My thoughts were interrupted by a loud splash. An undine had leapt over a boulder, her slim transparent body twisting in the sunlight as she performed a backwards flip. Immediately, two others copied their sister with their own flips, the second one adding a double somersault and a mid-air twist.

“Great, now they’ll all have to do it,” Liz muttered, hands on hips. She clapped her hands briskly and called in a stern Jean Brodie brogue, “Come along girrrls, we haven’t got all day. No time for showing off.”

In response one of the undines performed a triple axis worthy of the figure skater Sarah Hughes at the 2002 Olympics.

“Very well,” Liz said, the ghost of a smile flitting across her face. “Get it out of your systems.” And then, noticing me on the path behind her, she added in a low voice, “Poor things. I can’t begrudge them their little bit of fun. They have a difficult journey ahead of them … and then this might be the last time I ever see an undine run.”

Glancing at Liz, I noticed the smile had faded from her face.

“Soheila told me about the meeting next week,” I said. “Do you think the Grove will really try to close the door? Will IMP go along with it?”

Liz turned to me, her face looking suddenly older. The truth was I didn’t know how old she was. Witches could augment their life spans with magic. If Liz had seen the undine run before that meant she was over a hundred years old. Normally, she looked like a stylish, well-preserved sixty, but right now her eyes looked like they had seen a century of woes.

“I believe it is what the Grove has been working tirelessly to achieve for over a hundred years. Before I came to Fairwick I taught at a girls’ school in the Hudson Valley. There was a door to Faerie nearby. The school was run by the witches of the Grove who believed that the creatures that came from Faerie were all evil and must be destroyed.” She shuddered. “Some of the creatures were evil. But some of us came to believe that not all the denizens of Faerie were bad. There was a rift, followed by a battle in which innocent blood was shed …” Liz’s voice trembled. She bit her lip and looked away until she had mastered her emotions.

“I wasn’t the only one to lose loved ones. The witches of the Grove suffered losses they still haven’t recovered from. They closed the door to Faerie near the school and since then all the other doors to Faerie have closed, except for the one here in Fairwick.”

“Soheila said that some people believe it’s a natural process …”

Liz shook her head impatiently. “No more than global warming is a natural process. The Grove has been closing the doors with their spells. This door would have closed already were it not for the spells we’ve cast to keep it open, but over time it’s become harder and harder to keep the door open. We were afraid that it was closing for good … but then you came …”