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I scanned the wild, its gnarled branches and quivering leaves, for whatever lay in their vicinity. This realm mesmerized and terrorized, with its wondrous architecture and ancient wild, beguiling in its color and darkness. It emulated the very breadth of a fairytale—were someone to believe in such fancies.

Not I, though my hands hadn’t resisted settling upon a trunk or grazing the boughs, admiring and distrusting all that encompassed us.

My eyes prowled, but altogether the vista became too much. Taking note of the lookout stations and arrow slits in appointed outposts, my pulse calmed. However, anticipating the next incident in which I might trade looks with the girl, it escalated again.

What would happen now? I knew not the answer, nor the reason my gaze strayed to her with such frequency. Despite the abundance of choices for distraction, such as Nicu’s welfare and Lyrik’s uncouth existence, I watched her.

Lyrik noted the slash of dirt on Nicu’s chin and led us to a communal bathing chamber with a tub centered in a hut of parquet wood. A lever rose from the floor, connecting to a tube running down the tree and into the creek. When pulled, the lever’s opening acted as a spigot, water gushing into the basin.

Once filled, Lyrik added droplets from a decanter, and the pool bubbled, steam rising from the surface. The girl refused to partake, saying that she couldn’t get wet. With her earthen scent and inability to perspire, one would assume she had bathed only this morning.

Nicu indulged first. His incapacity toward direction and space became threatening if objects weren’t always placed in the same location, meaning in extreme cases, he could confuse a skewer with a soap bar. Shape, size, and texture were sometimes irrelevant designations. The battle might never end, but it eased with training, which Nicu had dedicated himself to. Notwithstanding the foreign atmosphere, he did not require my assistance to bathe, as it hadn’t been a significant problem in years.

Thinking of the girl’s words in the pumpkin wood, I resisted the urge to guard the entrance, contenting myself to keep vigil in my original spot.

When Nicu finished, he joined Lyrik and the lumber maiden, while I took my turn. In the pumpkin wood, I’d packed garments from a wardrobe in one of the bedchambers, choosing only that which would not be missed. Retrieving them from the horse, I returned to the bathing room. The tub drained and filled anew, and I sunk in, the suds lapping at my muscles. I rested my head against the rim, warmth sloshing but failing to seep in, purge, or console.

Mista be my savior, Seasons be my guide, for I questioned my sanity in permitting this journey. A lifetime, I’ve lived by my pledges and creeds, in service of the Crown. Yet within a day, I’d chosen Nicu’s wish over that of my sovereigns.

It was a testament to my friendship with him. We’d known one another since childhood, when he’d first come to Autumn from Spring, and although I had kept my distance those initial years, I witnessed his longing for companionship, his confusion over how people saw him, how they discreetly avoided him. Apart from two female friends, he reached out for more from me, and we had bonded eventually. It was a happy day indeed, as it has been ever since.

To see Nicu bereft wounded me. I would lay down my life for him, for kinship as much as allegiance.

My regard toward the girl was unjustified. I’d chosen to help someone whom I’d once deemed a witch, a puppet, a manifestation of disturbing visions from the training yard. She had solicited my help through a shocking demonstration: an unmagically magic trick, her nose lengthening in consequence to a lie.

The kingdoms of the four Seasons neither required, nor produced mystical beings in this world, for nature itself possessed its own mystery. It graced and bewildered our lands with its enigmas, from thunder slashing the sky to the pebbles of hailstorms, from boastful winds to skeptical clouds, from one Season to the next, from the starlit forest of Winter, to the floral forest of Spring, to the Isle of Lost Rain in Summer—a rainforest island, deserted until seven years ago, when the Prince of Winter and a prisoner of Summer had been shipwrecked upon its shores—to other anomalies amongst the kingdoms.

Nature left its mark, which did not exclude its people.

If it decided to forge a girl of wooden skin, it did so.

I’d traveled with my rulers to each kingdom, but even I could not presume to know what rare traits the Seasons had bequeathed to other souls within these lands.

In the heat of debate with her, I had indeed forgotten her woodskin.

Her name was Aspen, and she was no figment or creature. Nonetheless, I knew her to be a lawbreaker, a manipulator, and a self-indulgent brat.

All of this, yet I watched her.

I rose from the bath, rivulets sliding down my bare body, and I slipped into fresh clothes. The garments fit, albeit leaner in the chest, the shirt and open coat woven of midnight thread, the hose of a slate dye.

The coat flapped around my legs, down to the ankles. The buckles holding my swords lolled around my hips as I left the bathing chamber.

I found Nicu and the girl communing on an overhead terrace, reached by a winding staircase. It was little more than a round plank of modest circumference, which encouraged intimacy and camaraderie, with curved banquettes embedded along the border and a central fire pit. As flames engulfed the nexus of the pit, the pair leaned against the railing, their backs to me, their shoulders bumping as they whispered.

When I emerged on the landing, the girl stiffened in awareness, the hidden intricacies of her frame shifting in tandem. Her head careened over her shoulder, her eyes stumbling over my new attire, halting whatever thoughts had occupied her. I felt that gaze across every stitch of material.

She wasn’t a girl. She was a young woman.

What thoughts dominated her? What inspired her to keep looking at me?

I did not care for that particular gaze, for the blank page of it. The unknown depleted me of words and sense, exhausting and exhilarating me to a formidable degree. The sight of her no longer made me squeamish, but rather something else.

All of this, yet I watched her.

My eyes slitted, and hers rolled. We upheld our routine, our imbalance of character—and levels of maturity. That I rejoiced over this subtle animosity instead of rectifying it, as any worthy knight should, filled me with contrition.

Earlier, my steed and the mule had been fed and settled in an old communal stable near a paddock. Discovering another horse living there made me ponder how Lyrik afforded the animal, not to mention the ingredients for his potions. Presumably, he drove a hard bargain for those unusual cocktails he brewed. Plus, taking up residence here had cost him nothing.