It was late when the knocking was heard. Her father found her in her room standing at the third story window, slapping her palm against the glass, which was luminous with the light that came from a window across the back yard. Her face was dappled by shadows thrown through the wet limbs and the errant snow drifting down between them; and her father's wonder at how she had gotten herself so worked up, and what kind of dream could have left her in such a state--naked and shaking--was only overwhelmed by what formed on the girl's lips once he got a blanket around her and lifted her into his arms.

      "They come in off the branch," she said, rubbing her eyes.

      "Who, Grace?"

      "They did, out there."

      He looked over her head into the night where winter smoke had settled with the snow over everything, peered down in the courtyard at the brick walls veined with ivy and dangling cables. A silhouette of some intruder, which he always hoped for, something to substantiate these events, was nowhere to be seen. He lifted the window a little, as her room was warm, and heard the music of the pianist who lived across the way, echoing against the brick. The city, someone always awake--couldn't that guy learn something else, all those crowded arpeggios flying every which way, and the piano out of tune through every note.

      "They're gone now," he assured his daughter, setting her down and running his hand over her damp hair. The room had cooled, and he pulled the window shut.

      "They want in."

      The man heard her brothers talking in the hall--small voices of complaint about this middle of the night stuff going on again--and he shouted over his shoulder at them to go back to bed, and hearing their footsteps retreating down the corridor, asked her, quietly as he could, "Grace, who wants in?"

      "Right there. Them light people," she pointed to where they were still, out there pulsing and pushing, sending out their white razor flame. They weren't happy about being tattled on, was what the small one with the electric zigzag tongue told her. Hey, that girl was going to pay for her indiscretion. Her father was saying something to her but she couldn't quite make out his words given what an angry din the intensified lights had raised. They never really said they wanted to be her friends, but on the other hand they didn't think they had done anything to her that would provoke such treachery.

      She opened her mouth to apologize but they weren't interested in apologies. They reminded her that she could have come out onto the branch and joined them whenever she wanted. Hadn't some of them been beckoning?

      Her father put her back to bed, and read to her for a while. The music from across the walled yard stopped, and the tree dimmed and was silent.

      Just before Christmas, two nights later, a static voice came to her and said: --Hey Grace? you want to see a trick?

      "No."

      --Watch this, watch this. You won't believe it.

      She went to the window, her fingers gathered to her chest, her quilt wrapped like a shawl around her as she stood there and again watched the light show. The Flare Man--the only one of the light people Grace felt was a friend--was alone, and had on a shell-pink tuxedo through which you could see his skeleton. Across his face was a crisp fuschia smile.

      --Don't look down, girl, just watch this, he said.

      Grace was afraid to call for her father, in part for fear she might awaken the smallest of the light people, the one who had threatened to sting her with that zigzag electric tongue of his, and in part because she didn't want her brothers to tease her about her light people, they who made fun of her, and them, whenever she got the chance.

      --Everybody ready? asked the Flare Man.

      Sheepishly, she shook her head yes.

      It was an astonishing display. It made her smile back at him, despite her terror.

      The Flare Man had gathered himself into a small ball of voltage, about the size of a baby, and then ran lightning snakes down and up and out, winding their way around every branch and limb of the tree so that the tree itself burst bright into bloom, and this ailanthus, this glorious urban weed--this botanical survivor, which sprouted between subway tracks, survived in pitch-black cellars, in ventilation shafts, which sent down roots into fissures in the streets--which was called, for all its love of darkness, the Tree of Heaven, wore for a moment its full garland of summer leaves, right here at the beginning of winter. The leaves nodded, cordial and companionable. Each leaf was impeccable in shape and contour. Each was composed of humming, blue light.

      Grace clapped and laughed, until the force of a flash against the casement knocked her backwards into her bureau. And thus it was that the ravishments began.