“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “I used to play here as a little girl, too. And one day, I came across a fairy who had flown too close to the stream.” She skimmed her paint-crusted fingers over the water’s surface, and the stream seemed to skip at her touch. “Her wings had gotten wet, and she was drowning. So I plucked her from the water and wrapped her in fern fronds to dry.”

“Was she okay?” I asked.

“She was,” Gram said. “And very surprised, because almost nobody can see fairies and other charmed folk anymore. They’ve all forgotten how.”

“How did you see her, then?”

“Well, they say it takes one to know one, don’t they?” she mused. “Perhaps I could see her because I have a drop or two of magic running in my veins, leftover from long, long ago.” She gave me a little wink at this. “Anyhow, the next time I came back to the wood, the fairy queen was here in the sycamore hollow, her ladies-in-waiting holding gifts of honeysuckle nectar and buttercup jam. It was her daughter, the princess, I had saved, you see. The queen told me that as long as I kept their existence a secret, I was welcome to the wood anytime.

“After that, whenever I came here, I would find that the fairies had left me something in the sycamore hollow. In time, the fairies themselves came out to join me in my games, and then the other creatures began to emerge from their dens and burrows, too.”

I looked down at the book I had just found, the one Gram said the fairies had left me in the sycamore hollow, trying to decide whether or not I believed her. “But haven’t you broken your promise now?” I asked suspiciously. “You told me the secret.”

“Ah, but only because the fairy queen herself gave me permission.”

“Will I be able to see them, too?”

Gram cocked her head. “Why don’t you try? There, look. There’s one just over your shoulder.”

I spun around, but all I saw behind me was a stubbly holly bush. “Where?” I demanded.

“Right there,” Gram said. “Just look for a moment. See what could be. Look through your eyes, Emma, not with them.”

I screwed up my face and stared at the bush. But it was still just a bush. I closed my eyes and let my mind fall open, like a book.

And then I tried again.

Gram and I never could quite agree on what the fairies looked like.

When I saw them, they had wings spun from spider’s silk and clothes stitched from flower petals and leaves.

When Gram saw them, they had butterfly wings and hats and tunics made with bits of thread and spare buttons they had managed to pluck from unsuspecting humans who wandered too close to the forest.