Skept, a ghost, and daughter of the god Thaumas, who was in charge of in-between spaces, lives alone on her island in Faerie, trapped there and clearly crazy. She sends glass birds to kill falcons throughout the many worlds.

Tim, alone in the wilderness of American west after his adventures with Leah, meditates on the people he has lost, and what they've left him, especially his father, Tamlin, who he barely knew. He sees a hawk flying by, and considers that he could use his magic to get to know its life better, and better understand his father (who could turn into a hawk).

Skept transforms from a black-haired girl in a ragged dress, walking in a misery-laden black, rainy landscape, into a blonde, blue-eyed girl in a nice toga strolling through a sunny paradise. Here, she seems to be stuck in a cycle of re-living her old life. She can't find her glass slippers or her father.

Tim sees her glass falcons grab the hawk he was watching, and take it into a dimensional portal. Tim reaches after it and falls from the tree he was sitting in. His hand touches the Key of Worlds, which his mother Titania had given him back in the original Books of Magic miniseries, and which has fallen out of his back pack.

Skept takes the captured falcon and sews its eyes shut. She is angry at a man who betrayed her, and who could take a falcon's shape. Again she switches back to her pure, bright self and looks for her father. She wants to go to the masque he is holding, but which he has forbidden her to attend. When she goes out and dallies in the stream, she says she knows where the Stone of Opening is--another magic item, which Tim had gotten from his father, and later gave away to some angels.

Tim suddenly walks up--the Key has transported him here. The two share in their loneliness and get to know each other, but Tim soon realizes she is a ghost after seeing her skull in the stream, and he also sees her father's bones scattered in the house.

Skept recalls that when she was alive, she met Tamlin, who was there to relay a message to Thaumas about the party. He kisses her, then flies off. Having been sheltered her whole life, she falls in love after this one encounter, and decides to take revenge on her father. She takes his Stone of Opening, uses it to transform her slippers to glass birds, and kills him. She imagines that Tamlin will come to the party and take her away, but he doesn't. She later seems to drowns herself in grief. Tamlin apparently comes back later and takes Thaumas' Stone of Opening, and probably the Key of Worlds (he presumably gives Titania the Key, and keeps the Stone for himself).

Her current body disappears, and Tim goes to find the falcon in the house. He is going to help it when Skept's ghost-of-a-ghost flies through him and frees it, then disappears herself, having come to grips with her life and what Tamlin did to her.

Tim, however, is left trying to come to grips with this new information about his father, which he can't fully accept.

Goldie has a single-panel appearance in The Dreaming as Skept's ghost-birds hunt the spirit of Tamlin across all realms. Other realms briefly seen include Hell, Gemworld and Skartaris.