“He doesn’t know?”

“How could I tell him? It’s not his fault.” That was La’s voice, but the other one he didn’t recognize.

“Of course not, but that’s dark magic, darker than you can imagine. You can’t possibly know what might happen.”

Snow stirred slightly. Neither of them seemed to notice yet that he was waking up. Truthfully, he was barely even registering their voices; a thick fog lay on his mind that he was struggling to shake off.

“I know he’s alive.” La’s voice sounded furious, though distant. Like she was speaking from far away. “What can I do but take care of him? I–”

The strange voice interrupted her. “Hush! He’s waking up.”

Snow moved again, only this time his muscles agreed to cooperate and he was able to push himself up into a sitting position as he attempted to blink the fog away. “La?” he mumbled sleepily, and was surprised to see she was only a few feet away from him when he turned and looked at her, though when she spoke again her voice sounded normal and not distant like it had been before.

“Hey! You slept hard. Do you remember coming into the oak tree last night?” She smiled at him, yet he thought it looked a little forced.

Slowly, he nodded. “Sort of. Like a dream, but I guess I was just really tired.” He pushed away the blankets and stood, folding his arms around himself as he turned to give Tina a tired smile. “I remember meeting you. I’m sorry if I was rude, I don’t know why.”

Tina leaned over and gave his arm a light pat. “Forgive and forget, my dear. Have a cup of tea!” She poured him a tiny bit of tea into a tiny teacup from a tiny teapot and he took it between two fingers, trying very hard not to break the delicate dish. When he looked at it closer, he could see that it had been intricately painted with flowers and vines, though the paint seemed to have faded slightly.

“Thank you,” he said, and when he took a sip he drained half the cup. At least it was good. She offered him a seat at the table she and La were sitting at, with La looking infinitely less comfortable than the fairy given that her knees had to be shoved around at awkward angles, and he chose to decline with as much politeness as he could muster. He was all limbs and height, after all.

An awkward silence fell over the room. Snow tried to distract himself by sipping the tea as slowly as possible but it still only took four little drinks before the cup was all gone. He set it down carefully on the table. Thankfully, it was still all in one piece and he’d managed not to break it – though the thought of Crow trying to sip delicately out of the tiny dish made him smile. The cup would be smashed into a million pieces as soon as he picked it up!

“Are you going to help us find my brother?” he asked suddenly, breaking the tense silence. Thinking of Crow had reminded his still tired mind why they’d gone to look for the fairy in the first place. “Please, I mean. We really need your help.” He switched his weight from foot to foot, eyes never leaving her face and his long, pale fingers tapping against his sides.

Tina tilted her head at him. “That depends. This is the first I am hearing about him so please, fill me in and I will see if I have any advice to give.”

And so they did. La explained to Snow that she had already spoken about the attack and why they were being hunted but he’d woken up before she’d gotten to Crow’s fate, so they took turns telling Tina about what had happened. Her face became very grave when they mentioned the Wildlands.

“So,” she said at last when they had finished their somber tale, “you mean to go to the Wildlands and pluck him straight out, do you?”

A pause, and then Snow tentatively replied, “Yes?”

“Neither of you can fight.”

“No,” he conceded.

“Nor do you know where you’re going.”

“That’s true,” La agreed.

“And you have enemies searching for you, eager to return you to this ‘Master,’ correct?”

“Yeah,” they both said, speaking in unison.

Tina reached into a nearby cabinet, pulled out a jar that definitely wasn’t tea, and chugged half of the contents before slamming it down on the table. “And what am I supposed to do about it? Listen,” she added quickly, seeing that both of them were about to protest, “it isn’t that I don’t care. It’s just that this is a good deal harder than leading a lost little girl home to her family. Impossible, even! Magic – yes, yes, I have magic. Magic that can conceal a large oak tree and make blankets fly from ceilings and power a few little lights on and off, not magic that can give you weapons, teach you to use them, and then guide you to someone who might not even be ali–”

“Tina.” La’s voice held a tone of warning.

“Very well. I apologize for being so negative but really, you are asking a lot. Magic, my friends… magic is fading. Dying. I don’t have the strength I used to have…” She looked at them sadly. “I will do what I can but it will take time – and patience, because I am aware you have precious little time but if you try to run into the Wildlands as you are now, you will surely die.”

Snow clenched his hands into fists. He could feel his nails digging into the palm of his hand but somehow that helped calm him. He wasn’t sure why but he didn’t question it, his mind being focused on other more important things. It felt as if his heart was in pain – real, physical pain – and for a moment he squeezed his eyes shut until he finally felt grounded again and the world didn’t seem like it was spinning quite so much. He didn’t like that feeling at all.

“I don’t know a lot about magic, but thank you for whatever you can do It means a lot – everything, really,” he said when he felt he could finally speak again, though his voice sounded weak to his own ears. “Can I… can I go outside? Is it safe?”

“It will be safe enough if you don’t stray too far from the tree. Let the branches shield you.” Tina waved him away and as he headed swiftly for the door, he heard La get up from her seat – loudly, as she kept crashing into things – and follow him but he didn’t stop until he’d pushed open the little wooden door and squeezed himself out of it, and it wasn’t until he was surrounded by fresh air that he felt he could properly breathe. He inhaled deeply as he stared up towards the sky.

“I missed the sunrise,” he said to La, a little dismayed.

She stepped up beside him and folded her arms over her chest. “There will be others. The rest was good for you anyway.”

“What time of day is it now?”

“Late morning, I think. Not noon yet, anyway. If we go to sleep right after we watch the sunset then we ought to be able to watch the sunrise in the morning. How does that sound?”

Snow shuddered in response and she noticed, for she added, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s… I don’t know, it’s a little silly.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I’m sure it isn’t.”

There was a long pause between them. Snow wasn’t sure why but the words didn’t want to come to him properly and anytime he wanted to say them, it all just felt jumbled. At last he gave up on trying to sound too intelligent and mumbled, “It’s a nice fairy tree. But it reminds me of back there.”

La blinked at him in surprise. “How does it remind you of the circus? It’s so different, why–”

“You didn’t have to sleep in a tiny cart every night,” Snow blurted out. “Even a tree this big feels small when there’s two people and a fairy in it. And maybe that’s silly, I don’t know and I don’t mean to be rude either, but… I can’t… I just…”

“You don’t have to explain it.” This time it was La who interrupted. “I’m sorry that I didn’t think of it earlier but we don’t have anywhere else to go. We’ll just… I don’t know, I guess we’ll just have to try and spend as much time outside as we safely can. Will that be okay?”

He nodded slowly, trying to smile. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “Don’t be.”

—---------

The next few days felt blurred together. Snow spent as much of his time outside as he could, usually studying some maps that he’d found in Tina’s stash of books and scrolls, and La would often join him. She’d point out places on the map that he’d been to with the circus and never seen and tell him about as many details of the places they’d visited as she could muster. The mountains intrigued him most. It seemed the perfect place to take flight, so high up in the sky already. Yes, it was impossible; he’d realized that the moment he’d learned that the sun was much, much further away than he’d thought and that the sky had no end, so he could never reach the top of it, but a part of him still dreamed on anyway.

When he wasn’t studying maps or watching the sun rise and fall, Snow liked to play around in the stream. The fish intrigued him and they didn’t seem to want to swim away from him the same way they did to La when she’d go wading with him, instead swimming around his ankles in a way that he perceived to be almost playful. She’d pouted about it and complained it wasn’t fair, but they’d both had a good laugh about it in the end. He’d then refused to eat the fish they’d tried to serve him for dinner.

Tina had shrunk his shoes down to size and given him new clothing on the morning of the second day. The fabric was a simple gray and the style was equally as simplistic, but it was soft and warm and comfortable.

“That’ll serve you far better than what you had,” Tina told him after he’d put it on. “Stronger material and warmer for the winter – I’m surprised that those rags you were wearing hadn’t fallen off already.”

‘Leah – the girl you’d helped those years ago, you remember – she tried to mend it for me best she could. The family was very kind – and so are you,” he added quickly. And it was true. He knew they were asking a lot, though he also knew he didn’t entirely understand the extent of how much, and she was doing what she could to help them. Sure, she scared him a little bit but it was worth it if she could help save Crow.

Her response had been to smile and pat him on the arm. A lot of people seemed to do that, he noticed. It was a little weird.

At last, several days after they had arrived, Tina summoned them both inside to talk and this time Snow relented and squeezed himself into a chair at her little table, though his legs wouldn’t fit underneath it. La sat to his right and Tina to the left, wings folded neatly behind her back and arms crossed in front as she stared hard at them both. Snow couldn’t read her expression. Was it good? Bad? The silence grew tense, broken only by the sound of him tapping his fingers on the wooden surface of the table.

“I said I would do what I could to help,” Tina said at last, “but I also told you that you were asking something nearly impossible. I have studied books, scrolls, maps, but precious little has been written about the Wildlands and what lies within it. Maps are usually inconsistent and vague as if…” she paused, throwing up her hands in frustration. “As if the woods inside of it change over time – not just a little, like the world tends to do. Like it almost rearranges itself entirely. Dark magic lies within. The books I read from the few who’d traveled in and made it back out alive were written as if by madmen.”

“What does this mean for us?” La spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “We can’t just leave him there.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know. I can give you the most recent map I have and point you in the general direction but there’s little else I can do. A few supplies, too, I can grant and a lantern to guide you on your way. But be warned – the light will only last for so long when it’s away from me.”

Snow bowed his head. Just like Leah and Otis. They had been wonderfully kind and so eager to help but they hadn’t been able to do very much, either. At least not when it came to finding Crow. Still, he had received very few kindnesses in his life and knew to appreciate whatever he could get; no matter how big or small it was, for it was something given that could have just as easily been kept by the owner. It was a morsel of food, shelter, a hot drink of chocolate while watching the sunrise. It was a smile and a doll and a fairy lantern. They did their best. What more could he ask for than that?

Even so, it was hard to push down the swelling panic inside of him. Hopeless. Everything was telling him that but he would not believe it. He could not. He tried to open his mouth to speak but the words were caught inside of his throat.

“Thank you for your help.” He was glad that La spoke up because he still couldn’t find the words to say. “I wish there was something we could do to repay you,” she continued, “and you’ve been more than kind.”

“Maybe someday there will be,” replied the fairy, and then reached for a nearby scroll which she spread out in front of them. The map. Snow leaned a little closer. Tina pointed to a spot on the map, marking the paper with a spot of red without even using a pen.

“This is where you are now,” she said.

She then moved her finger across the stream and up over the map a little further before making a circle. The ink followed her touch.

“And this,” she said, “is where you need to go.”

“About how long of a walk is that, do you know?” La was trying to twist her head around to see the map from a better angle.

Tina sniffed. “A walk for you is very different from a walk for me, my dear. Not that I’d have to walk. But I’d guess about a day and a half, maybe two days to get there, though if you’re trying to avoid both the main roads and the sun…” She frowned, resting her chin in her hand. “Three days, maybe longer.”

So somewhere between one and a half to three days, or perhaps a little longer. Or had she meant a lot longer? That was… well, it was certainly a time frame. “Knowing where we’re going will help,” said Snow, finally finding his voice again.

Hopeless, his mind teased. It’s hopeless.

But now he told himself he wouldn’t listen to that voice. They at least had a path to follow, as well as good clothes and some food, and that was more than he’d left the circus with. He had to remember that. No matter how hopeless and scary everything seemed, they were one step closer to their goal than they had been and he figured that was pretty important.

Tina must have decided that the moment of somber silence had dragged on for too long because she fluttered up suddenly and hovered above them, though she was only at his eye level when Snow unfolded himself from the small furniture and stood. “There we are then,” she said briskly. “It is quite early yet, you can still get much walking done before the day is over. And here–” She snapped her fingers and two cloaks, both gray like the clothing Snow was wearing, floated down from the top of the tree and hovered in front of them. “These will keep you warm and protected, both from enemies and the sun. They can’t magically hide you but they’ll help conceal you like any other cloak will. And you’ll find they make excellent blankets.”

Snow took his and swung it around his shoulders. Next to him, La followed suit. “It fits perfectly,” La said, wonder in her tone.

Adjusting the clasp a little against his chest, Snow smiled. It did fit perfectly, just like the clothes she’d made him. He didn’t mind the simple color – it was rather nice, actually, and would help them blend in better with their surroundings than the performer’s clothing had. La’s clothes underneath the cloak were still colorful, a blend of reds and blues and greens and yellows, but the cloak concealed her from head to toe. Finally, he tore his gaze from the cloaks and met Tina’s eyes. “Thank you for everything. I’m sorry I was scared of you.”

Both her eyebrows went up. “You were?”

“A little.”

She laughed softly, then thrust the map into La’s hands as well as the promised lantern into Snow’s, and shooed both of them over to the door. “Off with you. Take care of each other and stop and say hi if you ever come back through. I’d love to meet your brother.”

“We will,” he promised. “You’ll still be here?”

“Of course, silly boy, I live here.”

“You didn’t reveal yourself again to Leah when she came searching for you,” La pointed out, pausing just outside of the doorway. “So why show yourself again to us?”

“That was a lost child who just wandered a little too far away from home. She needed me for only a moment. Your story is much more interesting, my dears, and I do love a good story.” She tapped the bark of the oak tree. “My home is open to you.”

“Is that what the whispering was? When you whispered to the tree before the door appeared after you first found us?”

Snow frowned. That whole night was a blur to him but surely he would’ve remembered watching someone whisper to a tree. She had to be making some sort of joke… right? But Tina nodded and he found himself even more confused.

“I was allowing you in. A spell of sorts, keeps out those I don’t want around, but the tree won’t hide itself from you anymore. Enough talking now. You must be on your way, for you have far to travel and the days are growing ever colder.” Perhaps he was imagining things but Snow thought he detected a morose tone in the fairy’s voice. “Go. And remember, the path behind you is not where you are going so don’t look back, even if it’s less scary than looking forward.”

Snow drank in every detail of his surroundings before he turned his gaze away. Tina, the big oak tree, everything that was starting to become familiar. He wouldn’t miss sleeping somewhere so cramped but he would miss the feeling of safety he had when he was there. She’d said that no one would find them or hurt them when they were with her and she had been right, and now they were headed to a place where most everything would try to hurt them – or worse, take them back to the Master. But she had also said to look forward, and forward was where Crow was, so with one last grateful smile, he turned his eyes to the land beyond.

It only took a couple of minutes to cross the stream. It wasn’t a large stream but the rocks were all slippery and they had to support each other across until at last they stood in the soft, damp grass on the other side. They walked together in silence for a long time after that, each lost in his or her own thoughts.

Though he was scared, Snow felt a new sense of determination come over him. They’d spoken of the danger ahead and he understood that what he would see now wouldn’t be quite so nice and lovely as everything he’d experienced so far, but it was still something new to experience. This feeling of excited apprehension and not knowing what would come next was far better than living in that little cage he’d grown up in, for now he knew how small his world had really been.

He had freedom. He had La. Now all he needed was Crow and his happiness would be complete.