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Shiemi digs her hands into the dirt and breathes. Her garden, the smell of wet soil and new growth, roots and worms, the things that have always been safe and familiar. Today, more than ever, she needs safe, she needs familiar.
In a few moments her mother will find her, will have followed marks of footsteps and crutches down the path and through the trees until she finds Shiemi in the only place she ever goes. But before that, before that, Shiemi has just a few moments to catch her breath. So she does, she breathes, she buries shaking hands into soft loam. Her mother will give her this moment, probably. And then--
"Girl, why are you crying?"
She looks up at a boy she's never seen before. His clothes are strange, all greens and browns in a patchwork of colors that shifts and changes like dappled sunlight on the barks of trees, like something she had never seen before, and shouldn't be seeing now. He's crouched near her, on top of a mossy boulder that she'd never had the strength to move, studying her intently with blue-green eyes narrowed with focus.
He is the most beautiful person she has ever seen. She wonders if she should be scared.
"Why are you crying?" He asks again, curious and like he's never seen someone cry before, and she pushes against the soft ground and sits up, scrubs at her blotchy face with the back of a hand to try and scrub some of the tears and snot away. She thinks she probably shouldn't answer him, that it's dangerous, that she knows what he is and people might call them Neighbors or Good Folk but she also knows that it's just to be nice. Shiemi has heard the stories, the myths, knows that these things are anything but neighborly or good or kind. But he doesn't look dangerous, with his skin pale and freckled with shadows, with his green-blue eyes and furrowed brow, with a frown that looks more concerned than cruel. And she's always been shy, always been so painfully shy she can't talk to strangers, or look at them, but there's something about this person (he isn't a person, exactly) that makes her want to speak.
"I'm supposed to go to the castle," she says, still scrubbing at her cheeks with muddy hands. "I'm supposed to go to the castle and marry the emperor."
He doesn't understand, she can tell, because he moves closer without exactly standing, a quick graceful motion more animal than human. He moves closer, but he does not touch her, and she looks behind him and sees a line of new fresh toadstools, in a curve around the boulder, in a curve around the both of them. She has, somehow without thinking, stepped into a fairy ring.
"And that makes you sad," he says. He doesn't ask, he says it, like he's confirming a suspicion he already had. Shiemi feels like he's studying her, like he doesn't understand her in the same way she doesn't understand him. She nods, instead of answering. This close, she can smell something like woodsmoke and herbs and animal fat, can see the dappled pattern across his skin like the soft fur of a fawn. The fair folk are supposed to live in golden castles in their otherworld, but she can only picture this strange, curious boy as something from deeper in the woods, who sleeps on beds of moss underneath the creaking branches of ancient trees. He is silent, between words. She is also silent, her heart pounding in her chest as she nods. She doesn't want to scare him away.
"Are you going to go?" He asks, another question as he crouches beside her. Beside her, not in front of her, not touching her or reaching out for her. There's a bow and a quiver of arrows on his back. The bow is short, and curved in a way she's never seen the hunters in her village use, and made of a wood as red and dark as arterial blood. The arrows are made of the same deep red wood, fletched with shimmering black feathers. The quiver is a pale soft leather, embossed with a scene of hunters riding stags through a snowy forest. Shiemi can't tear her eyes away from it.
She nods, again, and fists her hands in her skirt. The princes are good, for the most part, like princes have to be. But the great wyrm Shemihaza has always demanded sacrifices, and without them the world will fall into chaos.
"I can help you."
Shiemi looks up, startled. The boy is looking back at her.
"Why?" She asks and then realizes that she might be being rude, but to her surprise the boy looks away. She didn't know the fair folk could be embarrassed, but he does look a little bit like he is.
"Your garden," he says, like that's an explanation. Her garden, her grandmother's garden, this little patch of quiet just inside the edge of the forest, away from the fields. That's what brought him here? That's why there's a fae boy with dappled skin and a gentle face crouched next to her and making her a quiet little offer of help. "It's peaceful here, and my brothers don't bother me."
Impulsively, she reaches out and grabs one of his hands in both of hers. His skin is cool, like a river-washed stone, and his eyes go wide and round as he looks at her. Shiemi knows she's probably being rude, and she knows she should never be rude to one of the good folk, but she's never been one to think before she acts.
"Let's help each other! I'm sure if we work together, we can figure something out!"
He stares at her, and then, slowly he smiles.
"To steal you from the Emperor of the Flowers will not be an easy task," he says, and he is not right now a boy, or something like a boy. She sits on the back of something like a deer, something like a yearling buck but somehow larger, with dappled fawn-fur and antlers of glittering silver. Shiemi strokes the soft fur of his neck and listens, holding her crutches in her lap. They walk through a forest, and she knows it is not the forest she left behind a time ago, not the familiar plants in season or the familiar paths between them. The trees back home were older than her grandmother had been. These trees might be older than anything, older than kingdoms or stories or time.
The boy, who is a deer, who is one of the Fair Folk, who has taken her from her home and brought her into the Otherworld, winds his way confidently through the trees, through the glittering sunlight and over mossy ground, silver hooves making no sound and leaving no tracks.
"She does not give up her princesses lightly," he says, after a pause. Sheimi doesn't know how long that pause between his words was, how far they've come or how far they have to go. The sunlight slants through the trees in a way that might be afternoon, or might be morning. She doesn't know why he would have gone to her garden, why he would have needed somewhere peaceful when he has a forest like this, full of the smell of earth and the gentle sounds of distant birdsong.
"I know," Shiemi says. "My mother said that her sister..."
The deer looks back at her, quiet and watchful. A nod, and his silver horns catch the sunlight and cast it out again in glittering splinters of brightness. She thinks he's about to speak again, though she isn't sure if he has ever spoken aloud like this, or if it's only been words gently handed to her somehow. And then--
A sound like thunder, but somehow deeper and closer and he dances backwards, all tossing head and snorting breaths and she holds tightly to his neck as the ground splits open under his flashing silver hooves. They do not fall, he's too quick for that, too sure-footed in his backwards steps even as the forest crumbles away before them, mossy rocks tumbling down and trees shifting and crashing with groans of displeasure.
"Littlest brother," comes a voice, or the sounds of shifting rocks made to speak. "I want that."
The thing that comes out of the earth is all glittering green-black armor, like polished stones. It looks, Shiemi thinks in sudden bafflement, like a lizard, like the little lizards that skitter around the garden, that rest on warm stones. It's larger than them, larger than a house, but she still thinks of lizards and not of dragons as she looks at it, her arms wrapped around the neck of the deer.
"Elder brother," says the boy. "She is my guest."
The lizard is a boy in glittering green and gold, standing in front of the deer with a hand on the hilt of his sword and a scowl on his handsome face. Shiemi wonders if he's a prince, if he has ever been denied anything he wants, if the dappled stag who is sometimes a quiet boy in patchwork clothing can do anything against someone who makes the forest fall apart just as a greeting.
"Littlest brother," he says again, but he is looking at her rather than the deer. "I want that. Give her to me."
"Elder brother," he says, and his voice is firm, and Shiemi's hands are still trembling in his fur. "She is my guest. I know you would not be so rude as to take a guest from me."
"I hate you!" The green prince stomps his foot like a child, and the whole forest trembles, and Shiemi feels the deer tense beneath her, feels him shift to keep his balance, sees him lower his head just slightly to point those glittering silver antlers down towards the creature in front of them.
Another stomp of his foot, his voice is a rockslide. "I hate you! I want her! You'll give her to me or I'll take her myself!"
"Elder brother," the deer says again. His voice is quiet, his voice is the still power of a sunbeam on damp moss, of light through leaves. "You would not be so rude."
The lizard is larger than a house, larger than a meeting hall, and his frustrated yell is the sound of smashing boulders. He hisses, snarls, stomps a clawed foot, and the deer does not move. The deer does not move until the lizard steps backwards, down into the splintered darkness of the rocks, hisses and spits and moves slowly back and shrinks slowly smaller and is gone.
They wait, her and the boy who is a deer, wait for a long moment in silence and stillness, watching the ruined ground for signs of the lizard returning. Shiemi's heart is pounding, and beneath her she feels the deer give a sigh before stepping backwards, then moving to find a path through the shattered ground, picking carefully over boulders and under the tilting masses of trees older than the world.
Neither of them say anything for a long time, 'till the ground smooths out beneath them, 'till the broken ground is far behind them.
"Was that... a prince?" Shiemi asks, and the stag stills underneath her. He goes to the ground, slowly, settling onto his knees without shaking her loose, and she climbs carefully off once she can. Her crutches sink into the moss, her always-unsteady feet are even more unsteady on the uneven ground. His hand is on her shoulder, guiding her down to sit and rest.
"He is a king." The boy says, and his eyes are faintly worried as he settles down next to her. "He is the King of Earth."
"... are you a king?" She asks, and she doesn't think he is, doesn't think he could possibly be, but she doesn't know what's possible here, and maybe quiet boys who are deer can be kings as well.
"No."
"Are you a prince, then?"
"No." A pause, the silence of the forest settling around them. "My elder brother is."
"But not that elder brother?"
"The brother closest to me," he explains, and his eyes are watching the forest, his head is tilted slightly, like a little bird. Shiemi wonders if he means age or friendship or just proximity, how many brothers he has, if they're more like him or more like the spoiled king they just left behind.
She finds out soon enough. The forest is spring, is summer, is autumn, is winter, is all of these things all at once, and the trees are older than words and the smallest of saplings and Shiemi herself is a child and an old woman and eons dead and not yet born and all she can do is hold tightly to the neck of the deer, or the hand of the boy, like he told her to before they started climbing down into this valley, millennia ago and centuries in the future. She closes her eyes and she keeps them open and a dragonfly the size of a cat lands on a feather-shaped leaf of a tree and a thing like a mouse made of rusting metal scurries under a pile of rubble and she can only think that she has to hold on, hold on and not let go.
"Eldest brother." The deer says, and said, and will say all at once. "I have a mortal guest with me today."
Everything goes blessedly still. They stand on a path in a field, one hand holding tightly to the boy's hand. It is summer, the wind blowing lazily through the tall grass, and Shiemi is herself again, young and fleeing from a dragon marriage to the Emperor of the Flowers. The castle in front of her is polished stone, battlements, flying pennants and stained glass. A moment ago it had been everything all at once, a wooden hall and a metal fortress and a crumbling ruin and the thing a building is before it there could be anything alive to build it. But now it is a castle with a drawbridge lowered before them, and in the center of the drawbridge stands a man in bright clothes.
The King of Time is more like a human than either of his brothers that she's met, Shiemi thinks. He's more like a human as he stands there but as he moves, as he smiles a loud smile and flings his arms wide in welcome he is nothing like a human at all.
"Welcome, littlest brother, and little mortal princess!"
Once, when Shiemi was very little, back when her legs would carry her weight and grandmother was alive, she had been in the forest by herself, exploring further and further away from home. There had been a noise. She had followed it. She had found a fox, bloodstained and filthy, snapping teeth and snarling panic. Its foot was caught in a trap, a metal thing with biting teeth that snapped onto a leg and wouldn't let go. It was chewing through its own leg in its fear, desperate to escape from something it could never understand.
She understands something of how it felt now, she wants to turn and run and run until she stumbles out of a fairy circle in her garden in the woods, until she is home and collapsing in her mothers arms. There is something here too much for her to understand, too wonderful and terrible, and it has her in its teeth.
"Thank you, eldest brother." The boy says, and his hand is cool in hers but his grip is a comfort, is something she can focus on. "We have had a long journey from there to here, and longer still to go."
"Longer by far than you're expecting, littlest brother." His smile is a flash of knives, is a cruel joke. "Come in, and rest awhile."
Shiemi takes a breath, moves forward on her own. She does not want to show weakness to this man, even though her heart is pounding, her hands are shaking on her crutches. Even though he knows already, knows how she has been in the past and how she will be in the future, she moves forward on her own. In the face of her fear, the unspeakable terror of a few moments before, she cannot let herself be weak. She will be a dandelion, breaking its way up through a gravel path. An oak tree, growing from an acorn.