“The thing is,” he said as his assailant dropped, “some meat fights back.”

One of the men he’d knocked down earlier lifted himself from the ground by straightening his arms under himself. He spat on the ground, blood and a tooth, small eyes dark with fury.

“Eat my shite, you grand pluiker,” he muttered.

And then he disappeared.

Lizzie’s eyes widened, not sure she’d seen what she’d seen. But then the little man she was still sitting on vanished as well. She scrambled to her feet as though she’d had an electric shock. As she watched, the other three disappeared, one by one.

“How . . . ?” Lizzie turned in a slow circle, trying to understand.

“It wasn’t magic,” her rescuer said. “They just moved between.”

“Between? Between what?”

“This world and the other.”

Lizzie slowly shook her head. “This isn’t happening.”

“ ‘Course it’s not. That your car?”

She nodded, her attention on one of the abandoned bows. It wasn’t much longer than her own fiddle bow, but sturdier, and certainly deadlier. She toed it with her boot. It seemed real.

“What’s wrong with it?” the stranger asked.

She looked up, confused. The bow seemed intact. What was wrong was that it was even here in the first place. It, and all those little men, and this mysterious stranger . . .

“Your car,” he said. “What’s wrong with your car?”

“I don’t know,” she finally managed.

“Let me have a look.”

She trailed along behind him, stepping over the ditch and onto the road.

“Who were those . . .”

She reached for a word, still feeling lost and stupid. She had to grip her hands and hold them against her chest to try to stop them from shaking.

“Those dwarves?” she finally said.

“They were bogans, not dwarves,” the stranger said. He was looking under the hood of her car without apparently needing a flashlight. “There aren’t many dwarves around here and, anyway, they’ve much better manners. And they don’t poach.”

Poach? Lizzie thought. But then she remembered what the little men had been carrying when they first showed up.

“Looks like your alternator’s crapped out on you, so your battery hasn’t been getting any juice.”

“Can you fix it?”

He lifted his head from where the was studying the engine to look at her.

“Not permanently,” he said.

He put his hand on the manifold and the engine coughed, then started up. Lizzie stared at the car. The motor seemed to be running more smoothly than it had in years.

“What did you just do?” she asked as he closed the hood.

He gave her a thin smile. “Now that was magic. It’ll hold until you get to wherever you’re going so long as you don’t turn the engine off.”

“But—”

“Where were you headed?”

“I was on my way to Newford from Sweetwater, but maybe I should go back if the car’s not really fixed.”