The Watchtower

succeed in your quest through the services of Sir Dee. But if you do embark on this most awesome of journeys, keep in mind that crossing over—‘transformation’ as you call it—can annihilate the voyager, even dislodge the earth that birthed him. Your beloved best be worth these sorts of risks, son. And you’d better be prepared, from what I’ve heard rumored over the many years, to die during the journey.”
    Now there was a second darkening in the street, then a brilliant flash of lightning followed by thunder. Hailstones began to drop with a sound like bullets fired from the clouds striking the pavements, followed by large raindrops falling with a sound like blood spattering.
    Will, weary of Guy Liverpool’s portentous perspective, said a hasty farewell, slapped two shillings down on the tabletop for his drink, and sped off into the deluge. With a new chance at immortality, he felt as if he could walk between the hailstones and raindrops. And walk between them he nearly did.

13
    Harlequin
    The next day I caught a train for Fontainebleau.
    “I have to go alone,” I’d told Madame La Pieuvre after we’d left the Luxembourg. “Sylvianne told me so.”
    “What else did Sylvianne tell you?” She still looked puffed up, but the inky blotches on her face were fading.
    “She told me that tomorrow night the Wild Hunt rides through the Forest of Fontainebleau, and that if I stopped in front of the head rider and demanded passage to the Summer Country, he would have to give it to me.”
    “Oh, is that all?” Madame La Pieuvre asked, arching one eyebrow. “Why not tell you to stand in front of a speeding train while she’s at it?”
    I recollected her words as I hurried toward my track at the Gare de Lyon. Surely Madame La Pieuvre had been exaggerating. She’d been angered by Sylvianne, but she herself had said that the tree folk’s treatment of humans was harmless. Mostly . And sure, Wild Hunt sounded scary, but when I’d looked it up last night on the Internet, I’d found out it was merely the name for a gathering of fairies. It was also sometimes called the Wild Host, Woden’s Ride, or, in Old North French, la Mesnée d’Hellequin, none of which sounded quite as ominous as Hunt. Hellequin turned out to be an ancestor of Harlequin, the masked and diamond-suited jester of commedia dell’arte. What could be more harmless than that?
    Besides, I was going with a personal calling card from the Queen of the Forest. Sylvianne had given me a small twig from her “hair” to hold up in front of the riders and assured me that it would keep me safe. So I had nothing to worry about … unless the twig was a secret message like the death sentence borne by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet indicating that the bearer should be killed on the spot.
    I shook my head free of these thoughts as I boarded the train, took a seat on the upper level, and tried to focus instead on the excitement of the trip. After all, what could be more evocative of adventure and romantic travel than these big, old European train stations? From the top level of the double-decker train I had a wonderful view of the great vaulted ceiling and the enormous clock hanging from it. Shields with the insignia of French provinces lined the walls. At the top of a great staircase was one of the last of the grand railway restaurants: Le Train Bleu. My mother had taken me there for ice cream during the summer I was sixteen, and she’d told me that she had gone there as a girl, first when she and her mother took the train from her little village in the south up to Paris. She’d told me it had been the last place she’d ever seen her mother, who had later sent her back into the country just weeks before the Germans marched into Paris.
    Suddenly the bustling train station transformed before me. Instead of tourists rushing to catch their trains for their holidays in the Midi, I saw hordes of frightened families pushed by black-booted soldiers onto freight cars. I heard the cries of mothers calling to their children and the shrill commands in German. And standing in the center of it all was the man in the long coat and the broad-brimmed hat I’d seen five times now. And he was looking right at me.…
    I startled out of my vision to find myself surrounded by three loud and boisterous teenagers crowding into the seat across from me. One of the girls was opening a window and shouting in English to hurry up, for fuck’s sake . She collapsed into