“It’s a trick,” I said, even as I pressed myself against him. “You’re making yourself into a shape to please me …”

“Is that wrong, Cailleach?” he asked, turning me onto my back. “Wanting to please you?”

His legs nudged mine apart. I felt him hard against my belly. His face was above me, haloed by amber Faerie light streaming through swaying willow branches. His eyes were the same green as the long willow leaves. Leaf shadow dappled his skin. I ran a hand along his arms, which were tensed to keep his weight off me, and then down his chest, his muscles rippling like water over stones, his sigh when I touched him like water rushing to the sea.

That’s what he was made of – leaf shadow and mountain stream, moss and Faerie light. Once he had been flesh and blood, but over the centuries his body had filled with Aelvesgold, the substance of Faerie. I wanted to pull that thick gold light into me, to feel that rush of wild water moving through me. I looked into his leaf green eyes and asked a question I didn’t know was on my lips.

“Will I ever see your real face?” He ducked his head down and brushed his lips against my ear, his breath the first breeze of spring, his tongue the lap of rainwater. “When you tell me that you love me,” he whispered.

“I want to love you,” I cried, the desire to love him merging with the desire to have him inside me. I was filling up with hot gold light and the rush of the first spring thaw. Now he was the stream and I was the stone, now he was the wind and I was the wild grass rippling beneath him. I flung myself into the maelstrom until I felt my own body melt into the same elements he had become, merging with him in the golden light, on the cusp of loving him and making him real.

But instead of being enveloped in the warm gold light I was suddenly plunged into ice-cold water. The shock woke me. I was in my bed, alone and drenched. Had it been real? He’d come to me once as moonlight. Did he come to me now as water?

Another splash of water hit my face. I turned on the bedside lamp. The sheets that I’d tangled and tossed every which way in my dream passion were soaked. I looked up … and got another drop of water in my eye. I wiped it away, along with flakes of chalky white grit. I turned on my bedside light, stood on my bed for a better look, and found the source of my watery passion. Brock’s newly installed skylight was leaking. Water was bubbling beneath the plaster in long, tear-shaped streaks. As I stood looking at it a drip swelled and fell with a sullen splat on my bed. It was echoed by other drips – one in my bathroom, one down the hall … all over the house. My lovely Victorian, which Brock had tended with hammer and magic, was leaking like a sinking ship or … the metaphor leapt into my head … as if weeping for its lost caretaker, my unloved lover, and all the friends I might lose if they went back to Faerie.