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“Looking back now, I wonder if I was observant enough. Certainly I was alert---I always am, during fieldwork---but I suspect that the unfamiliarity of the landscape, the high, dark mountains swaddled in snow, lulled me into a belief that no living thing could accost me here, certainly nothing fae, creatures I have spent my career associating with greenery and water and life. Fortunately, my reflexes are sharp. The instant the light flared through the trees, I halted and gripped my coin. It was a grayish light with no warmth in it, like a star. A wind moved through the trees, and there came a whisper of bells. Had I not been touching metal, I might have been bespelled, and as it was my head still spun a little, but I am used to brushing against faerie enchantments and stood my ground.” — Heather Fawcett