Fancy pants's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Fancy Pants stood at the edge of the Witherfern treeline before dawn, her salt-and-pepper curls tied back, her golden pants catching the first gray light. She had come for the silver stag. Legend said his antlers granted one unbreakable wish, and she wanted only one thing: to bind herself, the ginger princess, and Laird Thomas together for good. Nothing less would do. The ginger princess stood at her left, holding a linen cloth of honeybuns still warm from her oven. Laird Thomas stood at her right, one hand on his sword hilt, the other resting light on Fancy Pants's shoulder. He had ridden east with both his lovers against his own protests. He had stopped protesting a week ago. "He comes to water at first light," Thomas said. "We wait." "He comes to me," Fancy Pants said. The ginger princess smiled and tore a honeybun in half. "Then let him smell breakfast first." They did not wait long. The stag stepped out of the ferns like a piece of the moon walking. His coat threw back the dawn. His antlers branched wide and pale, each tine catching light the way still water does. He should have bolted at the scent of three humans. He did not. Fancy Pants walked toward him with both hands open. The ginger princess set the honeybuns on a flat stone and stepped back. Thomas kept his sword sheathed but ready. The stag lowered his head to the bread. Fancy Pants laid her palm flat on his neck. He did not flinch. She swung up onto his back in one clean motion, gripping only mane. He carried her weight like he had been waiting for it. "Told you," she said. Thomas exhaled. "Aye. You did." She rode him into town at midday, and again the next day, and the day after. Children ran alongside. Old millers stopped their wheels to watch. The thin woman from the eastern mill left her post to stare. Fancy Pants sat straight-backed in her golden pants, the silver stag stepping proud beneath her, the ginger princess and Laird Thomas riding behind on their own mounts. Word spread fast. By the fourth day every village within a day's ride knew her name and the stag's shape. On the fifth morning, a boy ran up to the cabin porch where the three of them were eating. He was out of breath. He held a folded strip of bark with black writing on it. Thomas read it once. His face went still in the way Fancy Pants had learned to fear. "What," she said. "The oracle left word before she vanished into Witherfern," Thomas said. "The binding wish has been granted after all." Fancy Pants, ecstatic, devoured the honeybun in her hand, licking her fingers clean afterward.