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A hint?

The breeze tossed an answer my way. Instead of clattering, my heart pumped a steady rhythm that I’d never experienced before. Itbeat.

And it beat. And it beat.

Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.

Like a living thing. Like a real heart.

I sucked in a breath, my nose tickling, the branches nodding.

The third acorn granted a restored life. A restored life meant a changed life.

Nicu had said maybe the acorn wasn’t for Mother, but neither of us had guessed more. But maybe I could now. Maybe I knew.

Maybe the third nuggetwasfor me. Maybe if I replaced one for the other...

With one acorn, wood. With the other, a restored life.

A changed life.

A real heart. A real girl.

20

Fantasy

I shook my head, no, no, no. I’d come here for Mother, not for myself.

This couldn’t be the resolution. This couldn’t be.

I’d misinterpreted the signs. That was all.

My temples pounded, the pain spreading. Terror blew through me, whipping at my skirt and bumping the hat off my head.

It took Aire’s touch, his fingers sweeping aside my hair, to stall the draft. Strong palms cupped my cheeks. “You are unwell,” he said.

He didn’t know the half of it. That’s why I collapsed.

My defective knees buckled, detaching from their fastenings. A preview of things to come? A teaser?

Aire caught me before I crashed to the ground. Punk squawked like a crow.

“Head hurts,” I groaned, my thieving little paws grappling the knight’s shirt, my pulse matching his in size and sound.

My cheek landed against Aire’s collarbones, my head beneath his jaw. He swept me into his arms and carried me. I floated in the cloud of his arms, soaring through the woods.

On the way back, Nicu began to sing, his words tethered together by a fluty pitch and soothing melody. Words about wishes and nuts, facts and fibs.

Punk perched on Aire’s shoulder, her wings brushing my scalp.

It took forever to get home. I smelled ancient wood and dozens of lives, dozens of stories, dozens of fairytales absorbed in the treehouses. I listened to Aire’s footfalls as he climbed a set of stairs, around and around, the world twirling.

A pillow cradled my cruel skull, blankets enveloped me, and then silence.

And just as quickly as the darkness had entombed me, the lid lifted. I lurched from my bed with a gasp, the sound falling from my mouth, its edges tattered. Wakefulness dredged up the memory, the residue of our forest trek and that discovery in the clearing. That turning point of realization.

The acorn wedged into my chest had hardened once more, no longer large and beating like a foreign tool. My window offered a moonlit woodland view. The bungalow was quiet, peaceful, and anything but. My feather hat sat on the nightstand. My satchel hung off the back of a chair.