It was some while, during dinner, before his feelings of nostalgia, of separation, finally passed. Gradually though, he was drawn back into the present, warmed by wine, by conversation, by good food. It was then he noticed that he was not the only person at this convivial table to be abstracted. Genevieve Hunter’s attention, he observed, was also elsewhere. She took little part in the conversation, and spoke seldom. When she did participate, the effort involved was palpable.

She was seated opposite him. Covertly, Rowland examined her. She had very short, pale, silvery hair, a pale complexion, and the expression in her gray eyes remained unreadable. She reminded him of someone, and at first he could not place the resemblance. Then it came to him. It was no one he knew: she resembled the princess of his own fairy tale that evening. Like that creature, she looked spellbound, as if someone or something had imprisoned her, as if she were looking out at the world through glass walls.

By the time Mina and Cassandra finally reached the barn, it was bitterly cold. The huge barn doors were open, and its interior was lit with strobes. People were already dancing inside, and the field around was rutted with the wheel tracks of the travelers’ trailers, ancient buses, and vans. Campfires illumined little patches of ground and intensified the blackness beyond.

The field nearest the barn was a seething mass of moving shapes. Ragged children ran back and forth in packs; dogs barked; some of the travelers were dancing outside, pumping their arms and stamping to the strange loops and electronic chatter of the music; others cooked food, or just sat in huddles near their fires, on bright blankets and quilts they had laid out on the ground.

Mina shrank back, but Cassandra caught hold of her and pulled her into the throng. The music grew louder, beating in on Mina’s ears; she felt assaulted by smells and sound. There was a rich drift of marijuana, of sweat and unwashed clothes; cooking fumes, car exhausts, burning wood, mud, and icy air. Outside the barn doors, a man dressed in a scarlet embroidered Afghan coat was juggling with colored balls. Beyond him, inside the barn itself, lights danced and bounced on the walls. The strobe flashes dazzled Mina’s eyes. She clutched Cassandra’s arm and watched her face speed up, like jerky frames of old film, so her expressions were fragmented, and the scorpion on her forehead appeared to move.

Cassandra’s eyes, black, then bright, were searching the crowd. Somewhere here, Cassandra said, somewhere in the midst of the tossing hair and jerking arms they would find Star.

“He’s tall,” Cassandra shouted through the din of the music. “He looks like an angel. He has long black hair. He’ll be wearing a red scarf.”

She began to push her way through the dancers, holding Mina tight by the arm. And as they fought their way through, Mina began to feel it, the pulse of the music, and the electricity of the crowd. It was benign, not threatening, and heady too. She could feel the rhythm of synthesizer guitars start to beat in her veins; the random snatches of words incorporated into the music opened up the corners of her mind. She liked the weird, high-pitched helium voices. She chanted the words; she wanted to dance too; she wanted to get inside the sound.