Chapter Text
❦❦❦
Once, long ago, in the Paradis countryside, beyond the riverside village of Thistlewick, there stood a secluded cottage surrounded by gardens.
The nearest villagers knew it as the home of a quiet woman who could coax remedies from stubborn roots, mend a torn sleeve so finely that the seam disappeared, and paint the likeness of a flower with such care that one might mistake the picture for the living thing.
Her herbs, embroidery, preserves, and botanical drawings appeared regularly at the Thistlewick market. When illness entered a household, she was sometimes called upon to prepare a tonic or sit beside the sick. When a garden failed to bloom, people sought her advice.
Yet few were ever invited beyond her gate.
Fewer still had entered her home.
And no one in Thistlewick knew that, in a garden where no blue poppies had ever grown, the grieving woman had once found one blooming beneath her window.
It appeared sometime between twilight and dawn.
The evening before, the earth beneath the window had been bare except for several sprigs of thyme and a stubborn patch of clover the woman had intended to pull. Yet when she stepped into the garden the following morning, carrying a basket beneath one arm and a pair of pruning shears in the other, she found a tall green stem rising from the soil.
At its crown rested a single open flower.
The woman stopped so suddenly that the basket slipped from her arm.
Rosemary, folded linen, and freshly cut lavender scattered across the path, but she did not bend to gather them. She could only stare.
She had tended the garden for many years. She knew which bulbs slept beneath every flower bed, which seeds the wind carried in, and which plants had crept through the fence from neighboring fields. She knew the pale faces of the daisies, the thorned tempers of the roses, and the names of weeds that pretended to be flowers until they had strangled everything around them.
But she had never planted a poppy there.
Certainly not one like this.
Its petals were blue—not the pale blue of morning mist or the faded blue of distant hills, but a deep, impossible color that seemed to have gathered the final shadows of night and kept them. Fine silver veins ran through every petal, visible only when the sunlight touched them. At the center rested a dark velvet crown dusted with gold.
The flower faced upward.
It did not bow beneath the dew or turn away from the morning. It stood open to the sky as though it had been waiting all night for the sun to find it.
The woman lowered herself onto the damp earth.
She reached toward the flower, then stopped before touching it.
There had been a time when she had prayed for a child with the same devotion she gave her garden. She prayed at dawn while kneading bread. She prayed at dusk while folding linen. She prayed beneath blankets when the house was too quiet, and hope had become too painful to speak aloud.
When she finally carried a child beneath her heart, she believed every prayer had been heard.
Then the cradle she had built remained empty.
Afterward, she stopped asking the heavens for anything.
She planted herbs. She mended curtains. She learned how grief could fit inside ordinary days so neatly that no visitor would ever notice it sitting beside her at the table.
But when she leaned over the blue poppy, its petals trembled.
Then they opened wider.
Curled within the golden center lay a tiny infant, scarcely longer than the woman's thumb.
The child's delicate knees were drawn to her chest. One little hand rested beneath her cheek, while the other lay open against the golden dust as though she had fallen asleep reaching for something. A thin fold of blue petal covered her like a blanket.
For several moments, the woman did nothing.
Then the pruning shears fell from her hand.
She covered her mouth, but the sound escaped anyway—a broken, startled sob that seemed far too large for the quiet morning.
The infant stirred.
Her tiny fingers closed around nothing.
The woman wept before she ever dared to touch her.
She called the child a miracle.
And because miracles were rare, delicate things, she decided that this one must never be allowed beyond her keeping.
❦
The blue poppy never withered.
Years passed, but its stem remained green, and its petals remained bright. Each morning, the flower opened toward the sky. Each evening, it folded itself slightly inward, though never so tightly that the woman could not see the golden hollow where the child had once slept.
One petal had loosened on the morning the infant was found.
The woman carried it inside and preserved it. When the child grew old enough to sleep apart from her hands, that petal became a blanket.
It remained softer than linen, warmer than wool, and light enough that even a child no larger than a thumb could pull it over herself. Though separated from the flower, it never browned or curled. It still smelled faintly of rain, garden soil, and something sweet the woman could never name.
The poppy occasionally surrendered other petals as the seasons turned.
They did not fall because the flower was dying. Each missing petal returned before the next sunrise, smooth and bright as though it had never been lost. Mother gathered every fallen one, pressed it carefully between layers of linen, and stored it away.
The first remained Y/N's blanket.
In later years, the others became ribbons, trimmings, sleeves, and skirts fashioned by the two of them together. But before Y/N was old enough to sew beside her mother, she needed somewhere small and safe to sleep.
A pale seashell became the child's first bed.
The woman had purchased it years earlier from a market stall in Thistlewick, where it had been displayed among buttons, ribbons, silver thimbles, and small glass beads carried inland by merchants from the coast.
It consisted of two pearly halves joined along one edge, allowing it to open and close like a hinged cradle.
She lined the lower shell with cotton, shaped a tiny pillow from down, and laid the blue petal over the sleeping child.
But as the child grew, so did the little world built around her.
By the time Y/N had become a young woman, she stood scarcely taller than Mother's hand from wrist to fingertip.
Though small enough to sleep within a seashell, there was nothing childlike about her now. She moved through the rooms of her little home with practiced grace, lifting her skirts over mossy paths and climbing twig staircases as easily as Mother crossed the floors of the cottage.
And whenever her movements carried her through a shaft of sunlight, the flower from which she had come seemed to reveal itself again.
Faint silver lines appeared beneath the skin of her shoulders, wrists, and the backs of her hands, delicate as the veins running through a petal. They vanished whenever she stepped back into the shadows.
Mother called them another sign that she was a miracle.
Y/N privately wondered whether they were a map to something she had not yet discovered.
Whatever their meaning, Mother had spent years ensuring that her strange and precious daughter would never lack a place in which to belong.
Upon the broad sill beneath the bedroom window stood the stained-glass terrarium she had built around Y/N's growing life.
It was shaped like a miniature glass house, with a peaked roof and a dark metal frame. Delicate arches curved through its panes like the veins of leaves. Some sections were made from clear glass, allowing Y/N to look into the human room and beyond it toward the garden. Others were tinted in soft shades of blue, green, amber, and rose, so that sunlight entered her home in changing colors.
The terrarium had been assembled gradually.
Its oldest panes came from a retired village glazier who accepted herbs and mending in exchange for his work. Other pieces had been salvaged from cracked lanterns, abandoned window frames, and fragments of colored glass Mother gathered over the years.
The roof could be raised whenever she tended the plants within, but one full side opened outward on tiny hinges like the wall of a house.
Mother had insisted upon the side opening after Y/N grew too old to be lifted through the roof like a trinket.
Inside, she had built her daughter a life.
The lower level held Y/N's seashell bed beneath the warmest patch of sunlight. Its cotton lining was replaced with every season, and the blue-poppy petal blanket remained folded inside.
Moss grew across parts of the floor, softening the ground between pathways of flat pebbles. Small ferns unfurled beside the glass. Vines climbed wire supports and curled around the terrarium's upper frame. A shallow dish made from polished mother-of-pearl served as a basin. A bottle cap became a table. Wooden spools became stools. Shelves made from thin pieces of bark held books, beads, seeds, ribbons, and tiny stoppered jars.
There were layers to the little house.
A twig staircase led to a narrow loft beneath the slanted roof, where Y/N kept scraps of parchment, pressed flowers, and stories copied in her own hand. A platform built around a potted fern served as a sitting room. Beneath it, she stored baskets she had woven from grass and thread. Tiny bells and glass charms hung from the upper frame, catching the light whenever the window was opened.
Some objects had been crafted especially for her.
Others were human things given new purposes.
A thimble held drinking water. A carved jewelry box served as a wardrobe. A broken pocket-watch face hung on one wall like a great silver clock, though its hands had stopped long before Y/N was born. Buttons became plates. Matchboxes became cupboards. Smooth stones became seats, steps, and decorations.
Mother filled the terrarium with plants and trinkets, both large and small, until it became a tiny glass home divided by paths, platforms, and growing things, with every comfort her hands could provide.
To anyone passing the bedroom, it might have looked like an elaborate ornament.
To Y/N, it was home.
❦
The terrarium was not the whole of her world.
When Y/N was very small, Mother carried her from room to room inside a lined basket, cushioned with cotton and soft scraps of cloth so that even an unexpected step would not jostle her too harshly.
As she grew older, the basket was no longer necessary.
Mother began carrying her in the center of her palm instead, with her other hand curved protectively around her whenever the stairs were steep or the floor uneven. Y/N would step onto the waiting hand, gather her skirts around her feet, and hold lightly to one of Mother's fingers as she was lifted from the windowsill.
Even after Y/N became old enough to move about on her own, Mother remained her usual means of crossing the vast distances of the human house.
Once she was set down upon a table, mantel, writing desk, or another carefully inspected surface, Y/N was permitted to explore—provided her mother remained nearby.
In this way, the cottage opened itself to her one small territory at a time, each familiar room becoming a landscape shaped by her own scale.
She knew the kitchen table as a broad wooden plain crossed by knife marks and rings left by hot cups. She had walked along the parlor mantel, where porcelain figures stood taller than she did. She had climbed carefully arranged books like staircases and sat inside the hollow between their pages while her mother read aloud.
The house contained entire landscapes.
The woven rug became a field of thick fibers. The gap beneath a door became a tunnel full of wind. A staircase descended like a mountain range, far too dangerous to cross alone. The pantry smelled of flour, dried herbs, beeswax, and fruit stored in dark jars. The sewing room was filled with colored thread, gleaming needles, and cloth that rose in folded hills.
Mother's work often spread across several rooms at once.
Bundles of lavender and feverfew hung from the rafters. Unfinished embroidery rested beside the parlor window. Botanical sketches lay beneath paperweights on the writing desk, their inked roots and petals waiting to be labeled before they were delivered to an apothecary in town.
Y/N sometimes helped.
She sorted seeds, untangled silk thread, identified herbs by scent, and copied labels in letters so small that Mother needed a magnifying lens to read them.
She also helped prepare the finer materials used for her own clothing.
After rain, Mother gathered lengths of silk from abandoned webs stretched between the garden shrubs, taking only those she had watched long enough to know their makers had gone. She washed the strands in warm water, and Y/N twisted them into thread beside the sewing-room window.
Mother still warned her that living spiders trapped whatever entered their webs.
To Y/N, this only made the empty silk feel like something rescued from danger and made useful.
On market mornings, however, Y/N was returned to the terrarium before the baskets were loaded onto the cart.
From the bedroom, she listened to the wheels depart along the lane toward Thistlewick.
Hours later, she heard them return.
She knew the village through the things Mother carried home: ribbons dyed in unfamiliar colors, wax-sealed letters, sweet buns wrapped in cloth, gossip repeated over supper, and the ringing of distant bells when the wind blew from the east.
She had left the terrarium many times.
She had never left the house.
The door leading to the garden remained forbidden.
Mother said there were too many places for a creature of Y/N's size to disappear. A crack in the floorboards could swallow her. A mouse might mistake her for food. A careless footstep could end her life before anyone noticed she was beneath it.
Outside, the dangers multiplied.
Birds did not understand gentleness.
Cats were worse.
Frogs swallowed things without asking their names. Beetles pinched. Spiders trapped. Rain could drown someone her size in a puddle, and a strong wind could carry her beyond anyone's reach.
Mother had repeated these truths so often that Y/N could recite them as easily as prayers.
What Y/N did not know was how much of the world was dangerous and how much of it merely frightened her mother.
She had never stood barefoot in open soil.
She had never walked beneath a flower while it moved in the wind.
She had never felt rain fall freely from the sky. Mother gathered droplets in a silver spoon and carried them indoors, calling that close enough.
Y/N knew the house intimately.
The garden remained behind glass.
❦
She spent her days learning the world in fragments.
Her mother taught her to read using letters written on scraps of parchment no larger than leaves. She taught her how to sew with the finest needles and how to knot thread without winding it around her fingers.
Y/N could mend the hem of a doll's dress so neatly that the stitches disappeared. She could weave dried grass into baskets small enough to fit inside a teacup. She knew lavender, rosemary, mint, chamomile, and thyme by scent alone.
She also learned how to listen.
From the terrarium, she knew the moods of the house.
She knew when her mother was cheerful by the way the cupboard doors closed softly. She knew when sorrow had returned by the silence that followed certain songs.
On those days, Y/N tried to become very easy to love.
She did not ask to go downstairs.
She did not mention the garden.
She folded her petal blanket, arranged her thread, and waited for her mother's eyes to lose their faraway look.
But listening was not the only way she learned the world.
Sometimes, when Mother was busy with embroidery or herbs, Y/N copied maps from the books left open upon the writing desk, tracing coastlines, rivers, roads, and forests onto scraps of parchment no larger than fallen leaves. When the maps ended, she invented what lay beyond them.
Roads continued past the inked borders.
Rivers bent toward seas no one had named.
Forests opened into villages where no one thought it strange to be small.
In the narrow loft beneath the terrarium's slanted roof, she kept those drawings hidden beneath a stack of pressed flowers, along with the beginnings of a story she had never shown her mother.
She called it The Place Past the Garden.
Y/N understood that she was loved.
She also understood, without anyone ever saying it aloud, that she had been given the task of making that love feel safe.
❦
The cottage stood at the far edge of Thistlewick Vale, where cultivated land gradually surrendered to meadow and ancient woodland.
Nearest the house, Mother's garden was orderly.
Medicinal herbs grew in neat rows beside vegetables and fruit trees. Roses climbed their trellises. Foxgloves nodded beside the stone path. Bees moved lazily among the late-summer flowers.
Beyond those tended beds, the estate grew wilder.
Tall grasses crowded the old fence. Brambles claimed fallen stones. The meadow rolled away beneath a sun already softening toward autumn, and farther still rose the Great Forest, its oldest trees dark against the horizon.
The river wound between them all.
It entered the estate through the northern meadow, crossed the wildest edge of the garden, and disappeared beneath the trees on its long journey through Paradis.
It was the one part of the grounds Y/N could neither see clearly nor stop imagining.
Beyond the roses and clipped hedges, reeds grew tall enough to hide a fox, and roots twisted from the soil like the fingers of buried giants.
Sometimes, Y/N heard water moving over stones.
During heavy rain, the sound grew louder.
It seemed impossible that something so distant could fill the entire bedroom.
Mother called that part of the property the garden's edge.
"The garden ends there," she once explained, "and everything beyond it belongs to creatures that do not care whether you are someone's daughter."
Y/N had turned those words over many times.
She wondered what a garden looked like when no one trimmed it.
She wondered whether the river knew where it was going.
Mother said it passed through the meadow, entered the Great Forest, and eventually joined broader waters flowing toward the distant sea.
Y/N had never seen the sea.
She knew it only through illustrations and the shells sold at the Thistlewick market.
An expanse of water without visible walls seemed less like a real place than something invented for stories.
Most of all, she wondered what it would feel like to stand somewhere her mother had not chosen for her.
To Y/N, the river was not where the garden ended.
It was where the world began.
❦
That afternoon, during the final weeks of summer, warm light poured through the clear panes and turned the terrarium's metal frame to gold.
Y/N had returned from accompanying her mother to the sewing room and now sat in the open half of her seashell bed. Her blue-petal blanket lay folded across her lap.
She wore one of her daytime dresses, stitched by Mother's hands and finished with her own.
Beneath lay a gown of soft cotton, but over it fell layered panels shaped from preserved blue-poppy petals, their iridescent blue-violet sheen shifting whenever they caught the light. Fine spider silk strengthened the seams and gave the long, draped sleeves a delicate shimmer. The petals curled softly along the shoulders and skirt, and each golden edge had been reinforced with embroidery so fine that the thread appeared to have grown there.
Her hair had been arranged away from her face and secured with a narrow ribbon braided from blue thread and spider silk. Smaller strands were held in place by seed pearls no larger than grains of sand. At her throat rested a single pearl upon a slender cord, a market treasure Mother had restrung to fit her.
Mother had opened the terrarium's side wall and was replacing the cotton lining inside the shell.
"You have made it too thick again," Y/N said.
Mother pressed another tuft beneath the tiny pillow.
"You complained that the shell was hard."
"Last winter."
"It may become cold again."
"It is summer."
"Summer does not last simply because you prefer it."
Y/N smiled despite herself.
Mother always spoke as though the weather might overhear and punish them both for carelessness.
She watched another tuft of cotton disappear beneath the pillow.
"Mother?"
"Yes?"
"Is the river very deep?"
Mother's hand stopped.
Only for a moment.
Then she resumed smoothing the cotton.
"Too deep for you."
"That was not what I asked."
Her mother sighed, though not angrily, and folded another tuft of cotton between her fingers.
"It is deep in some places and shallow in others."
"Does it leave the garden?"
"All rivers leave somewhere."
Y/N looked through the clear front pane.
From the bedroom window, the garden appeared still and orderly. Roses nodded beside the path. Bees drifted among the herbs. Far beyond them, reeds moved in a wind she could not feel.
"Where does ours go?"
"Through the meadow," Mother said. "Then into the woodland. After that, toward the southern waterways, I suppose."
"You suppose?"
"I have never had reason to follow it."
Y/N's gaze remained on the distant reeds.
"What lies beyond the woodland?"
"Other villages. Roads. Farms."
"And beyond those?"
"More of Paradis than either of us shall ever need to see."
Mother gave a quiet laugh, but Y/N noticed that she had not answered the question completely.
"You have become full of questions today."
"I am always full of questions."
"Yes. I had hoped you might eventually grow tired of them."
Y/N traced one of the silver veins running through her petal blanket.
"I heard something last night."
Her mother's expression changed.
The room seemed to notice before Y/N did. The air tightened. Mother's hand became still inside the open shell.
"What did you hear?"
"A voice, perhaps."
"From inside the house?"
Y/N shook her head.
"Near the river."
Mother rose at once and crossed to the window.
She inspected the latch, then the seams around the terrarium's clear panes, pressing each one as though a voice might have slipped through a crack.
"It was probably a frog."
"It sounded like singing."
"Frogs are very proud of their voices."
"What if it was someone else?"
Mother turned.
Fear crossed her face so quickly that Y/N wished she could pull the question back.
"There is no one near that river whom you need to meet."
"I did not say I needed to meet them."
"You were thinking it."
Y/N lowered her gaze.
Mother crouched beside the open terrarium and placed one finger gently against Y/N's cheek.
"Curiosity is not always harmless," she said.
Y/N leaned into the touch because she loved her mother and because part of her still wanted the comfort.
"Neither is never knowing anything."
Her mother's finger became still.
The human room seemed to contract around the little glass house.
Y/N rarely contradicted her. When she did, the words often sounded much sharper after they escaped than they had inside her mind.
Mother withdrew her hand.
For one frightened moment, Y/N believed she had wounded her.
Then the woman lifted the petal blanket and folded it over Y/N's knees.
"You know everything you need to know."
"How can I know that when I do not know what there is?"
This time, the answer came more firmly.
"Because I have already seen enough of the world for both of us."
Silence settled between them.
Outside, a bee struck the window and flew away.
Y/N watched it vanish toward the garden.
"Everything I do," Mother continued, "I do because I love you."
"I know."
"And everything you need is here."
Y/N looked around the terrarium.
At the moss paths and bark shelves. At the little loft full of stories. At the beads, bells, pressed flowers, baskets, books, and ribbons collected throughout her life. At the open side wall through which she could enter the human house whenever her mother permitted it.
Then she looked beyond the terrarium, beyond the room, and through the window toward the distant reeds.
She nodded.
She nodded because she loved her mother.
She nodded because disagreement brought fear into the woman's eyes.
She nodded because she had never learned what else a person might do when love and obedience were offered as the same thing.
Mother kissed the top of her head.
Then she carried the old cotton away.
❦
The afternoon slowly faded.
Gold softened into lavender. The roses became darker shapes beyond the window, and the river grew clearer as the rest of the garden quieted.
Far away, the bells of Thistlewick marked the evening hour.
Their faint notes crossed the meadow, thinning as they reached the cottage.
Y/N climbed from her shell and moved through the terrarium.
She passed the fern platform, crossed the pebble path, and climbed the twig staircase to the narrow loft.
From there, the clearest pane offered the best view of the blue poppy growing in the flower bed just beyond the window, its tall stem lifting the bloom nearly level with the sill.
Her flower.
Its petals remained open toward the dimming sky.
Mother said it had been waiting for her before she was born. Sometimes Y/N wondered whether the flower remembered things she did not.
She pressed her hands against the glass.
A breeze moved through the garden.
The blue poppy bent with it—not away from the world, but toward it.
Y/N listened.
A frog called from the reeds.
Another answered.
Farther away, something splashed into the river.
Then, beneath the ordinary sounds of evening, she heard something else.
A low voice.
Not singing this time.
It was too distant for her to understand, but the sound carried along the water.
Y/N descended from the loft and crossed to the terrarium's side door.
She pushed it open and stepped onto the windowsill.
She was allowed to leave the terrarium.
That had never been forbidden.
But the bedroom window remained shut, and the garden waited on the other side of the glass.
Y/N approached until her reflection appeared faintly over the darkening flowers.
"Who are you?" she whispered.
No answer came.
Still, she remained there until her mother returned to prepare the room for the night.
Clouds had gathered above Thistlewick Vale.
The air smelled heavy with approaching rain.
Mother guided Y/N back inside the terrarium before helping her prepare for bed.
She removed the pearl from Y/N's throat and carefully loosened the ribbon from her hair.
"Leave it loose tonight," Y/N said.
"It will tangle."
"I can untangle it in the morning."
"You will pull half of it out trying."
"I am not made of thread, Mother."
Mother's hands paused.
"No," she said softly. "You are made of things far more difficult to mend."
The answer held too much seriousness for such a small disagreement.
Y/N let out a quiet breath but did not argue again.
Mother left most of her hair free, securing only the strands nearest her face with a pale band of silk. Y/N folded her daytime dress herself, smoothing the iridescent petals before placing it inside the carved wardrobe.
Then she changed into the softer of her dresses: a cream sleeping gown made from fine cotton and spider silk.
Its long sleeves fitted gently along her arms before widening slightly at the wrists. Over the simple underdress fell an open layer of pale blue-violet petals, arranged so that they swept from her shoulders and parted over the cream skirt beneath.
Their iridescent surfaces glimmered faintly in the dimming room. Where the petals overlapped, they made her appear as a flower folding itself closed at dusk.
The garment was lighter and less ornamented than her daytime dress, though the petal edges had still been finished with tiny cream stitches to prevent them from fraying.
Once Y/N was settled inside the terrarium, Mother crossed to the bedroom window and tested the gathering wind against her palm.
On warm nights, Mother allowed a little fresh air into the room for Y/N and the living plants inside her glasshouse. But with a storm gathering over the vale, she unlatched the window and opened it only a narrow distance.
The curtain stirred inward.
Cool air slipped through the gap, carrying the smell of wet leaves and distant water.
Mother checked the terrarium's side door.
"Keep this closed tonight," she said.
Y/N glanced at her.
"Why?"
"The storm may grow stronger."
"I have heard stronger storms."
"And you have always stayed safely inside."
Mother lowered the upper half of the seashell until only a narrow opening remained. The petal blanket was pulled to Y/N's chin, though the night was still warm.
"Do not leave your shell," she warned.
"I rarely do."
"Not even if you hear something."
Y/N looked through the clear glass toward the distant river.
"What would I hear?"
Mother's eyes followed hers.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then she secured the terrarium's side door and drew the bedroom curtain only partway across the window.
"Nothing meant for you," she said.
The room grew quiet.
Rain began tapping softly against the leaves.
Y/N closed her eyes, surrounded by cotton, pearl, stained glass, and the scent of the flower from which she had been born.
Beyond the cultivated beds, the summer reeds bent beneath the gathering wind.
Farther still, at the wild edge of the estate, something heavy emerged from the river.
Webbed feet pressed into the mud.
A dark shape moved between the reeds and turned toward the faint light shining from Y/N's glass house.
❦
Sometime after midnight, the rain changed.
What had begun as a soft tapping against the leaves became a steady whisper over the cottage roof. Water streamed from the eaves, gathered upon the outer windowsill, and spilled into the garden below in silver threads.
Inside the bedroom, everything remained still.
The curtains breathed faintly around the narrow opening Mother had left in the window. Beyond them, rain traced wavering paths down the glass. The terrarium stood quietly upon the broad interior sill, its moss, vines, and tiny furnishings resting beneath the dimness of the sleeping room.
Y/N slept inside her seashell with the blue-poppy blanket drawn beneath her chin.
She did not hear the reeds part at the wild edge of the garden.
She did not hear the slow, wet passage through the flower beds, nor the careful steps that crushed thyme and clover beneath them.
And she did not hear the low grunt of effort when something began climbing the stone wall beneath the bedroom window.
The first sound that reached her was small.
A faint scrape against the outer sill.
Y/N stirred but did not wake. Her brow creased, and a soft, sleepy hum escaped her.
"Hm..."
Then the sound came again.
Scrape.
Pause.
Scrape.
One of the glass charms hanging from the terrarium's frame trembled as a draft slipped through the partly opened window. It gave a faint, crystalline note.
The sound pulled Y/N from sleep.
Her eyes fluttered open, heavy with drowsiness.
For several disoriented moments, she lay perfectly still beneath the petal blanket, listening to the steady rain and the faint creaking of old wood settling in the damp night.
Moonlight filtered through the terrarium's colored panes, painting patches of blue, amber, and rose across the moss surrounding her seashell bed. Familiar shadows stretched farther than they had before she fell asleep, turning the vines and tiny furnishings into strange silhouettes around her.
The carved wardrobe beyond the terrarium rose like a dark tower. Climbing vines cast long, grotesque shapes against the glass. Past the clear front wall of Y/N's little home, the partly drawn curtain stirred beside the open window as though something hidden behind it had breathed.
Y/N raised herself onto one elbow and peered into the human bedroom.
"Mother?"
No answer came.
Across the room, Mother's breathing continued beneath the bedcovers, slow and undisturbed.
Y/N waited.
When no other sound followed, she settled onto her back again and folded her hands across her abdomen.
Perhaps a branch had brushed the window.
Perhaps the storm had loosened something upon the roof.
Perhaps one of the frogs from the river had wandered nearer to the cottage than usual.
Because what else could it be?
It was not as though another tiny person could be standing outside her window in the pouring rain.
As far as Y/N knew, she was the only small person—if person was even the proper word for whatever she was—in all the world.
The thought brought a familiar ache beneath her breastbone.
It was sharp enough to make her fingers curl into the fabric of her nightgown. She grimaced and pressed one palm against her chest, as though she might soothe the loneliness back into silence.
Before she could wonder why the thought wounded her so deeply, another sound broke through the rain.
Plop.
Y/N froze.
A wet hand had landed upon the outer sill.
Plop.
A second followed.
Long fingers scraped against the wood as their owner searched for purchase beyond the window.
The curtain shifted.
Then it bulged inward.
Y/N slowly turned her head toward the sound.
A green hand curled around the edge of the raised window. Its fingers were bony at the joints and swollen at their rounded tips, with thin webs of gleaming skin stretched between them.
The hand tightened against the wooden frame.
Something outside gave a low grunt.
The window trembled.
A broad head pushed beneath it first, forcing the narrow opening wider. Then came one shoulder wrapped in dark, rubbery cloth.
The creature twisted sideways.
Its soft body compressed unnaturally against the frame as it dragged itself through the narrow gap. Wet fabric rasped against the wood, and the window gave a faint groan beneath the pressure.
For a moment, it seemed too large to pass.
Then one shoulder slipped free.
The rest followed all at once.
The creature forced the rest of its body through and dropped into a low crouch upon the far end of the broad interior windowsill.
The landing shook the wood.
Y/N's seashell gave a faint rattle inside the terrarium. Water trembled in her mother-of-pearl basin, and the hanging charms struck one another in a scattering of delicate notes.
Y/N pressed herself deeper into the cotton-lined shell.
The creature remained crouched near the open window, several great strides away from the terrarium.
Rainwater streamed from its cloak and gathered beneath it in dark, shining patches. Its long, webbed toes spread against the wood for balance, flexing once before becoming still.
It did not move toward Y/N at once.
Instead, it turned its head toward the human bedroom.
Its wide golden eyes swept across Mother's sleeping form.
Then the wardrobe.
The closed door.
The shadowed corners.
One eye blinked.
A moment later, the other followed.
Though the chiming glass house stood farther along the sill, the creature seemed more concerned with discovering whether anything larger might awaken.
Only when it appeared satisfied that the bedroom held no immediate threat did it begin to move.
It rose from its crouch, though not fully.
Its back remained rounded, and its head hung low between its shoulders, giving it the appearance of something more accustomed to leaping and crawling than walking upright.
It took one slow step along the windowsill.
Its wet foot lifted with a faint sucking sound and settled against the wood.
Then another.
Plop.
A shallow footprint of rainwater remained behind.
Y/N watched through the terrarium's clear front wall.
With every step, the creature grew larger.
First, its dark cloak swallowed the view of the curtain.
Then its shadow moved over a small potted plant Mother kept between the open window and Y/N's glass house.
The creature paused beside it.
It leaned forward and sniffed the leaves, its nostrils widening slightly. Then it swept the plant aside with the back of one hand, bending several stems without care.
Another step carried it closer.
Its shadow passed over the terrarium's stained-glass roof.
Blue, amber, and rose-colored moonlight vanished beneath its body, leaving Y/N's little home dim and green-black.
The creature stopped beside the terrarium.
From inside her seashell, Y/N could see only its lower half at first: the mud-darkened hem of its dress, the long webbed feet planted upon the interior sill, and the heavy droplets falling from its cloak.
The figure bent its knees.
Slowly, it lowered itself into another crouch.
Its hands settled upon its clothed hips as it studied the strange little structure before it.
Y/N remained hidden from its direct sight, her small body half-buried beneath the blanket and the raised curve of the seashell.
Lightning split the sky.
For one brilliant instant, the bedroom turned white.
Then the creature's face appeared above the terrarium.
Y/N gasped and pressed herself deeper into the shell.
It was broad and flattened, narrowing only slightly near the chin. Smooth green skin stretched over heavy cheeks, broken here and there by small raised bumps that gleamed beneath winding trails of rainwater.
A pair of wide golden eyes bulged from either side of its head. One lid closed, followed a moment later by the other, the two eyes blinking out of rhythm as their narrow pupils contracted against the light.
Its nose was scarcely more than two small slits above an enormous mouth.
That mouth stretched nearly from cheek to cheek. Its lips were full, pink, and strangely polished against the green of its face, as though the creature had painted them before leaving the river.
A dark-rose bonnet sat crookedly upon its head. Pale dots patterned the fabric, though rain and mud had darkened several of them. Beneath it hung long, bone-straight hair plastered against the creature's cheeks and neck.
The hair was pink.
Not the pale pink of a faded ribbon, but a bright, startling shade that seemed almost luminous against its green skin. The wet strands were tangled with reeds, duckweed, and scraps of river grass.
Hair, Y/N realized.
The creature had hair.
Pink hair, at that.
For the smallest moment, bewilderment slipped through her fear. Her brows drew together as she stared, unable to reconcile the creature's amphibian face with the painted lips, spotted bonnet, and river-soaked pink hair hanging around it.
No frog Y/N had ever seen in Mother's books possessed any of those things.
Perhaps it was not a frog at all.
At least, not entirely.
The creature's golden eyes moved over the terrarium.
Over its peaked stained-glass roof.
Over the tiny framed paintings Mother had hung upon the walls.
Over the bundles of dried flowers tied beside the wardrobe and the miniature lantern resting near the door.
Gradually, curiosity softened the heavy lines of its face.
Its head tilted slightly to one side. One eye narrowed while the other remained wide, as though it could not quite decide what it was seeing.
A low sound rumbled in its throat.
Not a growl.
More like a thoughtful hum.
The creature leaned nearer to the glass, studying every tiny detail with increasing fascination, as though the terrarium itself were unlike anything it had ever encountered.
It shifted closer.
One enormous hand rose.
The tip of a webbed finger touched the dark metal frame.
The glass house gave a soft creak.
Y/N's breath caught.
The creature's eyes sharpened at the sound.
Its face lowered toward the terrarium's clear front wall until one golden eye filled nearly the whole of Y/N's view.
Its gaze traveled through the tiny home.
Over the bark shelves.
The twig staircase.
The potted ferns.
The mother-of-pearl basin.
Then it found the seashell bed.
And inside it, Y/N.
The creature became perfectly still.
Its eyes widened—not with surprise or fear, but with the unmistakable delight of someone who had discovered a treasure where no treasure ought to be.
Y/N's hands tightened around the edge of her blanket.
Slowly, the creature's pink lips spread into a smile.
Rows of small, pearly teeth appeared behind them.
They were far too neat.
Far too human.
And somehow, that frightened Y/N more than fangs ever could have.
The creature leaned so close that its breath clouded the clear pane between them.
The smells of rainwater, river mud, crushed weeds, and stagnant pools surrounded Y/N's little home.
"Ah..." The creature's voice was thick and raspy, like stones rolling through shallow water, though pleasure warmed the sound.
"What do we have here, eh?" it sang, each word shaped by a warm, lilting accent.
Y/N did not answer.
Her throat had closed around whatever sound might have escaped. She could only stare at the enormous golden eye on the other side of the glass, watching as it narrowed with interest.
Thunder rolled somewhere beyond the cottage roof, low enough to tremble through the window frame.
The creature gave another low hum.
"Tiny," it murmured, the word warm and wondering. "Tiny, tiny thing."
A flash of lightning shivered across the terrarium and turned the creature's eye silver-white for the briefest instant before darkness closed over it again.
Y/N drew the petal blanket higher, as though a scrap of blue could hide her from something large enough to blot out the moon.
The creature's eye shifted.
It looked over the seashell bed again.
Then back to her.
"Ah," it said softly. "Not a trinket, no. Not a doll."
One webbed finger tapped the terrarium's metal frame.
The sound rang through Y/N's little home like a bell.
"You live in there."
Y/N's fingers tightened around the blanket.
The creature's pink lips curled again.
"How pretty."
Its gaze traveled across the tiny room once more, slower this time. It studied the moss paths, the bark shelves, the painted walls, the bundles of dried flowers, and the little lantern by the door as though cataloging each proof of her existence.
Then its attention returned to the shell.
"To think," it breathed, "all this sitting here in the window."
Y/N forced herself to speak.
"Please go away."
Her voice came out smaller than she intended, thin and trembling beneath the rain.
The creature blinked.
One eye first.
Then the other.
For a moment, it seemed almost surprised.
Then pleasure spread across its broad face, slow and terrible.
"Oh," it crooned. "It talks."
Its pink lips parted around the words, and the neat white teeth behind them gleamed in the stormlight.
Y/N pushed herself farther back into the cotton-lined curve of the shell. Her shoulder brushed the upper half, making it shift slightly above her.
Across the room, Mother slept on.
The creature noticed the movement of Y/N's eyes.
Its own gaze flicked toward the bed.
Then back.
"Hush now," it whispered. "No need to wake the big one."
Y/N's stomach turned cold.
Mother shifted beneath the blankets, turning her face toward the wall with a soft, sleeping sigh.
The creature waited.
Rain ticked against the window.
One drop slid from its chin and struck the sill.
Plip.
Only when Mother's breathing settled again did the creature lift one hand from the frame and begin feeling along the terrarium's side. Its fingers moved with surprising care for something so large, tracing the seams between metal and glass, tapping lightly at each corner.
"No," Y/N whispered.
The creature ignored her.
It found the tiny latch.
Y/N lunged upright.
"Mother!"
The cry left her before fear could swallow it.
The creature's eyes widened.
Across the bedroom, Mother shifted beneath the blankets but did not wake.
The webbed fingers pinched the latch.
Metal clicked.
The terrarium's side wall opened outward.
Cold air rushed inside.
Y/N scrambled backward into the shell, one hand gripping the petal blanket, the other braced against the smooth pearl beneath her. The tiny room that had always separated her from danger had been opened as easily as a cupboard.
The creature leaned closer.
"Oh, no, no," it said in that warm, singing cadence. "Do not make such a noise."
Its head tilted almost fondly as it spoke, but its golden eyes remained fixed and hungry.
A hand entered the terrarium.
It was enormous inside Y/N's world, green and shining, with fingers that knocked against the bark shelves and sent several seed jars rolling from their place. One struck the floor and split open, scattering tiny black seeds across the moss.
Y/N screamed again.
"Mother!"
This time, Mother stirred more sharply.
Her breath caught.
Lightning flashed outside, throwing the whole room into stark, white brightness.
The creature moved faster.
Y/N ducked low just as the hand reached for her. The tip of one finger brushed her sleeve, damp and cold, and she recoiled so violently that the upper half of the seashell slipped from where Mother had left it propped open.
The shell snapped shut.
Darkness swallowed her.
For one stunned heartbeat, Y/N could not move.
The inside of the shell smelled of cotton, salt, and the faint sweetness of the blue poppy. Rain battered the window beyond it. Her own breath sounded too loud in the enclosed space.
Then the shell lurched.
Y/N was thrown against the cotton lining.
Outside, the creature gave a pleased little cry.
"Oh! Even better."
The words came bright with delight, followed by a breathy little laugh.
The shell scraped across the terrarium floor.
Y/N struck her palms against the upper half.
"Mother! Mother, help me!"
The shell jolted again.
Something tipped over outside. A wooden spool stool clattered against the glass. The mother-of-pearl basin overturned, spilling water across the moss. Bells and charms rang wildly as the creature dragged the shell through the open side of the terrarium and onto the broad windowsill.
Across the room, Mother woke.
She made a small, confused sound first.
Then Y/N screamed again, high and desperate from inside the closed shell.
"Mother!"
The bedsheets rustled violently.
Mother sat upright.
For one terrible moment, she seemed unable to understand what she was seeing: the open terrarium, the scattered seeds, the swinging charms, the tiny side wall hanging loose on its hinges.
Then her eyes found the seashell bed.
It was being dragged across the windowsill toward the open window.
A dark, dripping creature pulled it along by both hands, its rubbery cloak leaving wet streaks across the wood.
Mother's face went white.
"Y/N?"
The shell bumped hard against the window frame.
Y/N cried out from inside it.
Mother threw the blankets aside.
"Y/N!"
The creature turned its head.
Its golden eyes flashed in the dark.
Mother stumbled from the bed, nearly tripping over the hem of her nightdress as she rushed across the room.
"Get away from her!"
The creature gave a startled croak, then tightened its grip on the shell.
"No, no," it sang under its breath. "Found is found."
Its lips pulled into a stubborn little smile as though the matter had already been decided.
It hauled the shell over the inner edge of the sill.
The lower half struck the window frame with a loud crack.
Inside, Y/N was thrown sideways. Pain burst through her shoulder. She clawed at the smooth inner wall of the shell, searching for the seam, the hinge, anything she could push open.
It would not budge.
"Mother!" she screamed.
Mother reached the window just as the creature forced itself halfway through the gap.
Rain blew into the room, cold and sharp.
Mother seized the edge of the shell.
For one breath, she had it.
Her fingers closed around the wet pearl.
Y/N felt the sudden resistance and sobbed with relief.
Then the creature yanked.
The shell slipped through Mother's hands.
"No!"
Mother lunged again, but the creature had already twisted through the open window with the shell clutched tight against its body.
For an instant, it clung to the outer sill, a dark shape against the rain.
Lightning cracked across the sky.
In that white blaze, Mother saw the creature in full: bent low against the storm, bonnet plastered to its head, pink hair hanging in wet strings, the pale shell gleaming beneath its grasp like a stolen moon.
Then it dropped.
Mother screamed.
The shell vanished beneath the window.
"Y/N!"
Mother leaned out so far that the curtain snapped against her face. Rain soaked her hair and nightdress within seconds. Below, the garden was a blur of darkness, thrashing leaves, and silver lines of water.
She saw movement near the flower bed.
A flash of pale shell.
A green hand.
Then nothing.
Inside the shell, Y/N beat her fists against the smooth pearl until her palms stung.
"Mother! I'm here! Mother!"
The shell lurched again.
The creature was moving quickly now, dragging and half-carrying her across the wet garden. Every bump sent Y/N sliding helplessly through the cotton lining. The blue-poppy blanket tangled around her legs. Her shoulder throbbed. Her breath came in sharp, frightened gasps.
Outside, branches snapped back against the shell.
Mud sucked beneath heavy feet.
Rain hammered above her.
Now and then thunder shook the ground so deeply that she felt it through the pearl beneath her.
Then came the sound of Mother's voice from far away.
"Y/N!"
The creature stopped only long enough to laugh.
It was not a kind laugh.
It was bright, breathless, and almost musical, rising above the rain as though the whole thing were some private joke.
Y/N struck the shell again.
"Let me out!"
A webbed hand patted the top of the shell.
"Hush, little treasure," the creature crooned. "You will wake the whole garden."
Its voice lilted with mock comfort, and the hand resting on the shell gave a slow, almost soothing stroke that only made Y/N recoil harder inside.
Then it moved again.
The world tilted.
The shell slid downward.
For one horrible second, Y/N felt weightless.
Then cold water struck the outside of the shell with a hollow slap.
The sound changed at once.
The rain remained above her, but beneath it came the rush and pull of running water.
The river.
Y/N went still.
The creature had reached the river.
The shell rocked violently, then steadied.
Water slapped against its sides.
Something heavy settled on top of it.
Y/N heard the creature sigh with satisfaction, long and pleased, as though it had finally reached the easiest part of its task.
Then the shell began to move.
Not over wood.
Not over moss.
Over water.
The river carried them away.
❦
Mother ran.
She did not remember crossing the bedroom.
She did not remember leaving the window.
She only knew that one moment the shell had vanished into the dark, and the next she was stumbling down the stairs with one hand skidding along the wall and Y/N's name tearing itself from her throat.
"Y/N!"
The cottage seemed larger than it ever had before.
Crueler.
The hallway stretched too long. The latch on the back door fought her shaking hands. When she finally wrenched it open, rain struck her full in the face.
She ran into the garden barefoot.
Mud swallowed her first step.
Cold water soaked the hem of her nightdress and clung to her legs. The orderly beds she had tended by daylight had become a black maze of thrashing stems and silver rain. Roses clawed at her sleeves. Foxgloves bowed beneath the storm. The blue poppy bent wildly near the window, its impossible petals shining even in the dark.
Mother ran toward the sound of the river.
"Y/N!"
Her voice broke across the garden.
No answer came.
Only rain.
Only leaves.
Only water rushing somewhere beyond the beds.
She pushed through the herbs, crushing lavender and thyme beneath her feet. She searched the ground for the pale shape of the shell, for a torn petal, for one impossible sign that her daughter had been dropped, hidden, spared.
"Y/N, answer me!"
From the darkness near the river, something laughed.
Mother froze.
The reeds parted.
There, where the garden surrendered to the wild bank, the pale seashell floated upon the swollen water.
It was closed tight.
A dark shape sat upon it as though upon a little boat, cloak dripping, webbed feet tucked against the curved pearl. The river carried both shell and creature past the roots and reeds, just far enough from the bank that Mother could not reach them.
Mother lunged forward.
Her foot caught beneath a twisted root.
She fell hard into the mud.
Pain shot through her knees and palms, but she pushed herself up at once, sobbing.
"Give her back!"
The creature looked over its shoulder.
In the dimness, its golden eyes gleamed.
It lifted one hand and waved.
"Adiós~" it sang, the word curling warmly through the rain. "We will take good care of your daughter."
Its pink lips stretched into a delighted smile, broad and bright against its green face. One webbed hand fluttered in a little farewell, almost dainty, while the other patted the closed shell beneath it as though Y/N were no more troublesome than a basket of stolen flowers.
Then lightning cracked across the sky.
For a heartbeat, Mother saw everything clearly: the creature's shining eyes, the pale shell beneath its weight, the river foaming around them, and the reeds bending like dark hands along the bank.
Then darkness swallowed them again.
Mother screamed.
The sound followed the river, raw enough to startle birds from the trees.
But the current had already taken the shell.
It drifted beyond the open bank, past the reeds tall enough to hide a fox, and toward a narrower channel where roots twisted from the soil like the fingers of buried giants.
Mother staggered after it.
The mud dragged at her feet. Branches struck her face. The garden she had always controlled became wild around her, all shadow and water and thorns.
"Y/N!"
Inside the shell, Y/N heard her.
Faintly.
Farther away with every breath.
She tried to answer.
She tried to scream until the shell broke open, until the river turned back, until Mother's hands found her again.
But her throat burned.
Her fists ached.
The air inside the shell felt warm and thin from her own frightened breathing.
The rocking of the water blurred with the pounding of rain.
Mother's voice faded.
The creature above her hummed a tune Y/N did not know.
Y/N pressed one trembling hand against the inside of the shell.
Then another.
Her eyes burned.
The darkness around her swelled and softened.
The last thing she heard was the river carrying her into the hidden part of the garden.
Then exhaustion pulled her under.
❦
By the time the river slowed, the storm had lost much of its fury.
Rain no longer crashed through the reeds in silver sheets. It fell instead as a fine drizzle, soft and steady, turning the air white with mist. The thunder had wandered farther across Thistlewick Vale, muttering now and then beyond the trees, and each fading flash of lightning revealed only fragments of the hidden waterway: black roots, bending reeds, wet stones, and the pale curve of the seashell drifting beneath a dark, dripping shape.
Y/N did not see any of it.
She lay curled inside the closed shell, exhausted beyond fear, one hand still resting against the smooth inner wall as though she had fallen asleep trying to push her way out. Her throat ached. Her palms stung. The blue-poppy blanket lay tangled around her knees.
Outside, Mrs. Toad hummed.
She sat upon the shell as though riding a little boat, cloak gathered around her wide body and long webbed feet trailing lazily in the current. A glossy sheen covered her green skin where the rain had not washed it clean, making her hands and face glimmer faintly whenever lightning flickered behind the clouds. Every so often, one foot dipped into the water and pushed, guiding the shell through a narrow channel nearly swallowed by reeds.
The river bent sharply.
Willow branches drooped low over the water, their leaves dragging through the mist like green fingers. Beneath them, half-hidden among roots and lily pads, waited a crooked boat.
It was not large enough for humans, but to Y/N it would have seemed enormous.
The boat had once belonged to men, perhaps fishermen or ferrymen, though no human hand had cared for it in many years. Its paint had peeled to reveal old gray wood beneath. Moss softened the edges of its planks. Reeds grew through gaps near the stern. A patched canvas roof sagged over the middle like a tired hat, and strings of shells, bones, and cloudy glass beads hung from the railings, clicking softly whenever the boat rocked.
Small lanterns glowed beneath the awning.
Some were made from cracked jars where fireflies drifted in golden circles. Others were no more than thimbles filled with pale fungus that shone blue in the dark. A chipped teacup hung from a nail. Snail shells lined the windowsills. Fish bones dangled from thread beside bunches of drying pondweed.
The air smelled of wet wood, river mud, mushrooms, boiled greens, and something fried until crisp.
Mrs. Toad steered the shell toward a short dock made from woven reeds and stolen pieces of fence.
The shell bumped against it.
Tok.
Mrs. Toad glanced down at the closed shell beneath her.
Her pink lips curled with satisfaction.
"Home," she whispered, almost tenderly, and patted the shell with one slick hand. A faint trail of mucus and river water shone across the pale surface where her fingers had touched.
Y/N did not stir.
Mrs. Toad climbed onto the dock first, moving with surprising nimbleness despite her broad body. Her webbed feet slapped softly against the damp reeds. Then she bent, seized the shell with both hands, and hauled it from the water.
The shell was heavier now, slick with rain and river spray, but Mrs. Toad dragged it up the dock with cheerful determination.
Scrape.
Bump.
Scrape.
Each sound carried across the quiet boat.
From somewhere inside, something clattered.
Then came a muffled shout.
"Mother?"
Another voice followed immediately, louder and more dramatic.
"MOTHER!"
Mrs. Toad lifted her head, pleased as a queen answering applause.
From inside the shell, Y/N remained unconscious, unable to hear the terrible irony of other children calling for their mother while she had just been stolen from her own.
A door curtain flew aside, and two figures burst onto the deck nearly at the same time.
The first was Connie.
He was short, round-shouldered, and springy, with smooth brown skin carrying a green undertone that deepened around his elbows, knees, and throat. Dark speckles dotted his cheeks like freckles. His skin held the faint moist sheen of riverfolk, not dripping exactly, but glossy enough that the firefly lanterns caught along his knuckles and cheeks. His eyes were large, golden, and slightly too round, blinking with such dramatic separation that one always seemed a heartbeat behind the other. His mouth was mostly human until excitement stretched it too wide.
He wore cropped suspenders over a sleeveless shirt, rolled trousers, and a little vest that looked as though it had shrunk in the damp. Around his neck hung a necklace of polished frog stones and bottle-glass beads. His bare feet slapped wetly against the deck, toes long and webbed enough to grip the boards.
Behind him came Sasha.
She was taller and leaner, with bright olive-brown skin, yellow-green eyes, and quick hands already clutching what appeared to be a half-eaten beetle cake. Her hair was tied back beneath a crooked kerchief patterned with lily pads, and a patched apron hung over her dress. Its pockets bulged with crumbs, fish hooks, wrapped sweets, and something that still had wings.
Sasha's cheeks were full.
Very full.
She tried to speak before swallowing, and a dark crumb slipped from the corner of her mouth.
"Was that supper?" Sasha asked thickly, then licked the crumb back with a quick flick of her long tongue, leaving a small trail of mucus.
Connie recoiled so hard his shoulders nearly touched his ears.
"That was disgusting," Connie said.
Sasha swallowed with effort and pointed at him with the remains of the beetle cake. "You ate a dragonfly wing off the floor yesterday."
"It was on the floor for less than five seconds," Connie said, offended enough that his throat puffed slightly.
"It was stuck to your foot."
"That made it mine, ribbit."
Mrs. Toad cleared her throat.
Both of them turned.
Their eyes landed on the shell.
Then on Mrs. Toad.
Then back on the shell.
Connie leaned forward, his hands braced on his knees and his wide eyes shining with hope.
"Is it food?" Connie asked, nearly bouncing on the balls of his webbed feet.
Sasha shoved the rest of the beetle cake into one cheek and crouched beside him, her gaze fixed hungrily on the shell.
"Please say it is food," Sasha said around the mouthful, crumbs and dark filling sticking to her lips. A bit of syrupy beetle filling slid down her chin, and her tongue snapped out to catch it before it could fall.
"It is not food," Mrs. Toad said.
Both faces fell so quickly that their disappointment seemed to weigh down the entire boat.
Connie's shoulders slumped. "Then why did you drag it home with supper energy?"
Sasha nodded solemnly, still chewing. "That was very supper-shaped behavior."
"Gifts can be non-food," Mrs. Toad said.
Sasha swallowed.
Her face twisted with visible doubt.
"That sounds like something people say when they have bad gifts," Sasha said.
"It sounds tragic," Connie added. "Ribbit."
Mrs. Toad ignored them and dragged the shell fully onto the deck. It left a shining trail of river water behind it, along with faint smears from her slick hands.
Sasha circled the shell first.
Her nostrils flared.
"It smells like the river," Sasha said, bending so close that the tip of her nose nearly brushed the pearlescent shell.
Connie leaned in beside her and sniffed too loudly.
"Everything smells like the river," Connie said.
Sasha sniffed again.
"No," Sasha said, eyes narrowing with sudden interest. "It smells like the river and flowers."
She leaned closer, nostrils flaring wider.
Then her expression shifted.
Not hunger this time.
Confusion.
Her tongue flicked once against her lower lip, quick and thoughtful.
"But not flowers I know," she added. "Not lilies. Not marsh blooms. Not anything that grows around here."
That caught Connie's attention.
He dropped to all fours so abruptly that his palms slapped against the wet deck.
"Oh," Connie said after taking another sniff. His head tilted, and one eye blinked before the other. "That is weird."
Sasha's eyes brightened. "That is expensive weird."
Mrs. Toad planted both hands upon her hips, her wet cloak dripping steadily around her feet.
"Careful, Connie. Careful, Sasha. This is a delicate thing."
Connie straightened at once, though his mouth remained open.
Sasha did not straighten.
She sniffed the shell again, slower this time, as though trying to identify every note in the scent.
Mrs. Toad slapped one webbed hand lightly over Sasha's nose.
"Not for eating."
Sasha pulled back with an offended gasp, her cheeks puffing.
"I was not going to eat it," Sasha said.
"You were thinking about eating it."
"I was appreciating the aroma."
"You were drooling."
Sasha wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then looked at the wet streak left there.
"That could be rain," Sasha said.
Connie squinted at her chin. "It is not rain."
"Traitor."
"Hungry traitor, ribbit."
Connie turned back to the shell and pointed. "What is it, then?"
Mrs. Toad's golden eyes glittered.
"A bride."
Connie blinked.
Sasha blinked.
Somewhere beneath the awning, a drop of rain fell into a bucket.
Plink.
Connie slowly lowered his pointing finger.
"I thought brides were taller," Connie said.
Sasha leaned closer to the shell, genuinely considering this. "Maybe it is folded."
Mrs. Toad made a scandalized sound and swept between them, blocking the shell with her body.
"Children, children, do not be vulgar. What lies within this shell is a rare beauty. A treasure. A little pearl stolen from a glass palace."
Sasha's eyes widened.
"A pearl?" Sasha asked, her tongue briefly touching the corner of her lips.
"Not that kind of pearl."
Sasha's excitement died again.
Connie scratched one speckled cheek. "So not food, not pearl, but bride?"
"Exactly."
"That is a lot of categories for one shell."
Mrs. Toad lifted one hand dramatically, droplets rolling down her green wrist.
"From garden glass and moonlit room," she began to sing, her voice swelling with theatrical pride, "I bring a bride fresh from the bloom—"
At once, music seemed to rise from nowhere.
A reed flute trilled somewhere beneath the deck. A pair of snail shells clacked together in a bright little rhythm. The bucket under the awning answered with a perfectly timed plink, and the strings of bones and cloudy glass beads along the railing began to chime as though the river itself had agreed to accompany her.
Mrs. Toad lifted her chin higher, ready to become unbearable.
Sasha, already caught by the sudden music, gave a small shimmy of her shoulders and lifted one hand as though preparing to join in.
Connie raised his hand.
"I have a question."
The music stopped.
Not faded.
Stopped.
The reed flute gave one strangled squeak. The shell rhythm died mid-clack. Even the bucket missed its next plink, as though embarrassed to be involved.
Mrs. Toad's smile tightened, twitched even.
"What?"
Connie tilted his head. "Bloom and room?"
Sasha nodded slowly, her expression grave. "It is not your strongest rhyme."
Mrs. Toad huffed.
Her throat puffed once with irritation, and she crossed her arms over her damp chest.
"It is a perfectly respectable rhyme."
Silence answered her.
A long, damp, deeply judgmental silence.
Somewhere beyond the boat, in the misty reeds, a cricket began to chirp.
Chirp.
Chirp.
Connie looked toward the sound.
Sasha looked toward the sound.
Mrs. Toad looked like she might personally evict the cricket from the garden.
"It is a lazy rhyme," Connie said at last.
"It works if you sing it with confidence," Sasha added, then demonstrated with one hand lifted to her chest. "BlooOOoom. RooOOoom."
Connie winced. "No, now it sounds worse."
Mrs. Toad's fingers tightened on her sleeves, leaving shiny crescent smears where her slick fingertips pressed.
"I was singing it with confidence."
"You were singing it with volume," Connie said. "That is different."
Sasha tapped her chin. "Maybe try something with 'petal'?"
"Petal, settle, kettle," Connie offered.
Sasha brightened. "Kettle bride!"
Connie frowned. "No, that sounds like soup."
Sasha's stomach gave an audible growl.
Everyone looked at her.
She lifted both hands. "I am participating in the arts, ribbit."
Mrs. Toad pressed her fingertips to her forehead, leaving a damp shine there.
"You are both ruining the atmosphere."
Connie glanced around at the crooked boat, the dripping laundry, the fish bones, the muddy deck, and the cracked teacup swinging from a nail.
"What atmosphere?" Connie asked.
Sasha looked around too.
Her eyes traveled over the glowing fungus thimbles, the wet ropes, the pondweed drying beside the awning, and the bucket collecting rainwater with steady little plinks, apparently no longer too embarrassed to continue.
"Wet," Sasha said finally.
Connie nodded. "Mostly wet."
Mrs. Toad pressed one hand dramatically to her chest, wounded to her very soul.
"This is why no one appreciates theater anymore."
A third voice came from inside the boat, lower than the others and rough with sleep.
"Because people keep doing it before dawn."
The curtain shifted again.
Jean stepped out last.
He was taller than Connie and Sasha, with a lanky frame that looked almost human until he moved. His long legs bent with a springy ease, and his bare feet gripped the damp boards with faintly webbed toes. His skin was warm brown with a muted green cast along his neck, knuckles, and cheekbones, and a faint dusting of darker speckles marked his jaw like freckles. His skin, like the others', held a subtle slickness in the lantern light, as though the river never quite left them.
His eyes were golden-brown, heavy-lidded and irritated, but sharp beneath the sleep. His mouth was human enough until annoyance pulled it wide at the corners. Damp dark hair had been pushed back from his forehead as though he had dragged both hands through it several times and lost the argument.
He wore a shirt with the sleeves rolled unevenly and a waistcoat half-buttoned over it, the sort of garment someone else had chosen for him, and he had accepted only because arguing would have taken longer. A small bronze clasp shaped like a frog's foot held one side of it closed.
Jean looked at Connie.
Connie immediately stood straighter and wiped his wet hands on his trousers.
Jean looked at Sasha.
Sasha's cheeks were still suspiciously full. She swallowed quickly, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and tried to look innocent.
Jean looked at Mrs. Toad quizzically.
Mrs. Toad smiled.
Then Jean looked at the closed shell sitting in the middle of the deck.
His expression tightened.
"Why is there a shell on the deck?" Jean asked, voice flat.
Sasha leaned toward him and whispered loudly, "It is not food."
Jean stared at her.
"I had gathered that."
Connie folded his arms. "It might still be food-adjacent."
Jean turned to him. "What does that mean?"
"It means near food in spirit," Connie said.
"It is not near food in spirit."
"You have not opened it."
"I do not need to open every strange thing Mother drags out of the river before sunrise."
Mrs. Toad turned toward Jean with a smile too pleased to be innocent.
"Because, my Jean-boy," she said, smoothing both hands over the front of her wet cloak, "it is for you."
Jean went still.
The drizzle tapped softly against the sagging canvas roof.
Connie's eyes widened until they looked ready to fall from his face.
Sasha's hand drifted halfway to her mouth before she seemed to remember there was no beetle cake left. Her fingers closed around nothing.
For once, she did not seem hungry.
Jean looked down at the shell again.
"For me," Jean repeated.
His voice had lost its annoyance.
Mrs. Toad clasped both hands beneath her chin. "For you."
Jean's gaze moved over the pearlescent shell, the wet scrape marks along its sides, the bent hinge where it had been dragged too roughly, and the faint blue petal caught near the seam.
His sleepy irritation faded.
Something sharper took its place.
"What is inside?" Jean asked.
Mrs. Toad's smile did not falter.
"Your future."
Connie made a choking sound.
Sasha's cheeks puffed again, this time not from food.
Jean turned his head slowly.
"No."
"You have not even looked," Mrs. Toad said, her smile stiffening.
"I do not need to look."
"You are impossible."
"You brought me a river shell and called it my future."
"A beautiful future."
"A wet one."
Sasha lifted one finger. "Most futures are wet if you live on a boat."
Jean pointed at her without looking. "Not helping."
Connie crouched beside the shell and tapped it with one finger.
His nail clicked softly against the pearl.
From inside, Y/N stirred faintly.
Not enough to wake.
Only enough for her fingers to twitch against the cotton lining.
But Jean heard it.
His face changed.
The sarcasm drained out of him so quickly that even Connie noticed.
Connie jerked his hand back as if the shell had burned him.
Sasha stopped chewing.
A long crumb slipped from her lips and landed on the deck.
She did not notice.
Mrs. Toad's smile softened into something watchful and possessive.
Jean crouched slowly.
The shell sat closed before him, pale and trembling faintly with the movement of the boat. Water ran from its ridges and gathered in the grooves between the deck boards.
Jean reached toward it.
Then stopped before touching it.
His webbed fingers curled inward.
"What," Jean said carefully, "is inside?"
Mrs. Toad leaned closer, her glossy face shining beneath the firefly lantern.
"Only the loveliest little thing you have ever seen."
Jean looked up.
The lantern above him cast gold across his face, catching in the speckles along his cheek and the hard line of his mouth.
For a moment, he said nothing.
His throat moved once as he swallowed.
Then his gaze dropped back to the shell.
To the bent hinge.
To the faint blue petal caught near the seam.
To the place where something inside had moved.
The color seemed to drain from his face.
"Mother."
The word changed the air.
Connie went quiet.
Sasha went quiet.
Even the boat seemed to settle lower into the reeds.
Mrs. Toad's smile held, but only barely.
Jean stood slowly.
His long fingers flexed at his sides, the webbing between them stretching thin in the lantern light.
He looked from Mrs. Toad to the closed shell and back again.
When he spoke, his voice was lower than before.
Sharper.
Afraid in a way he was trying very hard to hide.
"What did you do?"
❦❦❦