The sun cruised along the sky, looking for chinks in the tree cover so it could stab Keon-hee in the eyes. She still wasn't used to keeping to its non-negotiable schedule the way Asher and the natives seemed to. The sun was such a demandy-pants, telling them when to sleep and when to eat. Haenyeo did these things when they were needed, not when it was time. She stuck her tongue out at it. So there!

Still, the daytime could be beautiful. The leaves shimmered in the sunlight in a prism of greens and blues that flickered with the wind. She could hear a stream nearby, and fish busily jumping for the insects that congregated over the surface of the water. Curious birds hopped through the branches overhead, bouncing chirpy, singsong observations about these strangers back and forth. A sun-colored butterfly wobbled past, and Keon-hee turned around to watch its progress, walking backward. She caught Miss Rabbit watching the butterfly, too, and the two of them shared a smile.

It felt like they were friends already, she and gentle Miss Rabbit. A burst of happiness flooded through Keon-hee, and she started humming a silly little fishing tune as Asher crashed through the foliage ahead, as single-minded as a tidal wave.

"Well," he grunted, sounding eight shades of irritated, "we're headed somewhere, but this sure isn't a road."

He slashed viciously at the underbrush with his saber, clearing the way like a narwhal through kelp.

"Ah," Miss Rabbit said anxiously. She covered her mouth with her furred fingers, her brow troubled. "Well . . ."

Keon-hee, who wasn't about to let Asher ruin her good mood, allowed herself a small giggle.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing, just . . ." Keon-hee giggled again. "I feel like Alice!"

Asher stopped walking, his saber dangling from his hand, his face shiny with sweat. "Alice?" he asked, sounding like he meant, What ridiculous mermaid thing is this now?

"Look." Sang-eo obligingly opened his mouth when he saw her hand coming, and with a little wriggling, managed to push what she wanted into it. A small, tattered book, a thing she had only ever seen on a pirate ship, made of paper and glue and printed with brightly-colored ink. Alice in Wonderland. It wasn't written in the weird, squiggly, inside-out alphabet that belonged to Ephemeros. It looked more like pirate writing than anything else, which Captain Pye had taught her the summer she worked on his ship. The book had obviously been written for children, for Keon-hee had managed to read it to herself over several nights of study. She opened it to the center, where her favorite picture spread over two pages.

"There's this girl named Alice," she explained, pointing out the character's startlingly yellow hair and puffy blue dress to Asher while Miss Rabbit poked, fascinated, at an abnormally shy and blushing Sang-eo, "and she follows a white rabbit into a strange world."

Asher's expression told her what he thought of the way she had squandered their hard-earned money. "Where did you get this?" he demanded.

"That bookshop you took me to in Bushan," she said, surprised he hadn't known that. "I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing. You spent hours in there—"

"Why are you wasting your time with silly human nonsense like that?" he stampeded over her furiously. "I said you could come along, but I didn't say you could act like a tourist!"

Keon-hee bit her lip, dropping her eyes to the colorful, chaotic picture of Wonderland. The White Rabbit. The Cheshire Cat. The Mad Hatter. The Duchess. The Caterpillar. She brushed the pages lightly and sadly with her fingertips. She wasn't acting like a tourist, whatever that meant. She'd bought the book as a gift for Eun-Jung. Dear, beautiful, soft-spoken Eun-Jung. Keon-hee missed her terribly, and had promised to bring something home for her. Of course, she'd meant something from a shop in Anasika Port, not a whole new world. Eun-Jung must be devastated that she hadn't come home yet. She was probably waiting at the harbor, moonrise after moonrise after moonrise, for a hint that Keon-hee was on her way home.

She was going to go home, wasn't she?

Miss Rabbit, after noticing the glitter of tears threatening, glared at Asher, the first spark of real emotion she'd displayed.

Asher made the face that Keon-hee associated with swallowing a spoonful of poi. "All right, you can keep the stupid book. Just . . . come on. We're wasting daylight." He whirled, whacking a path through the bushes.

No, they couldn't possibly waste daylight, Keon-hee thought with a roll of her eyes. She wiped the tears away. What did these people think would happen, that the sun would shoot down from the sky and spank their bottoms if they disobeyed? They were so weird.

She clasped the book, her precious present for Eun-Jung, to her chest. They were weird, but they made such wonderful things.

Miss Rabbit crept a little closer now that Asher had lost interest. "A rabbit?" she gently urged.

All of Keon-hee's enthusiasm flooded back, warming her cheeks. "Yeah, a white rabbit!" she said. She took a few steps forward, holding the book so Miss Rabbit could see it. "Alice falls right into a rabbit hole and—"

And her words balled up and got stuck in her throat when the earth dropped away from her sandal. She tipped right into a yawning chasm, previously disguised by undergrowth. Arms flailing, she rushed toward a carpet of wooden spikes.

A line of fire and steel across her chest brought her up short before the spikes could fill her full of more holes. Her mouth, wide open, strained against the ball of words so hard her throat hurt.

"I gotcha!" Asher said. He hauled her out of the hole with his saber, which Sang-eo had clamped in his teeth. The ichawon's shoulder strap had saved her.

Keon-hee collapsed onto the grass, gagging and gasping until the lump in her throat broke free. Miss Rabbit was there, too, looking like she'd lost all the strength in her legs.

"Here," she said shakily, offering the book that she must have retrieved when it went flying out of Keon-hee's hand. A delighted smile broke across her face when Sang-eo shook off the shock of his heroic deed and noisily swallowed the book whole.

Asher waited until Keon-hee's breathing calmed, and then he began to walk away. "I can figure out the rest of the story," he said.

"It's not like that!" Keon-hee shouted, shooting to her feet.

But it kind of was. From that point on, the forest seemed determined to prevent them from reaching Pochee Town.

Asher stepped on a trigger hidden in the grass, which sent a row of pikes lancing upward, close enough to give him a shave.

"What?" he said in a boneless voice, eyeing the flint-headed pikes nestled against his cheek.

Keon-hee took an involuntary step back. She heard a click. Several morning stars swung heavily from the trees and almost took off her head.

"What's going on?" she cried, throwing herself to the ground so fast she got grass-burn on her chin.

Miss Rabbit shrieked. She'd stumbled against a tree. Then – click! She was dangling from her ankle ten feet above their heads, her robes around her ears, exposing a skimpy pair of lacy black panties and a puffball of a tail to the world.

Working together, Keon-hee and Asher managed to get her down, but when they tried to skirt the triggered traps – click! A wagonful of cut logs sprang free and barreled toward them.

They took off running for their lives.

"I see! You remembered that sign!" Asher panted and snarled at the same time, causing Miss Rabbit to flinch apologetically. He hurdled a fallen tree that Keon-hee scrambled over using her hands, and kept running. "You walked us into a trap!"

Miss Rabbit's pink eyes suddenly got two times bigger. "OH!" she said.

Behind them, the logs barreled closer, flattening everything in their path.

"Cliff!" Keon-hee screamed. She jumped over the edge. "Water!" she yelled helpfully behind her.

Asher took the jump in a perfect dive, which made Keon-hee glow with pride. He'd actually trusted her for once!

"I remember the rest now!" Miss Rabbit hollered from the clifftop while the logs rushed up behind her, throwing clods of grass and bits of bark into a dirty cloud. They crashed into more trees and a few boulders and went spinning off. She wrapped her robes around her legs and demurely hopped into space ahead of them. "I turned the sign around to trick the Hunters chasing me!"

"YOU COULDN'T HAVE REMEMBERED THAT SOONER?" Asher bellowed.

One by one, they crashed into the waterfall-fed lake that Keon-hee had seen below. Icy, but safe. Keon-hee swam joyfully for the surface, reveling in the water as it hugged her from head to toe. A silk scarf. An arctic current. A blanket of seaweed. Home.

Water elementals danced around her head when it popped into the thunderous, ice-crystal mist of the waterfall. She asked the tiny lavender dolphins, politely, to help Asher and Miss Rabbit, who were both struggling with their waterlogged clothes. The dolphins obeyed, heaving the two of them ashore with giggles and nickers, far enough from the waterfall that they could hear each other speak over its constant roar.

Keon-hee pulled herself out with a sigh. "Well, that was fun," she said. She collapsed on the warm grass and cradled Sang-eo in her lap, stroking his rough skin until he flapped his tail happily.

She smiled around at the clearing, enjoying the warmth of the sun. Huge yellow flowers with brown faces nodded at her. They stood taller than she did. She nodded back at them, knowing, from something Asher had said, that they were called sunflowers, plants that magically turned their heads toward the sun as it traveled across the sky. She rather liked them. Their brash color did not exist back home.

After a few minutes, the water elementals kissed her forehead, brushed wet fingers through her hair, and disappeared. She checked herself for injuries, and noticed Miss Rabbit doing the same.

Asher removed his denim jacket and gave it a quick shake, making it snap and showering down the nearby underbrush. He cast a sidelong glance at Miss Rabbit, whose ears and coiffure drooped, dripping into her lap. She had lost her golden hairpins. "So, these Card Hunters were chasing you?" he prompted in an unexpectedly normal tone of voice.

"Yes," Miss Rabbit admitted. She squeezed the water out of her silvery-gray hair. "I can't remember very well, but—" she wrinkled her pert nose, and then she sneezed— "they were definitely trying to capture me."

Keon-hee crawled closer excitedly. "But what about the golden light?" she asked.

"I – I don't know."

Disappointed, Keon-hee sat back.

Asher, however, who seemed to have been thinking hard, came to a decision. "Look," he said to Miss Rabbit, his dark red hair hanging in his eyes, which were intensely blue, like hard kyanite crystals. "I've got to check something. I need you to take off your clothes."

CRACK!

Miss Rabbit's hand had flown out of its own accord. The sound of the slap echoed through the trees, much like the sound of the rock that had nearly brained her – rack! ack! ck! She glared at Asher, quivering indignantly from long ears to painted toes.

Keon-hee knew her eyes were huge. She put her fist to her lips, waiting for Asher to explode like a clogged black smoker.

The dragon-kin sat where he was, his head turned to the side so far it must have been hurting his neck, a hand-shaped red mark blooming on his tanned cheek. He turned his eyes heavenward and mildly said, "Fine. Keon-hee will look, not me."

He got up, dragging his soaked jacket with him, and leaned his forearm against a nearby tree with his back to them. Then he leaned his forehead into his arm. His wet, ratty white t-shirt shirt clung to his body, showing off the sharp edge of a shoulder blade there, an angular sweep of muscle there. It bore matching rips near the shoulders, just like his jacket.

Keon-hee looked at Miss Rabbit. Miss Rabbit looked at Keon-hee.

Keon-hee shrugged. She had no idea what this was about.

"All right," Miss Rabbit said with a sigh, "but I don't know what you're looking for."

"A tattoo," he said into the tree. "A letter inside a wheel."

Looking as curious as Keon-hee felt, Miss Rabbit undid the top layers of her robes, shrugging them off her shoulders, holding the edges out of the way. She crossed her arms, keeping herself decent, which made her breasts swell up. Keeping her hands to herself, Keon-hee bent forward – and saw it, just as Asher had described: a tattoo of a letter, kind of like an inverted G, inside of a circle of more brush-stroke letters that spelled nothing at all, high on Miss Rabbit's left breast, where the gray fur grew the way fuzz did on a peach.

"It's there," she said, to Miss Rabbit's apparent surprise.

Keon-hee tilted her head, studying Miss Rabbit's expression. She wondered what that would be like, not knowing something about herself as permanent as a tattoo. What had happened to this gentle lady? Why would anyone want to capture her?

Asher hadn't spoken or moved. Miss Rabbit hurriedly dressed, folding the robes just so and retying her sash's giant bow. Both women stared at his broad back.

"That's an Elementis Achaici tattoo," he said at last, still leaning against the tree. His empty hand curled into a fist. "I think I know who you are, Bunny-lady."

A/N: This is why I wanted to write this story! It's so silly and FUN and wacky and just . . . FUN! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! *dances excitedly*

Also, I just realized that the idea of books, story or otherwise, are kinda central to this world (DUH, Anne). So Nimua now references "The Little Mermaid" directly, just as Keon-hee knows about "Alice in Wonderland."

Reviewer Thanks! St4r Hunter, Darwin, and medicalkitten. You guys are the absolute best and I luv you and thank you so much!

Cheers! Enjoy the day!

Anne