Summer Hill was a small town. That much was obvious to Marissa even before she moved here.
Less obvious was how connected everything felt. After Siris led her off-campus, it took a walking distance until they made it into the park.

The park was as small as everything else. Besides its fountain and its playground, only monuments of Civil War-era heroes interrupted the peaceful green.

A meticulously-tended lawn greeted them as they entered. It was so cold and wet that it felt like spring rather than late summer and its gentle climate attracted parkgoers. Stroller, joggers; there were lots of people Marissa had to avoid if she wanted to talk to Siris in peace.

She jumped at the bark of a rottweiler. The drooling, snapping dog was only held back by the lash of a stroller who, judging from her expression, was angry that Marissa had scared it just as much as it had scared her.

Marissa held her hands over her thumping heart.

"Easy," Siris said. "That's not a hellhound."

She pressed her palms against her chest until her heartbeat normalized. She needed some quiet place. Maybe that hill over there? It was a hill so large and sunny that the town probably owed its name to it and it carried a proud oak tree near its top.

For someone supposedly four hundred years old, Siris had a rather modern way of speaking. He probably used portals like the one he claimed the hellhound came through to stay up-to-date.

"Where's the gate?" she asked.

Siris stopped near the roots of the oak tree. "You should be seeing a circle of rose petals right here."

"I should."

He circled around the tree. When he still couldn't find what he searched for, he rubbed his nose into the meadows as if what he was searching for lay hidden in the grass. "I don't know why it's invisible."

"So, this circle is the gate?" Marissa whispered, careful that no-one was nearby.

"It's a fairy ring, yeah. They aren't always perfect rings, but it's the best shape if you want to trap spirit energy that's intermediate between the two worlds."

Good to know. Marissa still wasn't sure if she should accept Siris' call to adventure, but there was one compelling argument that made her lean towards "yes".

In his lecture, Professor Weber claimed that, in the US alone, about thirty thousand people straight-up vanished every year and never got found again. At the start of the century, it had only been eight thousand. If this waning Veil Siris mentioned had anything to do with that, this meant that as many as twenty thousand people died to monsters each year in her country alone.

And she had no idea if there was anyone out there to stop them. "Another question," she whispered again. "How many practitioners are there in this country?"

Siris put his nose out of the grass. "Look, I keep myself on the ball, but I'm not some census nerd-"

"How likely is it that there are practitioners other than me in this town?"

He looked at the sky as if he tried to divine the answer from the stars. "I suck at math, but I think there are ten thousand mundanes for every practitioner."

Ten thousand. Did Summer Hill even house that many people?

Marissa didn't have a martyr complex or anything, but if she was the only thing standing between the monsters in this town, it was an argument worth considering. "So, assuming I want to make a contract with you or whatever, how does that work?" she asked.

Siris looked at her. "Look me in the eyes and say my name three times. If you want to break the bond again, say my name three times backward. Since it's a palindrome, you can write it backward with the capital S in the end, that should also work."

"What happens if I bond?"

Siris raised his nose. "You Awaken. Anything after that depends on what you want in life."

Marissa paused at that. What did she want in life? The noble answer would have been something along the lines of 'to protect the town', but was this really want she wanted above everything else in her life?

"A-another question," she asked with the hesitation of a student seeking permission from the teacher. "Back when we were in the cellar, you said magic can overload someone's brain if used without a familiar. How does that look like?"

"It's not pretty," Siris replied gravely. "Symptoms can be depression, insomnia, and withdrawal from the rest of the world due to social exhaustion. There's a reason we've got this stereotype about magicians living in cottages somewhere in the far-off woods. Why the question?"

Marissa bit her lip. "What you just said, about witches being solitary loners, describes me. Only that I don't live in the woods."

"Hey, it's a stereotype. I've had the best time of my life back when I was a practitioner!" the cat said.

Marissa waved him off. "It's not. At least, not in my case. I mean, look at me," she said and pointed at the big tired bags under her eyes.

Siris inspected them closely. "Ah, you'll get used to that. The witching hour is at night."

"You don't understand!" Marissa said, hiding her face under her unruly, bushy hair. "I don't have any friends. Not here, not at home. It's exhausting."

"Well, that's normal. You're still young, still in the phase where people develop meaningful relationships."

"I'm an adult!" she said. "I-I shouldn't even be worrying about such stuff anymore."

"If you had any idea what I keep worrying about," the cat muttered. "And you really think there's a magical reason for this?"

Marissa tried this four-second breathing he recommended before. "I don't know. I just always felt like I was more sensitive than everyone else. Is this a thing?"

"Well, it's certainly possible for relatives of pracitioners to have unusual spiritual sensitivity even before they Awaken," Siris said. "Our emotions are our magic. Humans are full of strife and inner conflict and the spirit is just as chaotic. Maybe you didn't have the kind of shield that most pracitioners have through their familiars and that mundanes have through their ignorance of it."

"It's not just magic," Marissa said. "I had no mirrors in my old home because I kept seeing monsters in them. Sometimes, I even hear voices. I didn't go to my prom because some voice kept telling me about the things that would happen if I did."

"Ah, that's normal as well," Siris said. "Not all monsters are like the hellhound. Some are more internal and like to feed on despair. What you need is someone you can talk to. Someone who makes sure you aren't going through this journey alone."

Her muscles eased. "I guess that makes sense."

"Cool!" the cat said.

Marissa pressed her lips together. If mastering magic also meant mastering herself, she couldn't waste any time starting with it. There was no way she could pursue her dreams without building the confidence for it.

A white line of energy tethered their souls as she looked Siris in the eye. The power built up gradually to the point that it felt like diving deeper and deeper into water. It reached a point where her head threatened to implode from all the pressure building up around her if she didn't stay calm.

Ribbons of power engulfed her as her soul left her body. She spiraled through an airless void, past suns and stars and moons, and past worlds Siris claimed to exist in the Otherworld. Past realms that reminded her of Asgard, Elysium, the Underworld, and possibly several realms from myths she wasn't familiar with.

Before she could say his name, before the bond could be complete, Siris jumped from his place. He started at the oak tree's roots with twitching ears. All those hears raised on his back made him look like how Marissa felt when she confused that rottweiler for a hellhound.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "A barghest?"

"Worse," he said. "A fairy."

Probably not one as nice as Tinkerbell. "Where?"

"You can't see her. She's hidden under a glamour, but she has a mortal with her."

Marissa shifted on her feet. "How do we see her through this glamour?"

"We don't. Search for iron and run!"

Marissa crossed her arms. "What about the gate?"

"I didn't know it had a guardian! Now, for your own sake, run!"

When Marissa turned back to the trail, she noticed to her horror that the park-goers were gone. No mothers with strollers, no joggers running with their dogs, no-one.

Even the swings in the playground, the fountain near the hill, and the monuments were not the same anymore. These man-made structures had flowers and vines growing over them as if nature itself claimed them back.

Worst of all, Siris was nowhere to be seen.

When she looked back to the oak tree, she didn't see the white cat anymore. Instead, she saw two dancers jumping around in its rose-petal circle.

A young woman was leading the dance. Her hair was as green as the shoulderless garden-leaf garments she wore while her face possessed an uncanny, mirror-like symmetry.

It was creepily perfect, just like her dance. She whirled around so gracefully that she could dodge bullets with her movements.

Her dance partner couldn't match her stamina or her confindence. His profile matched this Simon Isa had descibed. He was a black guy in a white shirt with a tall and skinny frame, although with his limp and livid gait, he was barely on eye-level with the fairy. A backward-facing baseball cap covered his short-cropped hair. He danced over the meadows in running shoes and sagging pants while the expression on his face was that of a held-back scream.

Marissa had to help him.

But first, she needed to help herself.

The rose-petal circle they danced in matched the fairy ring Siris had been searching for. It was invisible under its glamour and Marissa must have accidentally stepped into it when she tried to walk down.

If this was true, she had just been sent into the Otherworld, and the other dancer, the female one, must have been the fairy Siris was scared of.

And the fairy noticed the intruder to her realm.

With a single wink of her eye, she summoned a gale of rose petals. The storm drew Marissa closer to the circle the way a tornado drew objects to its funnel.

She felt a well of energy, intermediate between the Otherworld and the mortal realm, geometrically contained within the circle of petals they danced in.

Once she entered the circle just outside of the two, she was trapped. Power swirled around the ring like a fiery blue wisp that ensured people could enter, but not leave.

The hill she had been standing on flattened. Instead of standing in the park, she was standing on a flat plane of daisies, tulips, grass, and daffodils. Roses blossomed with petals in pink, purple, and lavender each several shades crispier than the petals that composed the ring. There was a buzzing of bees to be heard and the heat of summer to be felt. Behind the cotton clouds, the burning sun gleamed and cranked up the heat by several dozens of degrees.

Marissa's legs started moving as if her feet possessed a will separate from her brain. There wasn't any music, just the song of the meadows whispering her to move.

Hands snatched her wrists left and forced her to join the eternal dance between the fairy girl and Simon.

The fairy laughed as she leaned backward, almost falling. She made Marissa and Simon whirl round and round and round with joined hands and smiles on their faces.

"Stop this!" Marissa yelled. "We don't want this!"

The fairy girl replied something in an Old Celtic language. Never mind, she didn't understand English. Did she at least understand that what she was doing was hurtful to mortals? Was she oblivious or was she as much of a monster as the hellhound?

Marissa couldn't pull her hands free, no matter how much she wanted. The fairy girl had thin arms, but her demure figure packed greater strength than her dainty body suggested.

Marissa felt like she had lost control over herself. She had entered a world where her body wasn't hers to command, but where it followed the commands of forces beyond her comprehension. Like a dream where she tried to run away from the monster, only to stay in place no matter how fast she moved her legs.

If Siris only was here. That idiot lured her here and she was dumb enough to follow.

He wanted to close the gate and, no matter if he wanted or not, he led her in it rather than out of it.

And he didn't even have the balls to follow her. No white cat in sight in this maddeningly beautiful landscape.

Nor were there any sticks she could grab near the tulips nor any pointed rocks in the grass. The only tool she saw that could even remotely function as an improvised weapon was a glint of rust that peeked out of the daffodils.

Every monster had a bane of some sort. Against the hellhound, it had been running water and against the fairy, she didn't even have to guess what it was. Siris had told her the answer. Cold iron.

She had to pull through now. She hadn't come here because Siris forced her to, she came here because she wanted to.

And the whole reason she gave him a chance at all was that someone had to take care of those monsters.

She couldn't wait any longer with the bond now.

Her lungs ached as much as her legs did from the neverending dance. She drew in the warm summer air as hard as she could before she shouted what had to be said. "Siris! Siris! Siris!"

The white cat appeared amidst a swarm of bees, his fur fragrant. He noticed the daffodils his master's nose pointed at.

He poked his head between the flowers and pulled out a necklace with a pendant that ancient cultures used as good luck charms: An upward-hanging horseshoe forged of pure iron.

Siris wasted no time. He arrived with the thread in his mouth and swung the necklace until the horseshoe's cold iron hit the fairy girl's skin.

Fairy girl screamed.

Marissa, who stopped dancing in the same instant as Simon, freed her wrists and pulled at the fairy girl's green hair.

Revenge was a dish best-served summer-warm.

The landscape changed from a flower field to a forest. The temperature drop suggested that they had returned to the mortal realm again. At least, the heat lay within the range Marissa remembered from the last days she spent in this town.

She recognized the forests of Summer Hill when she saw them. It lay in a very wooden area of the Hudson Valley, one far more rural than the densely-populated and highly industrialized city she had grown up in. Had she climbed on a hill, it would have taken her very long to spot the first radio tower or church steeple behind all these hardwood oak and pine trees.

But why were they here instead of in the park? And why was the sun already setting? Wasn't it still early in the afternoon when she went to the park?

"Siris," Marissa asked. "We're still in Summer Hill, aren't we?"

Siris rubbed the dirt out of his fur. He wasn't intangible anymore. With the bond between him and his master forged, he was as solid in the mortal realm as in the Otherworld. "Time and space are weird things in the Otherworld. Hours passed in the mortal world while you danced for minutes and the gate brought you to a different place from where you entered."

To be fair, her muscles felt like the dance took hours. Her legs ached from all the jumping and her body shivered from the sudden drop in temperature she experienced.

This Simon, who followed her here, looked similarly weary. He stood hunched like a zombie and, although the light had returned to his eyes, those tired bags suggested he could use a good night of sleep.

He wasn't bothered by suddenly being in a forest. His first reaction after "waking up" had not been to call for help, but to look for the horseshoe.

Oh.

That was his.

Were monster-weaknesses widely known in this town? That was, of course, assuming that he was just a normal townsman and not a practitioner or someone affiliated with them.

Simon picked the horseshoe up and looked at her. "Who are you?" he asked.