The Watchtower

had three vertical lines of sizzle within it that showered sparks everywhere. One of the lines struck Marguerite in the head and made her entire body luminescent.
    Will screamed at the top of his lungs, no heed to propriety or anything else, expecting Marguerite to become a statue of char, to disintegrate. But she didn’t; she barely broke stride, her only reaction a brief nod as if she’d shaken off an unpleasant sensation. She continued into the woods.
    Modesty never entered Will’s mind as he ran out of the room, down the stairs, and across the yard into the woods. At first he was relieved not to find her, as that proved she hadn’t died right on the spot, but as he flailed deeper into the woods without coming upon her, he feared that the lightning had struck her senseless and that she was now wandering in the woods out of her mind. Anything might happen to her … she might wander down to the pond and drown!
    At that thought he increased his speed, running in the direction of the pond, but before he could reach the water, he collided with the object of his search … and was repelled by a cataclysmic shock some ten feet backward through the air and hard into a tree, knocking him down.
    “Will!” Marguerite cried, running to him.
    He looked up and thought he must have died and gone to heaven. Surely the creature crouched above him was an angel. Her body was luminescent, her veins glowing with liquid fire, her face as radiant as a full moon.
    “What are you?” he asked when he’d regained the breath to speak and realized he wasn’t dead. “What in the world—or outside of it— are you?”

11
    Queen of the Woods
    “There are a few things you should know about Sylvianne before you meet her,” Madame La Pieuvre told me as we crossed the street to the Luxembourg. Although the night was warm, she had thrown a dark cloak over her shoulders that she clutched at with one of her long, thin hands. She lifted her head to the sky and a spatter of raindrops fell onto her face. It was quite dry where I walked a few feet beside her. “Sylvianne is a very old spirit. She was here when the mer fey arrived from Ys. At first there was fighting. I’m afraid that the mer fey are not the most tolerant of creatures. They took control of the islands in the Seine and tried to evict the tree spirits from their homes. But the tree folk can be quite tenacious . They become attached to places and the trees that grow there. Since the mer fey couldn’t kill the tree folk themselves, they cut down the trees that were their homes. In retaliation the tree folk kidnapped and tortured the humans who were dear to the mer fey.”
    “That’s awful,” I said, recalling the man I’d seen leap the fence into the park. Was he one of the tree fey—or one of their human companions? Either possibility was not reassuring. I shivered. The night felt suddenly cold to me and I wished I had Madame La Pieuvre’s cloak even though hers was now soaked with the rain that fell only on her—as if she were drawing water from the sky. Perhaps this was her personal hydration system. When we reached the tall iron gates to the park, Madame La Pieuvre produced a large, heavy key and fit it into the lock. I touched my hand to hers—it felt like old velvet worn down to the nap and was slightly moist. “Do they still do that?” I asked. “Do they still torture humans?”
    Madame La Pieuvre shook her head, scattering raindrops, without meeting my eye. “They agreed not to as part of the Trêve de Gui—the Mistletoe Truce, so called for the sprig of mistletoe held over the heads of the rulers of each people—that was signed between the mer fey and the tree folk. But by then the tree folk had acquired a taste for human company. They like to play with them.…” She looked up, suddenly apologetic. I think she had forgotten for a moment that I was human. “Their play is really quite harmless … usually. I believe most of their human companions enjoy it. But they can be a little … rough . I will tell them that you’re under my protection and that should keep them in line … only…”
    “Only what?”
    “Well, they sometimes take a perverse pleasure in appropriating the favorites of the mer fey.”
    “Oh,” I said, laughing. “That shouldn’t be a problem. I’m no one’s favorite.”
    “Oh, my dear,” Madame La Pieuvre said, stroking my cheek with her velvet hand, “you’re Will Hughes’s favorite, and that will particularly