Danica Hicks had crossed three forests to take a throne that already had someone sitting on it. She crouched behind a hedge at the edge of Fern Gully and stared at the castle. Its stone walls rose high and pale. Rainbow spires twisted above them like painted horns. Somewhere inside sat a queen Danica had never met, and that queen wore the throne Danica meant to own alone. She knew nothing about her rival. Not her strength. Not her weakness. A plan needs a crack to push through, and Danica had found none. Her raven landed on the hedge beside her. Its feathers shimmered red, then green, then violet in the sun. Danica had raised the bird from a chick, and it was the only thing she trusted now. "Go look," she whispered. "Find out what holds her up." The raven lifted off and flew toward the castle. Danica watched it slip through an open high window. She waited while the sun moved. She chewed the inside of her cheek. A rainbow lily grew near her boot, and she tore its petals one by one to keep her hands still. The raven came back near dusk. It dropped something into her palm. A pendant, heavy and warm, carved from dark obsidian. When she turned it, bands of color woke inside the black stone. Gold filigree framed it like a tiny crown. Danica knew what she held. Every ruler of Fern Gully carried this pendant. It was the only proof of the right to the throne. No pendant, no queen. Her rival had been careless. She had hung her claim near a window and let a bird take it. Then the castle bells began to ring. Not slow, like for a feast. Fast and hard, like alarm. Lanterns flared along the walls. Guards poured out the front gate and spread into the trees. A butterfly with rainbow wings drifted past Danica's face, calm in all the noise, and she almost laughed. She had what she came for. She also had every soldier in Fern Gully hunting the thief who took it. Danica closed her fist around the pendant and pressed it to her chest. The stone was cold now. She looked at the castle one last time. The woman inside still sat on the throne, but she no longer held her claim to it. Danica held it instead. "We found the crack," she told the raven. "It's this." She turned and ran into the dark trees, the proof of a queen clutched tight, and the whole gully waking up behind her.

By morning Danica had put a long stretch of forest between herself and the castle bells. She stopped at a clearing to catch her breath. The obsidian pendant hung heavy at her neck, its dark bands waking green and gold in the light. She held the proof of a queen. She still had no crown, no throne, no one who would bow. A rainbow butterfly drifted past her face and settled on a tall flower. Danica watched it and thought. The pendant meant nothing if no one saw her wear it. Fern Gully would never kneel to a stranger who crept from the trees. She needed someone the village trusted to stand beside her and name her queen. Without a voice to vouch for her, the stone was only a rock on a chain. At the edge of the clearing she found a woman gathering herbs. The woman wore a gray shawl and moved slow, her knuckles swollen. Danica had seen her before, at the castle gate, pressing bread into a guard's hand. This was the queen's own herb-woman, old enough to have served three rulers. "You know this castle," Danica said. She lifted the pendant into the light. "You know what this is." The old woman went still. Her eyes moved from the stone to Danica's face and back. "I know that stone," she said. "I hung it round the last queen's neck myself, the day she took the throne." "Then you can hang it round mine." Danica stepped closer. "Stand with me in the village. Tell them the pendant chose me. They will listen to you." The woman wiped her hands on her shawl. She did not reach for the stone. "The pendant does not choose," she said. "It only proves. A thief with the proof is still a thief." "No one has to know how I came by it." "I would know." The old woman's voice stayed soft. "I served the queen you robbed. I will not call a stranger my sovereign for a bird's trick." She turned and walked back toward the castle road. Danica's raven dropped from a branch and landed hard on her shoulder. She did not stop the old woman. She could not force a willing voice, and a forced one would betray her at the first chance. The herb-woman had seen her face. She had seen the stolen pendant. Within a day the castle would know exactly who took it and which way she had run. Danica closed her fist around the obsidian. The theft was no longer a mystery to her enemy. She had a name now, a face, a direction behind her. "We can't hide and we can't buy a voice," she told the raven. "So we take one." She turned toward the castle road the old woman had walked. If no one in Fern Gully would vouch for her freely, she would find the one person whose word no one could refuse, and make that person speak.

Danica followed the old woman's trail until the forest changed. Hoofbeats. Voices. She crouched behind a fallen log and listened. The castle guards had come into the trees. Steel clinked. A dog barked somewhere close. They had not waited for morning reports. They were hunting her now, and the herb-woman was walking straight toward them. Danica's heart pounded. If the guards reached the old woman first, she would point them to the clearing. They would take the pendant. They would take her claim. Three years of planning would end in a cell. She pressed her fist to the stone at her throat and thought fast. She sent the raven up. The bird climbed above the trees, its black feathers flashing red and green in the light. From that height it could see the whole search line. Danica watched it circle, then dive. It landed on her shoulder and shrieked twice toward the east. The guards were spread thin there, she understood. A gap. But the old woman had almost reached the road. Danica could not catch her in time. So she did the only thing left. She let the pendant swing free in the open and ran west, loud, snapping branches, drawing eyes to herself. "There!" A guard shouted. "The thief! West!" The whole line turned. Boots crashed after Danica instead of toward the road. She led them through a thicket of bright lilies, their petals torn under heavy feet. She ducked a low branch. A butterfly scattered from a bloom in front of her face. Behind her the dogs gained. She burst from the trees and doubled back along the gap the raven had shown her, the one place no guard stood. She dropped into a dry creek bed and lay still. The search roared past above her. Mud cooled her cheek. She did not move until the voices thinned and faded north. When she rose, her gown was torn and black with dirt. But the pendant still hung at her neck. She had led the hunt away from herself and the road both. She had her claim, and she had bought a few hours' lead. Then she climbed the bank and looked toward the castle road. It was empty. The old woman was gone. Danica stood with mud on her hands and understood what she had traded. The guards had chased her west. The herb-woman had walked free the other way, toward the village, toward the market square. By nightfall she would tell every soul in Fern Gully that a mud-streaked stranger carried the stolen stone. The raven settled on her arm. Danica wiped her face and stared down the road. "We escaped the guards," she said. "But she'll reach the village before we do." Her hand closed over the pendant. "Then we take the village first. Before she opens her mouth."

Danica stopped at the edge of the trees. The village lay just ahead, close enough to hear carts and voices. She looked down at herself. Mud caked her gown. Leaves stuck in her hair. Her face was streaked brown. One look and the people would know her for the thief the guards wanted. She needed to pass as no one. She needed a disguise before she walked a single step farther. A voice came from the gloom beside the path. "Mud on the lady, leaves in her crown. Where will she hide when they hunt her down?" Danica turned fast. A small girl crouched on a stone. Bare feet. Tangled black hair. A cloak of bark and scraps of moss. Her silver eyes caught no light at all. Danica had seen this child before, at the castle gates, trading curses to travelers who paid. The girl never spoke plain. She only rhymed. Danica's hand slid to the stone at her throat. "You again," Danica said. "You deal in hiding, don't you. I need to pass into the village unseen. Name your price." The girl tilted her head. "A thing for a thing, that's how I trade. Give me the brightest thing you've made." Danica's fingers closed over the pendant. No. Never that. Her mind raced. Then she thought of the raven on her arm, its feathers flashing red and green. She thought of the butterfly she'd scattered in the forest. Bright things. She lifted her arm and whistled low. The raven climbed. A moment later it dropped a single feather into Danica's palm, a feather that burned with every color at once. "The brightest thing I carry," Danica said, and held it out. The girl snatched the feather and pressed it to her chest. She smiled, a thin, cold thing. Then she tugged the moss cloak from her own shoulders and threw it across the mud at Danica's feet. "Bark and leaf will hide your face. No one looks at the lowest place." Danica swept the cloak around herself. The bark scraped her neck. The moss smelled of wet earth. She pulled the hood low over her brown-streaked face. Her torn gown vanished under the rags. She looked like a beggar now, like any barefoot wretch who begged at a gate. Like the girl herself. "How do I look?" Danica asked. "Like no one at all," the girl said. "And no one walks where queens would fall." She hopped off her stone and melted into the trees. Danica tucked the pendant deep beneath the bark. She stepped onto the road. A farmer passed with his cart and never glanced at her. A woman with a basket stepped around her without a word. It worked. She was no one. She walked into the village with her face hidden and her claim against her skin. Somewhere in the market, the herb-woman was already talking. Danica had bought her way in. Now she had to find the old woman before every ear in Fern Gully turned against her.

Danica moved through the market with her hood low. Everywhere she heard the same word. Thief. A fishmonger told it to a weaver. The weaver told it to her children. The herb-woman had done her work well, and the woman was still hidden somewhere, feeding the story hour by hour. Danica had to find her and silence her before the whole village turned. But the stalls hid nothing. She needed someone who tracked people who did not want to be found. She found that someone crouched on a barrel near the tavern door. The small girl in the bark-and-moss cloak pressed something bright to her mouth. It was the raven's feather, the very feather Danica had traded for her disguise. The girl's silver eyes lifted. She was the one who dealt in hidden things, the one who took the brightest thing you carried and gave you what you needed. "You," Danica said. "The old herb-woman hides in this village. I need to know where. Name your price." The girl tilted her head. "A thing for a thing, as always it goes. Give me the brightest thing that still glows." Danica's hand went to the stone beneath her rags. The pendant. The only proof she had. No. She searched her cloak and found nothing else bright. The girl waited, silver eyes fixed on Danica's hidden hand. "Everything bright, I gave to you," Danica said. "The feather. You hold it now." "A feather spent is a feather gone. The debt stays open, the night grows long." The girl hopped down. Her bare feet made no sound. "But watch my hand and watch it well. The brooding house has tales to tell." She pointed one small finger at the tavern. The sign above the door read The Queen. Through the thick windows Danica saw villagers packed shoulder to shoulder. Angry faces. Raised cups. And at the center, standing on a bench, an old woman in a gray shawl spoke to them all. The herb-woman. She had not hidden at all. She had gathered them. "She hides in plain sight," Danica breathed. "In front of a crowd." "No one looks for the loud," the girl said. "Only the quiet stay in the shroud." She slipped the feather back against her chest and melted into the press of bodies. Danica stepped to the tavern window. Inside, the herb-woman lifted a hand for silence. "The pendant was stolen," the old woman said. "Whoever carries it is no queen." The crowd roared agreement. Danica's search was over. She had found her enemy. But finding her changed nothing for the better. The woman was no longer one voice to catch on a road. She was a voice before forty voices, and every ear inside that room already believed her. Danica pulled her hood lower and watched through the glass. To win them now, she would have to walk inside.