Its opening sentence, "Every time it rains a ghost comes walking," is the perfect start to this beautiful, bittersweet story about the hesitant first steps of a relationship. Featuring Newford fiddler Geordie Riddell, it's a gentle story of love, loss and the bonds of friendship.

First published in Post Mortem edited by Paul F.Olson and David B. Silva, 1989; also appears in Dreams Underfoot and The Very Best of Charles de Lint.

Timeskip is where Newford began: "Newford was not planned out in advance. It started (unbeknownst to me) with“Timeskip,” a short story that I wrote for an anthology. I wanted to set the story somewhere other than the Ottawa area where most of my stories had taken place, but I didn’t feel comfortable writing about a city that I couldn’t physically visit. So I decided to use various aspects of large urban centers that I had visited, and create a fictitious setting."

–Charles de Lint, from an interview with FairyRoom.com