Chance is a funny thing. A moment's inattention, and you can take a wrong turn, find yourself on a branching path taking you far away from familiar lands. That's pretty much what happened to me, and the land I found myself in when my journey was over was farther from anything I've ever known than the sky is from the earth.

I don't remember much between realising I was lost and waking up in Fionn's cabin. He told me later that I had likely wandered into a Faerie Circle, and the crossing was such a shock to my system that I passed out. At the time, all I knew was that one moment I was trying to figure out how I'd gotten south of the river, and the next I was looking up at the most fearfully alien and beautiful being I'd ever seen.

He was very short, but I didn't realise that at first. He was so slender and willowy that he seemed much taller than he really was. But it was his hair and his face that drew my attention most. White hair, shining opalescent in most any light, arrow-straight all the way down to his ankles. His face was delicate and almost perfectly triangular -- high cheekbones and a pointed, stubborn chin -- the whole of it a dramatically pale frame for his huge, sharply slanted eyes. The colour of those eyes, too, fascinated me: green, yes, but not any green I'd ever seen before. No. Fionn's eyes were the lightest of shades, paler even than the flesh of a lime, subtly, but wickedly, entrancing.