The girl’s name was Sally Edwards. She lived in the small town of North Platte, Nebraska, where her mother was a schoolteacher and her father was a truck driver. She was twelve years old, but—because she was so short and frail—she looked no more than ten. Unlike the few other children who were visiting the cemetery and running all around, Sally didn’t have an overabundance of youthful energy. She walked quietly with a slow, almost stately pace, her head slightly bowed.

The man’s name was Alan Edwards. He was tall and slender with thinning light brown hair, and he walked with a vigor that belied his true age. The most striking thing about him was his eyes, which shone like twin chips of blue ice. The tears that gathered in them from time to time as he surveyed the cemetery further enhanced the distant, dreamy effect.

It was late in the afternoon. A gentle breeze carried the damp, mulchy smell of growing things and made the leaves flutter like thousands of tiny green hands, waving a greeting. The distant sound of birdsong rang from the forest behind the chapel. Slanting bars of golden sunlight angled across the well-manicured lawn, lighting the arcing rows of white crosses with a near-supernatural yellow glow. The blue shadows of the crosses stretched fully twenty feet and more across the dark, emerald-green grass.

“It’s hard to imagine now, it’s so pretty, but there was a battle here a long time ago,” Alan said, his voice as distant and dreamy as the look in his eyes.

He reached out and took Sally by the hand as they walked out behind the chapel. For someone only twelve years old, Sally showed a remarkable level of maturity. Maybe it was because of what she’d had to deal with already in her short life. She didn’t fidget as Alan, whom she called “Grampy,” stood there for a long time, staring at the woods that bordered the cemetery.

“American soldiers who fought here and who sleep in unknown graves.”

Alan flinched as he repeated the inscription on the memorial. He had visited here enough times over the years so every word on every plaque was seared into his soul, but like a litany, he repeated these words softly to himself every time he was here.

Until this trip, he had always come alone. This was the first time he had brought Sally or anyone else with him. He had his reasons for being here with her, and they may have accounted for the tears in his eyes as much if not more than the memorial to the American Marines and Army soldiers who had died here more than ninety years ago.

“Can we go back to the hotel soon?” Sally asked as she cast a worried glance at the darkening sky above the trees. “I’m kinda afraid of the dark.” When she looked up at Alan and saw the tears gathering in his eyes, she asked, “Why are you crying, Grampy?”

“It’s just . . .” Alan sniffed as he wiped away his tears with the cuff of his jacket. Even though the day had been warm, the evening brought a chill. He shivered. “A lot of men—on both sides—died here needlessly.”

“Is that why you’re so sad?”

“Partly, yes,” he answered.

“Did you know anyone who died here?”

For a long time, Alan didn’t answer her as he scanned the darkening woods. The shadows under the trees were as black as a wash of ink, but even so, he thought he could see figures flitting about in the deepest shadows. With twilight, maybe they would come out.

“Yes, I did,” he replied. “Back then, it wasn’t beautiful like this. A lot of the trees were blasted by artillery shells, stripped of their leaves and branches, just stumps, and there were craters and trenches and fox-holes and barbed wire . . . death and destruction everywhere you looked.”

“And fighting,” Sally said with a far-off luster in her eyes. “Why were they fighting, Grampy?”

Alan started to answer but caught himself and sighed. “For the same reason men have always fought, Sweetie . . . because some of them had what the others wanted.”

Sally nodded and turned to follow his gaze out past the curving rows of crosses to the trees.

“It was terrible . . . absolutely terrible,” Alan whispered with a shudder. “Truly, it was hell on earth.”

He was grateful Sally couldn’t see what was in his mind. As he stared across the cemetery to the woods, he superimposed over the view the churned-up mud, the chaos, the carnage that had surrounded him and the men in his unit of the AEF, the Sixth Brigade of the US Marines. He could still feel and hear and smell the war—the sticky mud, the reeking bodies that had been blown apart and left to rot, the smoke and exhaust that burned eyes and throats and lungs.

“It’s hard to imagine this is even the same place,” he said, but as he looked over the treetops to the slumped hill in the distance, he knew exactly where he was.

Back then, during the battle, that hill had been called Hill 193. Only much later, once the war was over and his wounds healed completely, did he learn the hill’s real name—Belleau Torcy Hill. It was less than a mile away from the forest, and even with the sun setting and Sally’s desire to get back to their hotel, he knew they had to go there.

Today.

“Grampy . . . ?” Sally said, her voice edged with real fear as she pointed off to one side. “Is there—? I thought I saw something in the woods over there.” She sucked in a shallow breath, which clicked audibly in her throat. The glow of the setting sun colored her face, giving her skin an uncharacteristically healthy glow. “Are there ghosts here?”

“No, Sweetie. There are no ghosts. You don’t have anything to worry about. Trust me.”

Sally nodded, but when Alan looked in the direction she had indicated, he also saw something flitting in and out of sight. However, he knew what—or who— it was. They were the reason he and Sally had come here.

“We called it going ‘over the top,’ ” Alan said in a voice heavy with melancholy. Sally’s grip on his hand tightened, but she was captivated by his mood and remained silent. Just like the words on the memorials, what had happened here in the summer of 1918 was seared into his heart and mind.

“We’d line up in the trenches, the stinking, muddy water halfway up to our knees, soaking our feet. The dead were lying all around us, and when the commander blew his whistle, we would clamber up over the top and run straight into the enemy machine-gun fire. Once we were in the forest, we couldn’t see where they were until they started cutting us down with machine guns.”

Staring blankly at the forest as he spoke, it didn’t strike him at all odd that the darker it got, the keener his eyesight became. The figures moving about in the woods appeared more clear now. He wanted to tell Sally more about them and why they were here, but he wasn’t ready to. Not yet. She had to understand about the war and what had happened to him, first.

As dusk came, the last few stragglers were leaving the cemetery. The gates closed at five o’clock, but Alan was prepared. He had parked the rental car far down the road, and he and Sally had walked up to the cemetery late in the afternoon.

“There were explosions everywhere . . . bullets whistling over our heads . . . men groaning as they fell, and screaming and crying as they died.” He shivered as he looked at Sally, tears blurring his vision. “We were trying to get to that hill over there.” He pointed toward Hill 193. “But I never made it.” Kneeling down in front of her, he held Sally by both arms and looked deeply into her eyes. “Here in the woods is where I died.”

For a moment, Sally’s eyes widened with shock. A tiny exhalation escaped her as she stared back at him, and an expression of worry washed over her face. Alan knew she loved him as much as he loved her, and he knew she had to understand that she could trust him with her life because that was exactly what he was going to demand.

“The fighting lasted for three full weeks,” he went on. “It was the first time, really, that Americans experienced the kind of trench warfare the French and English had been fighting for four years.” He took a deep breath to steady his nerves. “It was a terrible slaughter on both sides, and as we pushed toward that hill, a bullet hit me. Here.”

Reaching up to his neck, he hooked the collar of his shirt with his forefinger and pulled it down to reveal a thick tangle of white scar tissue on his throat. It looked like a miniature range of snow-covered mountains that wound from behind his left ear to just below his Adam’s apple.

“What do you mean you died, Grampy? You’re still alive.”

She looked at him, her eyes glistening wetly in the gathering darkness. He hated himself for scaring her like this, but she had to know. She had to understand.

“No, Sweetie,” he said, lowering his voice even though he knew those figures lurking in the woods could hear him clearly, no matter how softly he spoke. “I died that day more than ninety years ago. And I would have stayed dead if not for . . . them.”

Saying that, he nodded toward the woods where the figures appeared to be moving slowly forward, becoming more discernible in the gathering twilight. Their silhouettes stood out in sharp relief against the black backdrop of the forest, but even so, it was difficult to focus on any one figure for more than a second or two. They flitted and vanished out of sight, only to reappear as soon as he looked away.

“They’re here to help . . . I hope,” Alan said, and he gave Sally a bracing shake. “Come with me.”

With that, he stood up and, hand in hand, they walked down the gentle slope toward the woods.

“Pardonnez moi, monsieur,” a voice suddenly called out from behind.

Alan looked over his shoulder and saw the cemetery guide standing in the doorway at the back of the chapel. He was waving his arm at them.

“We are closing soon,” he called, his voice thick with his French accent.

Alan turned away and started walking more briskly toward the fringe of forest.

“Monseiur, arretez, s’il vous plait!”

“Grampy. He sounds mad. Will we get arrested?” Sally asked.

But Alan didn’t answer her or the guide as he strode across the neatly trimmed grass toward the woods and the figures waiting for them there.

“I never knew what hit me,” he said breathlessly as he practically dragged Sally along with him. Memories of what had happened that day were coming back with frightening intensity. “One second I was running. The next—Nothing . . . Darkness . . . And terrible pain. I have a vague memory of looking up at the sky. It was thick with gun smoke and shrapnel, and I saw flying things that looked like dragons and griffins, not airplanes. I thought I must be imagining it. When I tried to call out for a medic, my throat felt like it was on fire. The only sound I could make was a thick bubbling sound whenever I took a breath. And then . . . then I saw . . . someone.”

They were halfway between the chapel and the forest now when Alan stopped short. Kneeling down again, he shuddered as he hugged Sally tightly to his chest and sobbed.

“I was sure I was dead,” he said. “I knew I must be because even though I could see our own soldiers and medics rushing around the field, checking the dead and wounded, this person leaning over me—if it even was a person—certainly wasn’t a soldier or medic . . . It was—”

His hand was shaking as he pointed to the woods where now more than a dozen figures were flitting back and forth in the shadows. He never got a good look at any one of them, but he could feel them watching both of them.

“It was one of . . . them.”

Sally’s eyes widened as she looked from her grampy to the woods.

“I thought the one leaning over me was an angel who’d come to carry me off to heaven,” Alan continued. “He had long, flowing white hair that framed his pale face, and his eyes . . . his eyes were large ovals, and the light in them was . . . was indescribable. I rolled my head to one side and saw several others, moving about the battlefield as if . . . as if they were medics, checking on the dead and wounded. And then this one picked me up. It was like my body didn’t weigh a thing. I was as light as a feather to him. And he carried me off the battlefield.”

“Where did he take you?” Sally asked, her eyes wide with equal amounts of fascination and fear.

Alan was silent for a moment as he stared into the distance. He wasn’t sure how many of them were there in the woods now because he was remembering what he had seen that day more than ninety years ago.

“He took me into the woods. As we went, I saw more and more of them . . . hundreds, and then thousands—an entire army. Their weapons gleamed even in the deepest shadows under the trees, and they had banners and pennants, but I was in too much pain to see or think clearly.”

He paused for a moment and looked at the figures in the darkening woods. Resting one hand on her shoulder, he looked down at Sally. Her gaze darted back and forth as she scanned the trees, and then looked back at him.

“There was an army of them, moving through the forest,” he said. “They didn’t look like they were heading off to war. I had the impression they were coming back from a battle of their own, but I couldn’t tell if they had won or lost. Our own soldiers were running right through their ranks as if they couldn’t even see them or me. I was the only one who could see them.” Alan paused as an icy shiver ran up his back. “But you can see them now, can’t you, Sweetie?”

Biting her lower lip and making a funny sound in the back of her throat, Sally nodded. She reached up and grabbed his hand. Her grip was cold in his, so he gently rubbed her hand to warm it.

“Their hair and clothes look all silvery and misty,” Sally said. She was silent for a moment as she craned her head forward, studying the elusive figures. “But you’re right. They’re not ghosts, and they’re not scary.”

“No, they’re not,” Alan said breathlessly as a strong sense of relief washed over him. “And they wouldn’t let you see them if they weren’t willing to help.”

Alan’s knees popped as he stood up and started walking again toward the forest with Sally close beside him.

“They have different names,” he said, “depending on which country—which human country they’re in. The English have my favorite name for them. They call them ‘the Fair Folk.’ ”

“Do you mean fairies?” Sally said.

“Yes. That’s another name for them—fairies and elves, and some people call the land they live in the ‘Land of Faery.’ There are so many names for them, and they live in so many places, but most cultures agree that where they live is called ‘under the hill.’ That’s where they took me to be healed. Under the hill.”

“So you didn’t really die,” Sally said. “You were just hurt real bad.” Sally looked at Alan with a mixture of confusion and fear and . . . was that hope he saw in her eyes? He certainly hoped so.

“They were checking all of the men who had been wounded and killed that day, going from person to person, and then they picked me up and carried me off with them.” His voice caught, and the memory filled him with deep melancholy. “They took me under the hill where they healed me.”

“And you—?” Sally started to say, but they were close to the forest now, less than ten feet away, and Alan drew to a halt. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder, expecting to see the guide rushing down the hill to escort them to the exit, but the man was nowhere to be seen. Alan was sure the fair folk were using their “glamour” to hide him and Sally as well as themselves from the man.

“If that’s true,” Sally said, “if this all happened almost a hundred years ago, that means you must be—”

“I was born in 1886, in St. Louis, Missouri,” Alan said, “so that makes me one hundred and nineteen years old.”

“Are you kidding?” Sally asked, giving him a sly, skeptical look. “No one lives that long.”

“Well, you see . . . when I left them, when I came out from under the hill after they healed me, I realized I had been there for many, many years.”

“Why did they save you and not all those other men who were hurt?” Sally asked. Her face was as pale as paper in the gathering gloom. Her eyes shone like two sparkling stars.

“I don’t know,” Alan said. “I asked them many times, but I never got a straight answer from any of them. They don’t really explain themselves. It had something to do with what they called my ‘birthright,’ but no one ever explained that to me. As far as I could tell, I had been there only one night . . . maybe a day and a night . . . so you can imagine my surprise when I got out and discovered that forty years had gone by in the real world. The incredible thing was, I hadn’t aged more than a day.”

“Like Rip van Winkle,” Sally said, “except he was asleep for only twenty years. And he got all old and stuff.”

“That’s right. Like Rip van Winkle. I don’t really know how else to explain it. I guess it’s . . . magic.”

Alan and Sally were silent as they stared at the figures in the woods who seemed to have stopped moving, but even so, Alan found it difficult to look at any one of them for very long. In the blink of an eye, a figure would fade out of sight and then reappear someplace else. Their eyes glowed in the deepening gloom. Their hair, like fine-spun silver threads, wafted like gossamer on the slightest breeze. After a long silence, one of the figures raised a hand as if in greeting and beckoned Alan and Sally forward.

Sally held back, her hand squeezing her grampy’s hand tightly.

“Is that why you’ve come back here?” she asked, her voice laced with fear. “Is it time for you to die, and you’re going with them?”

Alan looked at her, emotion catching in his throat making it impossible to speak.

“I don’t want you to die, Grampy. I love you,” she said.

Tears spilled down her cheeks, glistening like quick-silver in the darkness as she clung to him. Her pale face, floating in the deepening darkness like a tiny moon, seemed almost as translucent and insubstantial as the faces of the figures in the woods.

“No. I’m not going to die,” Alan said, gently touching her cheek with his fingertips and feeling the coolness of her skin. “Not for a very long time, anyway, but I wanted you to—”

His heart was breaking as he considered what he was about to tell her, but he had no choice. Pulling her close to him, he was terribly conscious of her frail, trembling body.

“You know the . . . the blood disease you have . . .” he said, almost choking on every word.

“Uh-huh,” Sally said with a sharp nod. In an instant, her eyes seemed to cloud up, and her expression froze.

“And you know what the doctors have done . . . or tried to do.”

The tears in his eyes made everything appear dim and hazy. Even the tiniest hint of light from the night sky shattered into a dazzling rainbow of brilliant colors. The forest was absolutely silent with not even a hint of breeze or birdsong.

“They’re all trying to make me get better,” Sally said, but even as she said it, Alan could hear the note of resignation in her voice. She knew—even if not consciously—that there was no hope left.

“The doctors have done everything they can,” Alan said. “And now I want to see if these . . . if my friends can help you.”

Sally looked at him with a startled expression on her face.

“You mean you want me to go with them?”

Alan nodded slowly, and as he did so, he took her hand as if to guide her forward into the woods. A soft, murmuring sound that sounded vaguely like voices came from the darkness.

“How long will I be gone?” Sally asked, her eyes widening with fear and confusion.

“It will only be for one night,” Alan said mildly.

“But I don’t want to leave you, Grampy,” she said, crying now, her whole body trembling. “What if it’s like when you went under the hill? What if I’m away for forty years?”

“You’ll get better,” Alan said, and even as he said it, he tried his best to believe he was telling her the truth. “No matter how long you’re with them, it’s better than . . . better than . . .” but he stopped himself, unable to finish the thought.

Sally looked from her grampy to the motionless figures in the woods. The low sound of voices continued as one of the figures closest to them shifted forward and held a frail, white hand out to them . . . to her.

Sally looked up at Alan, tears streaming down her face.

“But if I go . . . if I stay with them for forty years . . . you won’t live that long. You won’t be here when I come back.”

The desperate pleading in her voice pierced his heart. It tore him up to think that he was looking at his precious great-great-granddaughter for the last time.

“Why can’t you come with me, Grampy?” she wailed. “You said they’re your friends. You come, too. We’ll both be gone together.”

“I’m sorry, Sweetie,” Alan said, shaking his head, “but it just doesn’t work that way. I didn’t know until just now if they’d even let you go with them, but I see now that they will.”

“What about Mommy and Daddy . . . and Charlie, my goldfish? What if they’re all gone, too, when I come back?”

“It can’t be helped,” Alan said. “Last week, the doctors told your folks and me that there was nothing more they could do. If you don’t go now, you won’t live more than six months.”

“But I’d rather live six months with you than forty years or the whole rest of my life without you, Grampy! Please! . . . Please don’t make me go!”

Even as she said this, the figure closest to them stepped out of the forest and reached out to take Sally’s hand. The instant their hands touched, she fell silent. The fear on her face melted away as she turned and looked at the figure.

Before leaving, the figure regarded Alan with a look of unfathomable sadness and compassion in his silvery eyes. Without thinking, Alan stood up straight, squared his shoulders, and stiffened his arm as he gave a snappy military salute. Like a soldier from one war recognizing a soldier from another, the figure clenched his right hand into a fist, raised it to his chest, and then solemnly bowed his head.

“You’ll wait for me, won’t you?” Sally called out as she stared moving off into the woods, still holding onto the hand of the mysterious figure.

“You know what I’ve always said, Sweetie. I’m going to live forever or else die trying.”

“Please,” Sally called out. “Please wait for me, Grampy. I’ll come back.”

With every word, her voice grew fainter and fainter until it was lost beneath the low sighing of the wind in the leaves. Numbed by sorrow, Alan stood where he was and sobbed, but he also was filled with a fresh sense of hope as the shadows blended into the darkness that now embraced the forest.

He had to believe that the fair folk who had tended him that day on the Belleau Woods battlefield in 1918 would save his great-great-granddaughter’s life now. And he hoped that, when she emerged from under the hill, no matter if it was days or months or even forty years from now, it would be a better world to which she returned. In spite of whatever wars, seen and unseen, were being fought, it would have to be a better world because she would be in it.