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.

Two days of driving put Lizzy past the last town and into country where the pines grew close and the road turned to gravel. The jar of fireflies sat on the passenger seat, still bright, but dimmer than the night she caught them. A few had gone dark at the bottom of the glass. She counted them at every gas stop. She was losing about one an hour. She parked at a pull-off where the trees opened north. The sky above the ridge was already moving. Green ribbons slid across it, then blue, then a streak of violet that curled back on itself like smoke. The northern lights ran the whole horizon. The prince was somewhere under them. She did not know where. She climbed out with the jar. The forest went on for miles in both directions. If she picked wrong, the fireflies would be dead before she found him. She held the glass up and watched the little bodies pulse. Pink. Orange. One more went dark on the lid. She set the jar in the moss and did the only thing she knew. She danced. Slow at first, then harder, until her heels bruised and a thin cut opened on her ankle. Red came out first, then green, then a color she had no name for. The ribbon of it lifted off her skin and drifted up between the birches. It did not fall this time. It climbed. It reached the tops of the trees and kept going, thin as thread, until it touched the aurora above the ridge. The sky bent down to meet it. One band of green peeled loose from the rest and came down through the branches, low enough to brush her hair. It hung there, waiting. She understood. The lights knew where he was. Her blood had called one down to lead her. She grabbed the jar and followed. The ribbon moved ahead of her at a walking pace, weaving between trunks, dipping under low branches. She ran when it sped up. Twice she stumbled and the ribbon slowed for her. The jar bounced against her hip. She could feel the fireflies inside, still alive, still lit. The ribbon led her a half mile in and stopped at the edge of a small clearing. She stopped with it. In the middle of the clearing, a man was dancing. Green hair. Wings like stained glass catching every color the sky had. He spun the way she had seen him spin when she was seven years old, and he had not stopped since. He had not seen her yet. She stood at the tree line with the jar warm in her hands and the ribbon of light fading above her head. She had found him. Now she had to walk out of the trees.