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When Percy was twelve years old, he went into The Forest.

That fact, divorced from any sort of context, would ordinarily not be any cause for concern. People went into forests all the time, and of course one would expect little boys to go in more frequently than most, whether to play knights and dragons with the best stick-swords they could find, or to climb the trees that seemed to send their branches into the sky like an old man yawning and stretching after a long nap.

But this forest was not an ordinary forest. It was not a forest at all. It was The Forest, and that made all the difference.

The Forest was old, so old that the villagers who lived nearby had forgotten its true name, and indeed, the very language it had once been spoken in. So they simply called it The Forest, and the hushed tone of voice that they said it in more than made up for their collective defects in memory.

The Forest was different from every other forest in every other respect as well. The old, old, branches on those old, old trees did not stretch into the sky. They were part of the sky. To an outsider, this suggestion would have seemed ludicrous, but the people of the nearby village knew it to be a simple fact. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and the trees in The Forest were old wooden pillars that supported that great blue dome above the mortal world and prevented it from caving in on their heads at a moment’s notice.

Some villages laid claim to the forests just outside their borders. They granted themselves dominion over the land, and maintained that the trees were for their sole use as lumber, and that the plants and animals were for their sole use as food. The people of this village did not do that. Maybe a few brave souls would venture just beyond the edge of The Forest to hunt occasionally, but on the whole, they knew that The Forest was not theirs. It belonged to someone, or rather, something else.

This was the final, most important difference between The Forest and any other forest the world over. The Forest was owned by fairies. The dangerous, mysterious fae creatures who could cast glamours and charms, who were benevolent to groveling mortal supplicants but flew into a rage at the merest perception of a slight.

That was what Percy was relying upon when he went into The Forest. Not that the fairies would get angry at him, though the truth was that the village schoolteacher had always called him an impudent lad and he was well versed in annoying people by simply existing around them. He did not want to be cursed to dance until he died or to come out of The Forest and find that a hundred years had passed, and he tried very hard to remember his manners as he walked under the lofty branches of the trees.

No, that bit was not what he was relying on. It was the other side of that same coin. He hoped that his passionate, but polite, plea would be enough to sway their cold hearts and make them grant his wish, because he wanted them to curse his stepfather. He hated that man, but he was only twelve, and neither he nor his mother had the strength to get him out of their lives for good.

His mother had been a young widow when she met him, poor and starving since her first husband, Percy’s father, had died when Percy was just a baby. She had struggled to make ends meet with two mouths to feed, and when a man from a neighboring village had begun to court her when Percy was seven years old, she looked on him with nothing short of unbridled joy. It was hard to find a husband who would take on the task of raising another man’s son, and with their combined wages, they would finally be able to pull themselves out of squalor and live in a house with more than one room. They had married quickly, but as soon as the vows had been said and the wedding bands had been exchanged in a small church in his mother’s hometown, Percy’s new stepfather had revealed his true colors.

When he had courted Percy’s mother, he had spoken of love and a happy married life, and he had even spared a kind word or two for her young son. He had charmed them both, but charm was all there was to it. He earned a decent wage, but he spent it all at the pub before he even made it home after work, and his wife’s earnings were stretched even more thinly over three people instead of the previous two. When he returned home for their meager supper, he was in his cups more often than not, and the strong drink gave him over to violent rages against both mother and son.

So Percy hated his stepfather, and he wanted the fairies to curse him to death. He was reasonably certain they would agree, because he vaguely recalled hearing that even the nicest fairies loved to cause mischief and torment mortals for their own amusement, and this seemed like exactly the kind of thing they would like.

It was hard to remember all the proper rules of dealing with fae. His stepfather did not hold with “that fairy story nonsense” and hated to hear their voices when he came home after a long day of doing absolutely no work, so Percy’s mother could not tell him the stories like most mothers did as they sat in front of the fire after supper or as they tucked their children into bed, and he had absorbed all the old warnings secondhand. They liked politeness, that much he knew, and he also unfortunately knew that by trespassing on their forest without an invitation, he had already offended them.

He felt like something was watching him. He was suddenly struck with the hilarious sensation that all the trees had eyes, and they were watching his every move. He felt the back of his neck tingle, and he spun around to catch whatever was behind him. But the treeline was empty as far as he could see, and as he took a cautious step back, he tripped on a tree root and fell to the ground.

A girl stepped out from behind a tree. He saw her delicate feet, shod in embroidered silver slippers, stop a few feet in front of him. He rolled over and jumped to his feet as she folded her arms and looked down at him.

She was about his age, but her face was not rounded with the youthfulness of a child. Her eyes, which were a deep, stormy gray, were just a little too large for her head; and her pale white fingers were just a little too long for her hands. Her perfectly arranged blonde curls, which tumbled freely down her back, seemed to sway in a breeze that only they could feel. Percy felt a chill run down his spine, although the leaves on the trees around them were still and it was not caused by any natural phenomena.

“Why are you here?”

Her voice was melodious, like the gently babbling rivers that bubbled up from deep within the earth were collectively speaking, but it was the tiniest bit too silky, and there was an undertone of hard steel beneath the softness.

“I need help. Fairy help,” he said, brushing the dirt off his tunic and the knees of his worn breeches that were just visible under its hem.

“May I have your name?” she asked, holding out her hand. Oh, he knew this one. It was the oldest fairy trick in the book.

“No, but you can call me Percy,” Percy said carefully, glad that everyone called him by his nickname so it was able to come to his tongue more easily than his given one. “What’s your name?”

She glared at him. “You are a stupid boy.”

“I know. If I was smart, I wouldn’t come into your forest and ask for your help.”

She seemed to be turning that over in her head. Finally, she spoke. “You are stupid, but you are also brave. That makes you foolhardy, but you are hardly a fool. Follow me.”

She turned on her heel and marched off, head held high, not bothering to look behind her to see if he could keep up. Percy stumbled and jumped over roots and little rocks sticking out of the soil, but she moved so smoothly that he could have sworn she was floating if not for the hem of her dark green gown, which slithered over the dead leaves and trailed against the ground. It would have been too much of a pun to call it forest green, but it really was precisely the same shade as the glossy leaves that supported the vault of the sky above.

They went deeper and deeper, to the very heart of The Forest, and Percy realized that the birds had stopped singing. The trees no longer supported the sky. They were curving inward, gnarled trunks fusing together and branches twining together overhead to create a living, growing palace. Will-o’-the-wisps floated along the walls and ceiling where a normal mortal castle would have had torches mounted in sconces. Long, winding passageways curved off in all directions, crossing over and intersecting at what he assumed were hundreds of junctures, spread out across the heart of The Forest.

The girl led him down none of them. She walked straight down the largest and most ornate pathway, never stopping or slowing her speed for an instant. The floor was still dirt beneath his ragged boots, but it was smooth and hard packed, so he was able to keep pace with her more easily.

Finally, they reached the end of the hall. The only thing in front of them now was a set of large double doors, twice the height of a grown man and three times as wide. There was no visible door handle, but the girl stepped forward and stroked a finger through a grove in the bark. The doors swung open at her touch, and she led him into a gigantic throne room. Just like the entrance hall, it was brightly lit with will-o’-the-wisps, and they showed off the ornate curtains on the walls and the plush green velvet carpet that went all the way to a raised dais at the very top of the room.

The girl stopped at the foot of the throne, which was formed from a single living tree, and dropped into a deep, sweeping curtsy. Percy followed her lead, and gave a clumsy bow.

“Mother,” she said as she rose, “I found this mortal boy in our forest.”

The fairy queen waved a hand, and her daughter obediently came to stand by her side. Percy took that as his signal to rise, and he stood up, trying to look like a meek and trembling supplicant. It wasn’t very hard, because The Forest was very intimidating, but he tried to tone down the angry look he knew he got when he was feeling threatened.

“I need help,” he said again. “Please,” he added. “Ma’am.”

The fairy queen arched one thin eyebrow. She was identical to her daughter in both coloring and facial expression, except she looked a little bit meaner. Her long fingers curled around the arms of her throne, and her perfectly manicured nails were filed into ten identical sharp points. She spoke, and if her daughter's voice was hard as dull steel underneath the softness, hers was a razor’s edge slicing through the silk.

“Tell me what it is that you desire. If I am feeling generous, I may grant your boon and allow you to leave with your life.”

“Uhh,” Percy said. “I know that fairies can do magic, so I was wondering if you could curse my stepfather, please.”

“Why should I do that?” She raised one long talon and scraped it delicately down her cheek as if in deep thought. Her daughter glanced slyly at her, then leveled her bored, disinterested gaze back at Percy.

Slightly emboldened by her drawling question, which was not an immediate rejection, he continued. “Because he’s a terrible husband. He’s rude to my mother, and violent after he spends all his money on drink.”

“You mortals are so amusing. You think that your tiny little problems are the most important things in the world. But you have amused me. I will grant your request.” She flicked her wrist, and a servant came forward with a small loaf of bread on a tray. “Do not take a bite of this yourself, and do not allow your mother to consume it either. But if you feed it to your stepfather, he will never be able to eat again.”

The fairy queen’s daughter stepped forward and handed him the loaf of bread.

“Thank you,” Percy said to her. She looked at him impassively and did not respond. She returned to her mothers side, hands clasped gently before her waist as she stood on the raised dais beside the living throne. The fairy queen’s eyes gleamed, but Percy was much too focused on the bread to think very hard about why.

“Return to your village, mortal. Do not trouble me again.”

When he returned home, many hours had passed. The sky had darkened and the dusky evening breeze was cool and sweet, though he was sure that the sun had just started to rise high overhead when he entered The Forest and that he hadn’t been gone for nearly that long. His mother scolded him first for disappearing without a word all day and second for seeking help from the fairies, and then she took the bread away, saying she would dispose of it properly even as he loudly explained its magical abilities.

That night for supper, she made thin broth with split peas and a single potato chopped into pieces. As usual, she served his stepfather the largest portion, but as a slight departure from tradition, she gave him two thick slices of bread along with his supper.

“To soak up the broth,” she said sweetly, and he simply grunted in response.

Three weeks later, he was dead, starved to death because he could no longer be satisfied by mortal food. His mother threw away her bread knife, their spoons, and their bowls, and bought new ones at the market. No one commented on it, and no one commented when Percy went missing shortly afterwards for another few hours. This time, thankfully, the sun was still in the sky when he left, only slightly different from where it had been when he went in.

That was, he presumed, because he did not go into The Forest as deeply as he had done before. He didn’t have to. She was waiting for him just beyond the first line of trees.

“Hello,” Percy said as he jumped over a fallen log. “Your bread worked.”

“Of course it worked. My mother told you it would.”

“She could have been lying to make me leave your forest,” Percy reasoned. “People say I’m very annoying, I wouldn’t be surprised if she just wanted me to get out of there.”

“Fairies cannot lie.” She tilted her head. “You do not know much about our ways, do you?”

“I know things,” he defended himself. “I didn’t give you my name.”

“Percy.” She didn’t merely speak it. He could see her tasting every syllable. “You are right. It is close, but not enough.”

“It’s my nickname,” he told her. She just looked at him, and he remembered that fairies didn’t have nicknames. He tried to think of something else to say. Noticing her dress, which was obviously a different garment than the last one but still the same color, he asked; “Is green your favorite color?”

“You are a very stupid boy,” she said again. “I think you will come to our forest again, even though my mother warned you to stay away.”

“I’m here right now, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are.” She smiled for the first time since he laid eyes on her. Her teeth were very white, and her canines were slightly more pointed than a normal mortal’s. “I am right. I will see you again.”

“Are we friends, then?”

“Fairies are not friends with mortals. We have spent time together, and we will spend more time together in the future. That is all.”

“Sure, if you want.”

She kept smiling, and blinked at him slowly, like an owl that had spotted a mouse and was keeping its every movement quiet so as not to frighten it.

“I do want. Very much so.”

He went back to The Forest a few months later. His mother’s job in this town had always paid little more than their previous town, and now with one less mouth to feed they were no longer in crushing poverty. Percy got his first pair of new shoes in many years, and he even started going to school again, most of the time. Attendance was neither mandatory nor regular, and he had skipped most days to find a little work where he could, a few coins that he could bring home to offset their poverty in some small way. Now that he was going again, he ultimately found it was boring to sit in the church’s cold wooden pews every day for hours on end, listening to the elderly schoolteacher drone on and on about mathematics and spelling. The only bright side was that when they began to sing hymns, it meant that class was almost dismissed, and they could finally leave.

When they were dismissed, most of his classmates headed back to town or to the fields at the north of the village. But Percy peeled off the group and headed south, towards the outskirts of town.

To be honest, he wasn’t sure why he wanted to go back. The Forest was dangerous and so was everything in there. But for some reason, he felt like it was calling to him, and he didn’t want to ignore it. Just like last time, she was hovering three trees in, and she slid out of the shadows as he approached. She stared at him, waiting for him to speak first, and he did.

“Hello,” he said. “It’s me again.”

“I remember you.” she said. “Do you need something else?”

“No, I just wanted to see you. You told me to come back.”

“I said you would come back; there is a difference.”

Percy didn’t really care to split hairs with her all day, arguing with her fairy speak. He shrugged. “It sounds like the same thing to me.”

“That’s because you’re a mortal.”

That was true. He shrugged again. They stood there and looked at each other for a minute. Despite her dismissive, almost annoyed, tone, she didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

“Do you want to play a game or something?”

Though her facial expression didn’t really change, Percy thought she looked amused.

“I don’t know any mortal games, and you don’t want to play any fairy ones.”

Percy wracked his brain for a game that would be suitable for the two of them to play. He didn’t have his knucklebones or marbles with him, and at any rate he wasn’t exactly sure that gambling with a fairy was the smartest thing to do. Most of them were better for a large group, like tag or Blind Man’s Bluff. Finally, he landed on hide and seek. It was easy to play, and there were lots of good hiding spots in The Forest. He explained the concept to her, and she agreed it sounded like a suitable idea. Not a good idea, but simply suitable, and that was good enough for him.

After a couple of rounds, in which she found him almost instantly every time, she pronounced the game enjoyable, and when he asked if she wanted to play again tomorrow, she said that would be acceptable.

So when he went into The Forest, sometimes they played games, but sometimes they just talked. She was very knowledgeable about it, naturally, she rattled off species of trees and plants and animals as they passed by them with nary a breath in between.

“You have a great memory. I can barely learn the dates in my history lessons, but you’ve got thousands of names up there,” Percy said as she finished listing all the bird species that lived in The Forest in alphabetical order. She shrugged, continuing to walk calmly on the ground beside him as he balanced on a fallen log. It was so long, it had to have been one of the pillars of the sky when it had been standing.

“Names are important,” she said. “I learn them all by heart.”

“You never told me your name,” he said abruptly as the thought occurred to him. He jumped down from his log, which had a large rotted-through hole in it just ahead, and hopped a few steps to catch up to her and match her pace.

She looked at him, frowning slightly. “You never told me your name either.”

“I told you my nickname, that’s close enough,” he reasoned. “Isn’t there anything I can call you?”

“You don’t need to call me anything. We should play another game, isn’t there anything else you know?”

She was obviously changing the topic, but he had learned by now that it would be useless to try and change it back. It seemed that fairies always had to be masters of whatever conversation they were having at any given moment. He didn’t really mind. That was just one of the quirks of having a fairy for a friend. She had never said they were friends, exactly, but she always showed up as soon as he entered The Forest, and she never told him to leave like her mother had done.

So he showed her another popular game from his village. It wasn’t much of a game, really. They just picked up rocks and threw them at a chosen target. The knothole in a barn door, the tallest fencepost in the row. Once, they had tried rolling a wagon wheel down the street and throwing the rocks through the moving spokes. It hadn’t worked, and they reverted back to more stationary targets.

When he told her this, she said, “I could do it.”

‘You could not,” he laughed. “We tried all afternoon. The entire school lined up along the road and threw rocks. It’s impossible.”

“I could,” she insisted. “Fairies are graceful; we all have wonderful hand-eye coordination.”

Percy picked up a rock and offered it to her. “Prove it. Hit that tree over there.” A good twenty paces away, a poplar tree had a bare spot on its bark. Some animal, probably a woodpecker, had chipped away a little hole in the dark wood, exposing a circle of white trunk beneath.

She looked at him consideringly and took the stone from him. Giving him a faint smile, she glanced at the target and then threw it sideways, like she was skipping it across a pond. It hit the tree trunk with a satisfying whack, dead on the spot he had pointed out. Percy let out a whoop, scaring a nearby bird out of its tree, and her smile grew larger.

“Nice one! Maybe you should come to the village after school, and show us how it’s done.”

Her smile was replaced by a frown. “Fairies aren’t supposed to leave the forest.”

“Why not? Rules are made to be broken!”

“Not for fairies they’re not. My forest is my home.” She picked up another stone, turning it over in her palm and feeling its weight. “What possible reason would I have to leave?”

She threw it effortlessly, and it hit the spot straight on again.

“Why does your hair move like that?” he asked her once, as they lounged next to each other in a little clearing deep in The Forest, looking up through the dappled leaves to the sky above. It was her favorite spot, she had told him. On a clear, sunny day, you could come here and hear the song of every bird in The Forest. When he had said he couldn’t hear it, she said they weren’t singing because they knew a mortal was nearby.

“Like what?”

“It just sways, even when there’s no wind. It’s doing it right now.” He reached out a finger and stroked it down one of her long, loose curls. Even though the air was still, the ends were still back and forth like a light breeze was blowing. She tilted her head back, smiling faintly, and looked up through the dappled branches of the trees.

“I don’t know. It’s just fairy magic.”

“You, admitting you don’t know something? That’s a first.”

“I always tell the truth,” she reminded him, smoothing out her skirts. “If I appear to know what I’m speaking of, it is because I do.”

“So you can’t lie? Ever?” She had told him this little piece of fairy lore the first time he came back to The Forest, but it still seemed slightly made up. Sometimes she spoke so obtusely he was sure that practically counted as a lie.

“A fairy doesn’t have to lie to get what they want,” she said, sounding a little smug. She paused, then asked, “Why do mortals lie?”

Percy had never really thought about it before. As strange as it was to say, lying seemed as easy as breathing. That sounded really terrible of him, like he was always lying and stealing, but it was true. “Because they can’t always get what they want, I guess.”

“Do you lie?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “I try not to when I’m around you.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t lie to me, so I guess I’m trying to even the score.” He shrugged, pulling up a handful of grass and tossing it aside.

“That is a very mortal perception. If you have an advantage in a situation, you should use it.”

“Do you want me to lie to you? I can start lying right now if you want me to lie to you.”

“I do not understand lying.” That wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no either. Something he had learned from being around her was that even if fairies couldn’t lie, they could work around that with ambiguity and confusing double meanings. In this case, he was pretty sure it meant that she wanted him to lie to her just this once, but she didn’t want to give him total permission in case he started doing it all the time. Percy decided to start out with something easy.

He ripped out another handful of grass and dropped it on her lap. “This grass is blue.”

“But you can see that it is not.”

“No, it is,” he insisted. “It really is. And it’s long too, as long as a stalk of wheat.” The grass was short, just over ankle height, because she had told him that deer liked to come here and graze in the little meadow. But they weren’t here now because they had run away when they heard a mortal coming, of course;

“No it’s not!” she said, her forehead crinkled in confusion but her lips smiling. Percy liked it when she smiled, because he had realized it was the closest she ever got to a laugh. Fairies were much more reserved with their emotions, apparently, and they tried not to show too many outward signs of their inner thoughts, preferring a blank, cold expression instead. That was what she had done for months, but she was finally beginning to loosen up a bit around him.

Now that he was lying to her, engaging in an extremely mortal activity, he decided to go the opposite route and make a more fairy-like statement. He twirled a finger through her gently swaying hair. “I like spending time with you.”

She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes slightly. “Is that another lie?”

“You figure it out.” Percy grinned at her, unsure of where this sudden boldness had come from, but too deep in it to back away now. She looked confused for a moment, probably because he had gotten the upper hand in the conversation for once, but then her expression cleared.

“You do, because you come all the time,” she decided, then went in for another haughty fairy statement. “Mortals are funny like that, they get so attached to anyone they meet.”

“I guess that’s true, but I wouldn't exactly call it a bad thing, would you?”

She paused for a long moment, just staring at him like she was running multiple possible responses through her head. Finally, she shrugged. “You wouldn’t.”

The next time Percy went into The Forest, he realized something was wrong almost immediately. She always met him as he came in, but this time, she was not standing halfway behind a tree or hovering just outside of his peripheral vision. She did not appear suddenly in front of him, causing him to stumble over over tuft of grass or a tree root, and she did not greet him in her oddly detached fairy way, which was admittedly quite cold by mortal terms but was, he had come to learn, as warmly as she could speak to him.

Percy wandered around, looking behind trees and calling out, but she did not reply and he could not find her. He was on the verge of giving up and coming back tomorrow when he heard a faint whimpering through the underbrush, almost like a wounded animal. He couldn’t see where exactly it was coming from, but he followed the sound, pushing back new branches and ducking around trees until he found it.

It was her, and she was sprawled out on the ground. Her hair was frantically waving and twitching, like it was caught in a hurricane, and she was crying. He had never seen her cry before, and the sight of her losing her composure was almost as terrifying as imagining whatever it was that had caused her to break down like this.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, throwing himself on the ground beside her. His hands hovered over her shoulders, but he didn’t dare grab her for fear it would exacerbate whatever had happened.

“My leg,” she wept, and he automatically pulled back her long, full skirts to see what she was talking about. His stomach twisted as he saw it was caught by a bear trap, set by one of the boldest members of the village, with wickedly sharp teeth meant to hold animals fast until the hunter could return and bring their game back home for dinner. If she had been mortal, it might have broken her leg, but it seemed that fairies were a little stronger than that, for though the jagged teeth dug into her leg, it was still perfectly straight with no shattered bones sticking out.

“It’s all right,” he said, his words betrayed by his shaking voice, “your leg isn’t broken. It’s going to be okay.”

But she shook her head frantically and burst into another round of gasping tears. “The trap is made of iron!”

In the years since his initial visit, his mother had told him more about fairies. Perhaps she figured that if he was going to be tromping around The Forest every other week, he ought to know more about it in order to protect himself. Perhaps she was simply making up for lost time, telling him the stories she would have told him for all those years at bedtime, reclaiming the most traditional bonding activity between mother and child now that they were free to do so. At any rate, one of the stories she had told him came sharply into focus, and he remembered, with a sick jolt of fear, that iron was poison to fairies.

He found a rock and bashed at the springs until they gave in with a creaking groan, then snapped the jaws of the trap open. She shrieked as he ripped it off her leg and threw it away. Iit crashed through the underbrush, and belatedly thought he should have placed it gently off to the side to ensure no one else would get caught in it again.

She slumped to the ground, sobbing piteously. Her leg was rapidly turning an alarming shade of green. It was not the deep emerald color of her dress, but rather a sickly pale pustule color, like a ripening lime. A row of little puncture marks, dripping blood, ran right above her ankle, and the edges of each wound were turning green as well.

“Come on,” he said, trying to help her stand. “Come on.” But no matter how heavily she leaned on him, her leg collapsed under even a miniscule fraction of her weight. Her face was deathly pale now, and her lips were completely white.

“Percy,” she gasped. “Percy—” But her eyes rolled back in her head and she lost consciousness. He staggered under her sudden limp weight, and fell to the ground, cradling her in his arms. Looking around wildly, Percy realized that they were no more than a few feet past the first line of trees, but the first time he had come here, she had led him deep into The Forest to find the fairy queen’s court. Her leg was turning steadily greener, and though he patted her cheeks frantically and shouted for her to wake up, she did not stir.

Scooping her up, and staggering again as he struggled to his feet, Percy took off running farther and farther into The Forest. He didn’t know where he was going, or how long it would take him to get there, but he couldn’t just sit around and do nothing as the iron coursed through her body and her dozen or so little wounds bled out onto the grass around them.

Three fairies in the regal uniforms of the queen’s guard suddenly appeared in a gap between the trees, and Percy nearly ran into them. Many years later, Percy would reflect upon this moment and realize that they looked startled, but not exactly surprised, though at the time he was too concerned for his friend to pay them much mind.

“She’s hurt,” he gasped, and though one of the guards made to take her, Percy couldn’t imagine letting her go. He hugged her closer, looking defiantly up at them, and the fairy’s hands dropped back to his sides. “We have to get her back to the fairy court!”

The fairies exchanged dark, significant looks, and then they turned around and beckoned for him to come with them. Two guards in front of him and one guard bringing up the rear, they took him deep into The Forest. The trees grew larger and the noise of the forest-dwelling animals grew fainter, and they finally led him to the entrance of the fairy court. Percy had no time to admire the living tunnels or the floating lights as they hurried him down the main hall, and he was too preoccupied to pay them much attention anyway.

One guard peeled off from their little group, continuing straight on through the court to the throne room as the other two led him down one of the twisty, winding hallways. Will-o’-the-wisps hovered overhead as Percy trotted at their heels, and the bobbing lights cast circular shadows on the walls so they moved in and out of pools of light and shadow. Finally, the guards stopped beneath a light, and one reached out to touch the wall. A doorway appeared, and he led Percy inside as the other guard stationed himself outside the door.

It closed behind them, and Percy found himself in what could only be the princess’s chambers. The room was larger than his entire cottage, and richly decorated. A large bed with a living wooden frame stood against one wall, and he laid her on it, making sure to slide a pillow under her head as he did so. She lay limp, and at some point when he was carrying her, her leg had started to bleed onto her dress. Little spots blossomed and grew into each other, showing up almost black on the dark fabric.

The door melted away again, and a large group of fairies entered, probably ladies-in-waiting or the like. The queen swept into the room before them all as the guards snapped to attention. The room filled with courtiers, and Percy backed up into the corner, next to a tapestry that hung from the wall. It was a detailed scene of The Forest that almost seemed alive. The leaves on the trees seemed to rustle in the wind, and the deer and birds strained to run and fly away.

A physician came forth from the fringe of the group at the fairy queen’s sharp instruction. He removed her remaining silver shoe, the other having fallen off as Percy carried her through The Forest. He pulled little vials of unknown, glistening liquids out of his bag, mixing them with powders and ointments in little bowls and spreading the resulting pastes on her leg. When he stepped back, his hands were cracked and green as well.

Two of the ladies-in-waiting stepped forward, fussing over the princess and rearranging her on the bed. They propped her leg up with a pillow and draped a blanket over her disheveled dress. Percy waited anxiously for her to shift in her sleep, blink, get up, say something, anything, but the only movement was the slow rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. Even her hair was lying limp against the pillows. Her leg had been cleaned and wrapped, but she looked no different than when he had laid her on the bed moments ago.

“Is she going to be okay?”

Every head in the room turned to look at him simultaneously, and eleven pairs of eyes burned into him. The guards must have forgotten he was there, and no one else had even noticed. The fairy queen’s frown grew even more pronounced as she looked at him.

“What are you doing here, mortal?” One of the guards hastened to the queen’s side and whispered into her ear. She inclined her head and flicked her eyes to the side, listening as he doubtless told her everything that had occurred. The guard stepped back after a few minutes, and she looked back at Percy. He didn’t expect her to but he assumed she would at least acknowledge what he had done and answer his question before sending him home. But to his surprise, she skipped straight to the last step.

“You will leave now,” she said, still frowning and glaring at him.

Percy had always been told he was impertinent, and he had tried to work on it. Biting his tongue Born half from impertinent contrariness and half from genuine concern, he said, “I’m staying.”

“You’re leaving.”

“Nope.” He threw himself down on the decorative rug, which was thicker than his mattress back at home, and crossed his arms defiantly. He would wait until she came to, and he was able to see she was all right for himself. The fairy queen seemed to swell to twice her usual size, and her hands clenched into fists. Tendrils of her hair swirled around her, and her eyes burned with rage. But he did not move. He wondered if she might strike him down, but with a low growl, she simply turned on her heel and stalked out of the room.

The physician and her courtiers trailed behind her. Percy suspected that if they had been mortal, they might have pointed and stared at him as they left, whispering among themselves at his audacity, but they were not and they did not. Out of the five of them, he could only see one looking at him out of the corner of her eye, like he was a mangy stray dog that ought to be watched lest he jump up and bite, but should not be looked at directly lest he take it as a challenge.

They left, and the door closed behind them. It sprung back into existence just as fluidly as it had disappeared, leaving no trace that it had ever opened in the first place, not even a hairline crack in the bark. He was completely sealed in, but he didn’t mind. He wasn’t going anywhere anyway.

Servants came to the princess’s chambers every day, offering him food and drink, but he declined it all. He went out into The Forest, picked nuts and berries, and drank cold, clear water from one of the many streams that ran between the trees.

The first time he went out to gather supplies, his guide deserted him halfway back and the fairy queen used glamours and charms to hide the entrance to her court from him. He stood in the middle of the woods, screaming and throwing rocks at the biggest trees in The Forest and generally kicking up as big a fuss as he was able, until another fairy came to fetch him. After that, his guide stuck to him like a prickly burr, and he never got lost in the woods again. Apparently she had decided, and quite rightly too, that it was less of a bother to let him as he wanted rather than trying to control him. The fairy queen might have had magic and powers beyond his comprehension, but he had a mortal’s commitment to loyalty, and he would not allow anyone to chase him away from his friend during her hour of need.

Except for those excursions, he spent all of his time in her room. Sometimes he sat on her luxurious rug, staring up at the will-o’-the-wisp lights as they bobbed in midair. He wondered how they stayed aloft. Sometimes he laid on his back, counting and recounting the leaves sprouting from the ceiling. He got eighty nine every time except for one, when a new leaf uncurled and sprouted from its bud. He noticed it growing for several days, but determined that it didn’t count as a leaf until it was fully uncurled, and skipped over it as he counted. Sometimes he knelt beside her bed, staring at her and hoping she would wake up soon.

That was the position he fell asleep in a week after his arrival. Her rug was soft, much softer than his bed at home, and her mattress was even more plush. One minute, he was leaning his elbows on the bed, resting his face in his hands, and the next his cheek was slumped against the velvet coverlet and he felt himself drifting off to sleep.

He woke to something moving in his hair. At first, in his half lucid state, he thought it was a rat making a nest on his pillow, which had happened several times throughout his childhood. Same rat every time, too. Percy sat up, ready to swat it away and go back to sleep, but as he did so, he remembered where he was and what he was doing there.

As he sat up, the hand that had been touching his head fell away, and he followed it up to see that she had finally begun to stir. She was blinking tiredly, and her hair was still limp on the pillow, but she was awake.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse, and Percy cast about for the pitcher of water that had temptingly been left in the room, in case he got thirsty overnight and decided that a cup of water was well worth starving to death for once he returned to the mortal world.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said as he found it and poured some water into one of the delicate crystalline cups that were conveniently close by. She lifted herself weakly, only managing to get a few inches off the pillow, and he slid a hand down between her shoulders to lift her into a half-sitting position. Taking care not to spill any, he guided the cup to her lips as she reached up with one hand to drink deeply.

When she finished and pushed the cup away, he lowered her head gently back to the pillow and put the cup down on the nightstand. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and petted her hair, like his mother always did for him when he was sick. Her eyes fluttered closed, and he thought she had fallen asleep again, when she said, “Can you get my mother?”

He said he would, and got up from the bed. He knocked on the door from the inside, and when it opened, he faithfully repeated her message. The guard took off down the hall at once at breakneck speed, and Percy returned to sit at her bedside again. Her hand twitched on the coverlet where it had fallen, and he reached out to pat it gently a couple times.

“I was really worried about you,” he said. She opened her mouth to reply, but he never heard what she was going to say, because just then the door opened and the fairy queen came in. Within seconds she was looming above him, and Percy knew that even though she had allowed him to stay the last time, he would not be so lucky the second time. He stood up and looked down at his friend.

“I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. The fairy queen glared at him. He looked right back at her and blinked slowly and stupidly on purpose, just because he knew it would infuriate her.

As he left, he looked behind him, and saw that they were both watching him go.

The years slid slowly together, and although The Forest did not change, naturally, they both did. Growing taller, wider, stronger, like two saplings stretching into mature oaks. To his consternation, though they had once been more or less the same height, she was now a definite inch or three taller. She seemed about as pleased with it as it was possible for a fairy to be (which wasn’t much), but she did mention it quite a lot, always with the ghost of a smile on her lips.

Percy went into The Forest whenever he was able, which by now was every couple of days. His mother didn’t ask where he was going or why his visits had increased in frequency, and he didn’t tell her. She seemed satisfied with that arrangement as long as he was home in time for supper. As long as he was careful, she said pointedly over their evening meal, and as long as he kept his wits about him. Did he need her to remind him of anything important he might have forgotten, or that she might have never told him in the first place? No, he said, he had learned everything he needed to know already. That answer seemed to placate her, though the next morning she would warn him again to be careful.

He understood her concern, though he didn’t think it was warranted. He had been going into The Forest for many years now, and his friend had never tried to hurt him or mess him around with fairy tricks. They did the same things they had always done; talking, walking, playing hide-and-seek. They were really too old to be playing such childish games now, but they still did it anyway. Not with the wild abandon of children shrieking and shouting breathlessly as they searched, but more sedately, making a thorough sweep of each area before moving on to the next one.

“Hello? Where did you go?” he said under his breath as he looked for her. She was always harder to find than he was; he supposed that living in The Forest all her life gave her some advantage. That, and her fairy ability to walk nearly soundlessly and almost blend into the trees when she wanted to. She could be watching him wander blindly around right now, laughing at him from behind a tree, and he wouldn’t have seen her until he was right on top of her.

A twig snapped behind him, and he whirled around. She would neither confirm nor deny his suspicions that she sometimes made noise deliberately to help him find her, but her silence convinced him that he was right. If she would rather say nothing (or, more accurately, say something confusingly vague and purposefully noncommittal), he knew it was because she would have no other option but to tell him the truth if she spoke.

“Hello, mortal.” Four fairies, all dressed in varying shades of green, were standing behind him, and one of the two girls was a little in front of the group. She looked at him and cocked her head to the side as she spoke.

“Are you looking for something? We can help you find it.” One of the boys stepped forward too. The remaining boy and girl exchanged gleeful looks behind their bolder friends’ backs, and Percy took a reflexive step back.

“I’m just playing a game,” he said uncertainly. He had never really spoken to any other fairies before. The servants at the palace had offered him food and drink where had stayed there, but that was the extent of their conversation. And he had talked to the queen a couple of times, but she hated him and ignored him as much as she possibly could. Really, his friend was the only fairy he had ever talked to.

He knew her inflections, her tones, her specific word choice that implied whatever she wanted to say when she didn’t want to say it outright. But it would be foolish to assume that all fairies acted in the same exact manner, even if they did have more rules governing their behavior than the average mortal.

The girl’s eyes sharpened, and she looked at him with something approaching curiosity. “You’re the princess’s pet, aren’t you? I think I remember you from before.”

“I’m not a pet,” Percy said. She ignored him and took a step closer, and then another and another, until she was standing right in front of him.

“Come and dance with us.” The girl laid a hand on his arm and looked up at him through her eyelashes.

“Yes, come and dance with us.” The boy flashed a blinding white smile.

“I don’t think I should do that,” Percy said slowly. He was sure he remembered something about how dancing with fairies was a bad idea, but he didn’t know how to refuse. They were standing too close, and she still had a hold of his arm. Were all fairies’ teeth that sharp, and were all their fingers that long and pointy? He tried to remember if his friend looked like that, but if he had ever noticed anything off-putting about her appearance, it had long since faded away and become unimportant in the face of other, more pressing observations. The way her eyes flashed with satisfaction when she saw him crashing his way through the trees to meet up, the way her lips curved into a silent laugh when he said something funny, the way her hair floated and danced in a breeze only she could feel. The other fairy girls’ hair was dancing too, but for some reason it seemed flatter and less vibrant than hers.

They closed around him like hunting hounds zeroing in on a deer, fanning out and trapping his back against a metaphorical wall. The girl tugged on his sleeve, still smiling but firmly keeping him in place. She was only holding him with two fingers, her thumb and pointer finger pinching the hem of his sleeve, but she might as well have been pinning him to the ground with a heavy weight.

One instant, she was smiling dangerously up at him, and the next, a look of shock skittered across her face. She pulled her hand back as if it’d been slapped, and it took him a second to realize that it actually had been. Faster than he could see, and before he could really comprehend, his friend appeared beside him, glaring at the surrounding fairies more fiercely than he had ever seen her glare before. They fell back a few paces as she growled, “What are you doing to him?”

“Nothing, just trying to have some fun.” The lead girl gave the impression of cool, unconcerned nonchalance, but her eyes flicked downward unconsciously in the presence of her princess.

She frowned more deeply, more dangerously, and her hand closed around his bicep. “He’s mine. You should remember that. If you want fun, get your own mortal.”

He stumbled as she pulled him away. The fairies scattered like she had thrown hot coals at their feet, but she kept marching along until they had nearly left The Forest.

“Did they harm you?” She had kept a hold of him all this while, and she still clutched his arm with one hand as she brushed his sleeve with the other. There wasn’t any dirt that Percy could see, but she frowned at it like she was trying to rub off invisible stains.

“No, I’m fine.”

“They shouldn’t harm you.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked like she was chewing her words over carefully. “They shouldn’t do that to you.”

“But why? I mean, they’re fairies, isn’t that something you guys do all the time?”

“No.” she said. “Not to you.”

He wanted to ask what she meant again, but something in her eyes told him not to. He had seen her rattled when she had gotten caught in that trap, but this was different. It wasn’t just discomposure, it went deeper than that. Was it fear? But it couldn’t have been. She was a fairy, and The Forest was her home turf. Not only that, she was the princess of the fairies. The others surely couldn't do her any harm.

But despite her firm, almost angry insistence that they couldn’t hurt him, she didn’t want to play the game anymore. Percy couldn’t quite say he blamed her. He was rattled by his encounter with the other fairies. Perhaps he had grown complacent when entering The Forest, only encountering fairies when he sought them out himself. He had forgotten this was their land, and they were always the ones in control.

She stood just inside the treeline, watching him as he walked away. Other fairies might still pose a danger to him, but she would never do anything to hurt him. Even if she didn’t want to admit it, they were friends. He was sure of it.

During his next few visits, she had apparently decided that an overabundance of caution was the best way forward. Instead of wandering around The Forest or sitting deep inside at her favorite clearing, they sat against a fallen log within sight of the treeline. When she sat down, the edge of her long, full skirt (still green, after all these years) draped itself over his leg, but she made no move to fix it. Percy had stretched his arms over the back of the log, and when she sat down, she fit perfectly inside his arm, his fingers inches away from her shoulder.

He told her all the gossip from his village, and she told him the latest fairy news. For some reason, Percy had assumed fairies were too cool and ethereal to have anything like a mortal village’s drama, but apparently they did. And it was doubly dramatic since they couldn’t lie, so everything she was telling him had to be the truth and not a wild exaggeration of some insignificant event.

About a week later, she finally agreed to let them sit out of sight of the village field, and she took him back to her special spot. As always, the supposed music of all the songbirds in The Forest was silent. Percy wondered if he was ever going to hear it, or if the birds would never get used to him being in the clearing.

“You seem different today,” she observed, when their conversation had lulled for a third time and he didn’t make his usual effort to restart it with a new topic. “Is something troubling you?”

Percy shrugged, running his hand over the grass. He pinched a new blade of sawgrass between his fingers and pulled it up, ignoring the few drops of blood that beaded on the pad of his thumb. “I’m just thinking.”

“So you usually don’t think? That’s what makes you so sad?”

She was teasing him again. He could tell because her lips were curling up at the corners even as she tried to keep a straight face. She had started to do it more often recently, and it was remarkable how many sarcastic things she could say without telling a lie. Percy sighed, and admitted, “My mother is getting remarried.”

“Oh.” She sat there considering. Then she asked, “Do you want some more bread?”

“No!” Percy held up a hand, letting out a shocked laugh even as he hurried to reassure her. “No, he’s a good man. He’s the new schoolteacher in our village. He just moved here because the last teacher retired, and the children love him.”

“You asked them all?” She quirked a brow and smiled, which was the closest she ever got to laughing.

“Oh, definitely,” he teased back. It was remarkable how talking with her made his sour mood turn good so quickly. “And if a bunch of rowdy schoolchildren give their teacher good reviews, you know he’s good!”

“So why does that bother you?”

Percy sighed, ripping up grass by the handful as he wondered about how to answer. He wasn’t exactly sure how to put his thoughts and feelings into words, even though he was currently feeling a lot of things. He sighed again. “He’s nice, it’s just... I don’t know. I never knew my father, you know, and my last stepfather was so awful. I don’t know. I guess I’m a little scared that he’ll turn out to be awful again, and my mother won’t ever find someone good enough for her. Or that he will be good enough, and I won’t know how to act around him. I’ve never done this before.”

She nodded slowly, apparently deep in thought as she considered his words. When she next spoke, it was in a low, heavy voice. “I never knew my father either. He’s not dead, he’s just a mortal. My mother wanted an heir. My father wanted to attend university.” She shrugged, and continued, “So she magicked up an empty spot in the course, and he gave her a child. The arrangement worked out well for both of them.”

Percy hadn’t expected this sudden burst of empathy from her, and he didn’t quite know what to make of it. She had never given any sign, any hint, that she had such a complicated past, and though he assumed it was because she didn't like to talk about it, he wasn’t sure what made her tell him everything now.

Even though she had shrugged while she spoke, there was a strange expression on her face. He had seen her smile, he had seen her frown. He had seen her afraid and happy and angry. But he had never seen her look as she did now, and even though she was obviously trying her hardest to keep up a blank continence, he could tell that it made her a little bit sad. “Does that make you upset?”

His question was semi-rhetorical, but even so, her evasion of a direct answer was painfully obvious. “It’s not logical to get upset over something that can’t be changed.”

“Just because it’s not logical doesn’t mean you can’t do it anyway.”

She clenched her hand in the grass beside her long, full skirts, ripping up a handful but not opening her fist to scatter it around. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“We can go back to talking about my problems if you want. But can I ask you one last question first?” She nodded, looking a little bit apprehensive even though he had promised to let the subject drop after this. But she needn’t have worried. His question wasn’t deep or emotional, and even to him it sounded kind of stupid, but the idea had literally just occurred to him. “If your father was a mortal, does that mean you’re only half fairy?”

She shook her head, looking a little relieved. “That’s not a thing. Children of fairies will always be fairies, even if one of their parents is mortal.”

“Let me guess, that’s more of that fairy magic?”

“Of course, would we have it any other way? Now, tell me more about your problems,” she commanded.

And so he kept her informed of every new development in the relationship. Every time he came into The Forest, he had more to tell her. She listened to everything quietly, and then she asked what the wedding was like (small and fast), and how his mother had looked (happy and excited), and how he felt now that it was over (happy to see her happy).

Things moved on at a rapid pace. Percy was happily surprised to find that it was easy to adjust to having his stepfather around. Months later, he was still as kind and considerate as he had been before the wedding, and his mother was still as happy as she had been during it. And so it happened that one day he came into The Forest and announced, “My mother is having a baby!”

She looked at him with a funny expression on her face for a second, and then it cleared. She asked mildly, “Are you happy about that?”

“I think so. My mother was almost crying from joy when she told me. But I’ve never been an older brother before, so I’m not sure if I’ll be good at it or not.”

She smiled at him. “I think you will be.”

He had had his doubts, but she was proved right a few months later. Percy didn't like to brag, but he thought he was doing a very good job. He loved his sister, and he loved spending time with her. Whenever she saw him, she raised her arms and made little grabby fists, and though she couldn’t speak yet, he swore she had a special gurgle just for him.

The only downside was that Percy couldn’t come to The Forest as often, now that his sister had been born. His mother didn’t like to bring her around all day as she worked if she could help it, and preferred that one of them stayed home with her instead. So now, instead of heading straight into The Forest when he had a free day, he watched his sister instead. He was usually able to come on the weekends, when school was out so his stepfather stayed home, but their once regular, nearly daily visits had diminished in frequency.

But as much as he enjoyed his new responsibilities as a brother, a small part of him missed seeing his friend every day. The visits had been a part of his routine for so long that he hardly remembered what he had done with himself all day before them. His sister was hardly a good conversationalist, so he spent most of the time thinking about his friend and wondering what she was doing at that moment and whether or not she was thinking about him too.

He didn’t know if she was upset about the changes to their unspoken schedule. Obviously she never told him straight out, but the next time he visited, she frowned at him as he crashed through the underbrush to their appointed meeting place and said, “It’s been a long time.”

Percy was sure there was a hidden ‘too long’ somewhere in there, even though it had only been a week. He couldn’t ignore the thrill of pleasure that went through him when he thought about it, because it meant she really did think about him as much as he did about her. He gave her a wide, hopefully charming, smile and asked, “Did you miss me?”

Her frown twitched into a smile at the corners of her mouth, but she still crossed her arms and looked at him very severely. “I noticed your absence.”

“Well, I’m here now, and I can stay until sunset today. We have all day together.”

She looked mildly pleased, and in a sudden burst of inspiration Percy imagined she was jumping for joy inside. Something about the idea pleased him a great deal, but he refused to examine that any deeper.

“How are you?” she asked as they walked into The Forest together. “Has anything new happened with your sister?”

Apparently, fairy children had very different stages of development than mortal babies, so she was very interested to know everything he could tell her about his sister. And Percy loved talking about her, so it was a win-win situation.

He entertained her with a long story about how his sister had tried porridge for the first time that week, and, to his mother’s dismay, had somehow managed to grab ahold of the bowl and fling it halfway across the room while shrieking like a banshee. She told him that a fairy baby was fed solid food from the moment they were born and could chew breads and cakes as well as any grown adult, so she didn’t understand the concept of introducing soft foods slowly, many months after birth. She said that the fairy way seemed easier and much less complicated. He said that perhaps they had to agree to disagree, and then, to her slightly bemused stare, he explained a joke his stepfather had told him about a craftsman, a farmer, and a baron who walked into a bar.

They stopped for lunch in a little clearing when the sun was high overhead, obvious even though the thick leafy branches above their heads. Percy reached into his pocket for the pieces of hard cheese and salted meat that he had brought with him, and she somehow produced a perfectly ripe fruit and a small, round cake from the folds of her dress. They placed their food on their knees in lieu of a table, which was probably for the best because Percy didn’t think that the rotting old log they were sitting against would have been very sanitary.

“What would happen if you ate mortal food?” he asked suddenly. She was watching him closely as he bit into the piece of meat, and he thought that perhaps she was as tempted by it as he was by her meal, though of course he knew he shouldn’t touch it.

“Nothing. Mortal food isn’t magic, it wouldn’t have any effect on a fairy,” she said, taking a delicate bite of her cake. “We can do so much more to you mortals than you could ever do to us.”

He ignored how ominous that sounded and kept eating his lunch. After a few moments of companionable silence, she asked him another question about his sister, and he launched into yet another long-winded story about her. Her lips curved into a smile as he rambled on, and though he was enjoying telling the story immensely, he would have given a speech on the best way to till a field before planting if it would make her smile.

A couple of weeks and a couple more visits later, Percy was at home looking after his sister once again. His parents were out; his mother taking in work as a laundress and his stepfather teaching lessons at the old church schoolhouse.

His sister squealed and clapped her hands at him, begging to be picked up, and he did so, but then she immediately started squirming to get down like an indecisive housecat.

“All right, all right,” he said, laughing, and put her down. She had started crawling a few days ago, unusually early for a baby, but his mother said it was because she was so sweet and intelligent. His little sister was apparently eager to practice some more, for she started her unsteady scrambling as soon as her hands touched the wooden planks of their floor.

He turned around, just for a minute, to lay out the plates for their meal, but babies were faster than he realized. One moment all was well as he filled their cups with water, and the next, a piercing wail made him spin around, nearly knocking over a chair.

His sister had crawled over to the spot in front of the fire where his mother kept their extra pots and pans, and she was sitting next to a cast-iron skillet, screaming her little lungs out and flapping her hands wildly. Percy swore madly, jumped over the chair, and grabbed her hands so fast that she screamed again. Kneeling in front of her, he forced her to uncurl her clenched fingers to assess the damage.

Her chubby little baby hands were blistered, and her soft palms were a sickly green. She fretted as though she had been burned, and though the fire was hot, that particular pan was far enough away from the flames that when Percy pressed his open palm onto it, he could hold it there for minutes without even so much as a sizzle.

It had been years, but he recognized the injury immediately. He had seen that color before. It had been a leg and not a hand, but it was exactly the same. Too late, Percy half-remembered hazy warnings about changeling children, fairy infants who had been left in place of mortal babies who then were spirited away to the magic court.

The realization made him sick. He looked at the baby. She was still crying, her little face screwed up and red as a tomato, and he picked her up to comfort her as he had done countless times before. But he actually hadn’t, because this baby wasn’t his sister and he had never seen her before in his life. Unless he had. How could he know how long she had been switched out? How many times had he held the changeling child, hugged her, kissed her, played with her, not even noticing that his real sister had been stolen away?

He made to put her down again, but then he stopped. Percy couldn’t just ignore a crying baby, even if touching her tenderly felt like a betrayal. He held her on his shoulder, cradling her little fuzzy head with one hand and resisting the urge to throw her away from him as he thought about what he should do. There was no time to delay, he decided as he instinctively calmed the baby, rocking her from side to side. He didn’t know how long his sister had been swapped out, and he knew enough about fairy food from personal experience to know that he had to get her back before she ate some.

Percy took the long cloth that his mother used to carry his sister around on the days when no one could stay home to watch her and wrapped it around his chest. It took him a few tries, even though he watched himself in the little polished square of metal they used as a mirror in order to copy his mother’s complicated series of deft tucks and knots. Finally, he worked out that she had been folding the loose end under the bottom wrap and then over the top band instead of just over the top, and that made the whole thing actually stay in place and even created a tighter sling for the baby’s feet.

When he was able to move without the whole thing spontaneously unraveling on him, he released the tentative hold he had on the baby and looked around for the iron fire poker. It was, unsurprisingly, near the fire. He tested it in his hand, slashing it from side to side and stabbing into the air to gauge how hard he needed to swing it. Percy hoped that he would be able to convince them to reverse the trade, baby for baby, but he needed a backup plan for the more-than-likely event that the fairy queen didn’t give in to his demands.

He did not leave a note behind when he left the house. It was too much to explain, and too upsetting for his mother to read scribbled down on a piece of paper. Selfishly and a little bit cowardly, Percy hoped that he would be able to go into The Forest, get his sister, and come back before his parents even knew he had gone. He didn’t want them to know he had as good as given their child over to the fairies by telling his so-called friend every single detail about her existence.

The Forest was more clearly in view now as Percy crossed the great grassy field, and he instinctively quickened his pace until he was flat-out running to the trees. His sister was in there, in the deepest part of The Forest, and he had to get there as soon as he was able.

Someone else, it seemed, was also in a hurry.

A blur of gold and green was streaking across the rolling field that separated his village from The Forest. In all the years he had known her, somehow she had always known when he was coming and beat him to their appointed meeting place. He had never seen her take one step past the furthest tree, and he had assumed she couldn’t. Another fairy rule, another law of the land they could not disobey.

But apparently that was not the case. She saw him coming and altered her course to intercept him but did not slow her pace, and minutes later, they collided. Percy instinctively threw up his arm to protect the baby that looked like his sister, and she steadied herself by grabbing onto his bicep. His first urge was to wrap an arm around her waist and pull her upright, but his second urge was to be furious with himself for even thinking of it.

“You must come with me,” she said, oblivious to his inner struggle. Her gray eyes were large and serious, and he was doubly angry with himself for noticing them.

“I thought you were my friend.” It was the first thing that came out of his mouth. Percy had thought he blamed himself just moments ago, but now that she was standing in front of him, he realized that he blamed her too. The questions she had asked him about his sister, the interest she had shown in him and his family, suddenly took on a different light. Not innocent concern or friendly curiosity, but sly investigation and pointed digging for information to use against him.

He knew fairies were harsher than mortals, that they operated on a different set of rules, but somehow he had thought that they had a real connection, something that made their relationship more important than those petty little divides. It was hard to be wrong.

“Of course I am!” she said carelessly, disregarding and dismissing him without a second thought as she just kept talking. It was like she didn’t take him seriously. “Quickly, you must follow me.”

“Why the hell would I do that? You kidnapped my sister!”

He did not raise his fire poker, but she winced at it anyway. Or maybe she was wincing at him and his harshly raised voice, unlike any other way he had ever spoken to her before. But then again, she had never done anything this terrible to him before.

“I did no such thing. I am trying to help you.”

“No you’re not. Maybe you didn’t take her yourself, but you told somebody else about it. How else could they know?”

“I had no idea that she had been taken until moments ago.” Something deep inside her eyes flickered, and it seemed she finally realized he was dead serious. “You mortals are so obstinate. Haven’t I told you fairies cannot lie?”

“I still don’t believe you.”

A small part of Percy knew she had to be right, because fairies couldn’t lie, but he was too bitter and angry to admit it. It just opened up too many new questions. How had the other fairies found out, and how long had they known? But what if they didn’t know about him at all? Her betrayal made it a personal attack. But without that surety, it was just a random senseless act of fairy malice, and he wasn’t even worth the nails in his boots in terms of their notice. That was scarier, because as bad as it was to be targeted by them, it was even worse that after all these years, he didn’t even register on their radar. It was easier to be angry with her, because that made it matter more, and if he didn’t yell, he thought he might cry. He wasn’t sure which was more upsetting; his sister being taken away, or the idea that she could have betrayed him by helping them to do so.

He turned away in disgust, but she grabbed his hand and pulled him back around. Her eyes were wide, and for the second time in the years he had known her, she looked unsettled and afraid.

“You have to come with me. You owe me, Percy. Your debt has not been repaid.”

“What debt?” he asked stupidly, too confused by her sudden accusation to summon any venom into his words.

“Do you not remember our first meeting? My mother allowed you to take fairy food home to your village to kill your evil stepfather, and you thanked me for handing it to you.”

“I was just being polite! Aren’t fairies supposed to like that?”

“By thanking me, you admitted that you were in my debt. Why do you think my mother has allowed you to live for so long? It is because I have never collected my payment.”

Was this the reason she had invited him to return, the first time they had met? No, not invited, Percy suddenly remembered. She had been very clear on that point. She had simply told him to return, and he had done it. Was that the first of many orders she had given him? Had she been magicking him this whole time, with him unaware that he had even done anything wrong in the first place?

“And why haven’t you?” he challenged, his anger returning again. “Was our whole friendship just a way for you to collect it?”

She closed her eyes briefly and huffed a sigh. Then she opened them again and pointed sadly at a nearby daisy. “Percy, I want that flower over there. Give it to me.”

It was like someone had dropped a bucket of cold water on his head. He felt it spill down his back, through his arms, all the way into his toes. It just kept going, repeating and repeating, and each new wave stuffed his head up with cotton batting. Percy took three clumsy steps over to the flower. He felt himself bend down to get it, and he watched his hand hold the flower out to her. She took it from him and cast it aside in the same motion. His mind cleared, and the sensation disappeared.

“That is the power of a fairy’s control. Tell me, have you ever felt such a sensation before?”

Percy shook his head dumbly. His anger seemed to have been washed away with the flow of her magic, and now he was just confused and upset. Not directed at her anymore, just a general emotion as he looked back over the years, recontextualizing everything and trying to remember if he had ever made any other unintentional promises.

“Come with me,” she said gently, tugging at his sleeve. “I’ll help you get her back.”

He silently yielded to her, and allowed her to pull him into The Forest. She guided them through the maze of trees that grew taller and taller as they went further in. Her gown slithered over the leafy ground, and she kept turning back to look at him.

The birds stopped singing, and the tree branches curved overhead, forming a low ceiling above their heads. They hurried down the long, straight tunnel that led to the throne room, and as they passed intersecting hallway after hallway, Percy wondered which one of them led to his sister.

They stopped at the grand double doors, and she stepped forward and stroked a finger through a grove in the bark. The doors swung open at her touch, and she led him into the gigantic throne room. It was just as he remembered it from all those years ago; brightly lit with will-o’-the-wisps, ornate curtains on the walls, green velvet carpet on the floor. The raised dais, the throne made out of a living tree, and, on the throne, the fairy queen.

Percy did not bow to the queen, and she did not curtsy. She hovered beside and behind him, a few steps to the left, and he stood straight and tall and gave her mother his best angry glare. No one could look intimidating with a baby strapped to their chest, but he did his level best. “You took my sister. I want her back.”

“You dare to come into my court and make demands?” The fairy queen’s face contorted into a sneer, and her eyes burned bright as coals. “You have no authority here.”

“And you have no authority in my home.” Percy knew he was doing a dangerous thing, and the little twelve-year-old boy inside of him trembled at the unpardonable rudeness he was showing to her. But any risk was worth it for his sister. “How did you know about her?”

“Foolish mortal. Do you believe I would allow my daughter to fraternize with you unchecked and unguarded? You have been watched since the moment you reentered my forest.”

“Mother! I am fully capable of looking after myself.”

“Is that why your mortal is here in my court with a rod of iron?”

“I’m here for my sister,” he repeated. Percy raised the fire poker and pointed it at the fairy queen. She hissed, and her courtiers took a collective step back.

She seemed unable to reach her full level of fury with iron in her presence, and she turned away from him. Addressing her daughter instead, she commanded, “Collect your debt and end these tiresome theatrics.”

The fairy queen looked furiously at her daughter, but she just stared back with a glare just as fierce. She blinked slowly. Once, twice. Three times.

“Where is the mortal baby, Mother?”

Her mother did not respond. They just kept looking at each other. The hall was deadly silent, and the air thrummed with boiling tension. Finally, without breaking eye contact, the fairy queen snapped her fingers and pointed at the nearest guard. “Take them to the mortal child.”

“Did you feed her anything?” Percy demanded as the guard stepped reluctantly forward.

“She is unharmed,” the fairy queen said. The very air around them was buzzing, the feel of iron colliding with, and suppressing, her fury. Percy lowered his fire poker and gave a short, curt nod. He wouldn’t have thanked her even if he thought he could.

The guard came towards them, making a wide berth around his weapon, and practically sprinted out of the throne room. Percy turned halfway around, ready to go, but the fairy queen called out one final parting command.

“Mortal. Do not come here again.”

It was an echo of what she had told him the first time he came to her court, but this time there was no trace of amusement in her voice, or any wry smile in her eyes. She was as sharp as a soldier's sword, and her eyes were as bright as the forges that had burned to make it. She was deadly serious, and he knew he really could never return.

The fairy queen’s daughter followed after him, and together they walked down the main hall and then down a twisting, winding offshoot that seemed to go on forever. The guard stopped suddenly in front of an empty expanse of wall and turned jerkily. He didn’t speak, or even look at Percy, but he gave a stiff little bow to his princess.

“In here,” she said to Percy, laying a finger on the bark door. It melted away. He stepped through as she glared darkly at the guard, and then with a rustle of skirts she spun through the doorway and sealed it up again.

The room was small and the branches that twisted together overhead were much lower than the rest of the court’s ceilings. A single will-o’-the-wisp floated above a leafy bassinet, and Percy leapt forward to seize his sister. She waved her chubby arms and legs in the air and gurgled at him, seemingly unaware that anything was amiss. He wanted to pick her up, to hold her close against his chest, to smell her baby-scented hair and have her spit up on his shoulder. But he couldn’t pick her up with the fairy baby in the way, and he hesitated, wanting to untie the other baby but refusing to take his hands off his sister in the crib for fear she might get snatched away again.

She sensed his dilemma without him having to speak, and she smoothly stepped forward and took the changeling baby off his chest, untying the broad piece of swaddling cloth with her long, delicate fingers. Tilting her head with a frown, she looked down at the baby she was now cradling in her arms.

Percy picked up his sister and was immediately rewarded when she smeared her wet, slobbery hands on his face and neck. He kissed the top of her head, where the soft spot was just beginning to fade away. A few tears came to his eyes as he wrapped the cloth back around his chest. Even though he knew how to tie it properly now, he didn’t stop supporting his sister with his arm.

The changeling baby cooed as she put it down in the bassinet, and then she neatly stepped around him to open the door again. Picking up the fire poker that he had dropped in his haste to get to his sister, he followed her out of the room.

“Send for the doctor and have him tend to her hands,” she ordered the guard, who turned on his heel and marched down the hall. He looked glad to be leaving them to their own devices, as glad as Percy was to be leaving this place with his sister alive and intact.

Fairies hovered at doorways and in the halls, watching him pass with inscrutable expressions, but their queen’s daughter still walked at his side, her furious glare daring them to comment in any way. Although she didn’t need to, she kept pace with him all the way out of the court, and all the way back through The Forest. Even when the sky was visible again and the birds started to sing, she walked beside him. When he left The Forest, she stepped beyond the last line of trees and trailed after him towards the village.

She stopped halfway across the field as they drew nearer to the village, and Percy turned to face her. The sun was setting over the western hills, and her moving hair caught the dying light, making it shine like so many little chains of gold. There was so much he wanted to say to her, but he didn’t know where to begin. Apologize for blaming her, for one thing, but if thanks was dangerous to say, he didn't want to know where sorry would get him. So he settled on something that was as close as he could get, truthful yet teasing at the same time.

“I would thank you for your help, but I think I’ve learned my lesson,” he said.

“I think that’s something you should have learned before you came into our forest,” she retorted, but her eyes glinted and he knew she was only teasing him in return.

“You’re probably right.”

“Of course I’m right.”

Percy chuckled softly, because of course she had to be right, when a thought occurred to him. He hadn’t noticed it when it happened, because he had had more important things to worry about, but now it was glaringly obvious and he didn’t see why he had missed it earlier. “You wasted your debt on a flower.”

She ran a gentle finger down his sister’s chubby arm. An hour ago, Percy would have slapped her hand away and shouted at her to never come near them again, but all he could think about in this moment was how her eyes had flashed when she had stood beside him in the hall, and her unwavering cool conviction as she told her mother to give up the mortal baby.

“I didn’t waste it,” she said. “I would never want you to do what I want. I want you to do what you want.”

“What if I wanted to do this?” Percy reached out and took her hand in his. Their fingers laced together perfectly, and she smiled at him. Her hand was soft and warm, longer than his but no wider.

“This is nice,” she said. And then, “My name is Annabeth.”

How strange was it that he had known her for five years, but he had never heard her name until this moment? He had asked once, a long time ago, and she had refused him flat out. But now she was standing before him, exposing her only vulnerability to him without prompting, it was only fair that he did the same. He wanted to do the same. “My name, my real name, is Perseus.”

“Perseus.” She repeated his name in a way that stretched out all the syllables like molasses, sweet and warm and full of anticipation. “That’s a good name.”

He could have stood there forever, listening to her say his name, but his little sister started fussing. Maybe she finally realized that she had been away from home for too long, or maybe she was just hungry. Percy rubbed her back soothingly and she quieted a little, but she still wriggled around in the sling.

“I have to go, but I’ll come back tomorrow,” he promised.

Annabeth smiled again, even brighter. “I’ll be waiting in the forest.”