She looked irritated, and the sounds and the smells swept over him as the moment stretched. But then she softened. "I don't understand it, Alan," she said. "Is it true? Is it really how you say it is? Did I see what I saw?" "It's true," he said, and it was as though the clouds had parted, the world gone bright with the glare off the snow and the sounds from the playground now joyous instead of cruel. "It's true, and I don't understand it any more than you do, Marci." "Are you...*human*, Alan?" "I *think* so," he said. "I bleed. I eat. I sleep. I think and talk and dream." She squeezed his hands and darted a kiss at him. "You kiss," she said. And it was all right again. # The next day was Saturday, and Marci arranged to meet him at the cave-mouth. In the lee of the wind, the bright winter sun reflected enough heat off the snow that some of it melted away, revealing the stunted winter grass beneath. They sat on the dry snow and listened to the wind whistle through the pines and the hiss of loose snow blowing across the crust. "Will I get to meet your Da, then?" she said, after they'd watched a jackrabbit hop up the mountainside and disappear into the woods. He sniffed deeply, and smelled the coalface smell of his father's cogitation. "You want to?" he said. "I do." And so he led her inside the mountain, through the winter cave, and back and back to the pool in the mountain's heart. They crept along quietly, her fingers twined in his. "You have to put out the flashlight now," he said. "It'll scare the goblin." His voice shocked him, and her, he felt her startle. It was so quiet otherwise, just the sounds of breathing and of cave winds. So she let the whirring dynamo in the flashlight wind down, and the darkness descended on them. It was cool, but not cold, and the wind smelled more strongly of coalface than ever. "He's in there," Alan said. He heard the goblin scamper away. His words echoed over the pool around the corner. "Come on." Her fingers were very cool. They walked in a slow, measured step, like a king and queen of elfland going for a walk in the woods. He stopped them at the pool's edge. There was almost no light here, but Alan could make out the smooth surface of his father's pool. "Now what?" she whispered, the hissing of her words susurrating over the pool's surface. "We can only talk to him from the center," he whispered. "We have to wade in." "I can't go home with wet clothes," she whispered. "You don't wear clothes," he said. He let go of her hand and began to unzip his snowsuit. And so they stripped, there on his father's shore. She was luminous in the dark, a pale girl-shape picked out in the ripples of the pool, skinny, with her arms crossed in front of her chest. Even though he knew she couldn't see him, he was self-conscious in his nudity, and he stepped into the pool as soon as he was naked. "Wait," she said, sounding panicked. "Don't leave me!"