Jeremy blinked his eyes open and focused on the dust particles floating lazily in a beam of light above his head. Where was he? His waking mind grasped for clues. An old cabin. Abandoned. A thunderstorm. A broken chair. The lingering smell of wood smoke. He reached above his head as far as he could and extended his legs, pointing his toes in a giant stretch. He savored the warmth and feel of his now dry clothes. As his yawn ended and his eyes slid fully open, they rested on the semi-transparent woman from his dream. She stood straight-backed beside the far wall, watching him intently. Attractive, his mind told him, but she would be much more so without that green streak in her hair. The next thought his mind provided was much more focused and included a ringing alarm, which notified him that there was a see-through woman staring at him from across the room. He lurched to his feet and stumbled to the opposite wall, pressing his back to it.

“Whoa,” he said with a trembling voice. His eyes darted across the room, searching for more ghosts before coming back to rest on the silent woman. “Who are you?” He pointed his finger at her. “What are you?” She looked at him sadly and pointed to her mouth, moving her lips.

“You can’t speak?”

She nodded and Jeremy took a tentative step toward the stove and slowly leaned down, reaching for his pack and hiking boots. As he moved, he kept his eyes locked on her. She put her hands up, palms out, as if in surrender, before pointing to the wall behind her. Her brilliant brown eyes were pleading.

“Sorry,” he said, scooping up his belongings and dashing past her out the door. She materialized in front of him on the porch with desperate eyes, hands folded as if in prayer. Her lips moved, forming words that Jeremy could not hear. He skidded on his heels and spun back into the house. Maybe there was a back door. As he sprinted into the room, she was already standing beside the wall, pointing to the same spot. He froze in place, chest heaving. Looking around the room, he didn’t see another exterior door. Could he run through her? She didn’t seem dangerous. His mother’s voice screamed in his mind, though. Demon! Ghost! She is here to suck the soul out of your body, retribution for abandoning your family. Sinner!

He focused on her and tried to settle his mind, shoving the thought of his mother away. The semi-transparent woman was forming the word please and pointing at the wall. It was the woman from his dream. Maybe he was still dreaming. He reached up and pulled on his right earlobe. The texture of his skin and slight tinge of pain felt real. He shuffled further into the room and was rewarded by an eager nod from the woman.

As he stepped closer, she backed away and continued to point at the same spot on the wall. He was reluctant to take his eyes off her, just in case she turned into a mad harpy bent on ripping his throat out, but his curiosity was overtaking his fear. She had a round face with sharp features, and her eyes were such a brilliant brown that they were almost glowing. Her tanned skin and thick skirts made him think of gypsies. Old photographs in library books. He glanced at the wood-paneled wall and caught a glimpse of an old picture frame before quickly looking back at her face. She nodded encouragingly.

He chanced another look and let his eyes linger. The image in the frame was so faded he couldn’t make out what it was. He hoped she wasn’t luring him to her corpse. Maybe she was murdered a hundred years ago, and her bones were embedded in the wall. He didn’t know if he could recover from something like that. He turned back to her for guidance. She mimicked the act of moving the old picture frame to the side. This proved to be an easy task and he immediately noticed a loose board.

He glanced at her eager face from the corner of his eye before crossing himself and peeling the board back. It gave way easily and the morning light showed him a worn leather bag sitting in the middle of a nook. It looked lonely and insignificant, except that he could just barely make out swirling patterns etched into the leather. The ghostly woman next to him nodded her head in encouragement. He reached in and picked up the bag.

“Oh, thank the stars!”

Jeremy dropped the bag and spun around. Her voice had been abrupt and close. Now she looked frustrated and waved him around to the wall once more. He narrowed his eyes, staring at her. She silently formed the words please over and over and put her hands together once again as if in prayer. Without taking his eyes from her this time, Jeremy pursed his lips and picked up the small bag.

“... ease, please, please, oh, yes! Don’t drop it, please don’t drop it. You can hear me?”

He nodded slowly, mouth hanging open. Her voice was the sound that a sunrise would make if he could hear it. As she spoke, she became more substantial. He could still see the wood stove behind her, or through her rather, but just barely. If he passed her casually on the street, he may not even notice.

“Thanks, oh thank you.”

“Your voice, the…”

“I’ve forgotten what you hear when we speak. It’s been so long since I’ve talked to a human.”

Jeremy slowly pulled the bag out of the wall. “I…I can hear you if I hold this bag?”

“That’s right, you’re a seer.”

“What’s a seer?”

“One who sees us, the world, all the…” she started in a flurry, but stopped, furrowing her brow in thought. She tilted her head toward him and started again. “A seer is one who sees the world as it is and all of us who are in it. Not just in your reality, but ours too.”

Jeremy pried his eyes away from her face and looked around the cabin. What was her reality? “What’s your name?” he asked, settling his gaze back onto her face. Her brilliant brown eyes glowed in the morning light. She studied him for a moment before answering. Names held power. Not the name itself, but the idea that it formed, the identity that it shaped for the user.

“Adelia,” she said, quietly.

“I’m Jeremy.”

“I know. I visited you.”

“In my dream. You were in it, in the beginning of it.”

Her face fell just a little. “Yes, I was, for a short time, just to make sure you were safe.”

“Safe from what?” Jeremy didn’t want to talk about his dream. If she saw the rest of it, then she knew about his family. He didn’t talk about his family. He didn’t like to think about them, either, but thoughts were harder to stop than words.

“If you were safe for us,” she said. “We brought you here through the storm. It was a great risk.”

Her sing song voice put him at ease, but her words made him uneasy.

“What do you mean you brought me here?”

“It was very difficult, we all had to work together.”

“Who is we and where am I?”

She hesitated, looking around the cabin.

“You’re in Ardmore.”

“Where is Ardmore?”

“South Dakota, close to the Nebraska border. We wove a traveling storm to carry you to us. Seers are rare and sometimes dangerous, but we couldn’t let our chance pass.”

“Who else is here? You better start explaining.” Jeremy took a step backward toward the door. A wave of dizziness passed through him, and he started to tremble. This was too much.

“I will, just come in and be still.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Jeremy, you are a seer. You can see Sanctuaries and all of us who live in them. We are the Moirai, but a lot of people in the western world call us the Folk, fae or faeries. Most stories about us get some details right, but the big things are usually wrong. We’re born from human emotion and bound to our Sanctuaries, the abandoned places. We are left over after humans pass on or leave a place for good. We do not predict human fate like most people write about in the stories, we are the result of a human’s fate. I suppose that gives us insight, doesn’t it? That’s why we have served humans as oracles so many times in the past.”

Jeremy stared at her, tilting his head. “I don’t know what that means?”

Adelia sighed. “I’ll start at the beginning, maybe. It’s been so long since I’ve talked to anyone outside of our Sanctuary. My name is Adelia, I come from what you probably know as Czechoslovakia—”

“It’s been the Czech Republic since 1993,” a small figure said, stepping slowly out from around the bedroom door.

“Sinta, you’re OK!” Adelia rushed over and kneeled in front of the small creature.

“It was only Czechoslovakia for a short time after World War I,” Sinta continued, gently pushing Adelia away. “Of course, we think our Adelia is from the region long before that, even before it was known as Bohemia, Slovakia, and Moravia.” The small creature walked with a limp and moved as if her small joints ached. “Of course, she’s not even sure about that. That would make her ancient even for a Moirai.”

Sinta stood just above knee height. She was clad in what looked like burlap shorts, and a flannel shirt. Child-sized glasses perched on the end of her enormous nose, which resided just below tiny beaded black eyes. The creature’s ears were larger than appropriate proportion allowed for, not dissimilar from her large head, when compared to her skinny body. Her forehead was wrinkled like the ridges of a pumpkin. In fact, her skin was the color of a pumpkin.

A torrent of surprise, concern, and fear coursed through Jeremy, and he knew, somehow, that they were Adelia’s emotions. The bag grew warm under his fingers.

“You are not going crazy,” Sinta said, looking over at Jeremy.

“Did you read my mind?” he asked, sure that nothing would ever surprise him again.

“No, I can’t do that, but your thoughts were clear enough on your face,” Sinta said. “I can assure you that you are safe from us here. But we need your help. I’m afraid Adelia needs it most of all.” Sinta’s voice was a pleasant tenor, but it wasn’t the music of Adelia’s.

“What can I possibly do for you?”

Jeremy realized he was sitting at the table and his hiking boots were on his feet and laced up. When did that happen? He looked down at a steaming cup of coffee sitting next to his hand, the one not holding the bag. A small voice beside his right knee said, “We’ve been waiting for twenty years to use this. We don’t like coffee, but your people do.”

The creature was like Sinta except smaller, with an even larger nose and dark gray skin. Its voice was a slow baritone with little inflection. Jeremy nodded and wondered how they had kept coffee grounds fresh for twenty years. He lifted it to his lips numbly and took a sip. Somehow, they had, because it was just about the best coffee Jeremy had ever tasted.

“He doesn’t deserve coffee, Nod, he wrecked my chair!” Another small humanoid stomped out of the bedroom. He was a sandy red color and more muscular than the others. His voice was a bass drum filled with gravel.

“Pinta, it’s going to be fine. I’m Sure Jeremy will be happy to salvage for you. It’s a small price to pay for the chance at so much loot, isn’t it?” Adelia said.

“We’ll see if he can get through Crag.” The small muscular Pinta climbed up onto the chair next to Jeremy, crossed his arms, and scowled at him.

“What’s a Crag?” Jeremy asked. He lifted the coffee cup to his lips and studied the small red creature. If this was really happening, he might as well accept it. The coffee was good.

“Not what—" Adelia’s voice cut off. Jeremy looked at her frustrated face and realized he had set the bag down on the table and moved his hand away. He touched the bag, and her voice came back.

“…you can’t let go of the bag Jeremy.”

“Why? What’s in it?” Jeremy leaned over and pulled it open.

“Wait, this is gold. Why do you–”

“It’s Moirai gold Jeremy, it won’t do anything but bring you harm. And it’s charmed. That’s why I’m trapped in it,” Adelia said. “We can only leave Sanctuary for long periods if we infuse ourselves into an object of value.”

“You’re not in the gold, you’re standing right there,” Jeremy said.

“But I’m bound to it, that’s why you have to be touching it to hear or see me very well. At least until I find the missing pieces.”

Jeremy didn’t have much use for money, but he was sure the coins in this bag would make him rich, at least by his standards. They looked ancient and thick, with strange symbols and markings. What would a person do with that much money? A trail tent, maybe, and some vacuum sealed camping food, new hiking boots. “What missing pieces?” he asked.

“Less talk, more action,” Pinta interrupted and slid off the chair. “Crag left, he’s moving up north and his lackeys probably won’t attack a human.”

“You’re right, Pinta, we need to move. Jeremy, will you help us?” Adelia stepped toward him.

“Now wait, I don’t even know what you want me to do, or what a Crag is.”

“Not what, who,” Sinta said. “Crag is the very large, very angry, interloper who has invaded Ardmore from another Sanctuary. His was destroyed, something about humans building new condos, so the story goes, and he had to flee. The former chief of Ardmore gave him and his minions sanctuary. That was obviously a mistake.” Sinta pulled the antique glasses from her nose and rubbed the lenses with her flannel shirt. “We’re not technically part of Ardmore, we’ve been our own Sanctuary long before Ardmore was ever abandoned, but we’re close enough that Crag has forced himself on us, too. We’re not strong, the four of us, but we would still rather not die, or worse yet, serve Crag and his band.”

Pinta, Sinta, Adelia and the little gray creature, Nod, who was just a hand shorter than the others, gathered by the front door. Jeremy took a slow sip of his coffee.

“So, you want me to run off this Crag guy?”

Adelia shook her head, Sinta sighed deeply, and Pinta let out a sharp bark-like laugh.

“Boy, he would turn your insides into liquid and set you up like a fountain outside of city hall,” Pinta said. His gruff, gravelly voice reminded Jeremy of his grandpa, who had died when he was very young.

“Then what do you want?” Jeremy asked.

“Chairs, another table, mirrors, and any artifacts you can find,” Pinta said. “They have power we can use to protect our Sanctuary. And you can move so much better than us in the physical world and carry more weight. Maybe even find a working truck to load. With the right artifacts, we can hold Crag and his minions off long enough.”

“Long enough for what?”

“For us to find the missing gold pieces and bring my body back,” Adelia said. “And my power. Then I can be in the world again. And I can make Crag go away. It would be as easy as a word if I were whole. Instead, I’m trapped and insubstantial. I can’t even make myself visible to humans without a seer holding my gold. But if all the pieces were in the bag, I would get my power back.”

Jeremy stood up and slipped the bag of gold into his pocket. It bulged a little but was manageable. He looked at the woman and three small, oddly shaped figures. The smallest gray, the grumpiest, sandy red, and the smartest the color of a pumpkin. People helped people, but you never trusted anyone, not ever. He learned that from his parents, and on the road. While his parents beat this mistrust into him through years of ideology and physical persuasion. On the road, lessons were even harder. It was easier to stay away from everyone.

“I’ll walk with you into town, but you have to explain how chairs will help you, and what a Sanctuary is. And where the missing gold pieces are. I’m not saying I’ll help you, I’m just saying I’ll listen and look,” Jeremy said.

Adelia gave him an appraising look, nodded, and turned toward the front door.

“Normally, we wouldn’t be able to travel out of our own Sanctuary. But Ardmore is so close that it’s connected. It’s a blessing and a curse.” Adelia moved across the old porch and down the steps into the field.

Where there was a road last night, there was nothing but rolling fields and a dry stream bed. Gnarly, twisted, trees climbed out of the banks and the prairie grass was just a shade darker at the bottom. It waved as a slight breeze picked up.

“I got here from the road. It should be right there.” Jeremy stared at the landscape with wide eyes.

“It was last night, but now it’s not.” Sinta didn’t offer any more explanation, and Jeremy had to hurry down the steps to keep up. The old cabin was nestled between an earthen shelf above and the ancient stream bed below. It was a natural alcove in the curve of the once large stream, and Jeremy wondered if this perfect spot had been created somehow. The tall yellow grass made a swooshing sound around his legs as he hurried to catch the others.

“The streambed will take us right into town,” Sinta said, leading the way.