In "Bear Skin," Hazel is whisked away from her tedious job and humdrum life by the mysterious Arailt to be his lover "for a year and a day, without reason and without question." The only problem is there is more to Arailt than meets the eye. In "The Three Riddles," the elves, they say, know the secrets of events—but the queen has no time for superstitions. Ignoring the warnings, she deserts her childhood love, Sir Thomas, for a darkly charismatic foreign duke. As her kingdom crumbles, she longs for her lost love, but can she risk her country on a whim? In "The People in the Garden," the beguiling Katia seems to be everything the Count and Countess Malinovsky could ever hope for in a maid, and the decadent couple soon embroil the young women in their erotic games. But then strange things begin happening in the grounds of their Gothic manor house. Local people tell of fairies, goblins, and unnameable creatures, and there are stories about a girl—with an uncanny resemblence to Katia—who disappeared almost 100 years before.