The shy shapeshifter in the woods considered her for a moment, and in answer attempted its first human face. Joy squealed her delight as the dappled light and shadow became a girl of her own age, her perfect companion, and lured her in. As they played, light and shadow became so common to her that she lost track of time completely, and it was only when they came close to where the full sun touched the grass that she heard the voices and wandered out into daylight.

Surrounded by her family, bombarded with sobs and shouted questions, Joy discovered that she had been missing not for a mere afternoon but for an entire year.

“I don’t understand. I didn’t understand,” said Chance then and now.

“Ohh,” the Trickster said, too moved to stay silent. “You do not/did not yet understand how time works for us, my friend.”

Chance looked at him with all the pain and confusion of the young undying and the pain and knowledge of his mature being. “I’ll try/I tried to make it right.”

And thus the Trickster saw Chance return to a young woman named Joy, of whom it was said that she had spent a year with the fairies. Much grown, he had come to make amends, but by then she too was older and had grown rooted in a linear time and a stable place. Still, she let herself be persuaded to accept the silver coin and the couplet he gave her in payment for a long lost year.

Blood on the silver, silver in the flame,

Come to my aid when I call your name.

“You meant well,” the Trickster reassured him as they departed.

“Is that ever enough?” Chance replied.

CHAPTER SEVEN

When they returned to the edge of the labyrinth, Miranda glanced at them but said nothing. She quickly repacked the briefcase except for a single file, which she held firmly before her. There was a look of determined neutrality on her face. She still stood in the center of the labyrinth, but now she clung to that center as if the path were a barrier or border that would keep her safe.

“I have to talk to you,” she said, looking at Chance. Her gaze drifted uncertainly to the Trickster, then focused on Chance once more.

He shook his head in impatience, anticipating trouble from the tone of her voice. “We don’t have time for—”

“You told me you always have time,” she interrupted. “Listen to me. I—I didn’t like how you treated that woman.”

Eyes narrowing, Chance angled his head to one side and examined her. He knew the expression would make him look like his old inhuman self rather than the friendlier version who had brought Miranda to his strange new world and reassured her. He wanted her to remember that other Chance and what he was capable of.