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“What have you been thinking?”

“The way your insolent mouth fit to mine, the flex of your tongue, the roll of your hips in my hands.”

Well, I’d asked for it. We stared at each other, visions of what happened against the tree returning.

“It was vile of me to abandon you thusly,” Aire said. “I didn’t know how to feel about what transpired between us.”

“I can help you with that. I felt the evidence pretty clearly.”

He scrubbed his face. “You are the most meddlesome young woman I’ve ever known.”

“I refuse to believe the ladies at court don’t proposition you with more teasers than that.”

“You’re knocking for information.”

“You’re denying it.”

“If we lived in Whimtany instead of Mista, it might be so.”

The Spring Kingdom was known to be the flirtiest, most promiscuous of the seasonal bunch. No surprise that our Court Jester hailed from there. Aire was probably right, that Mista was too refined for its females to be naughty.

“I must be unique, then,” I remarked.

“There’s a trace of bitterness in your voice,” Aire said.

The creek bubbled beneath me, flowing over the stones. In the water, I saw my reflection. I’d come here to get rejected and then pretend it didn’t matter, yet an unsolicited thought wrung itself from my chest and leaked off my tongue.

“I used to believe that’s all I was: different,” I confessed.

“That is not the extent of your tale.”

“Mere tales don’t hold stake with you.”

“I believe them when they’re real, of this world rather than an invented one.”

It was silly to take that personally. “You’re missing out.”

“Perhaps you shall inspire me to wonder.”

It frightened me how effortless talking to him had become, how natural it would be to admit a pile of truths. To share with him how very real and unreal my tale was.

“I used to think my woodskin was a distortion, that it made me disfigured,” I said. “Besides Punk, the only one who’s ever treated me like a normal person...,” I trailed off for a heartbeat. “My mother always looked at me and saw a girl, nothing more, nothing less. And now she’s...now I’m losing that, too.”

I dug my thumb into one of the bridge rungs and scraped, a slice of timber lodging in my fingernail.

Aire was silent, then ventured, “She’s ailing more than you’ve confessed.”

I remembered the workshop, a somber morning like this one. I’d slogged up there, expecting—no, hoping—to find Mother at work. Instead, I found her muttering to herself about the trees.

I’d called to her, and she whirled on me.

I hadn’t noticed the mallet until it froze an inch from my face.

In that second, Mother’s eyes weren’t her own anymore. I wasn’t her daughter anymore—not that she’d ever used that word to describe me. I’d always been her timber girl.

But right then, I wasn’t even that. I was an object, a thing she’d sculpted from a block of lumber.

Something to apologize for. Or to regret. Or to fear.