Princess Pampers crouched behind a mossy log at the edge of Swillcreek and listened for hoofbeats. Three days ago she had climbed out her palace window in a rustling white diaper and run for the woods. Her father wanted her fitted for a crown and a husband by summer. She wanted a place where no one made her grow up, and Swillcreek, the forgotten village past the marsh, was where she meant to build it. The trackers were close enough now that she could smell their pipe smoke on the wind. She hugged the huge plush bear strapped to her back and tried to think. The bear was the size of a small pony, soft as bathwater, and heavy enough to bruise her shoulders. She had dragged it from the nursery because she could not sleep without something to hold. Now it was the only bed she had. Two nights in the open had left her shivering and raw. If she slept in the reeds again tonight, the trackers would find her by dawn. She crept into the village at dusk. Swillcreek was quiet, half its cottages boarded up. At the end of a lane she found a small house painted in faded pink, yellow, and blue, with a scalloped roof and a round door. A weather-bleached sign read FOR LET. The windows were dark. The latch gave under her thumb. Inside, the air smelled of dust and old milk. Someone had left a low bed frame, a rug, and a chipped washbasin. She set the bear down in the corner and pressed her forehead to its belly. It was warm from her back. It smelled like home, or the parts of home she had wanted to keep. She worked fast. She wedged the bear against the front door as a soft, silent brace. She tore a handful of bright plastic blossoms from her satchel, toys she had grabbed off her dressing table the night she fled, and lined them along the windowsill so anyone peering in would see a child's room and move on. She drew the curtains. She unlaced her boots. Hoofbeats passed the lane. She held her breath against the bear's ear. The riders slowed. One of them called a name, her name, the old one, the grown one her father had chosen. She did not answer. The horses moved on toward the marsh road. When the sound was gone she let herself cry, quietly, into the plush muzzle. Then she wiped her face and looked around the little house. Four walls. A door. A place they had ridden past. She had a roof now. She also had a problem. The sign outside said FOR LET, which meant someone owned it, and in the morning that someone would come to collect rent from a princess who had run away with no coin and a bear.

By midnight the cottage no longer felt safe. Princess Pampers pressed her ear to the round door and heard it: a hound, still far off, but working a scent line down the marsh road. Her scent line. She had cut through the reeds that afternoon to fetch water, and now a tracker's dog had her trail by the tail and was hauling him toward Swillcreek. If she stayed, the hound would bay at this pink door before dawn. She could not fight a hound. She could only lie to its nose. She had one night to break the trail, or she would lose the roof she had just won. She stuffed her satchel with the loudest, silliest things she had: a rubber frog in a tiny diaper, a fistful of bright plastic blossoms on green stems, a heel of bread. She kissed the big bear's ear and left it wedged against the door. Then she slipped out the back window into wet grass. She walked on grass only, the way she had taught herself, quiet as a moth. At the first fence post she rubbed the rubber frog hard against the wood, then dragged it along the rail. At the next post, again. She was painting her smell across the village in a crooked pink line that led nowhere near her cottage. At the creek she stopped. Water killed scent. She waded in up to her knees, gasped at the cold, and walked downstream over slick stones. Her diaper swelled heavy against her thighs. She kept the frog clenched in her teeth so she would not drop it. Where the creek bent by an old barn, she climbed out on the far bank and pushed the toy flowers into the mud in a bright, obvious trail. Anyone with a lantern would see them first. Anyone with a nose would follow the frog. Both roads led away from the pink cottage, toward the empty hills. She was crouched, planting the last blossom, when a voice behind her said, "You're doing it wrong." Princess Pampers spun. A short woman stood at the barn corner in a pastel-striped apron, a baby bottle in one hand. Her own diaper showed under the apron's hem. She looked tired the way mothers look tired. "Hounds cast in circles," the stranger said. "One line won't hold. I'm Kira. Give me half those flowers." Pampers stared. Then she split the bundle. Kira ran the other bank, jabbing blossoms in a wide loop back toward the marsh. Together they laid two false trails where there had been one. The hound bayed once, closer, then confused, then farther. By the time the sky went gray, the baying was a mile off, chasing a rubber frog through someone else's field. Pampers waded home shivering. The pink door was still dark. The bear was still against it. She had bought another day. She had also been seen.

Pampers slept until noon and woke with a plan she did not yet know how to work. The hound was gone. The cottage was hers for another day. But her clearing sat empty behind the barn, blanket fort half-strung, tire swings still coiled in rope, mud slide only a wet streak down the bank. A haven needed people. Grown-ups like her. Grown-ups who wore what she wore under their clothes and had run from the same kind of dinner. She did not know how to call them without also calling the trackers. She sat on the cottage step and chewed the problem. A sign on the road would bring the wrong eyes. A shout would carry to the wrong ears. She needed a signal only the right person would read. She thought of Kira at the barn. Kira had seen the rubber frog in its tiny diaper and had not laughed. Kira had split the flowers and run the far bank without being asked. Kira had known. So the signal already existed. She only had to plant it. Pampers gathered what she had left. The pink frog. Six toy blossoms on green stems. She walked the village on grass, quiet as a moth, and set the frog on a fence post at the edge of the square where anyone passing would see it grinning in its little diaper. Around its feet she pushed the toy flowers into the dirt in a ring. A person who understood would understand. A tracker would see junk. Then she waited in the reeds across the lane. An hour passed. A cart rolled by. A boy kicked a stone and did not look up. A woman with a basket glanced at the frog, frowned, walked on. At dusk Kira came down the lane in her striped apron, baby bottle knocking against her hip. She stopped at the fence post. She picked up the frog. She looked at the ring of flowers. She looked at the reeds. "You're the worst spy I've ever met," Kira said to the reeds. Pampers stood up. "Did anyone else stop?" "A woman almost did." Kira tucked the frog under her arm. "She works at the pastel house up the lane. She wears what we wear. She was afraid to touch it." Pampers' chest went tight. "You know her." "I know where she sleeps." Kira held out the frog. "Put this on her step tonight. She'll follow it in the morning if no one's watching her." Pampers took the frog. Her hands shook. The signal worked. There were others. There had always been others. She walked to the pastel house at moonrise and set the frog on the bottom step, flowers in a ring around it. She was back in the reeds before the door creaked. Someone inside was crying. Not the woman. A child. Pampers had not planned for a child.