Magpie didn’t ask who Snoshti’s mistress was. A wild hope had leapt into her heart and she didn’t want to dash it.

She followed Snoshti, and it seemed they walked a long way beside the river. She didn’t see another bridge. Above them meadows sloped up to a forest and the forest rolled on from there, on and on in the moonlight until in the distance it met a line of white mountains.

Faeries waved from gardens as they passed and Magpie waved back, seeing glints of light from cottage windows tucked among the trees. All the flowers in all the gardens were pale and the foliage was silver, and the faeries too were the color of moonlight, and luminous, as if lit from within. Some were paler than others and more ghostly. When Magpie asked Snoshti why this was, she answered, “They’ve been here longer. They’re closer to their spark,” which really didn’t make things any clearer.

At length a rumbling sound resolved itself out of the placid shushing of the river and grew steadily louder. A waterfall, Magpie thought, and was glad the river didn’t go on and on forever in sameness. It broadened as it approached the plunge, and mica-glittering rocks began to loom out of the landscape. With Snoshti, Magpie left the meadows behind and approached the edge of a cliff. She felt the vastness of space opening before her as she stepped to the brink to peer over. But as she did, her senses suddenly screamed at her—onslaught!—and she caught Snoshti around the shoulders and yanked her back.

They tumbled to the ground just as a shape came hurtling up right in front of them, preceded by a snort of fire and spiraling straight up into the sky. The most massive creature Magpie had ever beheld, it shone like crushed gems and left a reek of brimstone in its wake as it coursed toward the moon. Magpie pushed herself to her knees and stared after it. She heard, over the rush of the falls, great bellowing calls sounding and looked down into an immense canyon. Near and far, huge shapes hove into the sky.

“Dragons!” Magpie gasped, staring up at them. Hundreds there were, gliding and spinning, the coppery fumes of their breath seeming to inscribe fiery glyphs on the night. Magpie had dreamed of dragons. She had dreamed of a time when the heavens had glistened with them as the sea glints with sharks, but she had always woken to a world of empty skies. Seeing them now, awe bloomed within her.

“And there you are, at last,” said a voice behind her. She turned.