He was ten.

At ten, Hyacinthe still read everything he could get his hands on, and he still wandered far out of sight.

At ten, he had hit a growth spurt that left him a bit gangly, and pulled his pants a little shorter than they would have otherwise been. Just another reason not to wear pants, in his opinion.

At ten, he was constantly striving to find new things, to learn new things, to attack the world with a stick. Well. Perhaps not the lattermost. He didn't want to attack the world, he wanted to ingest it and all the information it held.

At ten, he was constantly "almost bored." Boredom was a lack of movement, though, and he was always moving. It was simply that it was all the same movements in all the same orders, day after day.

At ten, he was at once too old for his skin, and too young for everything else.

He was ten and getting better at keeping his secrets.

--

He wandered further and further, the older he got. The Wood watched out for him, so the faeries worried very little about how far he went.

Except for Truss, who trusted no one and nothing. Sometimes, he did not even trust his own senses.

He wandered far into the wood, and followed streams for hours and hours, only to find that -- though he'd gone in a straight line -- he'd ended up back where he had begun. He weaved and wove through the trees, following dummy paths from dawn until dusk, only to find himself back at the cottage. He traveled, explored, but never seemed to get anywhere.

That was, until the day the Lady came to him.

Gone was the moss tunic she'd worn the last time. In its place was layer after layer of gossamer silk, all barely opaque once overlayed a hundred times. She looked more otherworldly in the silk layers. Some of the layers went as far down as her calves, but most layers fell mid-thigh.

She didn't belong in the world. That was why Hyacinthe was suddenly as far from boredom as he could be.

"Lady," he greeted, and he offered her a little bow.

She brought a twiggy, too-long finger to her lips to quiet him, then waved him closer. No. Not closer. She waved him forward, then turned and began to walk. Of course, Hyacinthe followed. Truss's lack of trust was not something he had managed to teach Hyacinthe.

If anything, Hyacinthe was the most trusting spirit any of the faeries knew. The exact opposite of the paranoia and distrust Truss held so tightly.

The Lady of the Forest lead Hyacinthe for what felt, on one hand, to be mere minutes. But, on the other hand, it felt like hours, if not days. The Wood was odd like that. Time was almost nonexistent, but also doubly existent. It didn't always run in the proper direction, either. Forward, backwards, inside out, upside down, and to the side. A great not, rather than the picture of linearity or uniformity.

The Wood seemed to be carving its Lady a path, widening the gaps betwixt themselves and bowing over the opening until it was almost a great tunnel of green. Green, gold, and barky brown. Hyacinthe watched in wonder. He'd never witnesses the trees move, not while they were so calm and benevolent, rather than hiding him.

The Lady smiled over her shoulder at him, but said nothing. She never spoke, though. Did she?

Her hair was like hair, curled in tight ringlets and falling in half-knots, a great mess and mass of hair that was too long to be manageable, and too wild to be managed. Her hair was also a little like smoke or water, always seeming to shift in unpredictable, ringed ways.

Hyacinthe liked her hair. His own hair was kept short by Loch, and cleaned and combed by Liddy. Truss's hair was kept short and combed by his brothers, as well, otherwise he would go around like a wild boy, in all likelihood. Truss didn't care about such trivialities as the look of his hair.

The Lady stopped walking. She turned to him, to hush him again, then walked away.

Hyacinthe turned to follow her, but the tree path lead in a different direction. And the trees did not allow Hyacinthe to deviate from the path, not even to follow the Lady.

Hyacinthe took a moment to get his bearings, then looked up at the trees again. The path, then, hadn't been for the Lady. It had always been for him. Hyacinthe hesitated, then took a step forward. Cheer resonated from the treetops, birds egging him forward and leaves rustling in congratulations. Hyacinthe nodded, lips pursed, and followed the path.

There wasn't much more walking to be done. The path lead to a figure, sitting on a log and hunched as small as it could go.

It could go pretty small, but only "pretty small" for a human.

Hyacinthe's lips became pursed again as he debated the scene. It seemed as though Lady and Wood both wanted him to approach the girl. But a tiny part of him did, in fact, listen to Truss. That part of him wondered how wise it was to walk up to strange humans, in the middle of a magical forest. That part of him was also easily silenced. The human was small, and shaking with tears.

Very quiet tears. But tears all the same.

Hyacinthe strode forward, feeling the purpose under the soles of his sandals. The rustling leaves quietly cheered him on and assured him that he was making the correct decision. He didn't know how much he should trust trees, though.

"Excuse me?" Hyacinthe said.

He said it too quietly and the human didn't take notice. It must have been a child. A child both younger and smaller than Hyacinthe, with longer hair pulled back into a brown braid.

Hyacinthe stepped a bit closer, shuffling a bit anxiously as he did so, and cleared his throat. "Excuse me," he repeated, a bit louder and a bit more sure of himself. Such a small human, such a small child, couldn't very well be a great threat to him.

The child startled and swung around.

Her face was a bit ugly with her crying. Red, with puffy eyes, wet cheeks, wrinkled chin, horrible grimace, and dripping nose. Hyacinthe rather hoped that he never looked quite like that, but he quickly offered a comforting smile. "You seem... lost," he said to her. It seemed such a lame, bland thing to say. But what else was there.

"Who are you?" the child demanded. It was a girl, probably. But so young that the difference didn't really matter. Most young looked pretty much the same, after all.

"A friend," Hyacinthe offered.

That tiny part of him that listened to Truss decided that it was better not to deal in names, even if he had dealt in names two years previous, when he had first met a human other than himself. Names were... identifiers.

Sure, he didn't know why he wouldn't want to be identified. But he knew the faeries didn't want to be identified, and that was enough for him.

"Lost?" Hyacinthe tried again.

Her eyes welled up with tears, her chin re-wrinkled, and she started to sniffle as her face contorted with the effort of holding back the tears.

Hyacinthe really didn't want her to cry. He didn't know how to handle crying!

"I can help!" he said quickly.

She gave a very loud sniffle and scrubbed at her painfully red eyes. Her nose almost matched a cherry, or a very red apple. "You can help?" she asked. She seemed doubtful. Or awed. Or doubtful and awed. Hyacinthe really couldn't tell.

"Yes, I can help," Hyacinthe sighed, relieved that her tears had been averted, at least for awhile. "I can get you out of the Wood," or so he hoped, "And to the nearest village."

As long as the Wood was willing, Hyacinthe could really go anywhere. But, he didn't want to take the little crying girl to the cottage. That felt like a bad idea. An idea that would cease his wanderings and put him under a constant vigil. Whatever the faeries were hiding from tended to scare them into ultimatums, sometimes, or drastic actions. Whatever controlled the crows. That was what frightened them so much.

Not that that answered "why" the faeries were frightened.

The girl sniffled again, loud and obnoxious. "I want to go!" she said. She beat her foot into the ground -- no wonder the Wood wanted rid of her -- and nigh threatened to start crying again.

Hyacinthe hesitated for a long moment, then offered her his hand. She took it was so much gratefulness that Hyacinthe was almost frightened into jerking his hand away. He was ten, what business did he have comforting another child or helping them to get un-lost?

--

He was ten. He had helped a little girl to the edge of the forest and pointed out the farms, the little bridge, and the town beyond them. He had shooed her to the town and settled back to watch her go.

She looked back at him a few times.

Her name was Mary. She was six years old. She had been picking berries at the edge of the forest, with her brother John and her mother, and she had wandered off and gotten lost. When she'd realized... well... she'd ran and gotten herself even more lost. Then she'd settled in for a good cry, exactly where Hyacinthe had found her.

She called him "My Angel" and thanked him more than a thousand times.

She liked to talk.

He was ten years old.

Her name was Mary. She was six years old.

Hyacinthe wished he could have been friends with Mary, but Mary hadn't meant to be that deep in the Wood, and Hyacinthe wasn't supposed to be outside the Wood. He wasn't even supposed to be on the edge of it.

A taste of companionship, as it had been with Pip, was almost worse than none at all.

--

He was eleven.

At eleven, he found that the Wood would let him further and further.

At eleven, he realized he could ask the Wood to let him go places, or to lead him new places.

At eleven, he went adventuring more, and read a little less. Sometimes, though, he did both. He would bring a book adventuring, then settle into a nook to read, then he would head back to the cottage, both adventuring and reading done.

At eleven, he was away from the cottage more than he was inside it.

At eleven, he visited the edge of the Wood and explored the places where the humans sometimes went.

At eleven, he was at once too vast for his skin and too malcontent to remain within it.

He was eleven and better at keeping his secrets.

--

He often, of late, felt that he was being watched or followed.

At first, Hyacinthe had thought it was Truss, who had been known to do similar things in the past. But the more it happened, the more Hyacinthe realized that it wasn't Truss. In fact, it wasn't a being that was hiding itself. It was simply a being which was hard to see.

It was the spirit that Liddy had helped him be unafraid of.

At the revelation, the spirit seemed to become easier to spot. And when the spirit was easier to spot and see, Hyacinthe was more at ease with it following him around. The more at ease that Hyacinthe was with the spirit, the more the spirit hung around.

It was a positive cycle, and one which made Hyacinthe feel like he had a new-old friend. Not one that could talk to him, really. But that was not all that mattered. The spirit was benevolent and pretty to look at, and Hyacinthe enjoyed its company.

Many of Hyacinthe's walks, near the edge of the Wood, came to be with the spirit.

Hyacinthe would tell the spirit of his guilty little yearnings – adventure, to be outside the Wood, human companionship, libraries, fancy hats, money ...

What did money feel like? he'd ask the spirit.

The spirit would bounce in a friendly way that meant very little.

What was money like? How did money work? Was it heavy or light or both? How did something as abstract as "currency" buy things?

Barter, as he told the spirit, was easy to understand. It made sense to trade one thing for another. Money, though like barter in some ways, was incomprehensible to someone like Hyacinthe, who had never handled it or used it, or even seen it. He wanted to know what it was, and why so many books would mention it, and why economies talked about it. And, honestly, what economies were supposed to be, in the first place.

The spirit couldn't answer his questions, but it felt good to know that someone was listening.

--

He was twelve.

At twelve, he was arriving back at the cottage after sundown, though Liddy would fret.

At twelve, he had managed to lose a bit of the gangly quality he'd acquired at ten.

At twelve, he was the picture of a happy and content child, while at the cottage. But when away from the cottage, he was almost never content. He was always pushing boundaries and wandering further and toeing the line. Testing his luck

At twelve, he had grown a little rebellious.

At twelve, he had grown out his hair a bit.

At twelve, he was as polite as could be, but would find loopholes and ways around. These were things that good children hardly ever did, or hardly ever had to do. This was how Truss noticed that their charge had grown rebellious.

He was twelve and better at keeping his secrets.

--

The spirit seemed to think it a bad idea, somehow.

The spirit would get between him and the last few trees that made up the edge of the Wood, or try to distract his attention to deeper into the Wood, like a will-o-wisp concerned about the wellbeing of it's not-victims.

The spirit, however, could not succeed forever at keeping Hyacinthe from his wondering and his dreaming. About what? His wondering and his dreaming about the humans and their quaint little village.

He was twelve, and at twelve he felt that he could be a bit daring.

So, there came a day that the spirit could not contain him. The spirit did the only thing it could, in that case. It followed Hyacinthe out of the Wood.

Hyacinthe quiet as he toed out of the Wood's edge and into the open green beyond it.

That first day of "toeing into deeper water" he only went a few steps, then he fled back into the forest before he could be spotted or called out to. That first day, he swore he wouldn't do that again, that he wouldn't leave the safety of the Wood. It may not have been his first lie, but it was one of the first lies he'd told himself.

The second day, he got about as far from the Wood and just stood there. Then he walked back into the Wood.

The third day, he sat against a tree trunk, right at the edge of the Wood, and only looked about himself, took in the sights of the people and places. It was a relaxing way to spend his day.

He spent his fourth day in much the same way, except that he brought a book and read it in that spot.

The fifth day, he avoided the edge of the Wood altogether.

But absence made his heart fonder. He returned on the sixth day and stood beside the tree for a time. Then he walked to the stream, touched the little bridge -- empty, that day -- and then headed back to the Wood. It was a small curiosity. But once sated, it drew forth a hundred other small curiosities. Which built into a big curiosity.

The bridge was smooth and sun-warmed. It was even smaller up close. The stream would be easy to jump. On dry days, it would be hardly a step from one side to the other. But the bridge was there, cute and quaint in a way that Hyacinthe couldn't quite come to terms with.

The spirit hung beside the bridge for a short while longer than Hyacinthe did.

It was the seventh day that he really pushed.

He couldn't forget Mary, and he knew she lived in the little village. Or was it a town? What made a village and what made a town? Either way, he knew Mary had to be around there, somewhere, and he convinced himself that he had to see her, had to know how she was doing and if her getting lost in the Wood had harmed her or frenzied her family.

So, on the seventh day, he forced himself to walk to the bridge without a second thought and without looking back at the Wood. He stood on one side of it. There were people about, this time, but none of them seemed to question the tunic clad blond child of twelve years that stood staring at the little bridge. Even though most of them wore pants and Hyacinthe was, essentially, pantsless.

Well.

Actually. He was actually pantsless. Essentially was the wrong word.

He crossed the bridge in a moment of impulsive bravery. And he continued to force himself to look forward, to the town, and not backward, to the Wood. If he looked at the Wood, he knew he would return to it. And then he thought he might tattle on himself for having such a horrible, impulsive, rebellious idea.

He persevered and walked to the town, into the town, down the main street.

It was all very unnerving for him.

He stopped beside one of the stalls, wide-eyed and in wonder of the stall itself. His mind still tried to focus on Mary, and seeing Mary again. And, hopefully, seeing a Mary that was less puffy-eyed and teary. But the street was lined with stalls, vendors, hagglers. And there was money.

Hyacinthe shook his head a little, then startled as his hand was taken. He turned to face his assailant and came face to... well. He was a head taller than his assailant, actually. He looked down. It was smiling at him, and the hair was braided and then made into a kind of crown-of-hair. But it looked like it could be Mary. He felt the tension leave his shoulders.

"It is you," Mary said. "My Angel."

"It is," Hyacinthe responded. Being called an Angel seemed...

He didn't know what it seemed. Right? Wrong? Both? What about strange? Or familiar? Or somehow both of those?

"Mary," he offered, to let her know that he remembered her, too.

Her smile widened a little. "Mama said you weren't real. That I imagined you," she said.

"Maybe you did," Hyacinthe said.

"I want to buy you something," Mary said.

Hyacinthe opened his mouth, then closed it when nothing presented itself to be said. Mary wanted to buy him something. She would have money, then, and he was so curious about money, not that he'd ask about it. She wanted to give him a gift. She wanted to buy him a gift! That seemed so strange and foreign and even Hyacinthe's book characters failed to advise him on what to say.

"Well, you're suitably flattered, at least," the eight-year-old girl said. She looked pleased with herself.

--

Mary bought him a small carving of an angel. "An angel for My Angel," she informed him.

He left soon after, without asking the questions he'd meant to ask her.

The angel became another secret of his, and he oved it dearly. He had a friend, it seemed, and that friend had given him a gift.

On the eighth day, Hyacinthe met Mary on the little bridge, to give her three apples. One for her, one for her brother John, and one for her Mama.

Then he went back to the Wood.

He wouldn't leave the Wood every day, especially not after his curiosity was satisfied. But he thought it would be nice to have a friend like Mary, so he resolved to visit occasionally. Sometimes just to leave apples, berries, or little pieces of carved wood under the little bridge, on a convenient flat stone that didn't get submerged except in flooding. Mary knew to look there for them, and sometimes left him little things, too. Dates, dried fruit, folded paper, or little trinkets she thought he might like.

She never questioned him about the Wood, or why he came from there, and she never seemed to spread the mystery of him about.

Except to her brother, who was ten. John met Hyacinthe at the bridge once, too.