A quiet cough, maybe an hour later, recalls me to the huntsman.  "Mary?" he hisses.  "Are ya sure she went this way?  Her tracks go straight into the haunted part of the forest."

"I'm sure," I tell him patiently.  The scenery reflected in the princess's necklace has gotten distinctly darker and more ominous, though still relatively benign by my standards.  The trees show a distinct lack of thick spiderwebs, for instance, and there are no unusual creatures scurrying around the underbrush.  The princess herself looks rather worn and frightened; she clutches the velvet of her dress to her chest and jumps at every unexpected sound.  If I had to guess, I'd estimate that she's no more than fifteen minutes away from us.

I'm actually surprised it has taken us this long to find her; she must have been truly terrified to get this far.  I've always regarded her as a bit of a spoiled brat, but I have to respect her determination in this case.  I hope she, like so many before her, learns from this experience.  If her story follows the most typical path, she'll be queen sooner rather than later, and the kingdom doesn't need a petty child on the throne.

The huntsman sighs.  "Alright then."  He's been riding a bay gelding, but now he dismounts and smacks it on the rump.  "Go on home, boy.  I'm not taking ya into that." 

The horse whiffles, blowing hot breath through the huntsman's hair, and he strokes its nose.  "Go on then, get out of here."  To my shock, the horse obediently turns and trots off in the direction of the castle.  Does the huntsman have some form of animal magic?  No... I would have spotted it, I think.

Just to be sure, I shift my vision into different ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum, then riffle through the magical planes.  There's nothing on any of them, not even the slightest ripple.  The horse must just be a well-trained creature, which in some ways is even more impressive.  Any mage worth their salt can compel a dumb animal to do their bidding, but it takes significantly more skill to convince an animal to obey without any form of magic.

My view spins dizzyingly as the huntsman replaces me in his belt before kneeling and pressing his fingertips to the damp soil.  "She's close," he mutters.  "This is still fresh."  I'm not sure if he wants a response from me, so I remain silent. 

He remains kneeling for a moment longer, running his fingers over the tracks on the ground.  From my vantage in the mirror, I can't see his face, so I split my attention into a dozen water droplets on the surrounding leaves.  Though my vision is a bit more blurry, I can easily see the way his brow wrinkles as he studies the ground.  There's more than a trace of regret in the expression, which surprises me.  What does he have to regret?  Or am I reading him wrong?

Unfortunately, mortal emotions are quite hard to understand sometimes, and body language is highly species dependent.

I debate asking, for humans often like to talk about their feelings, but he doesn't give me the chance.  His forehead smooths over and his mouth assumes a stern line as he rises and brushes his hand over his breeches.  Then, without a word, he strides briskly into the so-called haunted forest.

The last time I checked, the dismal air of this section of wood was created by a rusalka who had claimed a nearby pond as her own.  She shouldn't be a danger to the princess, though the huntsman would do well to avoid her watery lair – rusalka have an odd love-hate relationship with human men.  Bones litter the ground around her pond, remnants of the men foolish enough to wander into her clutches, but a few who have survived an encounter with her return with mounds of treasure.  As far as I know, the rusalka never tells them that their newfound wealth is derived from the pockets of dead men.

I don't know what causes a rusalka to spare a potential victim, though learned magicians have postulated a dozen theories.  As I've never ended up in a rusalka's hands, I couldn't say which are true.  However, I do know that the fraction of men who survive is miniscule, and I don't want to take the chance that the huntsman is not among them.  Thankfully, I don't believe that the princess is heading in her direction.

Just in case, I flick a particle of myself into the princess's necklace.  She's still heading north, while the rusalka's pond is more to the east.  Good.  I don't fancy spending the next three decades at the beck and call of a supernatural predator who lives to murder men – my curiosity as to the extent of their mercy does not extend that far.

The huntsman's voice breaks me out of my musings.  "Mary?"  I summon the mask back to the surface of my mirror and open its eyes as the huntsman retrieves me from his belt.  "Are ya..."  He coughs, rubbing his hand over his forehead.  "She's, I mean, she's still okay, isn't she?"

"Yes," I tell him, doing my best to make my tone reassuring.  "The forest truly isn't that inimical around here."

He frowns skeptically.  "Are ya sure?  Over a dozen young men disappeared last year alone."

"Actually, only seven died in here," I correct.  "The rest went to seek their fortunes elsewhere."  It isn't uncommon for young, single men to travel to neighboring kingdoms in search of better opportunities than they can find in their own little villages.  They often end up as soldiers or roaming mercenaries, which isn't a bad job apart from the constant danger.  The ones who make it home do so with substantial earnings, and there are always those lucky few who stumble upon some monster's hoard or win a king's favor.

The huntsman snorts, sounding vaguely amused.  "Seven is still a large number, milady."

I find it cute that he has apparently decided that I'm both female and relatively high-ranking.  I'm neither, but his form of address is far politer than most of my wielders, so I choose not to correct it.  I do, however, point out that seven deaths is approximately equal to the number of people claimed each year by disease in the villages surrounding the castle.

He shrugs.  "True, I guess.  Still, it's a spooky place, ya know?"

He's clearly feeling the rusalka's aura permeating the forest.  Creatures like rusalka generate malevolent energy that saps the life from their surrounds and attracts a variety of lesser beasts that feed off of such darkness.  This particular rusalka is actually fairly weak, as such creatures go – thus the lack of monstrous spiders and malformed beasts.  As she ages, the darkness of her patch of the forest will increase.

The huntsman sighs, turning my mirror over and over in his hands before replacing it in his belt.  "Well, then..."

"HELP!!"  The scream pierces the gloom; it's unmistakably the princess's voice. 

The huntsman swears and starts sprinting, pressing one hand against my mirror to make sure that it doesn't fall.  I dart from reflection to reflection around the princess, merging the thousands of images into a coherent whole, but I can't figure out what scared her, unless it was the abrupt flight of the crow soaring up into the sky.  As far as I can tell, it's a perfectly ordinary crow, and therefore no cause for alarm.

The princess screams again when the huntsman bursts into the clearing, backing away from him with both hands held up to ward him off.  "Go away!  Leave me alone!"  Her eyes dart frantically around the forest, pupils dilated until they subsume the crystalline blue of her irises.

"Princess, it's me," the huntsman soothes, lifting his own hands to show their lack of weapons.  "I won't hurt ya.  Ya know me."

She pauses, eyes coming to rest on him.  "You... you...  What are you doing here?"  Her voice shakes, mirroring the trembling in her hands.  I can see tear tracks streaking her cheeks, which now bear a thin layer of dirt and sweat.  Her mother would be horrified by her disarray.

The huntsman takes a couple steps closer and she quivers like a hare under the gaze of a hunting hound.  "It's alright, princess.  I came to find ya."

Rather than calming her, his words make her freeze.  "You were sent by my mother, weren't you?"  She lets out a heartbroken wail, backing up until she bumps into a tree trunk.  Her hands clench around the muddy velvet of her dress as she cowers there and continues, "I won't go back!  She hates me, I know she does!  She can't stand me!"

The terror is fading out of her now, replaced by petulance.  Whether she knows it or not, she regards the huntsman as a source of safety.  The change is most apparent in her voice, which has shifted from quavering to whiny in the span of a few sentences.  She may have had the presence of mind to run away, but she clearly doesn't have the brains to realize that her biggest danger stands right in front of her.

"Princess, it's alright," the huntsman murmurs, holding out a hand to her.

She dashes it away.  "Just shut up!"  She sound remarkably similar to her mother as she snaps, "Either take me away from this kingdom or return to my mother empty-handed, for I won't go back!"

I want to ask her if she'd truly prefer the latter option – she'd survive less than a day out here – but I don't.  If she's anything like her mother, and limited observation suggests that this is the case, the question would either make her dissolve into tears or try to smash my mirror.  Neither are optimal outcomes.

The huntsman's mouth twists as though he wants to ask something similar, but restrains himself.  Instead, he murmurs, "My lady, are ya injured?  I promise that I won't try to take ya back."

Her posture softens slightly, and she opens her mouth to respond, but her eyes fasten on my mirror before she gets more than a word out.  "I...  No!  Get away from me!  That's her mirror!  I knew you were sent by her, I knew it, I knew it!"

This querulous brat is considered the most beautiful lady in the land?  Humans are utterly incomprehensible.  If I had to serve her, I think I'd go insane within a week.  Why do they consider her so gorgeous?  I had sympathy for her when she was obviously terrified, but now she's just another spoiled child.

Thankfully, the huntsman has infinitely more patience than I do, for he sinks to a knee and spreads his hands.  "Yes, the queen sent me, but I'm not going to hurt ya," he repeats, with no sign of irritation.  "However, ya can't stay here, neither."

"I won't go back!" she shrieks, stomping her foot on the ground.  Her pastel slippers are badly mangled and plastered with dirt; the gesture only adds more filth to them.  "I'm never going back!"  Her voice is getting louder and louder – I fancy that I can feel the glass of my mirror crack.  Or maybe that's just my last shred of forbearance.

"Would you rather spend your life in a dank hovel, trapped in an endless cycle of childbirth?" I demand, not bothering to conceal my ire.  "Or perhaps you'd prefer to be murdered, and only achieve justice when your bones and golden hair are turned into a harp, which can only sing one tune?"  I hate it when they do that to a poor girl, and it happens more frequently than some might think.  It's one of the nastier fates that has befallen mortals in which I've taken an interest, which is saying something.  I've seen wielders burned alive, drowned, chopped into bits, transfigured into a variety of animals, and locked in towers for decades, after all.

Happy endings only come to those who fight for them hard enough.

"My fairy godmother will protect me," the princess insists, full of childish naiveté.  She clutches her hands to her bosom, glaring at my mirror as though I'm responsible for her current predicament.

"So where is she?" I ask.

It seemed like a reasonable question to me, but the princess bursts into tears.  "I hate you!" she sobs, collapsing to the ground in a flurry of fabric.  "You ruined everything!  It's all your fault my mother hates me!"

I can't actually argue with that.  Or, well, I can, but explaining how mortal lives often end up following the same path, like a cart following ruts in the road, would be counterproductive.  She doesn't want to hear that she had been guided down this path all her life; no mortal does.  They have so many tales of prophecy and predestination, but those stories utterly fail to capture all the nuances.  It's probability, nothing more; the probability simply happens to be multi-dimensional and multi-versal.

The huntsman, oblivious to my internal debate, shuffles his feet uncomfortably.  "My lady?" he murmurs.  "Everything will be alright, I promise."  He attempts to pat her on the shoulder, but she smacks his hand away and sobs louder.  He gives me a beseeching look.

I sigh and give it my best shot.  "You really don't have it so bad," I coax.  "Plenty of other girls would love to be where you are right now."  Every other peasant girl dreams of becoming a princess, judging by their conversations, and I know a number of people who would trade their lives for hers.  One of my mortals is currently struggling to cross a blasted wasteland created by a magical cataclysm, full of wraiths and pockets of chaotic energy; the dangers of a possibly-haunted forest are nothing compared to that.  Others, who live in worlds where the social norms have been twisted into cages of thorns, would trade places in a heartbeat.

For some reason, this does not reassure the princess.  "It's all your fault!" she rails, crystalline tears streaming down her cheeks.  Her nose is turning red.

"You are so lucky Granny Weatherwax isn't here," I mutter.  The huntsman gives me a puzzled look, but I ignore him.  We need someone like the crotchety old witch to slap this girl out of her hysterics, since I can't, and he clearly won't, but we're not going to get that.  So I try again.  "Can you call your fairy godmother?" I suggest, plastering a sympathetic expression onto my mask.

"N...no," she sniffles, wiping at her tears with a dirty hand.  It leaves a smear of brown across her cheekbone, but she doesn't notice.  "I've only ever seen her on my birthday."

Well, at least the tears have slowed down.  That's something.  "So, when's your birthday?"  Maybe the queen can be convinced to spare her life for a few months, and then the fairy godmother can handle the rest.  While it's not a traditional path, there is precedent for it.

She opens her mouth to answer, and the world tilts.

* * *

Author's Note: What do you think of the world and characters so far?