“Cervis- like the constellation!”

  The Stag looked up from his breakfast plate of leaves. “Yes.”

  “Were you named after it, or was it named after you?”

  A flicker of amusement entered Cervis’s crystalline eyes. “I was named after it. I am not, in fact, older than the stars.”

  “You don’t sound that old,” I said, poking a sausage with my fork. “But my mother always told me magic grows more powerful with age- and you live in a floating palace, and have cloaked minions that turn to smoke.”

  Cervis chuckled. “I thought for sure you would have realized the messenger was Nyx?”

  My cheeks flushed at the realization. “Oh. Well, I suppose, yes, that should have been obvious. But really, this is all quite new to me, so you must give me some time to get adjusted before expecting me to riddle out such puzzles.”

  “Continue your reading, and you’ll start to understand these things better,” he said. I chewed the piece of sausage and swallowed, realizing something in the brief pause of conversation.

  “But you still haven’t told me- are you young, or are you old?”

  “Relative terms,” he said. “To a mountain, I am infantile. To an infant, I am ancient. The measuring of my time in existence will tell you very little about me.”

  I didn’t much like the way he wove words as if his intention was to maintain a cryptic tone. “You know, trying to make yourself a mystery won’t do either of us any good. I’m stuck here with you- I imagine for the rest of my life- and eventually I’ll figure out all the answers. You may as well tell me them at the start. It’ll make things easier for us both.”

  That same flicker of amusement reappeared. “If I thought you incapable or unintelligent, perhaps I would spell out my tale for you. But you are no child and mine is not a bedtime story with a happy ending. I implore you to put that spirit and courage to good use- find the answers on your own.”

  He finished his plate and walked off, leaving me to finish my breakfast only in the company of Sol and my irritation. Cervis could be cryptic and closed off if he so desired; I would find the answers on my own. And I would do so without peeking into that wretched journal Nyx guilt-tripped me about. Perhaps this was doing exactly what Cervis wanted, but I couldn’t force him to talk to me about his secrets. And I suppose I shouldn’t- I’m a guest in his home, after all.

  No, I live here, too, I reminded myself. And so did a bunch of hovering Lights, a night-fox, a Stag, and apparently an unknown man. I shivered at the mesonoxian visitor from the previous night, and tried to convince myself it was a dream- but daylight’s clarity didn’t reassure me at all.

  Sol led me to the library once more, and I sought a book on astronomy. Twinkle, Twinkle, Tales Above drifted to me at my request. One inconvenience of this room was the utter lack of seating; I rang the bell and called out, “I need seats in here, please.”

  The Lights didn’t respond this time, but with a series of bubbling pops, stools and chaises appeared in the room. I would have preferred a chair with a back, but I doubted the magical palace would care to supply that.

  “Thank you, palace,” I said, and sat on one of the chaises to read.

  The book was organized with images of constellations drawn on the page, their stars twinkling and their stories written beneath. Such mysticism and color permeated the pages as to stop me many times on my journey through the book before I found the tale I sought. Finally, after half an hour’s reading, I found it: Cervis the Stag.

  I turned to the story below and began to read; I remembered bits of the tale from my Father’s version, but it seemed he hadn’t had all the details.

  Once upon a time, in the Land of Free Men, there lived a hunter named Marathis. He was a poor man who lived in the woods in the countryside, and the only richness he desired was the love of a beautiful princess named Silia. Silia’s father, however, was a rich, condescending man, known for his collection of hunting trophies. When Marathis came to ask Silia’s hand, her father laughed and said, “No sorry excuse for a hunter like you will ever marry Silia. You couldn’t even catch a stag, I’ll warrant!”

  Truly enough, Marathis had made a pledge to an ancient forest god that he would not hunt deer, and in return the god granted him easy hunting of all small game in the forest. Marathis returned to his forest to plot anew how to capture Silia’s heart and attain her hand in marriage; she had bade him good luck before he ventured back out, and he had strong hopes that impressing her father would win him the bride he dearly loved.

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  And so Marathis returned to his forest god and pleaded: “If I can but hunt one deer, I can marry my true love.”

  “True love does not ask that we give up our morals,” the forest god replied. “You will have to find another girl.”

  Marathis despaired; without the forest god’s blessing, Marathis had been poor and starving, and he feared what would happen if he inspired the wrath of the forest god. But he could not give up on Silia, either. He captured rabbits, erskines, weasels, moles, badgers, raccoons, even foxes- and to no avail; Silia’s father remained unimpressed.

  Finally, Marathis began a new plan. He ran far from the forest where his god dwelt, and crossed many countrysides, following the rising sun. Finally, he came to a forest like none he had ever entered. The creatures that lived here greeted him and wandered about, entirely unafraid. Marathis realized he was in a forest that had never been touched by Man.

  Marathis delved deep into the forest, and he knew the forest god watched by the light of sun. When the moon was high overhead, Marathis found a golden stag, tall and proud, walking among the branches. Marathis aimed his bow, shot, and killed it with ease.

  With the golden stag, he rode fast for Silia’s house, hoping to deliver the deer to her father before the sun rose and the forest god discovered Marathis’ misdeeds. But as luck would have it, it was dawn when Marathis arrived. A sense of foreboding took over the hunter, but he quickly forgot it when Silia’s father, impressed by the kill, agreed to let Marathis marry Silia.

  But as Marathis cheered, the slaughtered deer rose from the table, its head now only a skull. “Why have you slain me?” asked the deer. “What right have you to take my life?”

  The forest god then descended into the elaborate estate in which Silia’s father lived. “Did you know the name of this deer? The life he had lived? That he was my own son, Cervis?”

  Marathis gasped and began to plead for mercy, apologizing to the god and the deer with all he had. He bowed before his god and declared, “I shall take whatever punishment you deem worthy. I have sinned in your eyes, and I no longer deserve your favor. You asked little and gave much. I bring shame upon myself.”

  “You shall take Cervis’s form and live as a deer for the rest of your days,” the god decided after a moment’s thought. “When you die, you will live in the skies and watch my creations by night.”

  Marathis accepted this fate, and from there on lived in the body of a stag, and became known by the name of Cervis. When eventually the golden body decayed and shuddered its last breath, the once-hunter’s spirit ascended to the heavens and was there stretched into the stars.

  I closed the book and pondered this. Could the Cervis I knew be the ghost of this stag? Or was it simply a name granted in tribute to the deer-centric legend? I looked around the room and found another book that might hold answers- Creatures of the Palewood.

  But this one provided no more absolute knowledge than the first.

  The Palewood, evidently, held creatures much like those I had known back home, with only a few distinctions. The foxes were black and could talk. The violet-jays were carnivores. The badgers were horizontally striped and diturnal. There were no ‘Pale-Walkers’ mentioned, no Owl Queen, no monsters of myth or legend as Cervis had implied.

  I began to wonder if perhaps he had concocted all of these obstacles to convince me to stay and not venture out. I decided to start with the korrigans- perhaps if I could learn more about them on my own, I could gauge exactly how ‘dangerous’ this place truly was.

  I closed the book and heard Sol let out an alarmed chirp. The Light followed me as I returned to the grand staircase that led into the gardens, this time not needing a guide. I was starting to learn my way around, though I still had no idea what pattern this place designed. I began to head toward the garden, my mission well planned. I wouldn’t follow the korrigans- but I would study them.

  Back on the ground, with solid dirt beneath my feet and the sun shining on me from a calico sky, I felt better. Grounded, so to speak. Flowers and shrubbery trembled in the breeze between the stony runlets of the garden, and I began to walk along the streams, looking for the korrigans Cervis claimed dwelt here. All the while, Sol buzzed around me, squeaking loudly and trying to convince me to turn back before I stumbled into the korrigans.

  It didn’t take long to find one.

  She looked exactly as the book had depicted: a small creature, half-girl and half-owl, with flapping wings and beady eyes. She soared up to my height and observed my face, and then let out a sound of disapproval and fluttered back into the leaves.

  “Well, that one was friendly,” I said, and continued on through the flowers. Sol all but screamed at my shoulder. I wondered if I should listen to Sol- but then, Sol was timid, even for a Light; perhaps he just wanted back into the palace. Well, I wasn’t going. Not yet- not till I had some answers.

  Farther down, three korrigans danced about in a birdbath. One splashed water on another and let out a high-pitched cackle; the other responded by dumping a whole pail of water on that one. It cursed shrilly as its wings drooped, and I smiled as I watched them.

  Then they spotted me.

  Shrieks of alarm accompanied the three as they flitted about, the soaked one being lifted by the other two as they moved to hide behind the birdbath.

  “Wait!” I demanded. “I’m not going to hurt you!”

  I ducked around the birdbath and they flew off toward the leaves. I dove after them, but they were faster than me, even carrying their sodden friend between two of them. The exacerbating journey through the garden- three korrigans fleeing as I chased after them declaring my own good will- led me to a part of the garden wall with a small hole where the stream let out. The korrigans fled through it and I knelt on the side, sighing.

  “I’m not supposed to leave the walls,” I muttered, and then thought about it. “Well- the korrigans weren’t exactly pranking me this whole time. And if the Stag is truly using them for pesticide, then I shouldn’t let him notice three of them are gone…”

  With that in mind, I crawled through the hole, knee-deep in the stream and out into the Palewood.