“We don’t really understand ourselves all that well yet,” I said. “I think it would be very difficult for you to do it.”

Mother Summer smiled at me, and it felt like the first warm day of spring. “That’s true, isn’t it?”

“But you’ve got a point to make, ma’am,” I said. “Or you wouldn’t have brought up the subject.”

“I do,” she said. “Winter is cold, Sir Knight, but never so cold that it freezes the heart altogether.”

“You’ve got to have a heart before it can freeze, ma’am.”

“You do.”

I walked for a little while, considering that. “You’re saying that I have a chance to stay me.”

“I’m saying many things,” Mother Summer said. “Do you have a chance to remain yourself despite the tendency of the mantle to mold your thoughts and desires? All Knights, Winter and Summer, have that chance. Most fail.”

“But it’s possible,” I said.

She looked up at me and her eyes were deeper than time. “Anything is possible.”

“Ah,” I said, understanding. “We’re not really talking about me.”

“We are,” she said serenely, turning her eyes away. “And we are not.”

“Uh,” I said. “I’m getting a little confused here. What are we talking about, exactly?”

Mother Summer smiled at me.

And then she just clammed up.

We are? We’re not?

I kept a straight face while my inner Neanderthal spluttered and then went on a mental rampage through a hypothetical produce section, knocking over shelves and splattering fruit everywhere in sheer frustration, screaming, “JUST TELL ME WHOSE SKULL TO CRACK WITH MY CLUB, DAMMIT!”

Flippin’ faeries. They will be the death of me.

“In the spirit of balanced scales,” I said, “would it be all right if I asked you a question, ma’am?”

“I welcome the question. I make no promises as to the answer.”

I nodded. “Who are you, really?”

Mother Summer stopped in her tracks and turned to look at me. Her eyebrows slowly lifted. “That is a very significant question.”

“I know,” I said. “Blame it on Halloween.”

“Why should I do that?”

I shrugged, and we began walking again. “It’s just got me thinking: masks. I know of one figure from ancient tales who is alive and well and incognito. Why shouldn’t there be more?”

Mother Summer inclined her head, more a gesture of acknowledgment or admission than agreement. “Things change,” she said. “Immortals deal poorly with change. But it comes to everyone.”

“I called Mother Winter by the names Athropos and Skuld because they seemed to fit her,” I said. “I mean, she likes her sharp implements, apparently.”

Mother Summer’s smile appeared for a moment, dazzling me, and then was gone again. “It was not an imbecilic guess,” she said. “And, yes, she has been known by such names before. But you’ve only guessed the name of one of her masks—not our most powerful name.”

“Our?” I said. “Wait. I’m confused.”

“I know,” she said. “Here we are.”

We stopped in the middle of a forest path that didn’t look any different from anything around it. Mother Summer stopped and frowned at me. “You really aren’t dressed for the climate.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I can handle cold.”

She let go of my arm, looked me up and down, then put a hand on the handle of the basket she carried over one arm and said, “Something a little less . . . informal would be appropriate, I think.”

I’ve played Ken doll to a faerie fashion adviser before, so I wasn’t entirely shocked when my clothing began to writhe and simply change. When the Leanansidhe had done it, I’d sat in the car for half an hour suffering through one fanciful and undignified outfit after another. Not this time.

My clothes transformed from cloth into custom-fitted steel. Well, probably not steel, but whatever the equivalent was that the Sidhe used in their armor. The armor was plain and functional with no ornaments on it—a breastplate, vambraces, and large pauldrons for my shoulders. Heavy tassets hung from the bottom of the breastplate, protecting my thighs. My lower legs were covered with greaves, front and back. The armor was black and gleaming, and where light fell directly on it, you could see shades of deep purple and dark blue.

I realized that I was holding a helmet under my left arm, and I took it in both hands to look at it. It was a Corinthian helm, like they wore in that movie about the Spartans, only without the fancy tail. It was padded on the inside. I slipped it on, and it fit perfectly.

“Much better,” said Mother Summer. “Stay near me at all times.”

I looked around the perfectly serene forest. It was a bit of an effort, since the helmet kept me from turning my head very smoothly. I looked up, too. I’m sure the armor made me look goofy. “Uh, okay.”

Mother Summer smiled, took my arm again, and stretched out one foot. She used it to brush a layer of dirt and fallen leaves from the pitted surface of a flat stone, like a paving stone, maybe three feet square. She tapped it three times with her foot, whispered a word, and drew me along with her as she stepped onto it.

No drama ensued. The landscape simply changed, as swiftly and drastically as when you turn on a light while in a darkened room. One second we stood in an autumnal megaforest. The next . . .

I’ve seen movies and newsreels about World War I. They didn’t cover it as thoroughly in my schools, because America didn’t have a leading role in it, and because the entire stupid, avoidable mess was a Continental clusterfuck that killed millions and settled nothing but the teams for the next world war. But what they did show me I remembered. Miles and miles of trenches. A smoke-haunted no-man’s-land strung with muddy, rusty barbed wire and lined with machine guns and marksmen. There was a pall of smoke that turned the sun into a dully glowing orb.

But the movies couldn’t cover all the senses. There was a constant rumble in the sky, thunder born of violence, and there was everywhere the smell of feces and death.

We stood atop a small, barren mountain, looking down. Near us, only a few hundred yards away, was an immense wall, the kind you’d use to hold out the Mongols if they were the size of King Kong. It was built entirely from ice or some kind of translucent crystal. Even from here, I could see that there were chambers and rooms in the wall, rooms containing barracks, hospitals, kitchens, you name it. There were dim and indistinct forms moving around in them.

The walls were lined with what had to be tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of soldiers. I peered, trying to get a better look, and then realized that they were armored Sidhe.

All of them.

They all wore armor similar to mine, its highlights throwing back the cool, muted shades of Winter.

Out beyond the wall was a land made of dust and mud and loose shale. It was covered in hillocks and steep gullies, and the only plants that grew there looked like they were certain to poke, scratch, or sting you. Though the land was somehow lit, the sky was as black as Cat Sith’s conscience, without a single star or speck of light to be seen—and it was an overwhelming sky, enormous, like in the open, rolling lands of Montana and Wyoming.

There were more bodies of troops moving out there. Some of them looked like they might have been giants, or maybe trolls. Larger groups containing smaller individuals were likely Winter’s gnomes. Things flew in the air. Bands of what appeared to be mounted cavalry rode back and forth. Some of the soldiers looked suspiciously like animated snowmen.

From this vantage point, I could see two major engagements happening, each containing maybe forty thousand Winter troops. And they were fighting. . . .

I couldn’t make out the enemy. There didn’t seem to be any unity of form. They were creatures—creatures whose physiologies made no sense, were utterly without order. I saw what appeared to be tentacles, enormous mandibles, claws, fangs, clublike limbs and tails. They weren’t bipedal. They weren’t quadrupeds. In fact, they seemed to have no regard for bilateral symmetry at all.