My chest aches with a pain that steals my breath away, as if the bitter thorns of Fall themselves are piercing my heart. With tears streaking down my flushed cheeks, I run, hiking up my simple woolen dress as colorful leaves crush under my boots, releasing the dizzying scent of decay and petrichor into my lungs with each frantic step.

I shouldn’t be so devastated… Finn was never mine. I knew he was betrothed to another yet seeing him finally wed drove home the cruel stake of finality in a way I never expected. I’d always admired him for his kind heart and courage, but also for his learned mind. He was an educated man and loved to read as much as I. Together we’d shared a bond, one of friendship and comfort. But I’d always dreamed by some twist of Fate it could perhaps one day be more… I dreamed that his courtship would sour and he’d at last see me as the future Mrs. Maclellan.

But this noon gone, he walked the aisle of our humble little church and pledged himself to his bride forever before God, leaving me to pine and perish in the shadow of a love that could never be mine. Seeing them so happy together, the townsfolk showering them with rice and smiles… I just couldn’t remain. The fire that blazes inside me in rebellion and the hurt is too strong. I fear that if I linger, my soul might burst, and the town will burn to ashes in my wake.

It’s better this way. I don’t know where I’m going. I just run—into the wilderness, heedless of my direction—as the hellish inferno burning within me threatens to immolate me alive. Gasping, I fall to my hands and knees, only to find the ground beneath me is no longer damp and littered with the colors of the season. Swallowing hard, a ripple of disbelief shivering through my limbs, I stare at the sparkling, crisp, white snow. Snow? It makes no sense. It’s not possible. It’s only autumn…

Oh, but it is, a quiet voice in the back of my mind whispers. A chill creeps up my spine as the impossible suddenly becomes my new reality. “It can’t be,” I breathe, clenching my fingers under the snow, before sitting back on my knees to gaze up at the world around me. “Faery.” Good God. It’s still All Hallows’ Eve. In my anguish and heartbreak, I’d forgotten all about the perils of the fae, of the simple and undeniable truth that the Veil between our realms is gossamer thin on this sacred day.

Biting my lower lip, I rub my hands together, breathing into them in an attempt to create warmth. “What have I done?” My breath whorls in the air, frosting on the breeze as my jaw goes slack and I drink in the ethereal beauty of the landscape stretching out before me in all directions. Lakes that should by all rights be frozen shimmer beneath the moon as if untouched by winter’s cold. Trees bigger than any I’ve ever seen reach toward the heavens—pines, oaks, and conifers, all immense beyond mortal comprehension and blanketed in glittering drifts of snow.

Climbing to my feet, I take a staggering step forward, my heartache forgotten temporarily as it races with awareness and a palpable sense of danger. Though most of us live in fear of the Devil and his demons, they’re a threat beyond the grave, a danger to our eternal souls … but Faery? From the moment we draw our first breath we’re taught to fear it. The fae are closer than the terrors of Hell. They’re just a whisper away, a real physical threat, our realms separated from one another by a Veil as intangible as the promise of an eternity in Heaven.

Licking my lips, I fold my arms across my chest and look behind me, but it’s clear there’s no going back. My village and its familiar forests are gone, lost beyond the Veil. I could run toward home forever and never find it. The stories of those lost to Faery are as old as time, and I know them well. The way between our realms is not a stationary thing, not a door, or tear in the fabric of the world one can just find at will. It cannot be located on a map or marked. The ways are always changing and once gone, may never reappear in the same place again.

My only choice, regardless of how I feel or what awaits me, is to move forward—to survive. Faery is notoriously cruel and the Lands of Winter especially so. The fae of The Winter Court are said to be as cold as the ice and snow they dwell amidst. I must find shelter sooner rather than late, or I’ll freeze. My dress is woolen, and my knitted shawl warm enough for Fall, but entirely inadequate to protect me from the bitter bite of a true winter.

“Come on,” I say, encouraging myself to motion. “Fate has laid a new path before me and I must walk it, no matter how difficult.” One step after another, I trudge my way through the fresh, deep snow, my dress becoming increasingly saturated as I go. Soon, I’m shivering, my teeth chattering, and my fingers almost numb, but I walk until my every breath is labored and the icy air burns my lungs like frozen fire. The vast landscape around me shrinks, closing in around me as I step from the seemingly never-ending space of open, crystalline fields and venture deep into the shadowed forest beyond the lake.

Here, the snowfall is softer, the tremendous, gnarled canopy above preventing most of it from ever reaching the ground. Verdant grass and glowing flowers spring up in the shelter afforded by the trees, their blades and petals shimmering, as if covered in diamond dust. I recognize snow-white lilies and pale, frosted foxgloves. Swallowing hard, I collapse once more, huddling up among the roots of a great oak as a strangled sob escapes my throat. Despite the magical world around me, I can feel the life ebbing from me with each passing moment. With every breath a little more of my warmth fades, replaced with a cold that seems to settle into my very bones.

Hugging myself against the cruel frost that threatens to seep into my soul, my inner fire spent, I shed tears that freeze almost instantly, creating trails of shimmering ice on my cheeks. Just as I’m about to break down, giving into the melancholy of my seemingly hopeless predicament, a voice so beautiful my heart skips a beat reaches my ears on the wind, and I look up, a fragile flicker of hope bursting to life within me like a spark in the gloom of my despair.