When he got home there was a new basket, this time sitting in front of his apartment door. It was as rustic as the last one and lined with moss. Nestled inside were several dozen small beeswax candles that looked handmade and were the perfect fit for his Hanukkah menorah.

  By now he was too confused to question anything. He carried his gift inside and set it on the kitchen table. And then, as if drawn by an invisible fishing line, he walked to the living room window and gazed outside. The rain had apparently stopped, and the moon had broken through the clouds to light the backyard in a soft glow, increased somewhat by the reflective nature of the widespread snow.

  But that was impossible. The snow had melted hours ago all over town, including in front of the house. Yet the back was still carpeted in white—and the snowman remained intact, its berry smile aimed up at him.

  Believe impossible things. That had been Zeke’s advice the previous day. It was difficult advice for Ash to take, but he’d recently been bombarded with so many oddities and curveballs that his usual resistance was crumbling.

  “All right,” he whispered to himself. “I’ll believe that our backyard has its own specific microclimate. I’ll believe that the woods are… I dunno. Magic. And I’ve stumbled on the most perfect café in all of Portland, and I have a secret admirer who leaves me gifts. And while I’m at it, I’ll believe that I’ll stop being too scared to try to date someone new, and Zeke is going to be just fine, and somehow he and Troy won’t have to sell the back of the property, and… and we’re all going to be happy.” He took a great, shuddery breath.

  “Good. I believe those things too.”

  Ash spun around so fast that he almost fell.

  And there was the man from Fred Meyer, standing in Ash’s living room.

  Five

  UPON DISCOVERING an intruder in one’s apartment, there are several reasonable reactions. Yelling, for example. Telling him to get the hell out. Pulling your phone from your pocket and calling 911. Stomping on the floor and hoping the people downstairs hear it and come to back you up. Grabbing something heavy to use as a weapon. Trying to run past him and get outside.

  Ash did none of these things.

  Instead, he stood frozen and gaping.

  “I’m sorry,” said the man. He wore the same sweater as last time and his curls remained an unruly halo, but now his feet were bare. His shoulders were slightly hunched, his expression wincing, as if he expected a blow.

  Which well he might, under the circumstances. But Ash simply took a few steadying breaths and made an unnecessary announcement. “You’re in my apartment.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I wanted…. I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

  Ash surprised himself by scurrying over to block the man’s exit. “Who are you?” Except even as he asked the question, he knew the answer.

  “Clay—”

  “Clay Tonia.”

  The man rewarded Ash with a bright smile. “Yes! You were expecting me?”

  “Not… not exactly. Some people mentioned you. Mahonia. Um, Sam someone.”

  Clay nodded. “Sam Bucus. I hope they were nice to you. I’m sorry you had to deal with them, but the band has rules, and I wanted….” He closed his mouth, tucking in his lips as if to keep words from escaping. He tugged nervously at the hem of his sweater.

  He looked so sweet and uncertain and plain old adorable that Ash wanted to draw him into a hug. Which wasn’t the normal response when a mysterious stranger made an unannounced appearance in your home.

  “This is what I get for believing in the impossible.”

  Ash was talking to himself, but Clay nodded eagerly. “Exactly! When humans believe in the impossible, their eyes are opened to all sorts of wonderful things. They see the world’s beautiful secrets.”

  “Like giant beetles and snow that should melt but doesn’t?”

  It looked as if Clay was going to answer, but Ash suddenly felt dizzy, like maybe there wasn’t enough air in the room. If he were a drinking man, it would have been time to pull out a bottle of whiskey. As it was, he had no booze at all in the apartment. His alcohol consumption was generally confined to Passover wine and a rare bottle of beer. But the situation certainly called for something calming.

  “Do you want some tea?”

  “You’re not chasing me away?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I can be very dangerous, you know. But not to you. Never to you.”

  Unsure why he found this statement comforting instead of creepy, Ash led the way to the kitchen, where Clay watched him put some water to boil.

  “Electric kettle,” Ash said. “One of the few appliances I kept after my recent breakup. Silas never saw the point of it. ‘You can just heat the water in the microwave.’ Heathen.”

  “Silas was your lover.”

  Ash measured Assam into the infuser. “He dumped me.”

  “He must be a very stupid man.”

  “No, he moved up. His new boyfriend’s way hotter than me.”

  “You are beautiful. Your heart glows so bright I can barely look at you. Anyone who can’t see your worth doesn’t deserve you.”

  Again, that should have been unsettling to hear from a stranger—an intruder—but Ash blushed as he poured water into the teapot. He gathered a pair of teacups and carried everything over to the table, where he waved Clay into the chair opposite his own. Waiting for the tea to steep, they stared at each other. Clay’s gaze was as frank as a small child’s, but his eyes looked ageless and clever and eerie.

  “Have you been leaving gifts for me?” Ash asked after a while.

  “Yes. They’re not much, I know that. Nothing like the nice things—”

  “I like them.”

  Clay let out a noisy sigh. “Thank you. I made them for you, but I wasn’t sure what you’d think of them. They’re not fancy or expensive.”

  “I’m not a fancy or expensive kind of guy. As you can see from my home. Clay, who are you? What do you want from me? What’s going on?” That came out more plaintive than he’d intended.

  Instead of answering, Clay filled both of their teacups and took an appreciative sniff of the steam. He had long, fine fingers, like a pianist. That made Ash self-conscious about his own, which were blunt, the nails gnawed ragged because he’d never managed to break that bad habit.

  “What do you dream of?” Clay finally asked.

  Which didn’t answer any of Ash’s questions, but oh well. “Do you mean literal while-I’m-sleeping dreams or metaphorical aspirational dreams?”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “Of course. One is what you want, and the other is… oh. Maybe what your subconscious wants.” Thank you, Dr. Freud.

  Clay smiled enigmatically and took a sip of tea. If he burned his tongue, his expression didn’t show it.

  “I guess a lot of my dreams are already fulfilled,” Ash said after some consideration. “A good job where I can help people and also pay my bills. A nice place to live. Family. Friends.”

  “All very precious things. What don’t you have?” Clay leaned forward as if he didn’t want to miss a word.

  An honest answer felt awkward, but this situation was already extremely strange. “A beloved. And I want my friends to be healthy and not to have to worry about money. How about you?”

  That produced a wide smile, as if Clay was delighted to be asked. “Much the same as you. I have a home, family, and friends. A job, money… those are of no use to me. But someone to belong to… that’s what I dream of.”

  The silence between them felt heavy as Ash tried to find the right words. Maybe there were no right words. Somehow his life had recently taken a sharp swerve into weird, and it felt as if he hadn’t had his footing since. The thing was, he wasn’t entirely scared by all of this, even though he probably should have been. It felt more like strapping himself into a roller coaster: his heart racing, his head spinning… just waiting for the terror and exhilaration of the ride.

  “Are you stalking me?” Ash kept his voice neutral—curious, not accusing.

  Clay winced. “If you tell me to, I’ll leave. I won’t come near you again.”

  Strange as it was, a pang hit Ash at the idea of never again seeing Clay. “I’m not asking for that. At least not now. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. Can you help me out? Please?”

  After a brief pause, Clay stood, walked around the table, and crouched next to Ash. “I’m sorry. I’ve never done this before, and my people… we’re quite different from yours. I saw you and you were so beautiful! Don’t make that face. I told you: your heart glows. I could tell that from far away. I wanted to get to know you, but, well, it’s very complicated. And I had to get permission from my band.”

  “We’re not talking the musical kind of band, are we?”

  Clay chuckled. “No, although some of us play instruments and I sing rather well. My clan, my kinfolk. And while I waited for them, I left a few small gifts because I wanted to make you happy.”

  “What about that thing at Fred Meyer?”

  “Oh.” Clay looked embarrassed. “I wasn’t supposed to do that. But I wanted to speak with you, even just a few words, and I thought it would be harmless enough. Anyway, it was fun to visit a grocery store.” He said grocery store as if it were somewhere exotic. “Are you angry with me?”

  “No. I’m just thoroughly confused.”

  Clay stood and set a gentle hand on Ash’s shoulder, which felt very nice. “Let’s finish our tea, and then I’ll… I’ll show you.”

  FINISHING THE tea took longer than usual, mostly because Ash answered a lot of questions. After asking permission, Clay wandered the apartment, teacup in hand, investigating various items. He wanted to know about the lumpy clay figure—which might have been a cat, or maybe a hippo—that one of Ash’s nephews had made for him. He interrogated Ash about the battered titles on his bookshelf, the family photos on the walls, and the rainbow-hued afghan Ash’s mother had crocheted for him not long before she died. None of these things would have held value to anyone but Ash, but Clay exclaimed over them as if they were the most precious treasures.

  Ash felt a bit as if he was the subject of an anthropological study, but it wasn’t an unpleasant experience. Besides, it gave him the chance to catalog Clay’s voice and mannerisms and watch the way his peculiar eyes sparkled when he was intrigued by something. And anyway, nobody had ever been that interested in Ash, who wasn’t an especially fascinating person.

  It occurred to him that maybe Clay was simply collecting information so he could pull off a complicated scam. But Ash didn’t really believe that.

  It was late by the time the teapot was empty, and by then Ash and Clay had also polished off most of the potato chips and all of the frosted mini donuts. It was, in fact, past Ash’s bedtime—he had to work in the morning—but he felt energized rather than sleepy. He put the teacups in the sink and turned to look at Clay. “I’m ready for that explanation now.”

  “All right. But you have to understand that this is very rare. Your people almost never see where we live.”

  “My people? You mean Jews?” Clay wasn’t anti-Semitic, was he?

  Clay looked puzzled for a moment before bursting into laughter. “No, that wasn’t what I meant.”

  That was a relief. “I don’t have a car. Will you drive us, or do we need to call a Lyft?”

  “We’ll walk.”

  This only added to the layers of mystery—which, Ash realized, he could solve by getting his butt in gear. He donned the new scarf, which obviously pleased Clay. He then slipped into his coat and laced on his boots. He didn’t comment on Clay’s bare feet. Or on the fact that Clay’s sweater, warm as it looked, wasn’t really enough for a December night.

  When they got outside, they paused for a moment on the front porch. Ash noted that the rain had stopped and the moon was out and that he felt a little giddy, as if he were going on an adventure. His head spun even more when Clay took his hand.

  “Is this all right?” Clay asked.

  “Yes, it is.” Ash felt a little flutter in his chest at the soft, warm feel of Clay’s skin.

  After descending the porch steps, Ash expected they would take the sidewalk. Instead, with a gentle tug, Clay took him onto the stone pathway that led around the corner of the house and to the side gate. From there they entered the backyard, where the snow sparkled in the moonlight like a field of diamonds. The jaunty snowman seemed to greet them as they passed, even waving his arm a bit. But surely that must have been a stray breeze catching the twig.

  Ash was somehow unsurprised that Clay was taking him toward the woods.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be quite safe since you’re my guest,” Clay assured him. “And because my band has approved you. But do stay close to me, please. And don’t eat or drink anything that might be offered.”

  “Why? Would it make me grow big or small, like Alice?” Because Ash was absolutely identifying with her tonight.

  Clay only laughed in response.

  It was pleasant to hear their feet crunching in tandem through the snow, and Clay didn’t seem bothered that his were bare. All other sounds were hushed. No car engines, no music wafting on the night air, no drifting conversations. Portland and the rest of the world felt very distant.

  “There may be nettles,” Clay warned as they reached the trees. “Watch out for them.”

  “In December?” Although now that Ash was close to the woods, he noticed how green everything was. Not just the fir trees and the moss, but the ferns and other varieties of undergrowth he didn’t know the name of. There was no snow here, and no path that he could discern, but Clay moved confidently onward and Ash, still holding his hand, found the way opening before them.

  Ash shouldn’t have been able to see much of anything once the tree branches closed above them, blocking the moon. Yet he could make out everything in sharp detail, and when flowers began to appear along the ground, their colors were as vibrant as if it were a summer afternoon. Lush vines snaked around tree trunks, their leaves Day-Glo green and yellow. A creature darted by, startling Ash, who caught only a glimpse. He would have sworn it was a cat-sized squirrel wearing a leather motorcycle jacket.

  “Clay? We’ve been walking a while.”

  “Just another ten or fifteen minutes to go.”

  “There’s no way Zeke and Troy’s property stretches that far back.” It was, after all, situated on a normal city block, and Clay knew for a fact that a street ran only a block behind the house. He’d walked down it many times, although a tall fence obscured the view of the back end of their lot.

  Clay stopped, let go of Ash’s hand, and put his hands on Ash’s shoulders. “Look around, Ash. Carefully.”

  Ash did.

  And there was no use denying it anymore. The place where they stood looked nothing like a stand of backyard trees in wintry Portland. It looked, actually, as though it were nowhere on Earth, with plants that Ash was certain didn’t appear in any field guides. There were no hookah-smoking caterpillars, but plenty of those oversize beetles trundled around, and giant bees buzzed through air that smelled like cinnamon toast.

  “Wonderland?” Ash whispered. “Oz? Narnia? Middle Earth?”

  “My home.”

  “I don’t understand.” Although Ash was trying, he felt as if comprehension lurked just out of reach.

  “It’s like this.” Clay reached over and quickly yanked a strand of Ash’s hair from his scalp.

  “Ow!”

  “Hang on.” Now Clay pulled out one of his own hairs, and he set both of them on his open palm. They lay there for a moment, Ash’s wavy and reddish-brown, Clay’s curly and almost black. Then both strands grew in length and thickness until they resembled lengths of chunky yarn, which then twined loosely around each other.

  Clay gave an encouraging grin. “You see? They’re similar but different, and they’re separate, but in some places they touch. They connect. This is your world and mine. There are plenty of other worlds too, but they’re none of our business. Anyway, the little forest behind your house is one of those spots where our worlds meet up.”

  None of this was plausible, but Ash remembered that he’d pledged to believe the impossible today. “Are there a lot of those connections between our two worlds?”

  “No, they’re rare. Special. And honestly, your people are terrible at seeing them. But my world is smaller than yours, and my people are naturally pretty nosy, so we tend to cross over. Mostly just for brief visits, although occasionally one of us decides to settle on your side.”

  “Like Mahonia?”

  “Yes!” said Clay, as delighted as a parent whose child has proved himself a prodigy. “She’s lived on your side forever. It’s nice for us to have a bit of familiarity on your side when we visit.”

  The summer after Ash’s junior year in college, he and a couple of friends had spent a month wandering around Europe—traveling on trains, sleeping in hostels, listening to local music. And almost every city they visited from Athens to Zagreb had at least one Irish pub where expats gathered to drink Guinness and watch rugby on TV. Mahonia’s café was something like that, he supposed.

  “Where do you live?” Ash asked.

  “On my side. But I’ve been on yours a lot more often recently.” He flashed a smile.

  And it was finally time, Ash decided, for the real question. “Who are you?”

  Clay shrugged as if the answer had been obvious all along. And maybe it had.

  “I’m a fairy, of course.”

  Six

  “A FAIRY.” Ash took a few deep breaths. “I’m guessing you don’t mean that in the pejorative gay sense.”

  “No, although I am very attracted to males. Some of them, anyhow.” Clay fluttered his eyelashes.

  Ignoring the flirting was hard, but Ash soldiered on. “Like Tinker Bell?”

  “Sure.”

  “Aren’t fairies… tiny? With wings?”

  Clay shrugged. “Not those of us from this world. Perhaps fairy isn’t really the right word. We’ve been given a lot of different names by different groups of humans, and there are a lot of stories about us, only bits of which carry any truth. The name we have for ourselves translates roughly as the Fair Folk—yes, we tend to be vain—so fairy is close enough, I suppose.”