“That’s what Grey said. He told me to forget about all of this. To go on with my life like it had never happened. But how can I do that if it’s real?”

“I’m told forgetting can be easy, if it’s what you wish. But . . .”

When he didn’t finish, Lizzie prompted him. “But what?”

“You might not be allowed to forget. Or it might be better if you didn’t. Not if the aganesha have marked you. It would be better to be prepared, should they decide that you owe them for your intrusion into their business tonight.”

Lizzie looked nervously around them. “Do you mean the bogans? Is that what you call those little men?”

“A bogan is a kind of aganesha, yes.”

“So aganesha is your word for fairies.”

The deer man nodded. “It’s what we call all the beings that came with your ancestors to our world.”

“But you’re not aganesha yourselves?”

He made an angry sound that rose from deep in his chest and spat on the ground.

“We are the spirits of this land,” he said. “We don’t steal from others.”

Lizzie took a step back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .”

“No,” the deer man said. “I should apologize. How could you know? Until tonight, it seems you knew nothing about any of us.”

“So these aganesha are trying to steal your lands from you? I guess the way Europeans did from the native people?”

“Not all of them. Most are content to keep to the territories spoiled by your people. But the green and the wild, these are still ours. Until you build upon it, the aganesha have no claim to the wild places.”

Lizzie gave a slow nod. “So your people stay in the forests and the aganesha stay in the cities.”

“We go where we please,” the deer man said. “We can live in your cities—it is still our land under the concrete and steel. But most of us don’t choose to.”

He looked to the sky, reading something in the position of the stars, Lizzie assumed from what he said next.

“I must go. I have still the sad tale of my daughter to tell my family, and the hour grows late.”

“I really am so sorry about what happened to her.”

“I know. I heard that in the lament you played for her. I saw it in the reverence with which you laid her flesh in the ground. I—my family—we are in your debt.”

Lizzie shook her head. “No, I just did what anybody would have done.”

“Then you don’t know many people. Most would have left what they found of her alongside the road like so much refuse.”

“But I don’t want anything from you.”