For poeticmaiden

Death

at sixteen, hurt like a monster hiding in a mushroom ring, water in her lungs, suffocating. It was all so fast. Running with Neil down the river banks. She was so, so happy, and then

The rocks were slippery, green with algae and tiny fish waiting to hatch from confining eggs to see their world, float down the river all the way to the far oceans, and live—or at least, it was something she thought of when she found herself suddenly drenched and cold (so cold) flying down the river at what could have otherwise been called a breakneck speed if it was on a horse instead of a current.

She was not a strong swimmer. She could swim, a little, but no one swam in the fast part of the river. Usually, "swimming" was actually wading, which was really only walking through something a bit thicker than air. And so, when the current started pushing her, shoving her away to some new world, she could do nothing but watch in a daze and think.

She thought that she had perhaps wished for something so very romantic to happen to her before. It would be nice (and so very appropriate) to be nearly drowned on her sixteenth birthday. It would be quite a tale to tell. Everyone would be so worried, and she might come down with quite the cold, but it would all be all right, because someone (someone very gallant) would undoubtedly jump in the river after her and pull her up onto shore where she would cough out all the water invading her lungs and be perfectly all right. And then, perhaps, that certain gallant someone might just profess his secret love for her. It would be very romantic.

The trouble was that there was no one jumping in after her. She was washing past like a grain of sand, like the minnows she saw rushing with her, only they could breathe, while she was breathless, suffocating, and couldn't even manage a slight thrashing to the surface to gulp in one single breath of air, one miracle to prolong her life just just long enough for someone - N-neil? - to jump in and romantically pull her to the bank and save her.

After a few moments, she was too afraid to care about romance. All she wanted was for someone, anyone, to save her and to not die because she was afraid of dying, and she didn't want to die; she was too young to die, she was only sixteen, she'd barely lived, and Neil Neil Neil; she wanted to see his face again, and she wanted to drag him behind her father's barn and kiss him like she'd always wanted but was too afraid to do, and then, and then

She saw his face. It was odd, the way everything was swimming in her head and going fuzzy, and she couldn't breathe; she couldn't think, but then she saw him. He was fuzzy and his face was knocked about by the ripples he was looking down through, but it was his face, with his forehead all crinkled like it did when he was worried, and his lips pursed tight together, and his eyes, they looked looked...watery, but maybe that was only because she was in the water, the water was the world, she was the water.

And everything seemed to come to a startling halt, and she stared up at his face and wondered if this was what dying felt like.

Life

felt strange, rushing through her veins again. It was a little like waking up from a long nap and a little bit like coughing up handfuls of cotton stuck in her lungs. It hurt; it was wonderful; yet from the way her fingers were translucent patches of brown white skin, she felt sure there was still something slightly amiss.

She was washed up on shore—part of her, anyway, and part of her watched as her more solid part drifted past in the water. She backed away from the—the – (corpse?) – as it rushed by her toes and felt that she might be sick, only she could not quite feel her stomach reeling. Pursing her not quite lips and crossing her not quite arms, she looked around her, carefully.

She was on shore, sitting on the sandy bank that she could almost but not quite feel. There were wet pebbles underneath her that were cool and hard, but not cold and rock hard. Then she saw.

The lights, floating, drifting. Redorangeyellowgreenbluevioletpinkandglittery. It was beautiful, so much so that it hurt her heart to look at them and dream of them, and she felt very pale in comparison. As she watched, they seemed to pulse at her, to suck her into their mesmerism, to whisper her name gently in her not quite ear.

Lorena. Lorena. Like a lark rising into the air in the lull of hazy light.

It was something magical that held her gaze, and as she gazed and gazed, she began to see figures and faces with cherry blossom hair and little golden lashes framing jewel eyes and rose petal mouths that curled into smiles as they looked at her.

Come away with us, Lorena. Be like us. And they spun around her in swift circles that sailed even as they sighed at the somber way she stared at them. What's wrong, Lorena? Don't you want to be like us?

It's nothing, she said, not speaking, but just breathing out a feeling like when the war general knows it's all over but just wishes it could have gone another way, because this was the end of her.

She thought of Neil. Infectious boy-smiles, fingers brushing against hers with the utmost hesitation as he shouted that he could beat her in any kind of race, and they screamed each other hoarse before actually starting a race to decide, and of course he beat her because he was a boy, but she was a girl and knew ways around that, so she pretended to have hurt her ankle until he came back, and she tripped him and took off sprinting, and then she beat him, and then...and then she died.

The fairies flitted around her, brushing away the not-tears that dripped from her eyes. We'll take away the pain, they said. You don't have to feel this hurt anymore. Through the blur that settled in front of her eyes, their colors were so bright and brilliant, melded together the way Neil melded metals to make swords, but they were more beautiful than swords, more beautiful than lazy summer sunsets, and she let them tug at her clothes and at her hair and whisper in her ear until she was magic like them.

Rosa Edmonds

knelt in her garden in the dim of first light, her head bowed to the ground, eyes closed, shutting out the gray world in preference to a lovelier one that made her lips twitch into a rare smile.

Lorena sat on a fence post and watched the girl, forgetting her own not quite visibility and remembering what it was to be sixteen.

Rosa was prettier than she'd been at that age. She hadn't been ugly by any means, but Rosa had a marked beauty, golden, something in her that radiated life—or at least, the potential for life, suppressed by beatings and overwork that came close to killing her. It was what the two of them had in common, what drew Lorena to the girl that was made to be a servant in her own home: a life interrupted.

At sixteen, Lorena drowned in a river.

At sixteen, Rosa was dying a little every day as she worked from sunup to sundown until she couldn't move; her body crumpled underneath her, and she laid on the cold ground until sleep took her. It had been like this since she was twelve. She wouldn't be able to take it much longer.

The girl looked up suddenly, lifting pale blue eyes to gaze at Lorena. "Are you going to save me?" she asked in a quiet voice that smiled even as it spoke with a desperation that reminded her of when she'd lain drowning at the bottom of the river and realized how short her life had been, how she'd never done half the things she'd wanted to do, and in the surge of memory, she could again feel the water rushing against her skin, surging into her lungs like frigid winds of ice and snow.

But it was in the past. She couldn't feel the pain she'd felt then. The fairies took that away when they made her like them. Now it was only an association she had, with sixteen and death and water, and the end of everything.

It was an association that made her determined to help Rosa Edmonds before the girl died of overwork.

However, in the practical sense of things—the sense she'd gained from ten years of not-life—there was nothing she could do. The girl needed to get away from this place, and for that, she would need money, food, a home. And Lorena was a fairy; there was nothing tangible she could give.

"I can't help you," she said.

Rosa looked at her with large eyes. "But you're a fairy," she said. "And I can see you. That means something, doesn't it? Either I'm dying, or...you're my fairy godmother."

Something about the statement made her laugh and laugh absurdly loud and long and deep, because if she was alive, she'd be twenty six by now; she'd be married and would probably be a real mother of one or two children, and now here she was being claimed by a girl only ten years younger than her as a fairy godmother. She wasn't sure what was humorous about the situation. She wasn't sure if she wanted to be a real mother or not; at sixteen, she hadn't bothered thinking about it yet. And her life had stalled at sixteen.

"But you are, aren't you?" Rosa asked, biting her lip until it turned bright red, and Lorena wondered if it would start to bleed. "That's the only reason people see fairies."

She stopped laughing finally and stared at the girl. "I don't know." The truth was that she did not know entirely what she was capable of, or why she was even here this morning, staring at this girl, and why she was aware of the girl in the first place, and why why any of this had ever happened. "What is it you want?" she asked at last.

"I want to get away from here," Rosa said, and her tiny hands with their tiny bones trembled like dried up autumn leaves in the wind. "I want to live."

"I wanted to live too," she said softly

"What?"

"Nothing," she snapped and wondered what the world had against sixteen year old girls. She supposed, sometimes, things just didn't work out. People didn't always grow up and have lives and fall in love and grow old together. People died, and it wasn't anyone's fault; it just happened, but the horrible thing about it was that it was the end, the absolute, the final, and even though she'd become fairy and was conscious and alive, she wasn't living. "I don't know how to help you."

Rosa hesitated, biting her lip, twining her fingers together and slowly untangling them. Then she spoke. "When I was younger...and I didn't need to work all the time, I...I knew someone. A boy. His name was...Galen Vladimir Raleigh Tollemach."

Common knowledge told her who he was—and that there could be hope for Rosa Edmonds after all. "The prince. When did you see him last?"

"It—it was years ago, but...we wrote letters to each other, all the time, until...a year ago ago. They just stopped coming. I don't know why. I...I love him."

"And does he return your feelings?"

"I don't know," Rosa whispered to the ground.

"Well," Lorena said, rising from the fence, "I suggest you go see him while you still can." She eyed Rosa's pale face, her eyes that were beginning to shut again as exhaustion took over her body. She didn't feel like being kind, like telling Rosa that she would make it through this, that Prince Galen would come and carry her away to a better world. Likelier than not, the girl would die before she ever got a chance to see the boy. "Tell him how you feel, and even if he doesn't love you, perhaps he can at least help you into a better situation."

She prepared herself to leave, to float away into nothing, let the wind come near to dismembering her and wisp her away somewhere else, wherever it fancied she go, but Rosa's voice stopped her.

"You must have been human once. A true fairy would be much more eager to meddle with human affairs."

She paused, looking back at the girl still kneeling on the ground. "I don't think human affairs should be meddled with much." She remembered Neil's face in the water, all distorted from the ripples. She hadn't seen him since that day. The day she died and became fairy. "Especially where love is concerned."

"What was his name?" Rosa asked in a soft, careful voice, her pale eyes searching.

"It doesn't matter. I'm sure he's moved on by now anyway."

"But are you certain?"

She pursed her lips together and didn't deign to reply. She looked at Rosa, though, thinking. "I still don't want to meddle, but I suppose you'd have a difficult time getting yourself to the palace anytime soon. I could nudge the prince's thoughts in your direction to simplify matters a bit."

Swords

hung around the room in varying lengths and widths, and with the door open, the sunlight hit the metal and ignited the whole room with so much light, it seemed like the sun was there—everywhere—like she was inside of the sun, but when the door shut behind her it all faded into dull wood and cold, lackluster metal. This was where he worked.

She ventured a little farther into the shop and wondered if he liked working here. She didn't remember it looking so bleak before. Of course, when she used to come in to see him, he'd been an apprentice under Mr. Galway. Now only his name was on the front sign. That must have meant he worked alone here, all day. Unless he had his own apprentice now. Maybe—maybe he had sons. That would mean he had a wife as well.

But—no, the place didn't have the appearance of a place that young men or children worked in. It was very tidy and very bare, screaming solitude the way an empty room did, or a lonely tower, or—or a river bottom.

"Excuse me—can I help you?"

He came out of the back while she was still staring at everything else, and if she had been human instead of only disguised as a human, she might have stumbled over her own feet and fell in a heap to the floor. Being fairy, she only stood, staring, and pulled her cloak closer around her and made sure her hood would stay up so she wouldn't suddenly become not quite visible and leave the poor man completely flabbergasted.

But when she was done with all this fidgeting, the fact of the matter remained that Neil was standing in front of her, and she could think of nothing at all to say to him. She was no longer quite sure why she'd come to see him; she hadn't dared coming to her own village in all the ten years since that day so long ago, and now just one talk with one sixteen year old girl had made her change her mind. And so here she was, against common sense, most likely against the rules of the fairies, and certainly against her own inclinations.

"I...I just wanted to look around," she said, running a hand through her hair, blushing, which was completely ludicrous. Even if her human form now had looked at all like herself before, she'd aged ten years. He would hardly recognize her.

"You wanted to look around...in a blacksmith's shop?" he asked, raising one eyebrow the way he'd always done.

"Well—yes. I think it's interesting."

"Hmm. Well. Look if you want." He walked slowly to one of his tables and ran his hands over the wood. He had very large, strong hands, and his arms were more muscled than she remembered. He was a larger man now, with broader shoulders, a bit taller, too. But when he looked up at her, his eyes were the same green they'd been, a little bit lazy, a little bit curious—but he didn't smile like he used to. And he moved slower when he finally reached for his tools and turned toward his blacksmith forge.

She supposed she seemed rather intrusive, standing there staring, so she moved to the side a bit and picked up one of the swords the from the wall. It was made well, from what she knew of sword making. Light, strong. Shiny. Those were the three qualifying details she'd always paid attention to when she came in before. Especially the shiny.

"That's a good sword, if I do say so myself," Neil said, coming up behind her.

She jumped. She hadn't known he was there. She was supposed to be the one that could sneak up on people now, not him.

"Sorry to have startled you," he said. "I just happened to notice what sword you were looking at. I made that one nigh on ten years ago now. I've made sure to keep it polished since then. Shiny." He ran a hand through his thick dark hair and gave her a funny look, like he wasn't sure he should have told her that.

"Shiny?" she asked in a dull voice.

He looked at her and nodded quickly, moving away to another of his tables. He fiddled with a few things before looking at her again. "I, uh...I made it after a friend...passed on. She liked shiny."

"Oh," she said. "I'm sorry." She wondered if she was apologizing for dying, or offering condolences for her own death. Either way, it was strange, this interaction with him, where he spoke of her, but not her, not the way she was now anyways. It rather made her feel like a ghost. And she supposed, in a way, she was.

"Yes, well." He came back to her and took the sword out of her hands, holding it in his own. She noticed that he didn't have a wedding band on his finger. Not that it mattered now.

"You've done a good job," she said, and he looked back at her. "Keeping it shiny, I mean. You can see your reflection in it."

He looked into the sword, and she saw his face reflected back at her, smooth on the metal, like it was in the water but without the ripples. She took one step closer to him, and she could see her own reflection—only, it was her reflection, not what she looked like - or was supposed to look like now - but the way she'd looked sixteen years ago. Young, hardly a line on her face, with a mess of brown curls, big, laughing eyes. She stepped away quickly.

Neil stirred, glancing at her sharply. He looked into her face for a moment, a long, searching moment, and she wondered what he saw there, if there was any hint in her face of who she really was, who she used to be. After a moment, he only turned away, shaking his head.

"I, uh—"

"I should go," she said quickly, stepping toward the door.

He looked at her again, and she noticed the lines around his eyes. So even his eyes weren't really the same. Almost, but he was older now. They both were. She shouldn't have come to see him.

"All right. Well, if you ever want to look around again..."

"Yes. Thank you." But she knew she wouldn't come back. She strode out the door, and in the quiet, empty street, she let the wind wisp her away. She had a prince to find.

Capture

was not what she was expecting, though she supposed she should have been more careful. People did these sort of things, for money. Rates for gawking at fairies were apparently very high these days. And she'd been all too visibly spreading her wings on the main road. There was no one around, after all; what did it matter?

But it did matter, and she'd been caught by a few shady looking characters. They grasped her before she could carry herself away and suddenly switching into human form didn't change their minds.

"We know your tricks," one of the grubby men said, smiling at her with rotten teeth.

They pinned her arms behind her back, and just when she thought she might be able to slip through their fingers, they threw some sort of anti magic netting around her so she couldn't fly or change forms or use the wind to carry her away. The thing felt like a brick wall had suddenly grown up around her—tight around her, more like a snake about her waist but so thick and so strong that she couldn't fight it even for a moment. It sucked out her breath, pulling the air from her lungs so she stood stock still and rigid, wondering what had happened.

"That's what we thought. You'll raise a fair sum. We did good with this one, Jacky-boy!"

Then they threw her in the back of an old rickety cart and threw a cover over her so no one could see, no one could help, and she was all alone. She found herself wondering if anyone would save...but no. Being saved might have been plausible at sixteen, but now she was twenty six if she was anything, and she wasn't even human. Her story was over. This capture was unfortunate, but it wasn't anything else; it wasn't part of a grander scheme, it wasn't a difficult spot in her story, something that could be amended, something she could be rescued from, this was...this was just this. A capture, where she'd be locked up somewhere and maybe sometimes people would come and stare at her like she had two heads, but there would be no daring rescue, no happy ending.

After bouncing around in the cart for an hour or so, they came to a halt. The blanket was thrown off of her, she was hauled out, and found herself standing at the edge of a lake. It was a pretty lake; the water was clear and blue beneath the matching sky, but the water made her heart stop for a moment so for a moment, a single moment where her whole body came to a screeching halt, she thought she perhaps might die again. But she was a fairy now. Water wouldn't kill her. She wasn't sure what would.

"Now take her down. It's magic of a sort. She won't swim her way out of there, but she'll be alive when we come back."

One of the younger, more agile looking men took hold of her and dragged her into the water with him. She didn't squirm or try to escape, just stayed still as ever, not hurting, not helping, succumbing to the numbness that started at her toes and rose upward. She took a breath before they went under, though it didn't matter. She could survive underwater as well as above.

They went down and down and down, into the very depths of the lake it seemed, before she finally spotted the castle underneath, a ruined palace hidden beneath all that water. She was brought to the door way and pushed inside, and then the door was closed behind her. She couldn't open it back up. Locked with magic, she supposed. It was dark. It was cold. And she was trapped.

She wondered, briefly, if this was what it was like to be a princess held high in a tower for years upon years, shut away from the world. At least in a tower, there was air to move in, rather than this heavy, crushing water. At least in a tower, there was the chance that someone might see and come to save her. Here there was nothing but dark and cold and nothing. Her life wasn't a story. Just an unfortunate circumstance.

Standing alone

at the gate, Rosa decided that she would get to the palace if she had to walk there. She had not planned to spend her day in this fashion, but when she felt the crashing water wash through her mind and felt the cold, the nothing that she knew her fairy godmother was trapped in, she knew she couldn't simply attend to her normal duties.

She hesitated for a long moment at the edge of the yard, clutching a fence post until her knuckles turned white, and she was afraid. She'd never gone far away before. Part of her felt like she wouldn't make it. She knew she was weak, and she knew she was going to die. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. She would never live to be old, and this trip could hasten her death. She might actually die today or tomorrow if she went. Of course, that could happen just as easily at home.

Pursing her lips and straightening her back, she stepped outside her gate and down the road. And she walked. She walked and walked with a slow determination like an old, wounded knight in his last, last battle that he'll ever fight, going down with glory and pride, knowing this is the end and choosing to go instead of simply letting it come.

She had to do this for her fairy godmother. For the woman (fairy, though something in her made her want to say woman, human woman) who sat on her fencepost and told her to love freely, to live fully, before it was too late. If not in so many words, it was what the message had meant to her, and she was determined to do it and to help her fairy godmother do it as well. To live.

Her plan was simple. Get to the palace. Talk to Galen (dear, dear Galen with his bright blue eyes). Tell him where she was, bring as many men as needed, and have someone swim down and save her from the cold, dark water. She could see it in her mind's eye, and the sight of it made her want to cry, to fall to the ground and curl in a ball and never look at the world again, such was the oppressive sight. But that was the very reason why she couldn't, why she needed to help.

Of course, it was not easy. She was frail, and the exertion under the bright, scorching sun so taxed her that when she reached the next town down, she simply collapsed in the middle of the road.

She was collected by a man with very strong arms and a rather sad face, who took her into his blacksmith's workshop, sat her in a chair, and gave her a drink of water, all the while staring into her eyes with a stern sort of worry.

"Are you all right?" he asked slowly.

"Yes, but...I need to get to the palace." She choked on the water, sputtering it in his face.

He looked confused.

"I'm sorry," she said, with more dignity. "I have a—friend who's been kidnapped. And now she's trapped in a castle underwater—I know it sounds strange, but it's true. I need to speak to Prince Galen."

He looked at her with one raised brow for a rather long moment. And after a few even longer hours of explanations, they set off together in his cart, bound for the palace and prince.

The process to get in was dizzying, but she persisted in telling various guards and advisors that she needed to see Prince Galen, that it was urgent, that he would know her. They did not look entirely convinced, but with her unwavering answer and Neil's (the blacksmith's name was Neil) stony backing, they finally allowed her in, though begrudgingly; the prince had apparently been called from a meeting, an important meeting, one he ought not be called from, and most definitely not for the sake of a shabby looking servant girl.

Indeed, seated in his throne at the far side of the room, chin resting on his fist, he did not look altogether pleased to see her. She hesitated in the doorway.

"If he finds your request impudent, he could have your head lopped off," one of the men hissed in her ear before shoving her forward.

Neil remained at the doorway and no amount of glancing back at him could make him follow her. She was completely on her own, and suddenly it felt like her blood had all turned to butterflies flapping and floating away, and it was all she could do to keep her feet on the ground and not float away with them.

She remembered the most silly things then, that she hadn't even bothered to brush her hair, that she hadn't washed her face at all since she'd collapsed on the road, that she was sweaty and dirty, and this was not exactly the reunion she'd envisioned.

She stopped in front of him and below him (he was so very high above her on his throne, on his golden dais), and she could think of nothing at all to say. "Um..." she started as he made no move to speak and did not seem to recognize her at all, and then she stopped and rather felt like crying. She wanted him to make the first move; she wanted him to remember her, to be head over heels in love with her. She'd wanted him to come to her himself and sweep her off her feet and wipe away all her tears.

But he wasn't sweeping her off her feet, and she remembered that this visit wasn't for herself. "Prince Galen, I—"

"Rosa Edmonds!" he interrupted with her name that sounded like summer coming from his lips. "Rosa, it is you! I thought so, but I wasn't sure until I heard your voice." He jumped up from his throne and ran down the dais, taking both her hands in his, and he smiled. He had such a beautiful smile.

"Yes...it's me," she said, smiling back a small smile, "...Galen." She liked the way his name felt forming on her lips.

He stared her with his blue blue eyes that traced scanned every corner of her face with that light in his eyes that never went out. "But—why are you here?" he asked. "I thought I'd never see you again when you stopped replying to my letters."

She frowned in puzzlement. "I...but you didn't respond to my letters."

Now it was his turn to frown, but then he only shrugged, happily dismissing the matter. "Well, then it was some misunderstanding. I always meant to look into it and find out what happened to you, but...everything just seemed to pile, and I never got around to it. It was rather terrible of me. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me, Rosa?"

"Of course," she said, smiling. "But I, um—"

"You look pale," he said. "Do you feel all right? What have you been up to since the last letter got to you? You must tell me everything!" he laughed. "I want to know everything about you, Rosa. You know I moped for weeks thinking you didn't care about me, and here you show up at my doorstep." He took her right hand and held it to his lips. He paused, finally slowing down as he looked into her eyes. "Rosa, I'm so glad you're here."

She smiled at him and felt her cheeks turning red. "So am I, Galen. There's so much I want to tell you. But—first I need you to help me help a friend."

Drowning

would have been preferable to this. At least it would have been over at some point, instead of stretching on and on like all the millions of miles of the universe that she could never quite cross. There was no one to talk to. There was no one to hear her scream. She couldn't scream, of course, not underwater, but it was the idea that mattered.

After a time, she began to wonder if she wouldn't rather have drowned the first time. She wasn't sure she'd ever really wanted to be a fairy. She hadn't wanted to die. She knew that much, but being dragged into some half way in between state, without living and interacting with the people she cared about, and yet still being there, thinking, going on day after day...it wasn't exactly what she'd envisioned her life would be like.

She supposed she could have changed. She could have become more fairy and forgotten everything she ever knew as a human. She could have flitted through forests and lain on flower petals and tried to rearrange other humans' lives, thinking that she knew better when she knew nothing about it at all. But...she couldn't do that. She didn't know why, but she was really fairy in form only. She still thought the same way she used to, if a bit more grown up now. More embittered, maybe. It didn't really matter.

A small school of silvery fish swam into the castle, through the barred window, coming alongside of her with scales that glinted when tiny bits of light hit them through windows and water, so much water above them. A few of them nudged her gently with slippery noses, but they scattered if she made any movement.

It was strange, this floating, trapped, drifting feeling. Sometime her captors would come back and take her somewhere else, some place where they could get money for having her, but for now the water was her world. It was similar to flying a way, the weightlessness, the minimal control she had, sitting back and letting the world have its way with her. But she wanted to do so much more than that.

Neil's face, in the water, rippling. She just wished she would have told him just once how she felt, while she still could. He waved his arms at her, wildly flailing through the bars across the window, and she realized this wasn't just a memory. But what in the world? Then she remembered Rosa. Rosa would if she could. There was a sudden flashing of images in her mind, of Rosa walking fifteen miles down the road and fainting in front of Neil, of them going together to the palace, and the prince—Galen. Rosa loved him. They'd be together now. But Neil...

She maneuvered herself, kicking and making wide strokes with her arms, until she reached the window. He pulled a sword from the sheath at his belt, and she wondered what kind of an idiot he was, swimming with that weight on him, but then she saw her reflection. It was her—her three times over. Lorena, the smiling sixteen year old girl with not a care in the world. And it was her, Lorena, the fairy, ethereal, flying. And then...it was something else. Her, as...a woman. A twenty six year old woman who'd lived little of her own life and was rather too old for happy endings.

Neil threw the sword away from him and reached for her hands, but she let them drift away from him.

He looked at her, and she looked at him, and she allowed herself to do something she could do as a fairy that she hated doing, which was forcing her thoughts into his mind. Neil, it's magic, and the door's locked, and I can't fit through these bars. Take Rosa and Galen and go away.

He shook his head adamantly, staring into her eyes with his darker ones. Lorena, he said, and it was just her name and nothing else, like it was the world to him, and she pursed her lips tightly together.

Neil, I'm not human. Just go.

I'm not leaving you again. Do you know what that was like for me, knowing you drowned and I didn't save you?

Do you know what it was like for me? Thinking I had my whole life and...and years to be with you, and then it was all over, and I knew you cared, and I knew I cared, and then— She gulped. I can't do that again. Even if you could get me out of here, I'd still lose you. I'd lose everything.

He stared at her for a moment longer and then reached through the bars again, gripping her wrists with hands like steel. If you feel that way, then you still do care. You're still human.

She started to shake her head automatically, but the thought grabbed onto her mind and lit into like a wildfire. If it was true, if she'd never let go of all these things, if she still cared (and oh, she did, no matter how many years she'd spent denying it), then didn't that mean something? The fairies said they'd take away the pain, and she'd spent so long feeling numb, but the truth was that now it hurt as much as ever, and couldn't she—couldn't she maybe be human?

The hold on her mind turned to a hold on her body, and suddenly she was changing forms like a shapeshifter in a matter of seconds, and she was tiny enough to sit on a flower petal, and then she was human and choking on water, and then she had wings, but her wings were so, so heavy; she felt herself sinking down and down with the added weight pulling her under like a rock tied to her legs, like a black hole sucking her into it, she was going, going...

Neil's hand gripped her's, and, reaching like she was reaching for the sky, or for that last rock on the riverbank that maybe she could have just gotten a hold of to pull herself out of the currents and live, she gripped his hand back.

The bars on the window crumbled, and just as Neil looked like he might start drowning himself, she started choking on the water again, and they dragged each other up to the surface.

Once more

she was alive. Truthfully, she'd never stopped being alive, but this time would be different. Neil stood beside her, sopping wet, and she smiled at him, running a hand through her own dripping hair. She was shivering, but it felt good to shiver, to be affected by cold and warm, and wet and dry again. Neil smiled back at her, and then she turned her attention to Rosa.

"I—I'm so glad you're alive," Rosa said softly, "and human."

"So am I," she said back, smiling even wider. "And I'm glad that you're alive and have managed to find your prince after all." She glanced behind the girl at Prince Galen. He was maintaining his distance, as he felt that he hadn't really done anything to help besides bringing them all to the correct lake with a castle inside it. Lorena knew he'd be a good match. She looked at Rosa's pale eyes again and felt a swelling in her chest. "Rosa, I'm not just glad; I'm...I'm proud of you. I guess I do have some motherly feelings towards you after all."

Rosa smiled and gave a small, shy laugh.

"You won't go back to your stepfamily after this, will you?"

"No," Rosa said. "Though...I might write a letter, so they know what's happened to me. But Galen—" she glanced back at the prince, and Lorena watched the girl's whole face light up, like the sun coming after rain, "he—he asked me to marry him."

"Congratulations, Miss Edmonds," Neil said, bowing to the beaming girl.

Lorena looked at him and at Rosa and grinned. "I knew he would. I wish you the best of luck."

"I wish the same for you," Rosa said, then paused for a moment, biting her lip.

"Is there something wrong?" she asked, frowning at the girl. She'd gone from servant to princess in a day, marrying the boy she'd loved since childhood. There seemed nothing in the world to be upset about.

Rosa glanced back at Galen, digging her teeth harder into her bottom lip. Her eyes were glassy. "I know it sounds selfish, but—I'm not going to live forever."

"I don't think anyone is," Lorena said, not quite understanding

Rosa twisted her hands together. "But, what I mean is...I don't think I'm going to live very long. I'm not going to grow old with Galen. I think...if I were to have a child...I wouldn't live through it."

Oh. So that was it. She'd been so happy with Neil and being a human again that she hadn't even thought of it. Her own problems had gone away like that, but Rosa's never would. She looked at the thin, pale girl felt like crying again. If Rosa had beaten fate just to have it slap her in the face again, then...what was the point of that? And for herself, what if she died tomorrow, or next week, or next year? Then was all of life simply in vain?

No. It couldn't be. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Rosa, holding her tightly. "You might not live long," she whispered, "but I think—I think it's not about how long you live. It's about...living, and loving, and giving each day everything you have."

She felt Rosa's thin, bony arms arms squeezing her back, and she felt the way the girl's spine shook as she took in a sharp breath. It was all she could do not to cry. All both of them could do. But Rosa took in another breath and stood tall and composed and determined again, and as Lorena pulled away at last she knew there was a lesson to be learned from this brave, brave girl.

They stood looking at each other for another moment, understanding each other perfectly, before Lorena grinned again. "Now go, start living," she said, waving Rosa toward Galen.

Rosa bit her lip, whispered, "Thank you," and went to Galen. The two locked eyes, then hands, arms, and finally lips.

Lorena turned back to Neil. He looked younger, she thought, than when she'd seen him at his workshop. And really, even if he was twenty-seven and getting quite old, he was still devilishly handsome. She smiled at him and rose her eyebrows. "Well," she said, "are you going to ask me to marry you?"

He laughed, running a hand through his hair. "I was getting there," he said and paused.

"Yes, well?" she prompted him, not feeling any reason to draw this out longer than it needed to be.

"Rather impatient, aren't you?"

"Of course I am!" she said, reaching out and grasping his hand in hers. "I've been waiting ten years for this, you know. I'm practically an old maid by now."

"All right, well...will you marry me, Lorena?" he asked, taking both her hands in hiss and dropping down to his knee on the ground.

"Of course!" she replied, clapping her hands together.

He stood back up and looked at her, his brown eyes smiling. "That was rather anticlimactic."

"Neil, I drowned," she reminded him. "That was quite enough climax for me."

He nodded slowly, casting a backward glance at the lake, a little untrusting. "I suppose it would be. Anyhow, let's go home."

"Yes," she agreed. "Let's. Only...one thing first." She pulled on his hand and made him turn to face her head on. "There's not a barn here to drag you behind like I always wanted to do, but..." She stood on her toes and kissed him hard on the lips, with all the brazen emotion of a sixteen year old's love, along with the deeper feelings of ten years stored up inside her. "I love you," she said afterwards, and he said it back, and finally, she knew what living felt like.