A teenage runaway on the streets of San Francisco discovers a hitherto unseen world of fairy creatures, many of them runaways like himself, and joins them in a search for the portal that will allow them to return to their magical home. There remains some Magic in this world of ours, although the Fair Realm draws further and further away. Gateways linger in a few places—and particularly in cities built on the hollow hills. Danny was different from the other San Francisco street kids. Danny believed in Magic, believed in it despite everything that had happened to him. Then one foggy night, while fighting imaginary dragons, he came face to face with True Magic. He found a girl dressed in tie-dye and flowers, who could vanish from mortal sight, and whose tears of homesickness rang in the night like pure crystal notes. Her name was Robin, and she was a Scatterling: one of the elven-kind left trapped in the mortal realms when the Queen of Fairie locked the gates of her land to all but the Highest Born. And when Robin looked at Danny, she knew that he could open a gateway to the Fair Realm, if only she could find the key to unlock his memory and his power.