"Come back," the voice whispered. "Step out and join me, manchild. The light is good here."

He did not know who he was or who spoke to him. He did not know where he was, or why the darkness that surrounded him felt so immense-a place where you could fall for a thousand years before you even realized you were falling…

"Come back." A minute flicker of light, the faintest possible glimmer, appeared before him. "Come here. Come and run in these green fields with me, child. Where you were going is too cold."

He opened his eyes, or at least that was how it seemed: the blur of light spread and deepened. Green and blue and white, the colors burst out, and he felt like he drank them down as a thirsty man gulps water. The clouds, the grass, the distant hills… and what was this new thing? Something white skimming toward him down the gray sky, a great bird with wings so wide they seemed as if they would brush a cloud with each tip: it was Saqri, of course, wearing a dream-form-or perhaps he was learning something deep and true about her that could only be experienced here.

"Run with me!" the swan called to him in the fairy queen's gentle, musical voice. "Run! I will follow you."

Fixed on the beautiful white bird, his senses swimming with delight, he spread his own wings to leap toward her, only to realize he was not a winged thing at all but a creature of hooves and strong legs and long strides. As he bolted out over the green meadows there seemed little difference between what he did now and what he would have done with wings. It was a wonderful freedom-it felt right.