Roland came out into winter.

Which was wrong. It had been Indian summer when he went inside, hot and sweaty, muggy twilight humming with insects, and unless the place had borders in Fairy, which he didn’t altogether doubt, there was no possible way it could be winter. And yet. He shivered in the frosty air, bare black boughs all around him, spindly limbs uplifted as if imploring aid or mercy. Snow glimmered like icy diamonds against his dark hair, and he didn’t have on a coat.

Furthermore, this wasn’t the road up which he’d come to reach the inn, a different stand of trees entirely, now that he was looking about, and when he turned to glance behind him, there was nothing but open space, a white, snow-covered plain that met the gray-black horizon as if there were nothing but Roland and the dark, nothing more, naught but space and darkness and cold. For a moment he wondered if he was in hell, for this was much as he had always imagined it. He did not believe in the principal espoused by Sartre—hell is other people. No, hell is what you have made of your own life, the regrets that rattle inside your brain like a beggar with a tin cup.

And then, with a feeling like hot lead hitting his stomach, he knew. Roland recognized this place. Beyond the horizon, the road wound around the lake and then opened up to a long straightaway, and next, a hidden curve, unexpectedly sharp around this stand of trees. Any minute now, a Ford Rambler would come hurtling down that straightaway. Inside, two people basked in delight and seeming immortality, a love so sweet and perfect that poverty couldn’t touch it, and happiness so profound that it seemed deathless. Unbreakable. A beautiful young couple eating Ho-Hos, sweet and sticky on their fingers, and laughing because that was all they could afford for dinner, and it didn’t matter because they were drunk on each other, the liquor untouched. They were listening to Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door and living through each other’s eyes, not knowing that it was all going to end in thirty seconds.

And he was going to get to watch her die. Again. So yes. This must be hell.

Tears froze in his eyes, and the wind whipped him. He could feel his skin going numb and felt it only right that he should freeze without as he had within since the night she left him, since the night he saw the life leave her eyes. Roland believed—he knew—that there was such a thing as a soul because he had known the moment hers went away from him, a loss so profound that it killed the part of him she loved most, the poet who scrawled lines to her on the backs of cocktail napkins, on road maps and once, on the toilet paper roll in their tiny bathroom in the studio apartment they’d shared.

Lines came to him, he’d penned them on a scrap of paper upon her naked back, although he had never seen Dangerous Liaisons. That film had merely been an idea crumpled on someone else’s floor at the time he lay with Madeleine in a room that smelled of sex and love and warmth, of the incense she liked to burn, and the winter wind he let in to balance out the scent of cinnamon and patchouli. He’d written in a fevered fit, a quick and hasty scrawl that surged up out of him like an orgasm, for her, always for her. She gave life to his words as she had always given life to his soul.

He whispered them aloud, knowing she might even be close enough to hear as the car whipped by, sense him outside, and perhaps turn to the window, her lovely face puzzled and intrigued by the elsewhen echo of the Roland who loved her so desperately and lost her. And would watch her go away again. Hell is not other people. Hell is a dark and lonely road, watching your own mistakes, again.

He murmured to her:

''I dream of sunlit streams And broken tides. Of infinity Among dark rocks. I dream your quiet soul Of divinity That breaks like a wave Over me. And instead of drowning, You pull me in; I swim.''

The wind caught and carried his words, whipped and whispered among dark trees like a prayer. And the words went on, further than his voice should have carried them, a poem made arcane by despair larger than himself, a susurrus of space greater than the human heart should hold, emptiness beyond emptiness, and into that space, a summoning.

He came from between the winter trees like a ghost, barefoot in the snow, white jeans ripped on one knee. Even Roland who had no eye for male beauty, rarely had an eye for feminine beauty either anymore, knew there was something special in the fey, witchy lines of this man’s face, a shock of white hair, crystalline horns, and his eyes shone like sapphires in moonlight. As Roland gazed up, he saw the moon had broken from behind a cloudbank, a rare blue moon with a white corona, which intellectually he understood the causes for; there was science that explained it, except this wasn’t a night for science. There was magic instead, and he sensed it through the ghost of the poet who haunted him.

And the Rambler had not yet passed. It should have. Had not. And for the first time, he knew a hope so bright, so fierce; it burnt him from the inside out. It shone from his eyes and made his hands tremble at his sides so he fisted them and stared in silence at the one who’d come, not trusting his own voice.

“You called me,” the man said, although that was a small, frail word to encompass everything he was and carried with him: the heart of winter, cold winds blown from the sea, dust brought up from dying leaves, the intensity of impending snow.

“Did I?” Roland asked. “Who are you?”

He gave a small smile in answer, indulgent almost, as if confronted with a precocious child. “I’ve more names than you have mind to know. Forgotten more than you could imagine. But…the Prince of Perhaps will suffice, for now, for tonight. For our purposes.”

“Is this where we barter? Bargain her life for my soul?” And he didn’t care; he was willing. It didn’t matter. He was here in a place that might be hell, talking to someone who might be the devil from the old stories and he did not care.

“I can give her back to you. I will.” The other’s smile widened, elongated. Became sly and subtly mocking. “But anything, Roland? Bold words spoken where they hold weight. Are you certain?”

He swallowed hard, shaking, and not from cold. “Yes.” His voice sounded thick, even to his own ears. “I’m sure. No price is too high to have Madeleine back with me.”

“Then this is what I will have from you, Roland, poet-who-was: your firstborn son. I will take him away with me to the winter lands, never knowing your name.”

“Done,” he said, almost before the Prince finished speaking.

“I think you have not fully reckoned the loss,” the other returned, cold and grave. “And not merely to you. But the pact is made and my word is good. There was a man looking for you. Ian Hughes... a detective who has been sent to find the woman you followed. He will not find her, but you should be prepared for questions.”

For a moment, he couldn’t remember. And then: “Mrs. Winters.”

“Someone else entirely, who had lost her way, and forgotten the path back to the winter lands. Land Send has always been a place that pulls writers and poets, artists and dreamers and…other desperate souls in need.” The Prince did not elaborate on the type of need and Roland thought, perhaps, he did not really want to know.

“Don’t I…need to sign something?”

The Prince laughed softly. “Writ in blood, poet-who-was? Such things are not needed. Simply turn and walk back the way you came. Through those doors.”

Roland glanced behind him, ready to protest there was nothing but space…except he saw the winding path once more, the golden isle of light of the inn. The chill was gone in the air around him, but he still felt cold as he strode up the hill, his knee mended somehow, an accident that never happened? Not anymore. Not this time. His fingers went to his brow, an old nervous habit, and found the skin smooth. Clean. His heartbeat hurt his chest as he pushed through into Land’s End for the second time, carrying his suitcase.

And found her waiting for him.

Their name written in the registry. Guests, apparently, who came on an annual basis. She was older, a little careworn, but he would know those eyes anywhere, the tender green of sunlight shining through new foliage. There was a little sadness there, which had never gone away, cradle death of their only child, unexpected, inexplicable. And she had never been able to conceive again. He took in the ash blonde hair, cut to curl gently over her shoulders. And every inch of her Madeleine, the Madeleine he had lost.

“Roland?” she said questioningly as he ran to her. Ran, and scooped her into his arms and twirled her, and crushed her to him as if he hadn’t seen her for more than twenty years. “My goodness,” she added, laughing. “What’s gotten into you? Roland? You’re so very cold…”

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