Iris yawned as the warm numbness of her last meal slowly dissipated. She clung lazily to her tree, quietly acknowledging and ignoring that she'd have to flutter to another soon for more food. Her mothy wings beat slowly, letting the heat of an endless summer evening seep in. Soft and feathery, with a pleasing dusky palette, they made the faintest breeze, nudging warm air over Iris. Her antennae, curving gently, tasted the haze for another feast and sensed more than her eyes, perpetually half-lidded, ever did. A candletree, not too far a flutter away, beckoned with a warmth both sapid and sultry. Iris considered the flight and her lazy limbs, then snugged up to her tree instead to sleep.

She woke to the trills of music down on the floor of the forest. She was hungry, sluggish bliss beginning to wear off, but she was also curious, so she spread her forewings and shook out her hindwings and pushed off her cooling tree.

Drifting, heavy air billowing under wings, hair streaming around each antenna: she reveled in soft touch of gentle wind, the languorous stretch of muscles sleepy-warm. Every second was a sensuous pleasure, just as it should be.

She fluttered to a halt just a bit above the ground and let her feet drop down. Better, she was getting better. Which was strange. Had not her whole life been amongst these trees, tasting their strange foreign stories? Why, then, was she still so clumsy? Something sharp and uncomfortable lurked in her mind, ready to answer, but she ignored it and instead walked towards the music.

Candle wax some bug had brought back cast soft shadows of the gathered Candlekin. They huddled around the glowing morsel, sitting nearly wing-to-wing, as the musician, thin and green, played the violin, his thin long arms jutting out violently to the wild rhythm. The memories in the candle morsel were not as sweet as Iris usually sought. They seemed to be all of a port city: houses with their bright colors weathered and peeling leaning against the ocean breeze, cobbled streets cluttered by passengers salt-sticky and too busy to mourn properly for their stolen city, fear and disdain and mistrust painting faces as the oddly dressed mingled with the country's true people, and threading through it all was the folk song and prayer.

The memories were not sweet, not the come-again memories of warmer days that most people left in candles when they prayed. They were bitterly real and, despite their pungency, still intoxicating. It was not too late to turn back, to return to the numbing warmth of the canopy, but Iris drew cautiously nearer the odd group. Their wings all drooped but their eyes were bright, brighter than any Iris had seen, so she settled down on the cold ground right behind them.

Though the song was new to her, its rhythm was not. In its structure and rhymes was a familiar sort of logic, though she knew not where she had picked it up. Swaying with the other Candlekin, she hummed along to the song, learning the words:

Oh Candlemaiden, Candlemaiden

Eyes aflame with gold

Light your candles, trap the devil

As in days of old

And through our streets runs

A monster, a madness

Foreign and vile

Its fumes are contagious

So cut it, excise it,

In your wisdom exorcise it

And in the end remind us

Of who we used to be

Oh Candlemaiden, Candlemaiden

History like a shroud

Hides your ken, harks to when

We knew our own selves proud

And through our veins runs

A legacy, a heritage

Stark and perverse

The most unlikely marriage

So water, and fire

And a survive-it-all desire

Are all that we require

To be who we used to be

Oh Candlemaiden, Candlemaiden

You set your own self free

Now we await the self-same fate

When you lead us to victory

Back to who we used to be

It was a catchy enough tune, but there was a haunting quality to the lyrics, or perhaps simply in the way the cricket man played it. Iris found herself leaning forward, imagining scenes to fit the lyrics, a headlong flight down the alleys and past windows bedecked with purple ribbons.

And, wait, that was oddly specific. Something, somewhere in the back of her mind, beneath the numbing warmth of the Candlewood, echoed. She felt as if this story, if not the song, was something she should know.

Iris, she thought. My name is Iris— but that's where the memories stopped. She frowned, and hugged her knees up closer to her chest. Around her, the Candlekin were stirring and singing, and one said to her, "Don't worry. We'll get out of this forest yet. All we have to do is remember and remember and do our best not to forget."

Forget what? Iris wondered, her antennae fidgeting. Forget the song, or the world it promised beyond? What, lurking below her mind's surface, was she supposed recall? And who was this Candlemaiden who was supposed to save them all?

It hurt her head and made her wings feel clumsy and stiff. She stumbled to her feet, almost fled, but stopped when an authoritative voice, weighted with years of memories, called out her name.

"Iris!"

Mother Hall was striding through the Candlewood, her hands and eyes aflame, and suddenly Iris wasn't a winged Candlekin, or even the intrepid Candlemaiden of the song, but a child caught somewhere out-of-bounds and in need of a scolding.

Iris felt a choking sense of shame, and she welcomed it, because it was more real than the sultry calmness of the Candlewood. Mother Hall swept past the musician and his gathered crowd, immune to their incredulous stares, and grabbed Iris by the wrist, hard. Iris couldn't quite catch the venomous words Hall was spitting out under her breath, but she focused on them instead of the opiate air as she was yanked through the Candlewood, wide eyes watching them from the shadows.

They stopped abruptly at a spot like any other, and Iris felt a wave of nausea and the start of a splitting headache. Mother Hall waved a hand, and suddenly a heavy set of doors materialized in front of them. She waved her hand again, and they opened. Before Iris could get a good glimpse of what lay beyond, Mother Hall had shoved her through them and slammed the doors behind them.

"What—" Iris started, but Mother Hall just shot her a harsh look and told her to stay silent.

Iris stayed quiet until they reached a low hill with a round door set in its side. On the door were three scallop seashells in a row, and though there was nothing in sight but low rolling hills under a purple sky, Iris thought she could taste the salt of the ocean.

Iris was hustled inside, and then all the angry energy in Mother Hall seemed to slip away as she closed the door and leaned against it, her eyes closed and her face lined, though looking younger than Iris remembered. Iris took the moment of peace to look around the hutch, which had round windows improbably showing a serene seaside and shelves full of the sort of small jars Mother Hall had loved to collect. It didn't look like their cottage back home, but it had the same feel and it was comfortable in the same way.

Then Hall's eyes flashed open, and Iris realized her reprieve was over.

"What were you doing in there?" she began, her tone livid. "Did I not teach you better? Were you not raised with more integrity? Of all the ways to throw your life away! How could you, or rather, why even are you... " Mother Hall stopped and peered at Iris, her expression changing. Slowly, she stretched out a hand and brushed her thumb over Iris's cheek, as if she were wiping away a smudge of dirt.

"But that's not right at all. How old are you?"

"Fourteen summers."

Hall's face collapsed. "Oh, Iris, I'm so sorry. Forgive me."

"I, um, accept your apology. But perhaps you could explain what's going on? And what happened to me in—" a nauseating shudder ran through Iris as an echo of the unbeing she had felt in the Candlewood smudged her tentatively solidifying sense of self "— in that horrible place."

Mother Hall stared at Iris in concern, and the truth of the moment crashed down over Iris. She was with Mother Hall. She was safe. Everything could be righted; she could escape this whole realm. Something essential in her had been threatened in the Candlewood, but now, with the woman who had raised her and taught her and shown her the way of the world, she was herself again: Iris, Candleimaiden.

She wasn't quite crying, but it was a near thing.

"My dear, my dear." There was a warmth in Hall's voice as she led Iris to a chair and sat her down. "Forgive my ire. I thought you had come here of your own accord and thrown yourself in the Candlewood in an act of self-obliviation."

"What?"

A dark look flitted over her face. "It has happened before. But first, tell me, why are you here? In the realm of the dead?"

"I didn't mean to come here. It was the river. I slipped through it chasing a young girl."

Hall wrinkled her nose. "The Ladies. I should have known. If that's the case, we need to get you out of here as quickly as possible. The land of the dead is no place for the living."

Iris felt her time with Hall slipping away. "But, wait." She asked the first question that came to mind. "How did you find me in the Candlewood? What was that place? Why would I have willingly gone there?"

Hall sighed, then answered rapid-fire. "A little bird told me where you were. Time runs differently here; I thought maybe you were already eighteen and facing your foretold tragedy. And the Candlewood is Denial's domain. A place where the recently dead escape the grief of their passing, and then pass on, having tasted, usually, the candles loved ones had set for them. And did you meet the self-styled queen of the woods?"

Iris nodded, and Mother Hall again wrinkled her face in disgust. "She was once a Candlemaiden too. But she became too fond of the Candlewood's drugged atmosphere and decided never to leave. Here, take these shoes."

Iris blinked and accepted the canvas shoes, staring at them as Mother Hall pulled her out of the chair and to the door. Then she asked, a bit slowly, "Did you say I have some foretold tragedy?"

"Iris, there's a lot you were never told, but it's not my place anymore to share these things with you, and besides, prophecy is a nebulous matter. More importantly, you need to leave this realm as quickly as you can, because the Ladies are fickle in their games, sly in their strategies, and ever unable to resist a good irony." She opened her mouth to say more, but then shut it quickly as if in pain and grabbed her wrist, a nervous tick Iris had never seen before on her.

"If you're ever again in this realm, hopefully of your own accord, please come visit me. My home will always be marked by three seashells on the door."

"Why weren't you near our hill? I thought, maybe, that I'd find you behind those doors by the missing church." Iris didn't mean it as an accusation, but she couldn't quite hide the hurt in her voice.

"Home is a complicated concept, Iris. There was a time in my youth when my home was whatever flat high ground I could find for a bed, and another when I wanted nothing more than to always wake up to the sounds of the sea and a warm Ethanian breeze. Home isn't a place, Iris. For some people it's a family, and for others it's a set of circumstances. But often it's more nebulous than that." As if to reinforce her point, when Hall opened the door it led out into a pleasant garden rather than an expanse of furrowed hills. Perched on a tree was a preening purple bird. Iris thought of sudden sunshine after rain and wondered if she had seen the bird before.

"Is that your bird, Mother Hall?"

There was both mirth and remorse in Hall's voice as she responded, "No. Kismet goes where she wills and does what she wishes, but we've been allied many times before." Hall sighed. "But that's beside the point. Every second you stay here you're in more danger." She pointed at a worn dirt road. "Follow that path to the river, and then use your shoes to cross. And, Iris? I love you and I know you're going to make me proud. Just, be careful and be kind."

Iris nodded, trying to be stoic. But then, biting her lip, she threw her arms recklessly around Mother Hall, for the first time in a while not worrying about the woman's fragility or maintaining a proper apprentice-mentor relationship.

Nodding again as she pulled away, Iris turned and started down the path. Certain Hall couldn't see her, she let a few tears fall, and soon the garden behind her faded out of sight.