be upset about the incident, just puzzled. “Tell me now you think he’s just a boy,” she said.
That night, very late, a wind came up from the east. The moon was nearly full, but the clouds rushed past her, didn’t pause to carry her like they sometimes did, edged in silver. The Green House creaked in the arms of the wind.
Sitting sleepless by her bedroom window, looking out, Ariel realized that everything had a voice; houses, forests, wind, even, impossibly enough, silence. The wind was singing and Ariel knew what it meant. A song of searching, for the wind never stops, always going forward, asking: Who? Where? When? There were feathers in the wind, glowing white. It had its own wings. And in that moment, Ariel realized her true nature. Stubbornly refusing to believe in something did not make it go away. The world had a secret life and some people could see it. Perhaps her mother had.
Then she saw them. Four of them. Down in the garden, among the rhododendrons, shapes in the dark. There were no glowing eyes, no vivid flash of white teeth, just shapes. They looked like beasts, crouched and waiting. They had come for Jack. He would leave now.
In an instant, Ariel was on her feet. She ran out of her room and down the stairs and her feet made no sound. They didn’t even touch the stairs. Sure enough, Jack was in the kitchen and no one else was there. She had to ask a question. She couldn’t help herself. “Who are they?”
“My father and his brothers,” Jack said. He opened the door to the garden, where the wind was hurrying past. “Will you come?”
“Yes,” Ariel said. She took the hand he offered her.
“It will be just this once,” Jack said. “Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
Walking across the wind was difficult because it wanted them to go the way it was going. It seemed to take a long time to reach the other side of the garden. Jack’s hand was hot and dry. He was speaking in a language Ariel did not know, a constant sibilant murmur: “Ah kaya, hala, hala, mah kah nay.”
Jack’s kin came out from the foliage, huge and sinuous. They were cats and yet not. They had golden hoops in their tufted ears, and manes that were plaited with feathers and beads. They stretched and groaned and rubbed around Jack. One of them looked at Ariel, and breathed upon her. Its breath was hot and moist. Ariel reached out and laid a hand upon the enormous dark head. It smelled of the earth. The animal raised a paw and then, with a swift and unexpected movement, slashed Ariel with its claws across the chest, above the heart, tearing right through her shirt. Ariel did not stagger back, nor felt any pain, but saw she was bleeding. Her blood looked black. She looked at the beast and let the questions fall from her eyes: Why? Had she not trusted? Had she not believed and so allowed the true sight to come to her?
The cat reared up and then it was a man standing before her, dark and wild, a creature of the hidden places. “You can’t be too careful,” he said.
Jack put a hand upon her shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said. “Let me, not him. His tongue is too rough.”
So Ariel let him lick up her blood, which he did neatly, as a cat would savor a saucer of cream. These things were really happening to her, there might be no future, but she didn’t care. She was dreaming on her feet. Jack’s voice brought her out of her reverie.
“You see, you’re fine. Now we can run.” He took her hand again.
“Where?”
“With the wind.”
When she awoke in her bed, Ariel knew she was supposed to believe it had been all a dream. Then she would get out of bed and her feet would have soil between the toes, her legs would be scratched from brambles, there would be a wound above her heart from where a vampire had supped her blood. She lay in bed, breathing quickly. Above her, the ceiling was covered in sparkling motes that did not disappear when she blinked. She heard Maeve call her name. So she slipped from between the white sheets and looked down at her feet. They were clean. Perhaps he had licked them clean after he’d carried her to her bed, exhausted. It hadn’t been a dream. There were her clothes, thrown over