As if compensating for the mundane slab bases from which they were upthrust, the trade telltales of Clear Crucible translated the morning light into innumerable overlapping awnings of lambent color. The old ground storey underpinnings beneath were commonplace, the sort of generic stone workhouses common to trade villages Major and Minor the Pan-Baronies over. The upper reaches, however, had been raised up afterward to exalt the singular craft and to showcase the triumphant prosperity of this particular tradetown – so naturally they were glass. Cast glass, blown glass, fused glass, floated sheet glass and delicate skyfarmed fulgurite. Clear glass, leaded glass, rustglass and saltglass and jadeglass. Thick structural glass for the walls and vaults and supports; fanciful teased-out flint glass follies for decorative pillars, buttresses, cornices, friezes, and sundry other adornments. From out of their plain forge floor beginnings, the Artisans of Clear Crucible had reached skyward with shining filigreed capwork proclaiming their esteemed status as chief glassworkers to a commercial empire.

The resulting ambiance was akin to an outdoor cathedral: the street was vaulted over with the master-crafted splendor and imbued with the multi-hued stained glass light of a nave, and consequently partook somewhat of a church’s solemnity. Pedestrians tended to unconsciously soak up that austere and reverent air and to conduct themselves accordingly. On this morning though, the common uncommon decorum on the Tradeway was shattered by the intrusion of brassily vibrant tones chiming down the length of the street.

“-and I simply WON’T consider it and that’s that! Priories are dreary winter places, not fit for summer! And old Margot has a face that could curdle milk!”

“SISTER Margot will school you in the the ways and the graces that should by rights have been second nature to you since you were out of swaddling!”

“Ways and graces are for winters, too.” The speaker stuck out her tongue.

An onlooker might have had trouble discerning the character of the exchange. The tones were brusque, antagonistic, but was there an undercurrent of wry affection? Such an unfamiliar observer might stare and stare, trying to sort it out. But in this case there was no curious onlooker, only myriad cases of studied ignorance and hasty lookings-the-other-way. For the pair debating their way down the tradelane were none other than Mayor Grywald and his daughter, and the folk of Clear Crucible knew that discretion was most definitely here the better part of valor.

“‘Ways and graces’ are the very essence of a lady, young, ah, young lady! The calling card of the gentry! They’re what set us apart from the vulgar vomitings of the muddy mob! The blatherings of the barefoot-” he choked off as, turning back from glaring over his shoulder at his daughter, he came nose-to-nose with a massive and dour grocerwoman. “—ummm, ahh….. pardon, goodwife.” The hillock-shaped woman dropped a shallow, surly nod, muttered “m’Lord Mayor”, and shambed aside. Flustered, Grywald shook himself before resuming.

“So, ahem, as I was saying… I was saying…” Grywald looked sideways at his daughter. She was staring back, her wide blue-eyed gaze at once attentive yet promising whimsical disregard for whatever dreary mundane wisdom he might hope to impart. Facing that gaze, his shoulders slumped in pre-emptive defeat. “…I was saying that you’re a contrary girl who hasn’t learned her social obligations a tenth as well as she would have had they been presented via one of those gauche mummers’ plays you favor!” His tone was dour, but there was a suppressed smile underneath it. Emlie, determined to drag that smile kicking and screaming into the sunlight, seized her father’s arm in both of her own.

“Why Poppa, what a superb idea! ‘A Comedy of Manners… of Manners’! How soon can you send to Greatwright and secure a troupe?” Her grin defied reading- earnest or wicked, could even her father say? “Naturally, I’d be thrilled to pen this little commission for you.”

“Silliness! I refuse to partake of this farce of a conversation.” Grywald primly declared, even as his quirking lips threatened to betray him.

“Farce… hrrmm, no, I was thinking more along the lines of a tragicomedy, Poppa. Such a weighty subject cannot be treated with without a properly respectful dash of portentous tragedy, don’t you agree?”

“I am NOT encouraging this, um, this ridiculous diversion…”

“Diversion? Oh, no, no! Theatre is all-consuming! This must surely keep me wholly and inextricably occupied for the foreseeable, Poppa! Far, far, FAR too busy, certainly, to have time for any disruptive sojourn at Charmquarters and Sister Margot’s priory!” She tilted her head hopefully. “Why, just think of the irrecoverable-from disruption to my writing and research that such a trek must entail!” She glanced up at Grywald; he rolled his eyes. Emile bravely ignored this, instead studying the ground in fierce concentration as she continued to scheme: “Troupe… costumes and scenery… venue… music… script… Of course… I’d require the aid of a… of a consultant, as you surely understand…”

Through gritted teeth, Grywald inquired, “…errmm, for what?”

Emlie looked up. Her grin widened, her blue eyes sparkled, and with unfeigned innocence she brightly replied, “Why… for expertise regarding all the nonsense about manners and social graces, of course!”

Grywald’s groan vied with his chuckle for the right to escape his mouth first. Recognizing that neither would claim victory just now, he allowed his daughter to link his arm in hers, tacitly signaling that the dispute had been laid aside for a resumption of their accustomed détente. They proceded, father and dausghter, down the street together.

A few blocks on, though, and Grywald’s fretting over his daughter’s willful averseness to convention had overridden the goodwill engendered by their last exchange. He besought from the universe an inner calm despite its longstanding elusiveness whenever discussion with his only child of said child’s habits, future or queer behavior loomed. He locked his gaze to the horizon ahead, took a deep breath, and bravely tried again:

“Emlie, erm, my dear, umm, my daughter…. in all seriousness, we really MUST see this discussion through! You KNOW I’m away to Greatwright for the Overclave come Cellarstock, and it really is essential that I leave with the knowledge that we have put this matter to bed, um, as it were. I’ll not have you gallivanting around town in my absence instead of making something of yourself! You are practically of age, and (whether you choose to ignore it or not,) badly in need of finishing! You have a duty—young lady, do NOT pull faces like that at me, and kindly stick your tongue back where it belongs! Now, erm, as I was saying… a duty, yes, to your father, to your town, to our Baron, to the Pan-Baronies, and, ahum, even to yourself! Why, it’s well known that the Barons have in years past visited great favor upon courtly young ladies with the breeding and delicacy to present themselves as…”

Emlie Hubbleton loved and respected her father. Hence, she made a good faith effort to listen. But as Grywald droned officiously-yet-affectionately on, his voice faded by inexorable increments into the background until she lost interest in it. Other sense impressions, in turn, came to the fore. Emlie prided herself on her observance. What her Poppa dismissively termed a “magpie eye”, she celebrated as quickness and decisiveness. That in her which her father might call “airy” or “distracted”, she took pride in as acuity and responsiveness. And while Poppa might wish her to focus on their conversation (not to mention on the street ahead), Emlie was never one to pass up strange sights, interesting side-tracks and any and all opportunities that might come to hand. Indeed, they called to her with an all-subsuming insistence that was impossible to ignore. When a chance parting of the Tradeway street traffic and the market crowd beyond revealed the crone in her slapdash stall, it was therefore but an instant’s easily made decision before Emile was dashing off toward the strange treasures it doubtless held.

Grywald began to turn back to his daughter: “-what’s more, had your mother lived, she’d have seen to it that you were raised properly. I only regret that I-” He broke off as, instead of meeting her eyes, he spied her retreating rear. And then he groaned in earnest, knowing what must surely come next…

Once fixated, Emlie was heedless of both crowd and consequence. She didn’t shoulder or shove her way through the Tradeway traffic; she’d never dream of anything so brutish. Nor did she make use of her station to demand that a path be cleared through the Trademarket bustle, as a well-born maiden might. Rather, the intervening crowd just tended to… fade from her awareness… yielding unobstructed apparent way to her destined goal. And so, ensconced within her personal reality, Emlie simply strode undeterred from start to finish. And somehow, something of her wide-eyed conviction translated to the world without, emanating from her like an aura. The effect of this aura on unenlightened world around her, unfortunately, tended towards utter haphazard chaos.

Market-goers tripped over themselves and each other in their efforts to avoid the golden-tressed girl. Men about to cross her path pulled up short, colliding with those behind in bone-jarring chain reactions that spread like shockwaves through the dense crowd. Cart horses reared, scattering their loads and drivers into the street. Produce rolled, livestock bolted from splintered cages, and a shattered caseload of acid intended for the morning’s etching hissed its way into the gutter, effervescing instantly upon contact with the standing wastewater into a noxious green cloud that sent strollers lunging for safety as it trailed the oblivious Emlie like a billowing viridian train.

And on she strode through the heart of it, wide-eyed, innocent, and as utterly intent on the strange wonder before her as she was ignorant of the horrific chaos behind.

“A pretty bauble, missy? A pretty bauble for a pretty thing?”

The crone squinted up at the approaching girl from behind her “stall”, a crude trestle table jammed crookedly between two actual stone stall walls that passersby alternately ignored or favored with suspicious glowers. She wore patched, mousy robes of glaringly coarse unloomed pauper-handiwork festooned with tiny metal bells of an equally rough forging. Fantails made of knotty sticks extended from her shoulders, broadening the fall of her cloak past the frail, puny spread that age had left her with and obscuring a modest hump. Sticks also featured heavily in her “hairstyle”, with several small specimens worked into her natty gray locks. From two or three of the largest twigs hung what appeared to be dead mice trussed up by their tails. She wore a necklace of colored glass beads alternating with tiny bird skulls.

One eye! She has only one eye! thought Emlie. She was inwardly thrilled, but her market-savvy response was casually dismissive: “Ohhh, Crucible ‘Market is full of pretty things!”

Emlie’s statement was true enough. The ‘Market square was itself “pretty” – it was demarcated by rows of stone arches, each sporting a capstone of stained glass inset filigreed stonework upheld by a great glass prism set on its end. The morning sun shining through the southern and western ranks of these columns sprayed bands of rainbow color across the numerous stone stalls filling the arcade. Inside each stall, the renting vendors displayed wares scarcely less scintillant. The breadth and depth of Clear Crucible glasswork was on display, clear and colored, massive to minute, the many pieces casting bright caustic light-riots and producing a constant pervasive clink and tinkle. Next to the tableware, the sculpture, the beads, the furnishings, the collected glory of this town of artisans, the few homely wares of the old crone made a poor showing indeed. In fact, they were by any objective standard downright ugly. The hidden desire that had brought Emlie here, however, had little to do with aesthetics:

That eye! She must be a real witch! She flashed what she hoped was a winning smile. “You don’t have to pretend with me! Nevermind pretty, show me your real wares…”

She emphasized by gesturing over the woman’s stall at its collection of crude glass trinkets and fetishes. They dangled on strings hung from a pair of forked tree branches that had been nailed to the ramshackle tabletop. Larger examples rolled free on the board, while smaller ones were woven into the crone’s tangled gray hair. Many were transfixed by smoky wisps of unevenly stained-in color: greens, blues, violets. The interiors of these showed a complex inner tracery of strands, drips, and frozen ropes of once-molten glass. The exteriors glinted with bubbles, cracks, and myriad other imperfections.

But the old woman only blinked innocently. “Sure an’ you see them clear, girl? I don’t understan-”

But Emlie was determined. “Show me something magick.”

The old woman glanced down at her wares and smiled enigmatically. “Why Dearie…. Whatever would possess a clever young miss like thyself to accuse a poor old glazierwoman of forbidden ways, hmmm? ‘tis ornaments and follies that I sell, mere pretties. Pretties for a pretty, eh?” Her lone eye glinted.

It never even occurred to Emlie to consider being deterred. She seized up a smoky glass tree-trunk with a waxen core. “Oh, don’t be silly! This isn’t any foddery old ornament! This is a summoning candle! And those,” pointing at the tinted glass spheres on the table, “those are witch-balls!”

The woman recoiled ostentatiously, placing a gnarled hand over her heart, “Upon mine honor mistress, Maeve would never in uncounted years dare defile thy fair town, nor would ever she corrupt the innocence of its first of daughters! All know of thy wise father’s edict, eh? If ‘tis not mere ornaments ye seek, best run along girl, for Maeve can be of no aid.” Her thin-lipped mouth turned up in what might as easily have been a wry smirk as an attempt at a placating smile.

A less self-sure person might have been daunted; Emlie only flashed past pout and straight into ire. A less focused person might have fretted over whether she faced insult or consolation; Emlie saw only confirmation of a subtext and, heedless of consequence, proceeded to immediately shred the text…

“It’s true, my father the Goodman Mayor has taken the Lord Barons’ Charter to heart, yes, and made it law within Clear Crucible and its borough: sorcery, magick, faery-dealings, and all other ‘folk superstitions’ have been outlawed, under penalty of heavens-know-what awfulness!” She finger-flicked the alleged summoning candle.

Emlie’s flip tone struck a nerve, prompting a defiant reply. “‘The Lord Barons’ nothin’, girl! Their oh-so-grand purge be but a petty, puny, pale echoe of the Great Ousting of epochs past, when the Fathers of Men turned against the Fathers of the Others and drove them from this sphere! Charter, feh.” She spat.

Despite that she’d provoked a fascinating reaction, Emlie frowned at the interruption; being shown up on a subject so dear to her heart made her cross, and being cross made her petulant. Petulant and contrarian. “Well, whosever idea it was, he’s awfully serious about enforcing it in the here-and-now! Why, just last week he took a charlatan hedge-wizard that the Constables caught bilking people with card tricks in this market and had his fingers broken, every one of them! Crude, I know… Somebody out of these accepting, broad-minded folk must have tattled on him to the blues….” In case her meaning was unclear, the girl gestured theatrically with her eyes at the neighboring stalls, the crowd beyond. My, but did the crone’s one eye actually widen at that? Good! Emlie pressed her advantage, “But of course, nobody would ever do that to a friend of the mayor’s daughter….” She smiled broadly, proud of herself for her subterfuge. NOW, surely, the witch would show her true colors!

But the old woman only started challengingly at the girl. “Hrmm…. It seems you’ve a touch or more of the darkly crude in yerself, girl. Proud of yerself, threatening old women?”

The accusation hit like a rock thrown through the glass frontage of Emlie’s brash composure. “I….. I am NOT! What a horrible thing to say!” Emlie’s lower lip trembled, and tears glinted in the corners of her eyes.

“And what would ye call yer charming intimations of the moment past, dearie? Constabulls an’ fingers an’ yer dear father’s laws?”

“I…. it was just, I….”

“-Havin’ a little careless fun, mmmm? Grindin’ yer genteel boot ‘twixt the shoulders of a mud marm, perchance? Larkin’, is it?”

Emlie’s shame gave way to ire. She was not cruel, not haughty and definitely not flighty! Couldn’t this old woman see how much Emlie simply wanted to see with her own eyes what this ancient throwback so obviously possessed? “NO! Not like that! I just wanted to see real magick!”

Resentment at the mischaracterization overrode her already tenuous social graces, and she impulsively leaned forward and laid her hands on the old woman’s in an effort to convey to depth of her earnestness. Her indecorous action must have offended or frightened the crone, prompting her to shudder or jerk in place as all of the little bells on her frock chimed once, violently! That one eye went wide, alarmingly wide, and Emlie was abashed. She attempted to jerk back her hands, but the old woman, with an insistent speed belying her age, seized Emlie’s withdrawing wrists. Emlie squirmed ineffectually, while her captor trembled –almost vibrated, surely, given that the various pendant bells of her outfit continued to ring irregularly. There came from the women the oddest noise, a sniffing… followed by what might almost have been a muted gasp.

Startled, Emlie whimpered, “Please-!”

The old woman suddenly looked oddly frightened herself. She all but flung back Emlie’s wrists and then slumped back onto her stool. Further odd emotions then competed for possession of her wrinkled face, what might have been reticence warring with something that looked like obligation. The latter appeared to be winning, and her shivering hand slowly dipped into the folds of her robes. Mercurial Emlie was no longer scared but uncomprehendingly flummoxed by the whole display; she knew only that she felt unambiguously awful for having caused the woman such discomfit. She blurted out, “I’m so sorry-!”

That simple utterance derailed whatever strange train of thought had overtaken the crone. Her wizened face slackened. She shook her head as if clearing it of cobwebs or dreams, and very deliberately rested her hand back on the tabletop. The single eye locked onto both of Emlie’s, holding them fast. “Ye are, are yeh?”

“Yes…. I’d never hurt you, or… or anybody! I was inexcusably thoughtless, I… I’ll gladly buy whatever of your baubles it pleases you…”

The crone’s eye bore down. “An’ what of yer hunger for magick, girl? Fer power?” The sharpness of her question made it seem accusatory, the intensity suggesting that Emlie’s answer might be somehow critical.

Past her sadness, Emlie was roused to indignation. “That’s not it at all!”

“Oh, now?”

“You just don’t understand…. My mother, she was… she believed in…” She faltered at expressing her motivation, the depth of feeling behind it. “She…. She didn’t want all this, the Barons and the rules, I’m sure she didn’t… and neither do I…” The girl swallowed a lump before it could become a sob. “You see… she believed in magick, too.”

Emlie faltered before that unblinking cyclopean gaze. For a moment it was hard… hard as iron, hard as glass, hard as judgment. Then, as if reflecting a determination abruptly made, the gaze softened. Emlie saw warmth there, and something else… affinity? Recognition?

“I see. Indeed I see.” She favored the girl with a sorrowful nod. The words that followed were strained, as if the old woman were fighting to get them out: “Child….. would that more still wished as ye do, would that more blood sang out still, this world might yet shine as once it did.”

Then her voice dropped, becoming a hoarse whisper: “But the sort o’ magick that I might show thee… them that still desire it, by dint of that very blessed desire, well…. are precisely them that should be spared it. Ye’re an answer to dark prayers, ye are girl, an’ I surely ought…”

Those last avariciously spoken words reawakened the odd warring of strong emotions across the old face for an instant, but the old woman fought them down with a spastic shrug. She cleared her throat noisily, then continued in a thick, choked voice. “But ye’ve a good heart, girl, and, damn him, I’m for turnin’ a blind eye.” Emlie’s own eyes widened; she had the strong intuition of having missed something essential, yet for once in her life this gave rise to neither ire nor combattiveness. “Ye should go home now child, home before-”

“Emliana Hubbelton, YOU GET AWAY FROM THERE THIS INSTANT!”

The moment was over, the contact broken. Spinning, Emlie saw her father the mayor chuffing up, red faced. (She noticed an awful disorder of some kind behind him – was he flushed with anger, from the exertion of following her, or from the sorting-out of somebody’s terrible mess that he’d doubtless been obliged to perform a moment before? Poppa was so put-upon by his constituency.) Jogging awkwardly up to her, Grywald viewed the booth and its occupant with undisguised distaste.

“Young lady… the Barons only know what I’ve done to deserve this! Come away NOW!”

“I will not, Poppa!” Emlie, sublimely innocent, replied primly. “I am browsing the trade wares just as any good citizen! That’s ‘graceful, mature’ behavior, is it not? I can’t imagine what objection you might possibly find in THAT!”

”You can’t imagine--??” Grywald looked likely to tear his already sparse hair out at any instant. “F-First it’s destroying my market, then it’s consorting with… with… pack-peddlers and ordinance-flaunters!”

Emlie was genuinely shocked. “Poppa, I’ve no idea what you could mean! I was simply looking over the lovely ornaments that, erm, uh-” She looked inquiringly to the vendor in question.

“-Maeve…” the crone supplied.

“…that old Maeve was highlighting the fine craftsmanship and, uh, lovely folk tradition of-”

“ENOUGH, Emlie!” Grywald Hubbleton was so furious that he forgot for once to act the faltering fuddy duddy. “Bad enough that I trail in your wake picking up your pieces! But now that we come to rest I see that you intend to shame me and to flaunt my authority in even grander fashion still! Have you no regard for your father at all?”

Emlie realized, belatedly, that the core of exasperated good humor which invariably underlay Grywald’s all-too-frequent chidings was, incredibly, absent. Poppa was actually angry at her! She sought to calm him: “Poppa, I NEVER-“

“Never what? Never think? Never stop a moment to give a care for your father, for his high station, for the shame and sadness you must bring on him when you make a shambles of his municipality or,” gesturing disgustedly at the cringing Maeve, “when you consort with base villains like these?”

At that, Maeve’s aggrieved head snapped up. “Milord, there be no call for a-layin’ that charge on old Maeve! I was only-”

“From the look of you, you were engaging in exactly the sort of proscribed nonsense that the Barons have advised be made worth the tongue of the ignorant wretch who gives voice to it! Be silent, woman, lest I actually start thinking that they’re RIGHT!”

Maeve lapsed into sullen hangdog subservience. Emlie for her part was taken aback. In his unprecedented ire, her father had actually momentarily forgotten his accustomed naif demeanor. He was, for once, focused, collected, impressive… and furious. Emlie might actually have been proud, had she not been so utterly aghast at his accusations.

“Poppa, she’s hardly unique! Half the tradesmen still call what the ‘works produce 'fae-wall' instead of 'glass'! Forgers, you even named me after-”

“Another of your mothers fancies, one I should never have indulged!” Both father and daughter paused at the disparagement of Lady Hubbleton – this was dangerous ground. Grywald, despite his rage, backpedaled slightly: “And, erm, in ANY event, this nonsense of magick and alchemy and faery stories and all the superstitious rest is beside the point! We are speaking, young lady, of your complete lack of-”

But Emlie, offended, refused to be un-sidetracked just yet: “But Poppa, you’re forever boasting to visiting dignitaries of the ‘magick’ of Clear Crucible’s craft! And Beidon talks of the ‘alchemy’ of steel all the time! You don’t accuse HIM of heresy!”

The interrupted Grywald wheeled on her. His glare was poisonous. “Beidon. Beidon. Your infatuation with that baseborn nonarmigerous pig-iron pounder might well be the most insufferable of your insults, the most egregious and destructive folly of all! Do not cite ‘Beidon’ to me, lest I start to wonder just what he is or isn’t guilty of!”

“You can’t mean that! You’ve known him forever! You adore him in your way, just as I!”

Something in her tone, some note of wounded vulnerability, resonated with Grywald. He wrestled with his ire, momentarily recovering a less venomous tone. “Emlie, you don’t understand…. He’s a, a boon lad, but fondness is a luxury, as… as false in its way as faery-tales! Your infatuation springs from a girl’s fickle heart. But you are meant for better things. You’re soon to turn sixteen, soon to debut into Baronway society…” His face hardened. “And by the bellows, you’ll do it as a woman grown and as a credit to our family! YOU will be the Lady Hubbleton then, and you’ll leave childish things behind, including that blasted smithboy!”

“But Poppa, I love Beidon!”

Grywald mumbled his reaction to the dirt at his feet, “You… love…. will you love him without his tongue? Without his hands, should he dare to so much as touch you?”

“Poppa….please, stop! Mother would have understood me, you KNOW she would have! She wouldn’t have let you bow to the insane edicts of those terrible Barons like this! She would have understood that I love whom I love!”

Grywald’s head snapped towards her, and he spat unthinkingly, “Then it’s a pity you KILLED her aborning, isn’t it, daughter?”

The accusation hung between them. Emlie’s mouth dropped open. She stared, blinked. “….I…” Then she pivoted, sobbed, and lunged away. Grywald, now appearing incredulous at his own behavior, snapped his head ineffectually back and forth, first leveling an accusatory glare at Maeve, then staring pleadingly after his daughter.

Behind him, borne of what she’d overheard, another rapid series of emotions flitted over the old woman’s face: rage softening to pity, then uncertainty, hardening finally into a terrible resolve. Suddenly decisive, she turned from the mayor to his daughter. Her shout was peremptory enough to freeze the girl mid-flight.

“GIRL! Mayhap I spoke prematurely before.” She spared a withering glance for the stricken mayor. “Yea, perhaps I did. Now I think it, Miss Emliana, ye DO deserve one of these fine decorations -- a most special one. Here!” She reached into a pocket of her ratty skirts and withdrew a crude glass sphere… and tossed it underhand at the surprised girl. Time seemed to dilate, the ball held in the widening eyes of both young woman (full of fear) and old (full, perhaps… of expectation?) It described a high arc, for an eerie instant at its apex eclipsing the morning sun, and then descended… and Emlie’s hand snapped up to catch it. She stared at it: an uneven handblown sphere, weathered and crude. It was somehow unlike the wares on display; indeed it made them look polished by comparison. Her gaze slid up and over the orb’s top to meet the lone probing eye of the crone. What she saw there was as enigmatic as it was unsettling. And yet, Emlie could swear she saw… approval of some kind. Triumph?

Emlie returned the stare, nodded, dropped the ball into her kidney pouch, and turned to scramble away.

The old woman was watching Emlie’s retreat when, suddenly, Grywald filled her monocular vision. He passed the back of one hand across his eyes, shook his head as if awakening from a particularly pernicious dream. He focused on Maeve. “YOU!” His head snapped around to track his fleeing daughter. “I… I have to…” He tossed a last look of impotent menace at the crone. “Best begone before I see to your sorting out, you… you… retrograde!” He pushed off of her, shoving her away while propelling himself shakily off in hopeless pursuit. He did not look back to see the terrible smile that flit across Maeve’s face.

Next Chapter: Prelude