“Don’t worry, they won’t do anything to you,” Tinder says, but Croi isn’t convinced.

“My lady, the queen asks that you return and report to her,” one of the pixie soldiers says. He is tiny, the size of Croi’s forefinger, but his size doesn’t detract from the ferocity in his voice and face.

“Do you want to come with me while I—” Tinder starts.

“My lady,” the other soldier interrupts, making it apparent that Croi isn’t invited.

Tinder’s lips tighten in a flat line. She takes off a necklace and hands it to Croi. “I won’t ask you to wait for me. Keep this necklace near, and I will find you.”

Without giving Croi time to reply, she flies away, heading to the mound with her magick sparking. Croi watches her go until one of the pixie soldiers pokes her.

She looks down at them.

“We will escort you out of the meadow,” the pixie soldier with a mole under one of his eyes says. The rest are taciturn, hoarding their words like jewels.

“I don’t need an escort,” Croi tells them.

It soon becomes clear that she has no choice in the matter as the hornet-riding soldiers surround her without another word, herding her away from the pixie mound. Croi grumbles quietly but starts walking.

After a while and with another look at her eyes, the chatty soldier asks, “What are you?”

Croi has come to hate this question. Why can’t people ask something else? “I am a not-brownie,” she finally answers. The soldier frowns, clearly dissatisfied with her answer, but he stops asking.

The meadow seems endless; they walk silently for hours before they reach the end of it. Well, Croi walks. The soldiers ride their hornets. Why they need hornets when they have perfectly functioning wings is a question Croi doesn’t dare ask.

The soldiers stop at the edge of the forest. The talkative one flies up to Croi’s eyes. “Go and don’t look back. Go and don’t return. We won’t be kind if we see you again.” With that, they pull the reins of their hornets and fly away.

Croi watches them leave, then turns to stare at the forest, the darkness yawning before her. She has misgivings. She has so many misgivings that she’s almost spilling over with them, but there’s no way to go but forward. It takes her only one step into the tree-infested place to understand how different it is from the Wilde Forest she knows and loves.

This forest has the same trees as the Wilde Forest: ash, poplar, beech, rowan, and oak. It has the same kinds of vines winding around branches, and the same kinds of flowers blooming here and there. However, the leaves in this forest glisten wetly even though it isn’t raining. Whatever light manages to shine through the canopy is pallid, like the sun cannot be bothered to light the world inside the forest. In the pixie’s meadow outside, the sun is bright and sparkly.

The magick, too, is different. Though the strands of it are thicker than in the human world, they’re less intense compared to the pixie meadow. The undergrowth of this forest, unlike the Wilde Forest, has been cleared as though many feet have walked across it, and perhaps they have. It is colder, too, inside this forest, so cold that it could be winter and not autumn waiting in the eaves. She walks farther in and realizes that the noise is also different here. This forest’s song sounds hoarse and rough—as if the trees are forgetting the words.