The girl groaned, tried to get up, found she couldn't put a hand out to steady herself, and didn't quite make it.

"Try getting yourself into a sitting position," Joe told her. "I can check and see if he has a key to those cuffs on him."

"No, no," the girl managed, feeling the bruise of that blow. "These are held by spell. I can feel it." She managed a sitting position, and Joe went over and looked at them. There were tiny little bands of color, like spiderwebs of varicolored light, all over the things.

"You're right," the nymph said, sighing. "Unless you've got the knowledge to untangle that mess, I guess you're stuck until we can find somebody who does."

"I probably could, if I could see it, but I cannot," the girl responded. "It's all right, though. It is not as important as it seems." She paused a moment. "My father — he is dead?"

Joe was startled by the question; somehow the idea that this might be a father-daughter pairing just hadn't occurred to her. She went over to the well-dressed man and scanned him.

"I'm sorry. He's gone," the nymph told the girl. "I think it's just you and me right now. And an audience of stunned fairy folk of all sorts peering out from the bushes."

The girl sighed but resisted breaking into tears. "I–I suppose I knew that the moment I saw him fall. He — he was a good man."

"I'm sorry I wasn't here to help him when you first got attacked, but I didn't even know anybody was ahead of me until I heard the sounds of battle."

"It — it's all right. I owe you a great deal for what you did do. More than I can ever repay. My father — he'd been a knight and a soldier once, and I think this is the way he would have wanted to go, if it hadn't been for me, anyway." She stared at her savior in the darkness, so obviously using faerie sight "My goodness! You really are a wood nymph!"