Her first child, her son, was so full of darkness -
She could see it, she knew him, she loved him, and she could've taught him better if only he'd stayed -
Her first child, her son, was so full of darkness -
She could see it, she knew him, she loved him, and she could've taught him better if only he'd stayed -
"This leg's a lot longer," she calls, voice faint, after a little while. "Light's getting bigger."
"Kinda - curvy? Not straight lines like the rest of the wardrobe." Wardrobe, that's the word. "I'm gonna keep going."
Tug tug.
She won't hear Kaylee again for a while. The signals on the twine keep coming, though.
She reaches the light.
She called out to Vanessa one more time, before now, and Vanessa didn't answer. So she probably couldn't hear if she yelled from here.
The light is an opening in the wall, shaped more like something that grew that way than like something that was made intentionally or something that was broken. It looks out into - a forest in autumn.
She clambers through the hole.
From the other side, the hole is a gap in the bark of a hollow tree. It looks exactly like the shape as a gap in a hollow tree would look, from this side, though she didn't recognize the shape when light was shining through it into the dark.
She looks around.
That's a forest, all right. In autumn, which it isn't, and in the middle of the day, which it also isn't.
A great big bug floats through the air and comes to hover in front of her face. Not a frightening bug - it looks like it's an oversized lightning bug. And there is a tiny little person riding on it, with goldenrod skin and gleamingly black hair and a tiny little bow and arrow made out of a tiny little curve of wood and strung with gleaming silk, strung over her(?) back.
"Hello, giant!" the tiny little person calls out bravely. "These trees are the gathering-grounds of the honeysprite city of Dozen Leaves! I am a scout of Dozen Leaves and would like to know your business here!"
" - hello!" Kaylee says. She is thoroughly charmed, though she considers in the next moment that being thoroughly charmed by this person, who is asking basically reasonable and straightforward questions, just because they are tiny and little, is maybe condescending and prejudiced. "My name's Kaylee. I didn't know there was a forest here. I was following a passage through - what I suppose must have been a magic wardrobe - and it led to that tree - " she points. "Before now I hadn't believed in magic. I'm pretty - confused and astonished!"
"That tree is called Fool's Hollow, and the sprites who have entered it say its darkness goes on forever, and if you go too deep you will be trapped in the webs of wild spiders."
" - well, there were some spiderwebs in there," Kaylee says. "But - well, I just walked through them. I suppose if you're a fairy they'd be dangerous?"
It's hard to tell, but the tiny little person might be frowning bemusedly at her. "A fairy? Fairies don't exist. I'm a sprite."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Kaylee says. "Where I'm from there's no such thing as sprites or fairies. There's only humans - I suppose humans are my kind of giant."