's words to the others in Common, translating awkwardly.

"Where are they taking us?" asked Mauritane, his face grave.

"He hasn't said." Satterly turned and spoke to Broward in English. "Where are we going?" he asked.

"You'll find out," said Broward, urging him forward with the barrel of his shotgun.

Satterly turned back to Mauritane and shrugged. "He won't say."

"Are those weapons dangerous?" said Mauritane.

"Very. One shot at this range would take off your head."

Raieve walked beside Gray Mave, letting him put weight on her shoulder. "How are you, Mave?" she asked.

"I'll manage," he said, but his face was pale and he'd begun to breathe in ragged, wet puffs.

"He can't take much more of this," Raieve said.

Mauritane looked back at her and said nothing.

Silverdun walked at the front of the line, his eyes downcast.

After two or three hours of marching, the forest trail opened onto a clearing at the base of a tree-lined hill. Inside the clearing was a row of three small wooden huts, with simple open windows and roofs of thatch. A large fire pit was in the center; several more humans sat around it, one of them turning food on a spit. The clearing was empty of snow, floored with packed earth, and was surrounded by a fence made of dark, corrugated metal rods bound together with some kind of rope. One of the humans, a boy scarcely out of his teens, ran forward and pulled open a wide gate constructed of the same materials.

Behind the huts was a low structure, again of the corrugated metal rods, that reminded Satterly of the lion's cage in the circus. Taking the place of the lion, however, was a solitary Fae man, dressed in the robes of a scholar, seated in meditation at the cage's center.

Something in the clearing caught Satterly's eye. It was a machine; a short, wheeled contraption with a metal bar that rose from the chassis to make a handle. It was covered in rust. Satterly racked his brain trying to figure out what the thing could be, his mind settling on the single, narrow point of reference rather than try and comprehend the situation at large. He'd seen the thing before, or something very like it. A long time ago. What was it? He pondered the problem for the space of a few breaths, utterly confused. Then the answer hit him with an almost physical force.

It was a lawn mower.

Satterly stood in the center of the noise and activity around him, trying to take in the scene at once and failing. The girl Rachel was one of three children, all girls, all about the same age of nine or ten. All three of the children wore the same bandages on their ears. Everyone Satterly could see was dressed in a bizarre combination of tattered human clothing, animal skins, and cheap Fae cloaks and boots.

The woman talking to him, Linda, was in her fifties and had long curling gray hair tied loosely behind her head.

Linda walked alongside them as they were led past the huts toward the low metal cage. "We don't mean you any harm," she said. "At least, not most of us, anyway." She tried a weak smile. "Hopefully if everything goes as planned, we'll be out of your way and you guys can just go on with your lives."

"But what are we here for?" said Satterly. "What do you want with us?"

"You'll find out," she said. "Soon enough."

One of the men, the one who'd led the horses, now crossed in front of them and opened the cage's door. There was no lock, just a simple latching mechanism that worked from the outside.

"Oh, shit!" said Satterly. "The bars! Don't touch the bars!"

Silverdun, who had been reaching toward the side of the cage to steady himself, withdrew his hand. "Why not?" he said.

"This stuff that the cage is made of," said Satterly. "It's called rebar. It's made of steel. Steel is made of iron. You guys shouldn't go anywhere near it."

At the mention of the word "iron," all four of the Fae shrank back from the bars.

Once the cage door was shut, the Fae scholar raised his head and looked up at them as though he hadn't noticed anything prior to that moment.

"Hello," he said. "Welcome to hell."

"You'll forgive me," said the Unseelie scholar, who introduced himself as Hereg. "So many months surrounded by these bars have weakened me. I no longer know what year it is, I have trouble remembering. Is it Midwinter in the Seelie lands?"

Mauritane nodded. "Firstcome eludes us for awhile yet."

Hereg shook his head slowly. "I'm afraid it's my fault that you all have been brought here. For whatever is to happen, I am to blame."

"What is to happen, Hereg?" said Mauritane.

Hereg smiled. "In a cage, even the sons of Mab and the sons of Titania may comfort one another," he said. "Perhaps more of us ought to be in cages, eh?"

"We must bend to circumstances," said Mauritane. "But answer the question."

"Have any of you trained in the magical arts?" he asked.

"I have," said Silverdun, the hood finally pushed back, his hair flowing. "I studied Elements at Queensbridge."

"Ah," said Hereg, rocking forward and back on his knees. "A man of the Elements. Just so, just so. You are, perhaps, aware of the Unseelie master of Spatial Thaumatics, Beozho? His Works?"

"I know of it," said Silverdun.

"Beozho teaches that the spaces between spaces may be enlarged and contracted. He describes the four axes of spatial harmony and gives manipulation keys for each." Hereg rocked forward and drew in the dirt with his finger, making a crude picture of a cube. "Using a premonitive resonator," he said, "the frequency of the space within a space may be tuned to achieve sufficient stability for passage, creating a doorway." He drew lines placing the cube upon a planar surface, then rubbed them out and altered the perspective with new lines. Depending on how Mauritane looked at the cube, it appeared to be either extended away from the plane or sinking into it.

"I cast runes to find one who is premonitively gifted," said Hereg, looking from Silverdun, to Mauritane, to Raieve, to Gray Mave. His eyes stopped on Mave and he pointed. "He is the one. He is to be my resonator."

"What does all this mean?" said Mauritane.

"I know what it means," said Silverdun. "He wants to use Gray Mave as a crowbar. Except instead of a packing crate, he's going to open a space between two worlds."

blue sky of earth.

Night fell. Hereg continued to speak, sometimes veering into heavily accented High Fae that Satterly could not decipher. Eventually, he gave up listening and wandered to the edge of the enclosure. As much as he hated to admit it, none of it made sense to him. The nuts and bolts of Fae magic sounded more like an alien differential calculus than the storybook finger twiddling he'd once imagined. And it always came back to the equally alien concept of re, the magical essence, or sense, or power, or whatever it was that let the Fae do what they did. Trying to understand how Fae magic worked without being able to sense re was like trying to understand music theory without being able to hear.

It was unspoken among his fellows, but obvious, that the presence of iron in the bars was beginning to affect them unfavorably. It was bad luck even to speak of iron, so no one said it, but no one needed to. The mere proximity of it seemed to act as a depressant, dulling even Mauritane's reactions almost to the point of stupor.

Satterly stood at the edge of the cage and looked at the guard. He was a young man, no more than thirty, his long greasy hair tied back into a ponytail. He was so tall he had a tendency to hunch forward; his head was permanently angled outward like a turtle's. He leaned against the back of one of the huts, a shotgun within easy reach.

"How'd you get mixed up with them?" the man asked, out of nowhere.

"Me?" said Satterly, surprised. "Oh, well, it's a long story. My name's Brian Satterly."

"So y'all are all together? Like, you're friendly?"

Satterly puffed out his cheeks in thought. "Well, we're not enemies, but I wouldn't go as far as to call us friends, either. Let's say we're joined by circumstance."

"Joined by circumstance," the man repeated, enunciating each word. "Huh."

Satterly frowned and changed the subject. "So, uh, what are all you people doing here? How did you get to this world?"

The man laughed. "We drove," he said.

The woman named Linda skirted around the huts and joined the guard at his post. Back near the fire, some of the children peered in their direction, but most of the adults looked studiously away, as though trying to ignore them. Linda whispered quietly with the guard for a few seconds, pointing and gesturing.

She stuffed her hands in the pockets of a pair of threadbare jeans and approached the cage. "You," she said, pointing at Satterly. "What's your name?"

"Brian Satterly," he said. "I just went through this with your friend."

"My name is Linda Grossman," she said. "I want to apologize for all of this."

"I'd feel better about that if I knew what 'all of this' was," said Satterly.

"Come on out," she said. "Just you, none of the others. We'll talk."

Satterly glanced back at Mauritane, who'd noticed Linda's approach and now was staring hard in her direction. "She says she wants me to go with her," said Satterly.

Mauritane's face was cold. "Go, find out what you can," he said. "We're having a bad time of it. I don't know how Hereg has survived so long in this cell."

Satterly nodded.

"Just reach around and undo the latch," Linda said, backing up. She turned to the young man. "Give me the Browning," she said. He scowled but reached into his coat and handed her a pistol without protest.

Satterly reached around and unhooked the latch, stepping carefully into the open clearing. Moonlight dyed the night a pale blue; it reflected from the snow at the forest's edge and caught in Linda's dark eyes.

"Come on," she said. "Let's talk."

She led him past the huts and continued walking, past the clearing and into the forest.

"See that hill over there?" she pointed.

Satterly nodded.

"That's where we're headed."

They walked in silence for a few seconds. Despite his confusion, Satterly felt comforted by Linda's presence. She was normal. She was a bridge back to the world he assumed he'd never see again. He imagined that if he were to lean in and smell her neck, he might begin to cry.

"I was elected to talk to you," she said, walking with her hands in the pockets of a too-large brown cloak. The butt of the pistol protruded alongside her right wrist. "I need you to understand a few things, and I want to know some things about you."

"Okay," Satterly said.

"Mainly, I want you to understand that we don't mean you any harm, not really. All we want is to get home. No one's going to get hurt if I have anything to say about it."

"That's fine, depending on how much say you have."

"I have almost enough." She scowled. "I need to know if you're willing to help us."

"I might be under different circumstances," Satterly said. "I don't appreciate being held prisoner. And my friends aren't doing so well in that cage of yours."

"We didn't ... well, I didn't mean for that to happen. So, they are your friends then?"

"Why does everyone keep asking me that?"

"You're human, and you speak their language. We could use you to help us get back, and in return we'd be willing to take you with us. We just want to know what side you're on."

Satterly stopped short. "So you really have a way out of here?"

"Yes."

"I ... I don't know. Most of the time I'm not even sure what I'm doing with those guys. I mean, I've been through a lot already with them, but ... I don't know. Sometimes I don't even think they want me around."

"So you'll help us?"

Satterly thought. "I have to think. I said I'd go with them; we're on a mission, sort of."

"I can't tell you what to do," said Linda. "But we're leaving this place tomorrow, one way or the other. Like I said, I just don't want anyone to get hurt. If you help us, you can do whatever you want. Come with us, ride off with your Fae friends. I don't care. But I do know this: if you don't cooperate, Jim will force you. And I can't control him."

"I have a question," said Satterly. "Why didn't you just ask? Maybe we would have helped anyway. I don't understand why I would even need to choose sides."

"I guess Hereg hasn't explained the spell to you yet."

"No, not to me."

"The way I understand it, in order to create the way out, he needs the full premonition essence from a catalyst Fae. I have no idea what that means, but whatever it is, it's apparently quite painful."

"I see."

"Do you?" said Linda. She folded her arms across her chest. "Understand, Mister Satterly. Your companion might very well die tomorrow. There's nothing you can do about it. I didn't want it to happen this way, but there it is."

Satterly raised his voice. "You keep saying that things aren't the way you want them, so why don't you do something about it instead of forcing it all on me?"

"Because I was outvoted, Mister Satterly. I have children, and the people who outvoted me have guns. And they don't really like me very much as it is. That's my reality."

He followed her up a steep wooded trail. Halfway up the hillside, she stopped and walked away from the trail, beckoning him to follow. Something metal glinted in the filtered moonlight. A truck.

"What the hell?" said Satterly. It was a flatbed truck, mostly buried in drifting snow but recognizable. The bed of the truck held a number of open containers filled with metal rods in varying quantities.

"That explains the rebar everywhere," Satterly said.