“Humans lie to each other constantly. They mean to. They think it best. They tell you what a clever child you are when they mean someone should muzzle you, and they tell one another how handsome they look when they think they look absurd. They believe they’re doing the world a favor by lying. Why, take your sister as a case in point.”

I won’t say a word, Kate promised herself stoically, and Emily rushed to defend her sister against her newfound favorite.

“Kate doesn’t lie!” she said indignantly.

“Oh, doesn’t she?” answered Marak, sounding much amused. “Well, M, I’m sure she doesn’t lie often, but such is the frail nature of humans that she simply couldn’t help herself. Imagine”—he lowered his voice dramatically—“as she stood by the bonfire tonight, she saw outlandish and otherworldly sights, and when I came toward her to lift her onto this horse here, she knew—she just knew—that if she let me put her onto this horse, she’d be galloped away beyond the world we know into some strange, shadowy underworld.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And not one of the mortals on this earth would ever see her again.”

Emily went off into gales of laughter. Kate felt a swift chill run through her. How could this stranger know what she had felt? She hadn’t even known it herself. But that was it exactly, down to the last detail.

“And so,” continued Emily’s storyteller cheerfully, “what on earth could your sister say? Could she say, I think you are about to steal me for what awful ends I know not? No, she is a human. Shefell back on the polite lie. And so she said”—and here he took on a haughty tone—“  ‘I prefer to walk.’ ”

Kate forgot her promise to keep quiet. “You must think that I am a perfect fool!” she exclaimed.

“Oh, no,” the rider assured her. “You are a woman of rare perception. Not one woman in a hundred—maybe a thousand—would have realized in time. I find myself wondering,” he added thoughtfully, “just how you managed it.”