Around the table, other heads were nodding in agreement. The queen took a moment longer, then gave in to their consensus.

“So, what do you suggest we do?” she asked Christiana.

“Let me go talk to Minisino,” Christiana replied, “and see if I can’t get him to come into this world to meet with you. What’s a common ground close to here?”

“Fitzhenry Park,” the queen’s captain immediately said. “It’s in the city, so we have access to it, but there’s enough of the wild and the green in its borders for the green-brees to feel comfortable.”

The queen nodded.

“A word of advice,” Christiana said as she rose from where she was sitting on the table top. “Don’t call them ‘green-brees.’ You might think you’re being clever, but everybody knows it’s got something to do with cesspools back in your old country.”

“I think we can manage to remember that,” the queen said with a dry tone to her voice.

Christiana shrugged. “Whatever.”

And then she was gone.

Jilly

When Del steps out of the room, all the anger I feel toward him drains out of me and leaves with him. I watch until the doorjamb blocks him from view, then my gaze turns and settles on Geordie’s remains. There wasn’t much left of him in the first place, just a mess of dirt and leaves and twigs that had once been a human being. A manlike shape on the floor.

Until Del kicked it apart.

I stare at the scattered pieces with a morbid fascination, but for some reason the anger doesn’t return. There’s only a deep, painful sadness, swelling up inside me once more, creeping up on me from someplace just out of sight.

This can’t be right.

How can Geordie just be gone?

But I saw it with my own two eyes. I watched, trapped in this child’s body, while the sick freak that is my brother waved his hand and Geordie was gone. Transformed like fairy gold into forest debris.

Once upon a time . . .

If this were a fairy tale, I could get him back. I would have befriended a sparrow, a spoon, an old woman by now, and one of them would help me sew a sweater from nettles, or climb down into the underworld to bring him back.

But it’s not a fairy tale. It’s just this sick place inside my head, where women are changed into little girls, and little girls have their mouths erased. Where the true love you didn’t appreciate you had is forever stolen away from you by a monster that has no right to be back in your life.