22I’m deep in unfamiliar woods, surrounded by towering oaks, birch, and pine. Lower to the forest floor are holly, elderberry, sumac, and thimbleweed. I’m careful not to crush them. The tündér get a little testy when you trample their flora. The sun is beginning its descent, and I should be finding my way back home. It would do me no good to be lost in these woods once the sun has gone.
The bobbing lights, the will-o’-the-wisps are starting to emerge from the expanding shadows. I want so badly to look at them, to follow them, but I turn my eyes away. I know all too well from the stories I read as a child that to traipse after them rarely ends well for a human. But I’m not human. They beckon to me, and I heed their whispering light. They take me to a mossy pathway, and I wander after them,
