She stood, mute, feathers falling around her while the rain blew in the broken window. Amidst the chaos that her kitchen had become she felt isolated, as if the world were actually silent. She was vaguely aware that parts of her hurt. Over the noise of the storm she could hear drops of blood splattering on the tile floor.

She lifted her hand and dimly contemplated the movements necessary to remove the glass shard from her bleeding hand. Behind her hand on the floor the white feathers had settled in the blood and bits of window. They remained pristine and almost seemed to glow in the moonlight.

She knew he was coming.

X X X X X X X X X

Sorcha Murphy was not the sort to wish bad things upon others. And she was certainly not the sort to come up with a phrase like "I wish the goblins would come and take you away right now."

In fact, Sorcha was almost unbelievably level-headed and well-grounded in reality. She had long ago stopped wishing for prince charming, a pony, or long, lustrous, movie-star hair. She did the dishes when it was her turn, wore comfortable shoes, and enjoyed doing her math homework. She thought maybe she wanted to be a lawyer.

The only indication that Sorcha ever wanted more than what her life had to offer was the worn copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales in a prominent place on the bookshelf next to her bed. But the trigonomotry book and Oxford English Dictionary it was wedged between diminshed much of its significance.So the last thing that Sorcha expected of a Wednesday evening was an encounter with a supernatural being.

The Murphy family, in keeping with their Irish Catholic roots, had 7 children. The oldest two had already left for college; Sorcha was almost 16; after her were Aidan, Liam, and Taidgh (ages 10, 8, and 7 respectively); the youngest was Mary Margaret, age 5, whom everyone called Maggie. In exchange for the use of one of the family cars, Sorcha took on the task of looking after her younger siblings after school before their parents returned from work. Mostly this involved making sure no one broke any furniture and the boys didn't convince Maggie that she should drink cleaning solution.

On this particular afternoon a vicious electrical storm kept everyone inside. Thus the crashes and shouts that now eminated from the direction of the boys' bedroom were not a surprise. Nevertheless Murphy energy was far more destructive inside than out and Sorcha headed upstairs to do damage control.

"Sorcha!" Maggie vaulted into Sorcha's legs as soon as she appeared in the hallway, "they're being mean!"

Sorcha picked Maggie up and headed into the boys' room.

"They said gobblins are going to eat me!"

"Goblins won't eat you Maggie. They're not real… And besides they prefer ice cream," she added when her initial reassurance didn't have much effect.

"Liam! Aidan! Taidgh! I can hear you jumping on the bed. You'd better knock it off before I get in there!" The noise from the other room seemed to have died down and now all she could hear were lowered voices. She rounded the corner into the room.

"Guys I'm tired of you saying things to scare your sister and it's almost time for dinner so you'd—" Sorcha's thought was cut off before she could verbalize it. "Why are the windows open?! Everything's getting … wet…" And now all thought fled as Sorcha saw the man standing in the middle of the room.

She set Maggie down on her feet. "Boys, take your sister down to the kitchen and call 911."

No one moved.

"NOW!!!" Sorcha lunged in between the man and her brothers and they all scampered out of the room, Aidan grabbing Maggie on the way.

The man watched her with an amused expression. Now that the children were away she had time to size him up. He was tall and lean and probably much stronger than she was. He was dressed in white with a long cloak covered in feathers draped over his shoulders. Water from the open window glittered around him giving him an almost surreal quality, as if he might just sparkle on his own.

"Get out of my house. Now." Sorcha tried not to quail under his gaze and privately wished she'd taken karate instead of flute lessons.

He smirked.

"I was just on my way out. But first I have to take what belongs to me," and before she could respond he had disappeared. Literally. Sorcha blinked several times and tried to figure out what had happened. She headed to the window to see if he had somehow jumped out of it when she heard screams from the kitchen.

She found him in the kitchen. The boys were facing him in a protective semi-circle around Maggie who was peeking our from behind Adain.

"Come, Taidgh, don't you want me to grant your wish?"

"NO!" The small boy tried not to cower before the man looming over him but his voice cracked and he scooted closer to his brothers. "I didn't wish it," he managed to get out, but his expression betrayed the lack of truth in that statement.

Sorcha rushed into the kitchen to put herself between her brothers and the stranger. He cocked his head at her and smile.

"My, my, Sorcha, you are determined to complicate things aren't you? Well, no matter," he rolled his wrist and a crystal sphere seemed to materialize in his hand out of nothing. Inside appeared an image of a frightened Maggie surrounded by darkness. Sorcha tried to demand an explanation of this bizarre charade when the boys erupted into shouts and threw themselves at him. And Sorcha realized that Maggie was gone.

The man held up a hand and quelled the children with a look. He made sure they all had a good look at their sister before the crystal disappeared with another flick of his wrist.

"Give her back!" Taidgh shouted, having momentarily forgotten his fear.

"Now, Taidgh, if you want your sister back you'll have to come and get her," he smiled cruelly and stepped aside. Behind him, where there had been a breakfast nook with a table and chairs and gabled windows, there was now a menacing stone archway set in walls almost lost amidst large, thorn-covered vines. No light penetrated beyond the first few inches of the archway. A grotesque, apparently stone face leered down at them from the apex of the arch and Sorcha felt her skin crawl as it raked it's eyes over her body and showed its fang-like teeth.

"You will have to find your way through my labyrinth to get her," he gestured behind him into the darkness. As he caught a glimps of the opening, the man might have almost looked surprised by what he had conjured in their kitchen, but the look was gone in an instant and he turned back to Taidgh. The boy physically screwed up his courage and took a step toward the arch but Sorcha grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

"No. I'll go."

The man glanced at her impatiently, "No. You did not make the wish. You have no right to enter. Only Taidgh can come."

"What?"

Curtly, "I said no."

While Sorcha tried to get past her indignation at the situation, Taidgh (who was still very young and did think of wishing pesky younger siblings to the goblins and so had a much better understanding of how these things worked) ran through the archway. The whole image shifted oddly and for an instant Sorcha saw a much more benign wall with an ordinary wooden door and some stray ivy. She didn't stop to think about it though and ran after her brother.

In her head an angry voice shouted 'NO' and there was an explosion in front of her. She still stood in the kitchen and all the windows of the breakfast nook had imploded at her. Out the window she could see a large barn owl flying away from the house. She vaulted over the table and grabbed a window pane. Heedless of the glass shards under her hands and the rain driving down into her face she screamed after the owl as if it were responsible.

"No! Take me!"

X X X X X X X X X

The kitchen had righted itself by the time Mr. and Mrs. Murphy returned home. The windows were not broken, the dishes were clean, and dinner was ready. The only evidence of misbehavior was a slightly rumpled bedspread upstairs. The Murphy children were sitting quietly waiting to see if their parents would notice that anything was amiss.

Mrs. Murphy praised Aidan for starting dinner and Mr. Murphy shooed them all off to wash up before the meal. The couple then mused about how mature their 10 year old was and how nice it was to be able to trust the children at home alone.

In the bathroom four freckled faces looked at one another across the soap. Eventually they would also forget who had made dinner that night; that there had been seven Murphy children. The human mind will ignore what it can't believe and eventually, when they were too old to believe in fairy tales and goblin kings, they would forget as easily as their parents. But tonight they knew what they had lost.