Even as a fish, dawn burned. I rose to the surface every morning, letting the light hit my scales, and for a moment, things would almost start to make sense. Part of me knew, however dimly, that something was wrong, and that part understood that dawn could free me, if I was patient. If I hadn’t been able to hold onto the knowledge that something about that place, that world, that . . . everything . . . wasn’t right, I might have stayed in the pond until I died. Maybe the sunrise helped, peeling the spell away one slow layer at a time until it broke. Maybe not. The odds are good I’ll never know.

What I do know is that Simon’s spell gave way just before dawn on June 11, 2009, exactly fourteen years and two days after it was cast. There was no warning. The spell didn’t compel me to rise to the surface or lift me out of the water like some modern Venus on the half shell. It just let go, and I started to drown. I shoved myself away from the water, sobbing in helpless confusion and gasping for air. The spell had released my body but still held my mind, and I couldn’t understand what was happening. The world was wrong. There were colors that shouldn’t exist and everything I saw loomed straight ahead of me instead of being tucked properly to the sides. Acting on disoriented instinct, I stood, and promptly fell backward as my already shaky grasp on reality refused to admit that I had legs.

The sky paled while I huddled in the water. The cold eventually drove me to the land, and I somehow managed to stand without killing myself. I don’t remember how I did it. I just found myself walking down the paths on half-frozen feet, totally alone. None of the normal denizens of the Tea Gardens were there—no pixies, no Will o’ Wisps, nothing—but I was too confused for their absence to seem strange. That would come later, when I started understanding what had happened. A lot of things would come later. For the moment, I wandered at random, occasionally stumbling or stopping to cough up more water. I didn’t know my name, or where I was, or what I was. I just knew that the pond had rejected me, and I had nowhere else to go. I couldn’t remember any other life. What would happen to me now that I couldn’t go home?

I was in a state of utter panic by the time I reached the gates, ready to bolt at the slightest provocation. And then the mirror that hangs next to the ticket booth caught my eyes by glittering, and held them with the image it contained.