There are things hidden from all except those who know exactly where to look. If you gaze out your window in the early twilight hours, when all the world is still asleep, you might notice an orb of light flitting through the late-summer leaves, each one blushing red in its wake. You might see faint ribbons of gold in the air, shimmering just above the hyacinths pushing through the newly thawed earth. Perhaps, if you are truly observant, you might appreciate the chisel marks scoring the crystal lacework of each snowflake. Alas, few are. And so, few will ever experience true wonder. Few will ever know that even the most mundane thing—the waning of the moon, the flow of the tide, the serendipitous reappearance of a lost trinket beneath your kitchen table—is magical.
All of it, of course, is the work of Never Fairies.
They orchestrate the turn of the season in a single night, then return home. It is said that if you soar past the second star on the right and go straight on till morning, you will reach it, too: the Queendom of Pixie Hollow. Considered from above, Pixie Hollow is like a cake sliced into four generous pieces. At its heart is the Pixie Dust Tree, luminous and golden as a candle in the darkness. To the east is Spring Valley, where the flowers remain forever in bloom. To the south: the Summer Glade, where the days stretch long and languid as a drowsing cat. To the west: the Autumn Forest, cool and crisp and ablaze with color.
Then, to the north, there are the Winter Woods.
The denizens of the warm seasons do their best to keep the Winter Woods far out of their minds. But when they catch a glimpse of it beneath the vast shadow of the mountain, they cannot help thinking of its skeletal trees, or the icicles glittering like bared fangs in the moonlight, or those who dwell in such a gray and lifeless place. The winter fairies—so the warm fairies reason—are best left to their snowy solitude. They have managed their own affairs for centuries. Besides, the cold there is so bitter and cruel it will shatter a warm fairy’s wings in an instant. No good would ever come of crossing its border.
Now, most of their fears are baseless superstition. But unbeknownst to the warm seasons, dark forces do dwell within the Winter Woods. There is a place where all the trees bend backward, flinching away from the frozen lake sprawled beneath them. There, the very air sits as heavy and wrong as a feverish sweat. No one visits this place. No one sensible, anyway, save the young Warden of the Winter Woods.
But if you were brave enough or foolish enough, you could step out onto the ice. Beneath it, you would find not water but a deep, writhing darkness. Even if you could stomach the dread it inspires for more than a moment, you would not be able to make sense of it. The shadows only occasionally arrange themselves into a recognizable shape. Here, a tooth. There, an eye, a claw.
No, few would ever experience such terror. But if you had somehow wandered down to the lake on this cold, moonless night—as the Warden of the Winter Woods did—you might have seen what he did: the moment a single crack fissured the surface of the ice. You might have heard the splintering that shook the snowfall loose from the branches. You might have felt the very woods tremble with anticipation.
