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.

The honey was still on Fancy Pants's fingers when the dogs started barking. A rider had come up the track to the cabin. He was not one of theirs. Thomas set down his cup and stood. The ginger princess stepped back into the doorway, quiet as she always went when trouble showed up. The stranger swung down before anyone waved him in. He was broad in the shoulder, dust to the knees, a long knife on his belt. He did not take off his hat. He looked at Fancy Pants first, then at the stag pen behind the cabin, then at Thomas. "Word travels," he said. "Five days riding the silver one. Every village between here and the coast is telling it." He smiled without warmth. "I've come for the trick of it. How you called him. How you held him. I'll pay fair, or I won't." Fancy Pants wiped her fingers on the linen. "He isn't a trick." "Everything's a trick if you know it," the stranger said. He stepped up onto the porch. His hand rested near the knife. "Tell me, or I'll wait here till you do. I'm patient." "So am I," Fancy Pants said. "I'm better at it." The ginger princess did not move from the doorway. She spoke low. "Get off the porch." The stranger laughed at her. That was the wrong sound to make. Thomas moved once. He crossed the porch, drew, and put his blade through the man's ribs under the raised arm. The stranger's knife hit the boards before his knees did. Thomas held him up by the shoulder until he was sure, then let him down. No one spoke for a moment. A rocking chair creaked where the ginger princess had brushed it. Somewhere past the stable, the stag stamped once and went still. "You said you wouldn't kill for me again," the ginger princess said. "I said I wouldn't promise it," Thomas said. He wiped the blade on the dead man's coat. His voice stayed flat. "He came for her. He would have come back for you." Fancy Pants looked at the body, then at the track the horse had come up. Her hands were steady. Her stomach was not. "There will be more," she said. "Every village knows my name. Every village knows the shape of him." "Aye," Thomas said. The ginger princess came out of the doorway. She knelt by the dead man and closed his eyes with two fingers. She did not look angry. She looked tired in a way Fancy Pants had not seen before. "We can't keep him here," the ginger princess said. She meant the stag. She meant all of it. Fancy Pants looked toward the pen. The silver stag watched her through the slats, waiting. The wish was not yet asked. And now the road to it had a body on it.

The body was still on the porch when the second rider came. Fancy Pants heard the hooves before the dogs did. She stepped down into the yard with her hands empty and her hair loose in the wind. Thomas was already there, blade wiped, feet planted between her and the track. The rider was a herald, not a fighter. He wore a clean coat and a laird's badge on his chest. He looked at the dead man on the boards and did not dismount. He read from a folded paper without meeting anyone's eye. "By the word of Laird Thomas of this valley," he said, "the silver stag stays. Any who come to take him, or to ask his secret, will be put down as this one was. So it is decreed." He paused. He added, softer, "And any who object will be answered the same." Fancy Pants turned to Thomas. "You sent that." "I sent it this morning," Thomas said. "To every village your ride touched." "You made yourself the wall." "Aye." The ginger princess came out onto the porch. She had a cloth in her hand and blood on her sleeve from cleaning the boards. She looked at the herald until he lowered the paper. "Ride back," she said. "Tell them the decree stands. Then tell them the stag is gone by nightfall." The herald opened his mouth. He closed it. He turned his horse and went. Thomas did not move. "He stays. I said so." "You said so to keep her safe," the ginger princess said. She nodded at Fancy Pants. "He won't keep her safe. He'll bring a hundred more like that one." She pointed at the dead man without looking at him. "You can't kill a hundred." "I can." "You won't." Her voice stayed low. "Not for me. Not for her. I am asking." Fancy Pants stepped between them. She put her hand flat on Thomas's chest. His heart was going hard under her palm. "She's right," Fancy Pants said. "The decree keeps him here and buries us under bodies. I haven't asked the wish yet. If we die on this porch, no one asks it." Thomas looked past her at the pen. The silver stag stood at the slats, watching Fancy Pants the way it always did. Still. Waiting. "Where," Thomas said. One word. "Somewhere no village knows," Fancy Pants said. "I'll take him myself. He'll go for me." Thomas breathed out. He sheathed the blade. "Then the decree is a lie." "Let it be a lie," the ginger princess said. "Let them come here and find an empty pen." Fancy Pants walked to the gate. She lifted the latch. The stag stepped through and stopped at her shoulder, close enough to touch. She did not touch him yet. She looked back at the two of them, laird thomas stopped her, said the stag is secretly my son in animal form, a kiss from a proper princess will change him back to human, ginger princess kisses him on the nose and he transforms instantly to a handsome young man and the stag was never seen again, no need for people to come looking any longer, he’s gone.

The young man stood barefoot on the porch boards where the blood had dried. He had Thomas's jaw and none of his weight. He looked at the three of them like he was still learning how his eyes worked. Fancy Pants stepped closer. She had waited years for the stag. She had not waited for this. "I have a wife," he said. His voice was steady. "In the trees past the far pasture. A doe. Two fawns. They were mine before the curse. They are mine still." Thomas said nothing. The ginger princess set the bloody cloth on the rail. "You want to bring them here," the ginger princess said. "No." He looked past the cabin, past the ranch sign creaking on its chains at the track. "I want a piece of the far end. By the creek. I'll build it myself. They won't come near the house. I won't either, much." Fancy Pants felt the shape of it land. The stag she had tracked for years was gone. What stood here was a son asking for a corner of his father's land, and a life she had no part in. "You're sure," Thomas said. Not a question. "I'm sure." Thomas nodded once. "Take the creek bend. Take what timber you need. Take the spotted mare if you want a back for hauling." The appaloosa lifted her head at the hitching post, ears turning. "She pulls straight." The young man's mouth moved like he might say thank you. He didn't. He stepped down off the porch and walked toward the pasture without looking back. Fancy Pants watched him go until the grass hid his feet. Thomas's hand found her shoulder. The ginger princess came to her other side and did not speak. "He was mine to bring in," Fancy Pants said. Her voice came out smaller than she meant. "For five days he was mine. Now he has a doe in the trees." "He was never the wish," the ginger princess said. "He was the road to it." "The wish was granted," Thomas said. "The boy said so. The oracle said so." "Then why doesn't it feel done," Fancy Pants said. Neither answered. The appaloosa stamped once. Somewhere past the pasture a axe would start ringing by the end of the week, and a cottage would rise that none of them would live in. Fancy Pants turned her back on the far field. She looked at the porch, the two chairs still rocking from the herald's visit, the third empty between them. She sat down in the middle chair. She put her hands flat on her golden knees. "Then I wait again," she said. "For what the wish still owes us." Thomas sat. The ginger princess sat. The three chairs moved together, then apart, then together, and just like that, like the clicking of ruby slippers the wish payed what was owed to them…