His fingers closed over empty air and he stumbled in something akin to disbelief. She had stepped back into a shadow and disappeared.

"I never ride my horses." Her voice, coming from behind them, made them all jump and twist around. She leaned against the wall, the weight of the bridle good in her hand, watching them. It was always fun to play this game, but you had to pity them as well. Playing with fire is dangerous, and playing with shadows even worse. It’s the thing mothers forget to warn their children about.

They swore. "Get her!" said the leader, so pretty, so vicious. Sometimes they did not learn fast enough. She leaped from shadow to shadow again, this time sitting on the bottom step of a nearby fire-escape, swinging her legs and laughing. She still liked to laugh. When you’re laughing there is no pain, and nothing can harm you for nothing can pierce that shield of laughter.

"I like this game, really, but there’s no time to play tonight. I have work to do."

The big one pulled out a knife and came at her. She almost felt for him as she kicked him in the elbow with one foot, then drove the knife into his throat with another thrust of her boot. The other one, the one with the dangling earrings, caught at her foot. Bending over, she locked her fingers around his throat, looking into his eyes as the rage bled into realisation. Realisation that he was not going to live very long as she lifted him till his feet were not touching ground.

"Why do you try so hard?" Compassion flooded her as she kissed his brow. Necks snap so easily, if one knows how to do it.

The other two fled. Or rather, tried to flee. The one she let go, he did not interest her. The leader, though….

She caught him easily, forcing him to the ground and putting one knee on his chest, her coat falling around them like a shroud.

His eyes opened wide, the long lashes fluttering. Strange that a boy who was almost a man should have such long, beautifully curved lashes.

"Please, I…"

"Shhh…" she tightened her fingers around his throat, liking the warm feel of his skin." You’ve met your La Belle Dame Sans Merci. It ends here, tonight."

"Lady, I don’t …"

She choked him off, so easily, till he gasped, eyes starting from his head. She loosened her fingers a little. "Strange that I should like to hear you plead. How many have you made plead, I wonder? I should send you with your fellows…..but I like you." She stroked her fingers through his hair. It felt like strands of silk. "So, I’ll let you ride instead. Sleep." She blew softly down on him as she had done for so many already, and immediately his eyelids dropped.

She got off him. The first for tonight.

The twilight fields were just next to the place where all of them lived if lived was the word for it. It was all she had ever wanted or dreamed of, a garden of beauty and blossom, of soft perfume and star-filled skies, a place where there were no limits and no restrictions, no danger or anger or hurt, its endless streams flowing for all eternity. They left it every night, to do their work.

She had made the bridle herself, as they all did, to their own taste. Silver, delicate-looking with star-flowers and pearls from a mermaid’s bounty in the deep. The mares were wild, headstrong, fierce, but she was a Herder and they would not break her bridle. She looked among the vast herds, passing the stallions who shone like red, white and gold suns and the foals who were but coloured shadows in the silver starlight. It was the mares she sought. She would give him a dapple-grey. Just enough to make him remember for a long, long time.

The bridle brought her one she wanted.

Still he slept soundly at her feet as the