Great-Aunt Chris had begun Helens story, but her death left Helen alone to scribble and scratch out a life now deprived of her deepest friend, whose greatest gift to Helen was a garden, a magical moonlit dance of crystal and gold and silver faeries. The stories of three girls verging on the precipice of womanhood intertwine. Each girl is a victim to brutality, and each was somehow dragged down into servitude and humiliation, yet each life is briefly illuminated by flashes of magic along her journey. The world is full of magicnot that witching magic of sorcery and spells, but the subtle glimpses of magic found in the wrinkles and smiles of those whose wisdom and affection illuminate our journeys. Theyre like fireflies flitting and dancing along a country road at night or the moonlit lace of branches along the forest floor. Magic is sometimes found in the fleeting passing of someone whose momentary flare of kindness and beauty enriches our hearts and souls. And that kind of magic can only be found between the stepping stones in those places where people dare not tread because they are so afraid of the unknown. Helen, Miramund, and Kathleen find themselves in places deep and dark and seemingly hopeless, and only the kind intervention of another can lift them back into the light. Shall each heroine be destined to be a laundress all her life, or can each break with destiny and become a magician in her own right? The stories seek to merge at a place and time preordained by the efforts and struggles of each girl, not by a fickle destiny, and hopefully, each girl will have earned through her own heroic efforts and at that time and place the gift of true balance and insight.