Blue and Sunrise

The next morning, Adam woke before dawn and went out to look at the swirling stars overhead.

And he wondered if Madeline was awake. And what she would think of his decisions, caught between Queen Lía's oaths and Millicent's. He had saved a child. He had killed their friend.

Rabbit was too young to ask any knight to take oaths, except, probably, the impossible 'be nice.'

He stayed out there past sunrise, thinking, and past breakfast, too. It wasn't as if there was anything to eat. He was completely alone until Rabbit barreled out of the trailer straight towards him. He caught her right before she collided.

Rabbit didn't run off in another direction as expected. She wrapped herself around his waist. She said, her face muffled against his chest, "The mean lady called me names."

"Oh, did she?" Adam said. It was time to have a talk with Sybil.

Sybil was where he'd left her, lying tied up in a corner. He hadn't talked to her more than what was necessary to help her relieve herself and to feed her what little they could afford. She probably thought he was starving her on purpose.

This wouldn't work very well standing over her. So he sat down on the floor beside her after both Gardener and Sniffer left to follow Rabbit about her day.

Sybil glared at him. The blanket had fallen partway off, exposing her in her bra and leather pants. Under her bandages, her shoulder was coming along well. No pus or swelling marked the wound. With her enhanced rate of healing, she could probably get up and walk now as long as she didn't try to use the arm too much.

"Leave, traitor," she snarled.

He rested his hands on his crossed legs. "No, I don't think I will. I hear you've been yelling at children."

Sybil snorted. "I called her a stupid little brat, and that blue-winged bitch threatened to punch me in the throat if I did it again. What are you going to do, cut off my knees?"

"I'm going to ask you to yell at me instead. Rabbit hasn't done anything."

Sybil frowned mightily. She said, abruptly, "How long are you going to do this?"

"How long am I going to do what?"

Sybil strained against the ropes. "Hold me here."

Adam sighed. "I don't know. I won't let you go back to Millicent and tell her how many faeries defend Rabbit, and how many knights she should send next."

"So kill me."

"I'm not going to kill you, Sybil. We've known each other for two hundred and ten years." And been friends for most of them.

"That didn't stop you from murdering Rose and Marion."

He exhaled. "Rose... was my fault. I hit her harder than I intended. I meant only to knock her out."

"Liar."

"As for Marion, the panther downed her before I could do anything."

"Liar," she said again, more softly.

"I said last call for both of them. The Spirit answered."

Sybil stared at him. "I should have been there for that."

"Yes, I know." He sighed. "So. You're stuck here. But it is ungentlemanly of me to leave you on the floor all day. Do you feel well enough to sit up?"

Her eyes narrowed. "What are you playing at, traitor?"

"I merely thought that you would prefer to be tied to a chair, outside. And if you're thinking of escaping, don't. The panther is very aggressive."

Hope

"Where are we?" Rabbit piped from the back seat.

"A 'natural area,'" Adam replied. "How would you like to go and see it?" He turned to look at her, throwing the emergency brake on. They'd be here a while.

"Is it far away?"

"Right here."

She tilted her head. "Will it be fun?"

Fun. Fun for Millicent. For Rabbit...

Rabbit gazed at him from the backseat, her eyes wide and trusting.

Adam stared at her. And released the brake.

He couldn't go through with it. He couldn't. Millicent would kill Rabbit, and any thoughts otherwise were merely comforting lies.

"Maybe we'll go find a natural area somewhere else," Adam said.

And six faeries melted out of the trees.

They were knights, all of them, and they approached like wolves swooping down on an injured deer.

"Don't say anything," Adam said softly to Rabbit. "Pull a blanket over yourself and lie small and still."

"Why?" Rabbit asked, halfway under a blanket already.

"It's a game," he lied. And then he rolled down the window.

He recognized all of them. Rauf, the leader of the conroi, could have been Adam's blonde and pale brother, except Adam had a fencer's frame and Rauf ran more toward bulky muscle. Waulter was a fox-like faerie, golden skinned and golden haired, with sweeping ears that belied his small size. Elinor, tall and lithe, was uniform nut-brown and lacking ears altogether. Her reptilian eyes flashed forest green. Piers was notable for his averageness; average size, average face, skin neither dark nor light. He was still more beautiful than a human. Gyles had the furred face of a greyhound, the body and clothes of a courtier. And Bridget's bulk was all bone, but her delicate face was as beautiful as the queen herself. Their lovely clothes were from a scattering of styles and eras, but Waulter and Rauf and Elinor were adorned in Queen Millicent's yellow. And Bridget, Piers and Gyles in the queen's red.

They clearly knew him. Elinor and Walter grimaced and frowned, but the others gazed at him from emotionless cold faces. They didn't draw their swords, but their hands fell to their hilts. Adam had left his sword under his mattress again, because he was an idiot.

Rauf swaggered up to his window and leaned down to stare Adam in the face. He smiled with colorless lips and said, "You're not welcome, traitor. The queen has spoken."

The words stung, especially since until a minute ago, he hadn't been a traitor, not to Millicent. But leaving his birth court behind, abandoning Queen Lía for another, meant the faeries born of Millicent would never see him as anything else.

"I have done nothing to betray Queen Millicent," he protested, as if the blanket-covered lump in the backseat didn't exist. "I have served her loyally for centuries."

"And she tired of you, traitor, and sent you away. You are not of her get. How could you think anything else would happen?"

Because he'd been young and stupid, and Millicent had lured him to her court with promises of riches and glory. He said, "If I am unwanted, I will leave, and you need not even bother the queen with news that you saw me."

Rauf snorted and stepped back. But Gyles stalked closer to the car.

"What?" Rauf snapped.

The dog knight took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. "He smells like a queen."

Well. He'd spent the night sleeping beside one, because Rabbit was a snuggler. And the blanket would hardly drown out her scent.

Rauf spun back towards Adam. He snarled, "What?"

"Is there a problem, gentle knights? If I encountered a queen, I don't see how it would concern you. Queen Millicent cares nothing for my wellbeing, as you say."

Rauf drew his sword with the hiss of leather against steel. "Get out of the car. You're coming with us, and you can tell Queen Millicent personally what usurper you've allied yourself with."

Adam threw the locks on the door. "If I were going to turn on Queen Millicent, why would I come here? There isn't any usurper. The queen was only passing through."

"Liar," Rauf said.

And then Rabbit sat up in the backseat.

No one moved for a second. And then Rauf lunged for the door handle. Adam stepped on the acceleration, and the rest of the knights barely dodged out of the way. Adam lurched away from Glory Woods so fast he almost fishtailed off the road.

Rabbit was thrown into the side of the car, but she bounced off as if she'd planned to do acrobatics that day. She scrambled to grab the back of Adam's seat and said, "I got tired of the game. Who were those angry people?"

"Rabbit," Adam said, "Please let me drive."

And miracles of miracles, she went quiet.

He sped through the forest, passing a few cars dangerously fast. He had no intention of stopping until he was back in Triangle Park. And then he had to skid to a halt to let a party of hikers pass. But they didn't pass. One man practically threw himself in front of Adam's car. Blocking his way. Now. When a hunt would soon be after him. He'd nearly stepped back on the acceleration before he remembered the man was human. He snarled, "¡Joder!" And then hoped Rabbit hadn't been listening.

Feel

Rabbit and Sniffer joined them as they shoveled the last bit of dirt onto the grave.

"Where did the hole go?" Rabbit asked.

Gardener said, "I told Adam that it was a tripping hazard and that he had to fill it in."

"Oh," said Rabbit.

"So we're done here now," Gardener said. "Let's--"

"Not quite," Adam said.

"Oh, sun and stars, what is it now?"

"I need to do a ceremony." For Rose, a friend he had killed. And for Marion, a friend he hadn't saved. Last night he had been too tired to do it.

Last night, only one of his friends had died.

Sniffer's growl was a clear warning.

Rabbit flicked him on the nose. "Be nice," she demanded.

The panther flinched back. And he stopped growling.

Gardener looked dubious, but she nodded and stepped back. "Do what you've got to do, I guess. Just don't ask us to join in."

"I won't. You didn't know them." Sybil should be here. But Adam was uncertain that she could be moved without reopening her shoulder. So he would do his best alone.

He stepped forward. Knelt between the graves and laid his hands where the sisters' faces lay, six feet down. With Sniffer and Gardener watching, he felt judged. How dare he know these people and want to ease them into the afterlife? How dare he indeed.

He spoke. "Spirit."

The words seemed to hang in the air. The trees above the grave were listening.

He focused on those trees. Forgot Gardener and Sniffer and Rabbit. Spoke words he'd spoken too many times in only two hundred and sixty four years. "Spirit of life. Spirit from which all queens are born, and all faeries. I invoke you, not to beg for good fortune and favors, but to ask for succor. Please listen to me, your child, on this sorrowful day."

Something came. He couldn't see it, or feel it, or hear it. But the trees responded to it, their leaves and branches reverberating with song. And the forest seemed taller and older, the grass greener. He felt stronger, and the wounds of his body were nothing. He could still feel them, but they did not matter.

"Spirit," he said, acknowledging the arrival of something far greater than he. He was already kneeling, but he bowed his head to the trees. "These two, your daughters, have stopped laughing. The bodies you gave them can hold life no longer. Violence has taken them from us."

The trees sang their sadness. The wind smelled, deeply and intensely, of green.

He took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. "In a fairer world, I would tell you how my court would avenge them. But those that killed them did so honorably, in defense of a child. Which leaves us with no vengeance. Only grief. So take them. Take them and let them become one with you again. Let them be part of every living thing until some queen dreams. And in those dreams, in a new shape, let them awaken to another day."

When he finished speaking, nothing happened. Not at first. But Adam stayed kneeling, waiting, for the forest was still too old and the air too alive. And then the wind blew freshly fallen leaves to cover the graves. They mounded over Adam's hands and feet, still green and living. The smell faded, the trees shrank down to their normal dimensions. The grass was patchy. It was his grass, not the grass of dreams.

Fly

They were nearly to the trail. It would be watched, of course. It always was. Adam's muscles tensed more and more as they approached. His senses felt heightened, as if the smallest fly or whiff of scent would capture his attention before any of his companions could notice it.

Of course, when the attack came, he didn't anticipate it at all.

A massive dog, black as Sniffer, crashed out from behind a fat red oak. A Gytrash, its red mouth opened to bite and rend, drool dripping from its lower lips. And its eyes glowed white like the sun. It hurt to look in them. But it didn't hurt as much as those inch-long teeth would. Awë:iyo:h shrieked and let go of Adam's pants.

Sniffer met the Gytrash's charge with outstretched claws. They raked deep furrows in the dog's shoulders. The hound bit down on the side of his neck, and blood splattered the forest floor. Adam couldn't tell which animal had lost it.

"Holy crap!" Lizzy jerked her gun towards a second Gytrash that appeared behind them. A third lunged out between the trees in front of Adam. He drew his sword and stabbed for its eyes. It shook its head and the sword glanced off its cheekbone, gashing open its cheek all the way back to its ear. It threw itself forward and he had to retreat before it. Sybil was at his shoulder then, her own sword held out before her like a spear. The Gytrash ran up against it and fell back, snarling. Gardener swiped at it from the other side, but she missed completely.

A shot echoed through the forest. Adam twitched his head to the side. The Gytrash charging Lizzy fell with a hole the size of an apple punched through its neck. It landed a few feet from her shoes.

Sybil stabbed Adam's hound in the side. "Well, now they know we're here!"

Lizzy pumped the gun. "They already know we're here!"

The Gytrash pulled itself off Sybil's sword and circled them, snapping the air and shaking drops of blood off of its face.

Adam slashed out across the dog's throat. "Shoot another one, then!"

"I can't! You guys are in the way!"

He and Sybil fell back in unison. Lizzy set her feet and fired. The shot caught the Gytrash in the shoulder, ripping through its fur and flesh. It barked, spun on its three functioning legs and fled. The third Gytrash, its throat torn up by Sniffer's fangs, followed. They transformed into black horses and ran so fleetly that Adam would not have taken a shot even with the enchanted bow.

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Just chapters and snippets

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For The Many-faced Princess

@deadlyessencewhispers

The Halfway Revenant

His queen had granted him these lands, a sizable chunk of Buffalo Mountain, bordered by farms to the east and west and state game land to the south. It wasn't until he was exiled there that he realized how much a joke that gift had been.

His small corner of the Ridge and Valley region had been slated to be a county park, presumably before someone had actually visited the place. It was named Triangle Park after the angular lake that sat in the center. But that lake, which wasn't much more than twenty acres to begin with, had been fed by a spring that had been dry for a hundred years. It was now merely a boggy hole in the ground that filled with a foot or two of muddy water whenever it rained. And the forest here had been logged too many times, leaving timber as ugly as it was new. As soon as the park planners had taken a look at it, the land had been quietly sold off. At some point it had come into Queen Millicent's hands, and now his.

He went down to his trailer at the edge of his empty lake. As he squeezed through the door, he pulled off his ugly brown coat, whose only redeeming quality was being impervious to sticks, and then his white undershirt. His chest was as pale as if it had never seen the sun, but he knew from experience that no amount of tanning would fix it.

On his bed, too small for his long frame, he sought dreams strong enough to make him forget the joke his life had become. But sleep evaded him all night.

---

In the morning, he took up his shears and went back up into the hills. He really had nothing better to do. Even if it meant his days amounted to no more than endless yard work.

He took a different path this time, deep into the untended forest. He trod through the dense underbrush, stepping around overcrowded saplings and bushes and wading through poison ivy when it tangled across his path. A benefit of his less than human nature: he didn't have to worry about little things like rashes.

He picked a spot at random for the day's work. The trees disliked him, but that was fine. He didn't like them either.

"I ought to cut you down," he told a young oak as he struggled to lash it upright. "And plant a sapling that can figure out how to grow towards the sun."

The tree rustled its leaves at him resentfully. The half that had leaves, anyway.

He snapped off a leafless branch. It was dry as paper.

"You can't even die right."

The tree reached for his pale hair, which shone near-white in the sunlight, but he kept it braided back tightly for just that reason. Its twigs glanced off, but he tied the tree upright with a vicious yank anyway.

"It isn't too late for me to get that saw," he threatened, which silenced the oak. It didn't even complain when his trimmers lopped off its dead branches.

"Aurug. Aurug," something called from the brush. The throaty bark made him lower his tools.

"Aurug. Aurug," the unseen animal cried, perhaps fifty feet away. Not a dog. Not a bear. And pumas and wolves didn't live much in the east. But something big, to have a voice that deep.

He turned silently towards the noise. His sword was in his trailer down by the lake, buried under his mattress. And his pruners made a poor substitute. But he would not leave some beast uninvestigated in his forest.

He ghosted over the obstacles he'd crashed through at dawn. Outcast or not, he was a faerie knight, he had been on innumerable hunts, and he had not yet forgotten all of his grace. If he could have turned invisible, he would have, but that had never numbered among Adam's talents.

The voice fell silent. But Adam prowled towards it anyway. Nothing had thrashed through the brush, so it should still be there. Just there...

He rounded a thicket of young oaks. A black beast crouched in the leaf litter. Clippers at the ready, Adam approached. Animals did not fear faeries the way they feared man, but the animal still should have bolted, for wildlife had never taken to Adam. His shape -- what humans might label an elf --was too man-like. But it watched him instead, its tail still, its claws sheathed.

A faerie, clearly. Adam didn't need the curling, tendril-like ears, or its swirling eyes, to tell him that. A great black cat, elegant and sleek, looked as out of place in this dumpy third-growth forest as he did. But it wasn't that that made him lower his weapon. It wasn't that that made him stare.

"Espíritu guíame," he breathed.

A little girl was curled around the beast, all great black eyes and leaf-brown hair and long pointed ears. She was dressed in the ragged cloth of dreams, half imagination, half nightgown. The child -- the child queen -- looked at Adam and shrank into the side of the panther, her little hands closing on its fur. If she had been human, Adam would have said she was perhaps six years old. But she was faerie, and Adam knew -- knew! -- that she had not existed ten minutes ago. Even though she should never have been born here. Queens were born in beautiful glades and on the shores of mirror-like lakes, amid wild hills and towering trees. They weren't born in ugly rural park rejects. And they were born adult, or adolescent at least. Adam had never heard of a queen born a child. And yet a queen she undeniably was. The cat sealed it. Her firstborn, come into existence beside her, the first faerie her dreams had brought to life.

Adam laid the pruners down in the litter. And he approached barehanded, for one did not carry a weapon into the presence of a queen without her leave.

The panther rose, and the queen rose with it, one hand resting against its side. But neither ran.

Five feet away, Adam dropped to one knee, offering a queen the obeisance she was due. The little faerie considered him. He considered her back. She was tiny but lanky, her limbs thin and graceful. Her square face had a tiny, delicate nose and a tiny, delicate chin. Her round pink lips sported a pronounced cupid's bow. And her eyebrows were so fine they were barely visible.

She let go of her firstborn and crept forward. Adam held still, wondering if she knew she was supposed to tell him to rise. But she didn't tell him anything. She reached him and threw her arms around his neck.

Adam startled. Slowly, he lifted a hand to cradle her small back. He had stolen human children before -- children wriggling and shrieking to go back to their own families -- but not in decades. Not without orders. This child did not try to escape him. But then, she was a faerie, and how odd that was! Most faeries were born adult, so they would immediately be useful, or at least born older than this.

He said into a long ear, "Do you have a name? My lady?" The title was hers by right of her nature. It still fell awkwardly from his lips.

"Rabbit," she said, leaning her forehead against his shoulder.

Adam nodded. Rabbit was as good a name as any, among faeries. Queen Lía, who had birthed Adam, had fancied human names, but that was an affectation on her part, not some inherent part of their culture. In his few centuries of life, Adam had met plenty of faeries with names that were no more than meaningless, inhuman noise. He said, "My name is Adam, my lady Rabbit. I am the guardian of these lands." He asked, of the panther, "And who is this?"

Rabbit leaned back in his arms and considered her firstborn. She said, finally, "He's Sniffer."

Sniffer growled, low and deep in his throat. Adam could almost feel the vibrations. The cat circled them, his alien eyes fixed on Adam. They were as vivid green as Adam's.

"I mean your mistress no harm," Adam told the panther, although he hadn't yet decided if it were true. He let go of Rabbit and rose, offering her his hand. "You are here alone in the wilds, and you will meet no other than myself. If I were you, I'd not be so quick to reject my company."

Sniffer considered him, his ears twitching. And when Rabbit took Adam's hand, he followed them down the mountain.

--

He only kept a hold of the queen for the first mile. After that she ran ahead of him like her namesake, her hair flying out behind her. But his legs were longer. He could keep pace without breaking into an undignified sprint. Sniffer trotted at her side, his tail waving like a banner.

The child was out of breath by the time they emerged from the tree line and out onto the field. But she arrowed for his trailer anyway. It was a travel trailer, the kind meant to be hauled behind vigorous pickup trucks, and it hadn't been new when Queen Millicent dreamed it up for his use thirty years back. It was on the smaller end, as trailers went, but he had never needed more. Not to survive. And surviving was all he did.

He jogged after and caught the girl as she went up to stare at it. She turned to gaze up at him, her wide eyes reflecting the clouds above.

He put a hand on her shoulder, to keep her from running again, and asked her, "What is so alarming, my lady Rabbit?"

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Do you live here?"

"I do," he admitted.

"It's ugly," she said. And it was. It was rusty all along the tow frame. The ribbed aluminum siding had accumulated black discoloration in the dips, leaving the formerly-white trailer a hideous shade of mottled gray, like it suffered from some sort of fungal disease. And he'd replaced its flattened tires with jack stands decades ago -- he had nothing to haul it out of this place with, anyhow.

Life hadn't left Adam much beyond his beauty and his perfect teeth. But it had left him his pride. He said, "It is serviceable, which is what matters. If it offends you, you need not look at it."

Rabbit's lip wobbled alarmingly. Adam stared at it. But Rabbit did not burst into tears. She said plaintively, "I don't like ugly things."

No. She wouldn't. Queens almost never did. That was why faeries were almost uniformly fair, and those monstrous banished from their queen's sight as soon as they were born. Without thought, Adam said, "I know a beautiful place you might go."

Rabbit perked up, her long ears lifting. She looked at him expectantly.

But the words caught in his throat. Glory Woods. A beautiful place, yes. Fit for a queen far grander than this one. But that was the problem. A greater queen already called it home.

But perhaps that was not a problem but an opportunity.

Queen Millicent would not be happy to have a new court growing up on the border of hers. She would reward Adam, surely, if he brought the girl to her to be dealt with. Maybe she would be pleased enough to give back all she had stripped from him. And he had delivered children, human children, to her in the past. How was this any different?

He had always felt guilty about those children.

He glanced back at Rabbit. But this child was different. She had no one to miss and no one to miss her. Besides. Millicent was fascinated by children. She kept the human ones in some comfort. She might not even kill Rabbit. Maybe she would simply adopt Rabbit as her own.

"But I don't want to leave this place," Rabbit said while he was still contemplating her. "This is home."

He lifted a brow. "My trailer?"

She looked at him as if he were daft and waved her arms in every direction.

"Ah," Adam said softly. "The forest is ugly here, too. And the meadow, and the lake. All of it is really dreadfully ugly."

"But it's mine," Rabbit said.

Hers? It belonged to Adam, all he had to show for abandoning the court of his birth to swear fealty to Millicent. But a queen had a higher claim to the land than a piece of paper inherited by one fake identity after another, surely. He shook his head. He was thinking about this as if she were staying. If she went to live with Millicent, no one would contest his ownership of the land. No one would want to.

But then he wouldn't care about the land either if Millicent let him rejoin her court. Rabbit could have it if he could just be home again.

"I could make everything prettier, maybe," Rabbit said, squirming out from under his hand. Freed, she ran up to touch the trailer and its weathered siding.

Maybe she could. The powers of queens were frequently unclear. Maybe she could turn his three hundred acres into a paradise worthy of a court. Maybe she could dream up a court worthy of a paradise.

His next glance at her was more thoughtful. She was a queen. If he raised her, if he gained her loyalty, he would be a queen's adviser when she was grown. And that was not something to lightly throw away.

But to raise a queen would be to cement his exile from Glory Woods forever.

"Can we go inside?" Rabbit asked, running little hands across the trailer door.

Adam shook himself and pushed thoughts of Millicent and advisers and stolen children down. He didn't have to make up his mind right away. "Yes, of course."

--

Inside, the generator still worked well enough to give them some dim light, enough for faerie eyes. Enough to illuminate peeling linoleum, off-white walls and the brightly patterned fabric of the dinette seats that was probably the only attractive thing in the place. Rabbit rattled through his kitchenette cupboards, pulling out pots and pans as if she had never seen them, which on second thought she almost certainly never had. She climbed onto the counters, using the drawers as steps, and tipped over and smashed his radio. Adam didn't mind. It hadn't worked in a decade. She poked into his one large closet and puzzled over his worn-out jeans, which were as ugly as everything else in this place. What use did Adam have for fine court raiment, when he might never be part of a court again?

While she explored, Sniffer settled himself across the threshold, barring exit and entry. Adam eyed the cat warily as Rabbit scampered into the back of the trailer and jumped on his bed. If Rabbit's firstborn realized that Adam was considering handing Rabbit off to another queen, they might come to blows, and just because the faerie was newborn did not mean he was born unable to fight. And Adam's sword was buried under his mattress. Where Rabbit, of course, found it.

She came back up to him dragging the blade behind her. It was still sheathed, thank the sun and stars, and didn't blunt itself or destroy his floor. He still went quickly to retrieve it from her.

The sight of it provoked mixed feelings in Adam. Adam had come from an immigrant Andalusian queen who must be some seven hundred and twenty years old now, a queen who had lived when swords were the weapons of champions. He had been born with a sword in his hand, literally, and even as he'd watched humans shoot each other, he'd never seen a reason to lay it down. Guns were loud and dirty, out of tune with nature. They were how humans fought, not faeries. He had held onto his sword all his life. Until Queen Millicent sent him away.

"Give that here," Adam told her. "It's rather too large for you to use."

The little faerie didn't relinquish her grip. "What's this?" Rabbit demanded.

"A weapon. And you have no need for weapons, for your firstborn and I will guard you against all dangers." For now.

Her brow furrowed. "What does a weapon do?"

"It hurts people," he said bluntly as he pried her fingers off the hilt. "Generally to prevent them from hurting you first." He was tempted, irrationally, to draw it. He settled for running a hand down its sheath. It was a standard longsword, except it tapered to a very fine and sharp point. The sort of point that rammed through weaknesses in armor when slashing wouldn't do.

Rabbit mulled over this. "It's for safety."

"Yes," he lied. There was too much blood on his hands for that to be true.

She nodded once, brushing her long brown hair behind one pointed ear. "I want to learn."

"How to use a sword?" Adam asked incredulously. Queens didn't fight. They had knights for that, and fierce beasts that sat at the foot of their thrones. He had never heard of a queen taking up fighting beyond, perhaps, the use of a small dagger for emergencies.

She nodded again.

"No. You are tiny, and I have no practice weapons." Besides, he had not trained anyone in decades, and his last students had been full-grown faeries.

Her face screwed up. Tears beaded dramatically in her eyes. He was almost certain she was doing that on purpose. But her voice wavered convincingly when she said, "I want to be safe, too. If Sniffer and you are away."

Training her... it would be a good way to get to know her. To help him make up his mind as to whether to shelter or betray her. So Adam relented and said, "Very well. I have a shortage of swords. But I do have an excess of sticks."

And when they went out to look for some, he buckled his sword around his waist for the first time in thirty years.

--

They spent the afternoon going in and out of the forest, collecting stout, straight sticks of the right size for Rabbit and Adam to use. Sniffer carried a bundle of them in his mouth, showing off his impressive fangs. Adam was glad to be properly armed again. He was certain he could take the cat. Almost certain. It had been too long since he had fought anything. He had grown rather pathetic over the years.

When the dusk came, Rabbit complained of the cold, although the June night was warm enough to Adam. Still, he ushered her inside the trailer, where at least the wind could not reach. Done for the day, and tired from all the drama, he shrugged off his coat and went and laid down in his bed without thought, setting his sword aside but within reach. He nearly jumped out again when Rabbit crawled in and snuggled up against him. His heart rate leveled off. He shouldn't have been surprised. She had nowhere else to sleep and he was at the very least warm. Sniffer didn't attempt to join them. Thank the sun and stars.

Rabbit drifted off immediately. He lay awake in the dark, thinking, her body a warm little weight pressed against his side. If he could go back to Glory Woods, if he could see Madeline again... But who was to say that she had waited for him? Thirty years was a blink of an eye, but Madeline was still young, little over a century, and the young were impatient. And who was to say that if he chose to sacrifice Rabbit Millicent would not laugh and take the child and banish him all over again?

He fell asleep and he dreamed of Glory Woods, and Madeline's hand in his, and the warm glow of Queen Millicent's approval.

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It took him hours to fell the tree. He meant for it to land in a neighboring clear space, but he was not a true lumberman. It toppled at an angle and bounced off a red maple on the way down.

The maple squealed as though it had been mortally wounded.

Adam stalked towards it. He was sweaty and hot, and his arm and back were sore. He was not in the mood for whiners. He said, "You lost a branch. A handful of branches. I cut that tree entirely in two, and I don't hear it complaining."

The tree fell silent. But not soon enough.

Adam brandished the axe. "Shall I do you, too?"

And the bark in front of him began to ripple as if in reply. Adam jerked back, raising his weapon defensively.

The tree sang, suddenly. The kind of songs that filled old-growth forests. The kind of songs that old trees sing. And the bark of its trunk swelled into a dainty, feminine face framed by pointed ears. A slim nose sat above rosebud lips and a small, sharp chin. And the face, far too familiar, opened almond eyes and smiled up at him from the tree. Curly hair grew, spilling down onto the bark, until he was looking at Queen Millicent in all her monochrome glory.

Adam lowered the axe. It couldn't do anything here but offend.

"Adam," the tree said. Millicent said. And it was her, in spirit if not body. Faerie queens never bothered with anything as mundane as cell phones.

"My lady," Adam said, for he lost nothing by being polite. "May I ask why you have honored me with this visit?"

Millicent's smile broadened. "You came to see me last week, or so my guards tell me. Why wouldn't I check in to see how you are? It's been so long."

"Perhaps I was there to see Madeline," Adam said.

"No," Millicent said. "You were there to see me. And you brought me a present, I hear. I was terribly disappointed not to receive it."

"I brought you nothing."

Millicent laughed, a charming sound that still made his heart stop after all these years. "You brought a child queen to the edges of my court. You were going to bring her to me."

"Your welcoming committee changed my mind."

Millicent gazed at him, her lips parted slightly, and said, "It's not too late, Adam. You can still turn over the child. I promise you, I would be... grateful." And her face was full of promises of reward.

"You'd kill her," Adam accused.

Millicent's eyes widened. "I would never! Adam, what do you think of me? Has being alone for only a few years made you forget me?"

It had made him see her clearly, out of range of her unearthly charm and attraction. "What, then, would you do with her if I were to hand her over?"

"Raise her as my own, of course."

"Hah."

"I would, Adam. I've never had a child. Not really. The human ones -- why, they're adorable, but they age as fast as mortal mutts. They're barely worth keeping."

"You don't know how fast Rabbit will age," Adam said. He didn't even know.

Millicent's smile was slow and charming, but something predatory gleamed in her eyes. How had Adam not seen that forty years ago? Two hundred and ten years ago? "Rabbit. Is that what you call her? How sweet. A little innocent woodland creature. Does she live up to the name?"

"Whether she does or not, I'm not throwing her to the wolves."

Millicent cast him a wounded look. "I'm not a wolf, Adam. I'm your queen. The one you chose."

He wanted to say, 'you threw me away,' and 'I'm choosing again.' But he said, "Dream up your own daughter. I know you are capable of it."

"But then she wouldn't be a queen. Why, if I sank enough of myself into a faerie to make her a queen, it would literally destroy me."

"And that would be a tragedy," Adam said, and he couldn't even tell if he meant it sarcastically or not.

Millicent smiled. "A great and terrible one. And so you're going to give me the girl."

"I am not."

"Think about it, Adam. And when you've made up your mind, bring her to me." The face melted back into the bark, and in only an instant, Adam was alone.

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Just chapters and snippets

Tag list for everything

@anonymousfoz

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@elizababie

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