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Good point. Moving on. “Your declarations smack of humanity. Since when is magic boring and manual labor the ideal to a Fae?” I interrogate.

“Since me,” he replies. “Or rather, the earlier me. When I was young and rosy-cheeked, I didn’t have a problem with humans and their magiclessness. No, my beef came later when they stormed the lands of my kin. Otherwise, I would have gone on liking them, including one girl in particular, had I met her under livelier circumstances.”

I clear my throat. “You’ve invested a considerable amount of time making assumptions about me. I wonder why you go to the trouble.”

“To get on your nerves, of course.”

“My nerves are welded of steel.”

“Care to prove it? Let’s see.” He drums his chin in contemplation. “Which bundle of nerves should we test? Which ones will resist an attack?”

My tattered bodice clings to me, the suede no better than an adhesive, no less constricting than his own garments. The Fables weren’t wrong when describing the insidious perversions of satyrs. Puck’s nomadic eyes rove over my figure, the look meant to strip one’s dignity as well as one’s modesty. His stare has the disturbing effect it intends to have, propelling tingles across my knees. In the private regions between my hips, blood circulates. I feel a jumpiness there, a fretfulness that doesn’t make sense.

My response comes out too fast. “You’re wasting the last of your energy.”

His response comes out too slow. “Does that mean you’re indeed impenetrable? Or just plain hollow?”

“Do all satyrs have a remarkable ability to say so much, yet express so little substance? Or is that your particular defect?”

“Such impoliteness toward a Fae.”

“You started it.”

“You continued it.”

Yes. Against my better judgment, I did.

I glower, those tingles flaring into cinders. “The hypocrisy and entitlement of Faeries is truly legendary, to expect politeness from mortals in exchange for glamouring and brutalizing us over the ages.”

His smile collapses. “That’s one way of looking at it. Or politeness in exchange for poaching our fauna and maiming our young. That’s another fucking way.” He lounges against the wall. “How am I doing so far? Does that count as—what did you call it?—substance?”

Nine years since The Trapping is no time at all for an immortal. As far as he’s concerned, the wound is still fresh. My chest hitches whenever I think of that era, so I understand his sentiments well.

Typical adversaries would swerve away from one another. Instead, we stare until the staring wears itself out. In this dank and sunken pit, and without a moderator, we’ll get nowhere constructive. If centuries of inequality, vendettas, and prejudice between magical beings and mortals hasn’t been resolved yet, the satyr and I won’t achieve anything here. To be sure, not while trapped, hungry, and thirsty. Despite this intermission, we have other pressing matters.

Puck seems to draw the same conclusion. He squints at our surroundings, his eyes sketching the roots’ patterns, his ears perked as if he hears something.

“Stop that,” I lecture a moment later when he gets impulsive and plucks a random plant stem from the ground. “Leave it alone.”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but the wee sapling asked me to relocate it,” Puck defends. “The bud has big dreams of being replanted aboveground with the rest of the grownups, and as its servant, far be it from me to deny nature’s wishes. Though, if you insist.” He sets the stem back where it was, its roots reattaching to the soil, and holds up his flat palms. “Happy? Because the plant isn’t. Fact is, it’s mighty pissed off at you now.”

I blink. “You said servant.”

“I say many things. Many things and even more things, and some of those things lead to other things.”

Yes, I initiated the subject. But does he ever shut up? “You said servant,” I reiterate. “Not ruler.”

“That, I did. You have a problem with it?”

“I’ve never had a problem with nature.”

“Has nature ever had a problem with you?”

This is dangerous terrain. I know what he’s getting at.

Faeries won’t give candid answers unless one either gets lucky or formulates the questions cleverly. Otherwise, these tricksters will skitter around the facts, being truthful without being entirely honest. They’ll find a way to respond without responding, to redirect the conversation to their benefit—to the recipient’s discomfort or disadvantage.

I amend my words. “You consider yourself a servant of the forest?”