Somewhere, which is anywhere, which is elsewhere, which is now, there was and is and always will be and never was a wood. It is an old wood. No matter when it is or isn’t, it is old. It is alive and it is watching.

Stories fall through the wood as strings through a sieve. Some become lost and crumble double back in on themselves, unfollowing, unknowing, with an ending buried in filth under a stone somewhere. These stories wait for someone to follow them and thread them through to the end, or for a sometime to come and awake the members once again.

Deep in these woods that separate the here from the there and is all woods in its own way, the heart of every little copse of trees at one time or another sleeps a prince.

He was not a good prince when he was what he is. If he had been a good prince he would not have been sleeping like this. Princesses sleep when they are too good for the world, princes sleep when they are too terrible to be contained awake. That is what the stories say, and sometimes stories are true. There have been as many forest-fire princesses as princes. They burned so hot their legend went to ash with them, though the scars they left on whatever world they were in remain forever.

This prince was careful. Not careful enough.

Let me try again.

Under a tree in a dark forest as old as anything, sleeps a prince.

This prince has a name that means forever, and the winds whisper it on this Night of all nights. Tiny breezes trip over themselves and the leaves, racing to the huge, ancient, elven oak. Its roots twist in impossible, untraceable waves to conceal the earth below it, to conceal the deep-as-two-men hole dug to trap a thing that would not be trapped.

The breezes found the tree as above the shining mistress moon let down her veil and light tried to fall to the ground. Gentle-fingered, the breeze pried and pulled at branches and leaves til one little beam of moon plummeted to touch a particularly knotted bit of root.

All of the tree seemed to sigh. It slumped, trunk taking a shape more natural and less upright than it had before. Gradually and bit by bit the roots that had spent so long wrapped around each other as drowning lovers let each other fall to the side. Wood struck dirt and the sides of what had been a sleeping princes prison. Earth and bark became the opium to trap sleep in his head.

As the last branch fell and the wind pushed a particular branch away to bathe him in beauteous silver.

When his sentence was decreed his mistress queen lamented the loss of such beauty to sleep on a lump of cold clay. Sorrowed they could not do as other had done and lock him in a glass case of crystal and silver ‘till he’d paid his dues.

Only the dead may have coffins here, and he was not dead. He could not be dead. The punishment was not so great as to place the prince, the perfect, the beloved creature under the whim of some mortal to come and save him. A time limit, a thing to wait, a breeze in a box to be let loose on the day she missed her prince.

There are not words in this or any other mortal tongue built to describe his beauty, but for your sake, your sweet sake, darling reader, I will try.

To the side of his true name the prince has been called many things. The Violet Lord, dark-eyed stranger, Thistle-Prince, the Sliver in the Dark. His ears knifed up through swaths of hair in a shade so wine-dark it was inky in anything but the direct glow of fire. He was a shade of moonlight fleshly. Pale and silver and enchanting.

Magic had preserved his flesh but nought much else. Once upon a time, his clothes were the most sumptuous of things. He stunk of rotten velvet, crusted leather, silk that dissolved to nothing as he opened his eyes and pushed himself up and onto his feet.

His prize would always be his impossible eyes, deep as a well and dark as desire. No mortal thing of man or beast or tree or bird had denied him when he fixed them upon what he wanted, at least that was what stories said. So frequent were his jaunts to Mortal, away from the Fae, they had to lock him up in a box. Humans were hammering iron spikes at the edge of the wood, lacing their milk with poppy and salt, planting witchhazel and laying open scissors under the beds of babes. He had hunted them some merry game, but hunt too much and the prey will either die out or learn to fight back.

The drums of war hammered hard on the Queen’s court doors. The necessary sacrifices were made. Witches knew first, then priests, then the people. A year went by with few going missing, lost daughters and sons dropping from dozens to one or two every year. Centuries crawled hand over hand over the wood, never touching the prince in his casket of dirt and moss and wood and rot.

All this he pondered staring up at the edge of a hole twice his height.

It is never expected that royals, especially not royals of his sort, will be willing to expend the correct sort of effort to remove themselves from problems.

Up above the breezes danced in the grass, waiting for him, whispering to him over and over.

“My Prince, my Prince, my Prince” in little voices. They might have said his name, his strange and beautiful name. He had been named for what he was, immortal and eternal. Never-dying ever-shining ever-darkening the doorstep of the world. Her Majesty his queen in the midnight always laughed that she would have to rename him should he perish. But her majesty had put a stop to the mention of him for so long the little breezes had forgotten it, and now the Queen, many of the older courtiers, and of course himself, were the only ones who remembered it.

The prince looked at his hands and flexed them. Not stiff or broken, his nails in just the same pristine state they had been in when he had been taken to this curse. Then he looked at the edge, shrugged, and dug his hands into the soft cold dirt.

Climbing was still a little difficult. His brain had become used to sleeping, so much so that it was a bit surprised that now it was awake. What to do with awake, anyhow? it was so much easier to just curl up in a ball on that nice soft pallet of moss and dirt and sleep til he really was dead.

Twice the prince fell to the ground when his legs and hands went limp and forgot to be alive again, twice he cursed and spat upon the earth and slapped his thighs to wakefulness before trying again, defiant. Twice he failed and once he succeeded. A body only needs once do the necessary thing to succeed.

Once the prince had found himself drowning in a stream going fast enough to pull his breath from his lungs as he attempted to claw to the surface. This was easier and yet more frustrating. Fixing things when mortal danger is pressing upon oneself, especially if one is only susceptible to killing of a physical sort, can be an incredible kick in the pants.

The prince could wait here for the lid of his prison to erode, letting the rest of his clothing rot away and the rain wash down earth ‘till he could simply step out and make his merry way into a world even stranger than whatever it was he was going to be exposed to now.

It was, then, a more bitter sort of victory when he finally wrenched his torso out onto crunching early-winter grass. Effort has little sweetness to one who knows it is only useful to things with less time. By then he’d all but lost his fine clothes. By then he didn’t care, flopping onto his back and staring wide-eyed up at a sky full of stars. He didn’t want to blink for fear this was simply a reprieve, not a release, and that closing his eyes would mean another- what- hundred? thousand? million years of sleep?

He wondered if he would ever sleep a night again this way, that pleasure now turned into something awful. He cursed the sky quietly. It had done nothing wrong, but it was within seeing distance and it seemed a good time to half-heartedly curse something.

His clothes itched. Unpleasantly itched. Itched so much he was becoming distracted from his existential moping about the nature of time lost and how much he hated and loved being out of that damned hole.

It is more difficult than one might imagine to remove clothes that are quite literally falling off of one’s body. There are a myriad of holes to get lost in and it isn’t helpful when one’s legs and arms continuously insist upon going limp without warning.

Eventually, thankfully, blessedly, he stood in the cold crisp air with nairy a thing on to inhibit him. Time was, once upon a time, when he was a truly young thing that all the Fair Folk would ride and caper this way. Sometimes, when the velvet grew choking and the lace too heavy, he would wish the finery away and bask in the moonlight in nothing but skin and magic.

Something rusted in the undergrowth. It suddenly seemed a terrible idea to be naked, alone, and entirely lost in the woods. Not to him, of course, but to anyone else in retrospective he told the story to forever.

From behind a shrub pranced the most perfect grey mare one had ever seen. A little older than last time he’d seen her, perhaps, a little greyer around the ears, but he didn’t notice or care. The prince threw his arms around the beauteous creature, burying his face in her soft mane.

She didn’t have a name. Fairy-horses of her ilk seldom do. She knew him and he knew her, and that was all that mattered. When the wind was let loose to bring him back she wandered after it. No one had tried to stop her. Once something like this mare decides she belongs to someone she does, forever, and no other man nor Fae could hope to change that til the day he died, and perhaps even after.

The horse did not react as such, she was old in mind if not in body, but she did appreciate being back with the creature that had been hers for such a long time.

Touching as this scene was the wind was not a patient thing. It tugged his hair and tickled the mare’s tail like an anxious child. “She calls she calls the Lady will not be kept waiting she calls!”

Breezes are not like one’s average winds. They are impatient little things, these directionless whisps, and unlike their wiser, gustier brothers and sisters, tend to be a tad single-minded in a task set to them and occasionally refuse to go anywhere but in a direct line. If a body wants a message delivered mostly-verbatim to a person the breeze thinks is the person you are looking for, then a breeze is exactly the thing you want.

The only true benefit to this sort of thing being asked to be a messenger is speed. Few things in this world or any other are quicker than a breeze.

Thus it is easy to assume, if one is being summoned by a tiny and excitable chunk of air, that whoever has sent the little whisp is not to be kept waiting.

The prince, our dubiously-titled hero for the time being, was well aware of this. He was also, however, equally aware of courtly manners. There are ways in which things are done. One does not simply return from exile empty-handed upon one’s own horse expecting to be welcomed like a prodigal. One must find a gift!

And what better gift, thought he, would be entertaining enough for Her Majesty, but a mortal.

Consequence be damned, reasons he was put in the pit in the first place be damned, possibility of being put BACK in the pit be damned one hundred times over!

At this point it ought to be clear that though this young person was a prince, with all the princely wisdom the upbringing had granted him, it was quite frequent for the young monarch to forget any and all common sense afforded him. Over the past two centuries his Lady had considered releasing him sooner, especially when the idles and fun of court life grew dull. Every time he came to mind, so too did visions of flame and iron stakes and priests brandishing holy water. She shuddered to think what would occur if he was let loose too soon.

Time had changed the world.

No longer did the folk of villages leave them cream and honey, shaking in their beds and begging favor. No longer did the women do their washing and ask before throwing out the wash-water. Mortals did not even wash outside! Everything done in stone and iron buildings without a single fireplace for a respectful hob to tend.

If ever his antics could be used it was the now. Her Majesty of Hills was under no illusions that her favorite heir might bring things back to their exact previous status but perhaps he could bring some joy to the dull, long nights.

Duty done the breezes took this rare opportunity to whisper into a listening ear. Most would not want to take the trivial things at their word, but the princeling did not have much of a choice in the matter. He moved about, collecting leaves and cobwebs and various sundry other things. He could not go courting without looking his very best. Leaves to trousers and spider silk to a shirt and rather fetching coat that gleamed in the moonlight. Time was he would spin clothes from dew, but lord had those times passed. Rain itches something horrid compared to spider silk, but fashions are fashions and he was as much a slave to them as anyone else.

Concentrating bordered on the impossible as the breeze chitted, oh did the little things delight in chatting his ear off! Who had died, who had run away to be something in the mortal world, what the peoples of the great wide place outside had been doing, what of the woods, and what their most favorite and interesting squirrels had been up to.

Most of the information so frantically imparted to Emryss passed without a whit of comprehension or care. Some small things made it through, though.

Things had changed. To the people at large he was just a silly story their great great great and more grandmothers told, of sisters vanished and found again turned strange. He was a bogeyman at best and a hallucination at worst.

“What perfection, what delight. I shall ride this night and snatch some mortal from their bed, with none the wiser. The silly thing might be dead, or wandering, or any thing!” He threw his head back and laughed, pulling himself onto his mare’s back.

“But never would the sillies now suspect a one o’ me!”

The mare reared onto her hind legs, as she had been raised with a proper sense for the dramatic, and bolted into the woods with him clinging delightedly to her mane.