She has been frequenting the human city for thirteen of the (almost) seventeen years she has been alive. Not once have the humans seen her walking among them. The animals are much more sensitive to her presence. A cat meows from her perch on a wooden fence when Croi passes it. She responds to it with a hiss. Meows don’t make music for her.

The Hag told Croi this morning that she is no longer allowed to visit the human city. She stood up tall, pretending to be a mountain, and said in her grandest voice, “You cannot, Croi. A little brownie will be discovered much too quickly. It isn’t safe there.”

“But I’ve been there many times before! Down the river path, through the hole in the wall, and into the grounds of the castle. The humans never see me!” Croi was mutinous.

“You must stop now,” the Hag commanded. She looked at Croi with her stormy eyes, and Croi became a boat about to be capsized.

“Why?” Croi wailed.

“No questions,” the Hag said, and turned away.

She says not to ask questions, but every time Croi glimpses herself in the mirror, all she sees are questions. Her body makes no sense to her at all. Her fingers, arms, and shoulders are whys, her torso and legs are hows, and her head is a who. Her body is a billion questions she keeps asking the universe. So far, it hasn’t replied.

She follows a little human boy through myriad alleyways to a shabby house near the city wall, not far from the market. She peeks through the open door of the house and sees him clamber onto the lap of a human woman sitting on a chair. She is a mother. Humans have them. They hold, they kiss, and they love. Brownies don’t. Well, this brownie doesn’t. She has a Hag who is part stone, part memory, and part tree. The Hag doesn’t hold, doesn’t kiss, and she most certainly doesn’t love. The Hag teaches and expects Croi to learn. She commands and knows Croi will obey.

The sun climbs the sky and the day gets hotter. Croi leaves the human child to his business and returns to the market, where she continues collecting various tasties. But the market gets too crowded, so she abandons it and follows the main avenue deeper into the human city. As she moves away from the city gates, the houses get bigger and bigger until she reaches the castle, which is the biggest of them all. Croi has glimpsed the king and the queen here and there on her meanderings through the castle grounds, but only once has she seen them make their way through the city with white handkerchiefs pressed to their noses as if they don’t stink as well.

The city is surrounded by a gray wall that keeps humans within and the Wilde Forest, where Croi lives, without. Humans don’t venture into the forest; the Hag says they’re not allowed. The Hag doesn’t ever visit the human city. Perhaps it is beneath her dignity to go through the little hole in the wall. Well, Croi doesn’t think the Hag would fit even if she tried.