Lizzy's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Lizzy packed her van at dusk and realized she had nothing for a prince. She sat on the bumper with her hands empty on her knees. North was two days' drive. The fae prince had been dancing under the northern lights since before her first memory, and she meant to reach him this time and not lose her nerve at the tree line. She was seven the night she first saw him. Third full moon of her life. Her mother had pulled the van over so Lizzy could pee in the ditch, and there he was between the birches, spinning green fire off his shoulders. Twenty-odd years later he was still spinning. Other women had gone before her. One of them had asked for his love and gotten it, in a shape that could not be held. Lizzy still dreamed about that woman some nights and woke up with wet eyes. She knew the rule. You do not walk up to a fae prince with nothing in your hands. He will take the nothing and give you nothing back, shaped like a favor. Her wallet held forty-two dollars. Her van held tapestries, a guitar with a cracked neck, half a bag of oranges. None of it was a gift. She got out and walked into the trees to think. Her boots crushed pine needles. When she was upset she danced, and when she danced she bled colors, so she danced a slow turn between two trunks and watched a thin ribbon of blue leave her palm and drift down into the moss. The fireflies came for the color. First two, then a dozen, then more than she could count. They were not the plain yellow kind. They burned pink and green and hot orange, like the color she had just spilled had called its cousins out of the dark. They circled her wrist and hung there. She stopped dancing. The fireflies did not leave. She understood then what she had been missing. He danced under lights. She could bring him lights. Lights that were hers, drawn out by her own blood. She went back to the van and dug out an empty pickle jar. She rinsed it in the creek and punched holes in the lid with a screwdriver. Then she danced again, longer this time, until her calves burned and the ribbons of color came steady. The fireflies followed the color into the jar one by one. She screwed the lid down. Dozens of them pressed against the glass, pink and green and orange and blue, a living lantern warm against her palm. She set the jar on the passenger seat and started the engine. The gift sat beside her, breathing light. She had something to offer now. What she did not have was any promise that the prince would accept it, or that what he gave her back would look anything like what she asked for.