She was of Tam's line, and so I could not spell her to ensure that she came to the meeting-place every few days to tell me of the human doings that fascinated me so, doings that I might have seen myself if my fear of iron had not been so deep rooted. Still, I could and did set a sort of awareness around her that I might know when she came or where she wandered to. I made chants so that I could remember the bizarre process through which humans were married, how they were buried, and their convoluted hierarchy.

Why did Summer continue to return, despite the fact that I never offered any information on the fae beyond what she already knew through the legends of faeries she told me? Hope that I would someday, I suppose. Curiosity. Boredom. Her hands flew through the patterns of shift-shirts and dresses, of gloves and trousers, leaving her mind and mouth free. And I was willing to listen in the hope that the aching need that my inability to run the Wild Hunt had created within me would finally be assuaged.

Standing in the place between sunlight and forest-made dusk, skin reveling in the contrast between sun-warm air and slight breeze, I waited. Dust. A silly, childish name that I had picked on a whim, seeing a small dust-devil spinning behind Summer the first day I'd met her. It held far more connotations for a faerie than a human, though, for dust was rarely found within the forests that were now the faerie strongholds, speaking of the age when the entire world was faerie and humans still an insignificant blot on the landscape. Not that they were any more impressive now, with their ugly stone piles and incredible lack of sanitation, but they were more significant now, by sheer dint of the fact that they dug up iron ore.