"Do you remember your mother?" Cocot asked Daniel after they had walked in silence for about half an hour.

"Sure. I was seven when the nuns came to pick me up from the apartment. Last I heard she still lives over in Hauteville. Some drunk took her in. My grandparents were already dead then, and my uncle didn't want me. Or more specifically, his wife didn't want me," he explained.

Walking side by side in the darkness, the lantern light splashing on the ground, Cocot could not see his face. She could hear the studied indifference in his voice, though. She gripped the lantern tight and steeled her lips to keep from shouting her outrage. Finally, she said, "How is it that you live with Monsieur Ruffieux if your mother is alive? It seems you'd be better with her."

"Not according to the Department of Child Welfare. After my grandparents died, and the inheritance ran out, my mom couldn't keep food on the table or alcohol out of her cups. It was clearly in my best interest to be sent to live in orphanages and to work on farms," he said. He let go of her hand suddenly to steady himself on an uneven part of the path. He had done this several times already—let go, climb up or down and then take her hand again to help her.

She hoped that this time was the same. "Could you go see her if you wanted to?"

He didn't answer. There were several boulders and a fallen tree across the path and he took her hand as soon as he had navigated the trunk.

What Daniel was living was what Cocot's mother had warned her about. Cocot must never let anyone know she was on her own. They would take her away and sell the chalet, strip her of all her belongings and send her to work on a farm or in a sewing factory: all in the name of good.

They followed the path, hand in hand up the slope and through the forest.

"I could go, if I wanted to," he said.

She heard his silent 'But I won't because I don't want to,' as clear as the owls cooing from the trees.

Cocot knew that not all mothers were like hers. None, in fact, seemed like hers from what she had seen in town. Even so, a mother is a mother—in all her imperfections and moments of weakness. A mother's love cannot be replaced or filled by any other.

"Maybe one day," she said, showing him the door was open. Her mother was dead. Cocot couldn't go and visit no matter how much the wanting to go crushed her. Daniel still had that option.

They were nearing the top of the hill. The trees were thinning and Cocot's breath was short from the effort of hiking the steep incline.

Sonlomont was not one of the mountains that shaped the Intyamon Valley—it was high, ridged hill. A troop of cows had their summer pasturage here, but the bovines must have been further off.

They arrived at the tree line and Cocot stopped. Except for the brief walk through the field at the end of Cocot's lane, they had remained under the cover of the thick forest. Irrational fear of being exposed, of losing her hold on the ground, rooted her feet to the spot.

The sky beyond the sparse cover of trees was too open, too high, and too huge. She needed a roof to protect her, tree branches to contain her or at least the blue of daytime to give her the illusion that there was something between her and infinity. If she walked into the field, she would have nothing to hold onto. There was nothing to stop her from flying upwards into that vast emptiness.

"We have to go to the middle," Daniel said. "The view is the best from there."

"I can't," she said. They'll see me. Everything would see her—the stars, the fairy creatures and even the flowers in the field, and they would recognize her for the imposter she was. Cocot keenly sensed that part of her that had once been a flower. If she went onto the hill, there would be no hiding and she had no roots to tie her to the earth.

"You can go," he said, "if you want to."

She tightened her grip on his hand and they left the protection of the trees together, the impossibly open sky arching over them. He would keep her safe. He would keep her on the lowly ground. They extinguished the lanterns and crossed the last part of the slope to the wide crest. Cocot lifted her eyes. She could not name any of the individual stars or pick out any constellations despite having studied the book for hours and hours. There were too many; bright, faint, fading together in swirling masses.

"Tell me what I'm looking at," Cocot said, turning herself and Daniel in a wide circle.

"You're looking at the stars." He chuckled, low and warm.

"I meant, tell their names, their constellations, tell me everything you can."

"All right. But first, just look at them."

Cocot continued to spin slowly, the grass, nettles and flowers rubbing on her calves as she did, her eyes and thoughts lost in the distance.

You are one of us, the field plants whispered to her. Sink your toes in the ground and stay. Gaze at the stars with us tonight and forever.

This is where the evil wanted to go, Cocot realized with a shiver of cold or fear. It wanted to lose itself forever in the heavens—don't we all?

Daniel spread the blanket over the grass. They stretched out on it, Cocot grateful for her wool coat around her. Their shoulders touched, creating a warm spot on her upper arm.

"One of the easiest constellations to find is Orion. See the three stars together in a line there? And that filmy curtain behind those bright stars is the Milky Way..."

He went on and on, explaining, pointing and telling the stories behind the names and constellations. Cocot listened. Her nose and feet were cold and she had her hands tucked in her coat sleeves when she wasn't pointing at anything.

"It doesn't matter about my mother when I come out and look at the stars," he said after a few minutes of silence.

"What do you mean?"

"When I'm out here, under this, it doesn't matter that my mother's a drunk and they put me in an orphanage or that I have to work at the farm like a slave. None of it matters because it is nothing and this," he swept his arm across the sky, summing it up in a single gesture, "is the universe. I could stay like this forever, watching the stars in their dance. I would, too, if I had the money for school. But I have to settle for coming here when I can. I'm saving up for a telescope, you know. They say that in the future, man will fly to the moon in rocket ships."

"I didn't know you had to pay for school," she said. He had let the slightest hint of rancor tarnish his voice when he said that part.

"Elementary is free and secondary, too, if they let you go. They didn't think I was smart enough, even though I tested better than anyone else in the class. The real problem is the university. I'd have to pay to study astronomy. It doesn't matter."

"You should do that, if that's what you want. I have money—I could loan it to you," she offered excitedly.

"I won't take your money, you're going to need it. Besides, you wouldn't have enough. It costs several hundred francs a year and it takes four or five years of studies. They won't let me do it, though. I'm a waste of their time," he said, sitting up cross-legged.

She sat up, as well. "I didn't know it was so expensive. Still, there must be some way—"

"There's not. I shouldn't have brought it up. I'm leaving the farm soon and I'll have to get a regular job. I won't have time to do both." He systematically shredded stalks of grass.

"You should think my offer over; if that's what you want to do in life. My mother always said I could sell the great armoire in the chalet. It's supposedly worth a king's ransom. I could loan you the money and you would pay me back when you got a job as an astronomer. Wouldn't it be better than working in a factory or on the railroad?"

"Drop it. It's not worth talking about. We should be getting back," he said.

They gathered their things and Daniel relit the lanterns.

Cocot wished there was some way to convince him to accept the money. She wasn't going to need it, after all. Adults could no longer see her to take it. If he could take it and use it for his studies, then in a few years....A terrible thought sent ice through her veins at the same time as a throbbing pain started deep in her chest, near her heart.

Daniel would be an adult soon. Would she disappear from his sight? The shooting pain nearly made her drop the lantern. She fell a few steps behind.

One crystalized drop of Farafell's fairy magic. What had Soufflé said? She was becoming more and more fairy every day and it showed.

She was going to lose Daniel soon. She had to find a way for him to study the stars, before he lost hope in the dream. The walk back to the chalet was difficult. They were tired and chilled and on the uneven path they had to watch every step.

The forest watched them more closely than before. Cocot could sense it. Daniel stayed withdrawn and taciturn, but the trees were whispering to one another. The bushes and nocturnal animals chittered and squeaked, hushing only when the two young people approached. The light of the lanterns kept the darkness at arm's length, but nothing more.

Cocot wrestled with the thought that she should tell Daniel to be careful, to be ready if something terrible came for them, but he would think she was crazy. At last, they reached the dirt lane and two minutes later were standing at Cocot's gate.

"Daniel, you told me you asked the Bounet Rodzos to help you once," she said, afraid she knew the answer to next question she was going to ask. The words would not remain still inside her any longer, though. "Do you still believe in fairies?"

"No."

"If I told you that I do, would you think I'm foolish?"

"You're not foolish. You want to believe in something, is all. Life has already shown me that there's no room for fantasy or fairy tales. But I wish there were fairies. I would like to see one, just once. Shall I walk you to the door?"

"No, that's all right," she said, thinking she would have to whisper the charm. "I'm going to check on Hector. You should go home. It's so late."

"Well, until we see each other again. I'll come by if I can and if you need any flour or eggs or anything, come to the farm," he said.

"Good night," she whispered.

"Good night."

They stood, not moving; he was apparently waiting for her to go through the gate, but she was afraid to reach for it since it swing open on its own. He leaned forward a few inches.

"Be careful on the road," she said, stepping in front of the gate. Her cheeks were uncomfortably hot and she was not sure what he was waiting for.

"As always," he said. He dipped his head a little lower, smiling ever so slightly.

Hector snorted and bumped against the door to his pen.

"I'd better see if he's all right," Cocot said. She waved her hand behind her back, causing the gate to unlatch itself.

"Good night," Daniel repeated, not noticing anything odd. He stood upright, clearing his throat and adjusting the bag on his shoulders uncomfortably.

"Good night." Cocot hurried away through the garden, only glancing back when she reached Hector's pen. The light from the lanterns and the black outline of Daniel's body were retreating along the lane. "Be careful," she whispered.

Hector was very agitated. He snorted and stamped and turned in circles and even tried to push the bottom half of the door open. The Bounet Rodzos had built a solid pen for him, though and he was trapped.

"What's wrong with you, old boy? Are you bothered by the dark? You are safe here." She rubbed his forehead and saggy neck. She shut the top half while he turned another circle, and walked to the front door.

Daniel was gone. She sighed. Maybe if they stayed good friends, he would always be able to see her. After all, she was only part fairy.

She put her left hand to the door to say the charm, searching in her pocket for her keys. Her pocket was empty.

Dread seized her.

She had forgotten to lock the door. In her mind's eye, she saw Daniel holding his hand out for hers, the lantern light flickering on his skin. She had forgotten to lock the door. They had walked off, after she had simply pulled it shut.

But the door was closed and all was quiet. Everything would be all right. Everything would be fine.

*** Would it, though? ***

Without roots, she might float up to the sky and return to the stars above.