I remember the night as clearly as yesterday. Perhaps it was yesterday.

I was a boy with only fifteen years behind me, wandering through the woods on my way home from the faire. I could still feel the kiss I earned on my cheek, and it spurred my step.

Just then, I felt the chilly wind whip down from the treetops. I shuddered, remembering my mother's warning to wear a coat that morning. Of course, I knew I didn't need a coat, but then again, I ignored many of my mother's warnings that day.

I knew the house lay near that old castle near Killbarney, the one my father warned me never go by, but running through the castle's old yard would save me precious minutes of sunlight. "Better to disturb the Sidhe when the sun is up," I said to myself and leapt from the roadway, cut through the dense woods and skedattled toward Castle Killbarney.

The treetops cut off my view of the sky, and I could no longer tell how far the twilight had crept across the sky. It seemed I had wandered too far into the woods. I wasn't sure where I was, even though I was certain I was headed in the right direction. I turned and looked back, but what lay behind me was as strange and unfamiliar as what lay ahead of me. Then, when I turned about, what I saw nearly knocked me to my backside.

Snow. All around me. As high as the tops of my boots.

I looked up and saw the twilight hanging in the sky, the moon lurking like a hunter high above me. I let my gaze fall back before me, and there, covered in the white crystal frost was a fountain and beside the fountain was a woman, her skin as white as the snow and her eyes the color of the sky. She leaned against the fountain and her expression that made me feel I was late for a rendez-vous.You are late," she said, and from somewhere, I knew I had heard her voice before. "Worry not," she said, her expression unchanged. "I am certain you will make up for your tardiness."