She hurried after, taking each twist and turn of the path at a run. But always the deer stayed just ahead, with no more than a quick glimpse of gleaming white, and the thunder of hooves on the packed ground.

Then she was in a clearing. It seemed to open up out of nowhere, a perfect circle of soft earth ringed by majestic trees. And within the circle, another circle, made of dark gray stones, the shortest as high as her shoulder, the tallest just over her head.

Stunned, she reached out, touched her fingertips to the surface of the nearest stone. And would have sworn she felt a vibration, like harp strings being plucked. And heard, in some secret part of her mind, the answering note.

A stone dance in Oregon? That was … certainly improbable, she decided. Yet here it was. It didn’t strike her as being new, but surely it couldn’t be otherwise. If it was ancient, someone would have written about it, tourists would come to see it, scientists to study.

Curious, she started to step through two stones, then immediately stepped back again. It seemed the air within quivered. The light was different, richer, and the sound of the sea closer than it had seemed only a moment before.

She told herself she was a rational woman, that there was no life in stone, nor any difference between the air where she stood and that one foot inside the circle. But rational or not, she skirted around rather than walking through.

It was as if the deer had waited, halfway around the dance just down a thin, shadowy path through the trees. Just as it seemed she looked at Rowan with understanding, and amusement, before she bounded gracefully ahead.

This time when she followed, Rowan lost all sense of direction. She could hear the sea, but was it ahead, to the left, or to the right? The path twisted, turned and narrowed until it was no more than a track. She climbed over a fallen log, skidded down an incline and wandered through shadows deep as twilight.

When the path ended abruptly, leaving her surrounded by trees and thick brush, she cursed herself for being an idiot. She turned, intending to retrace her steps, and saw that the track veered off in two directions.

For the life of her she couldn’t remember which to take.

Then she saw the flash of white again, just a glimmer to the left. Heaving a breath, then holding it, Rowan pushed through the brush, fought her way out of the grasp of a thick, thorny vine. She slipped, righted herself. Cursing vividly now, she tripped and stumbled clear of the trees.

The cabin stood nearly on the cliffs, ringed by trees on three sides and backed by the rocks on the fourth. Smoke billowed from the chimney and was whisked away to nothing in the wind.