Life’s lessons learned. Never have an affair with someone claiming to be the King of the Fairies.

Marilyn sat on the grass, the scattered toys all around her, eating a pale blue apple she’d picked on her last walk by the river. It must have been hours now, not that time was really the same under an orange sun that never set. She loved her daughter very much, but wished she was more ordinary. Ordinary children throw toys out of cots. Regina threw toys into the other world and was too young to understand that other people couldn’t pick them up again.

They usually turned up, eventually, but it sometimes took a few days. Regina seemed to will them back into her hands in the same way they disappeared. How long would it be before she realised that she really wanted her mother? Or that Marilyn couldn’t simply walk … through? Marilyn watched for a toy to fade, hoping she could grab it and be dragged back before it vanished entirely.

The nurses had panicked and run off. Probably lost, thought Marilyn.