When Aislinne Kray—dirty and bedraggled and grim—came around the corner of the doorway with a steel-tipped arrow and unstrung longbow gripped in one hand, she was shocked into complete silence.

“Prue?” the other asked in disbelief. “Is it you?”

They rushed to each other in mutual relief and hugged long and hard. “I didn’t know what had become of you after the Trolls took you,” Aislinne said. “How did you get free? What brought you here? Where is Pan?”

She backed away from Prue and gasped. “Your eyes! You’re blind!”

“Not so blind that I can’t see you!” Prue laughed. “Mostly, I just can’t see colors now. I can still see everything else. I’ll explain. But what are you doing so far from home? You don’t look as if you’ve eaten or drunk anything in days, and your clothes…Aislinne, what’s happened?”

They sat down together at the edge of the fields and began to trade stories, a process that took them much time. They had not seen each other since Aislinne had been imprisoned and Prue had escaped the Drouj and encountered the King of the Silver River. When they had caught each other up on everything that had transpired and what it was that had brought them to this time and place, they stopped talking altogether for long moments, locked in an awkward silence that discouraged either from saying anything more.

“What will you do now?” Prue asked the other finally. “Where will you go, if you can’t go back to Glensk Wood? Is there family that will take you in?”

Aislinne shook her head. “Distant family, people I know about who live in other villages but that I haven’t seen in years. Or in some cases, ever. There is no one else. Not even Brickey now. Not you or Pan, either, it seems. I came here because I could think of nowhere else and because I felt Sider calling me here. It’s silly, I know. Irrational. But I thought I saw him when I was fleeing, and I was so afraid of that creature—”

“When he came for me in the ruins,” Prue interrupted, “I could barely breathe. All I could think about was getting away. I don’t ever want to see him again, and yet I know I must. The King of the Silver River made it clear that sooner or later Pan would have to face him. When that happens, I have to be there to try to protect him.”

“But what will you do? How can you help?”

Prue shrugged. “I don’t know. I will do whatever I can. But I was sent back for that express purpose, Aislinne. My sight is diminished, but I was given back my ability to sense danger so that I could aid him. I must try.”