It might have been luck or it might’ve been the law and logic of the fairy tale, that that first time Naomi walked past the hill, someone else was going into it. The infinitesimal odds transfix her either way, that visible hinge where her life pivoted on coincidence. Naomi standing with her bare ankles in the Chess, her shoes discarded on the bank, watching a woman come to the base of the hillside and pause, holding herself still as a praying mantis on a leaf, and then plunge smoothly into the earth. The place where her body entered the ground is a little greener than the rest. Foxglove grows graciously out of it.

There’s no getting used to that passage under-the-hill. Naomi would call herself a steady person, comfortable with a measured amount of danger. Still, when she walks into the green earth, she shuts her eyes, holds her breath, her pulse races in her wrists. The only truly bad moment is when the dirt is all around her, damp and hot and always heavier than she’s prepared for. She comes out on the other side choking and has to balance herself with her palm shoved against the soft wall.

Inside, the hill caverns open around her. Its ceiling is shot through with oak roots like veins in the roof of a mouth, little golden lanterns hung all over them and dripping their convivial light onto the floor. At the center of the room is a sturdy table, like one might find in any number of pubs, and a small party gathering at it like one could not find anywhere else.

Here is the House: in this case, represented by one individual. Naomi calls her Magpie, with good reason. Her body is narrow and avian, barbed at every angle. She wears a gown of oily black feathers that may not be a gown at all, and the long arch of her face calls to mind a plague doctor’s mask. Most folklore agrees that true names hold power among the fair folk. Naomi has never heard them used here, only gestures and titles, Sir and Lady; perhaps this is why, or perhaps they have no names at all. For the sake of caution, when she is under-the-hill, Naomi calls herself Fiddler.

Their dealer is already seated. Naomi calls him Menagerie; a fair man in two, but not three, senses of the word, with smooth limbs like rolled-out wax. The folk have captured the idea of a human appearance, Naomi thinks: four limbs, a head, fingered hands, and two eyes. She cannot yet tell if their unique interpretations are accidental or stylistic.