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He touched the scarlet ribbon bracelet around his wrist. After a moment’s thought, he shook his head, his conscience leaking through.

I expelled a breath. In the silence that followed, I studied his crinkled forehead and the forlorn droop of his jaw. He wasn’t the type to take advantage of truths and secrets. He wasn’t selfish like me.

I found it impossible to hold this against him, as I would with others.

Later, I’d question what possessed me to speak. “I took it for my mother.”

Nicu’s head lifted as I explained, “Her mind is leaving her, you know?” I toyed with the bolts of my knuckles. “I thought the acorn would help her, but I don’t know how to use the blasted thing.”

“Then maybe it’s not for her,” he said. “Maybe it’s for you.”

“I already have an acorn,” I reminded him.

“Maybe that’s not the true one.”

“All three acorns were true.”

“But maybe it’s not the true onefor you.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.” I shook my head. “I don’t understand why you’re here. I mean, what good is staying here? In case you haven’t realized, this is the lower town. Running away—tumble-weeding, as you say—hasn’t taken you far.”

“So I’ll run farther with you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I sang.

“You have to,” he said. “You have to flee, to trail after the leaves and soil and roots of Mista. You have to if you want to touch the fairytale. If you want to know its secret.”

“Nicu...can you be specific?”

“The fairytale has footprints. You have to follow them to the core. To the seed.”

Follow the...follow the fairytale...to its core? Did he mean...where the fairytale actually happened? Where it began?

But that was far. Really far. The story had passed throughout Mista as an oral one, not a written one. Yet people didn’t need a map to know where it began.

That place had been abandoned a century ago. A place the people of Autumn no longer journeyed to. For good reason.

I said, “How could you know where to go?”

“I don’t.” Nicu shrugged. “But I know how to follow ribbons. The fairytale has ribbons, too.”

So return to where the fairytale began and hopefully learn how to use the final acorn on Mother. I scrubbed my face. Seriously, I couldn’t be considering this, could I?

On the other hand, did I have any other bright ideas?

And where had my sidekick vanished to? She’d fluttered off after our shadow puppet game.

I dragged my face up. “Where’s Punk?”

Nicu retrieved the carrot and munched on it. “She’s outside tweeting.”

“Whyyyy?” I drew out.

We stilled, his answer and the woodpecker’s warning calls alerting both of us.

Nicu swallowed a wedge of carrot. His green eyes bulged as he stared past me. “Because they’re here.”

He’d barely finished his sentence when a fist pounded on the house’s front door, loud enough to reach us. From the threshold, someone’s voice snapped, “In the name of Her Majesty, open the door!”