In her understanding the Wood went on forever, acre upon acre of green marbled with big blue and little blue veins and arteries and capillaries of sweet, sweet water. And it was all of it alive with music – that was her favorite part. When you drank from the creek babbling beneath her window, when you put your ear to the trunk of the old oak by the goldfish pond, when you breathed in the air, flavored with pine and anemone: flutes, French horn, and the faintest timpani bobbing underneath, like a pulse. She’d wake in the morning and the birds would trill hello, Lady, hello, and at evening when she turned to sleep they murmured goodnight, Lady, goodnight. All was well. All was sound, and her head was full always with the Wild God’s song.

Then it was dawn, and her world cracked very neatly in half.

Unpredictability was one of the Flats’ few predictable attributes. Its magic was so wild and hot that there were times the sand quickened into water, only to re-solidify like stone around your feet, or the breeze howling out of the west, plowing into your shoulder, burned cold as northern steel. Only the crocodile standing sentinel in the distance, regardless of the direction you cast your eye, seemed a constant; one could not even count on the sun, which occasionally chose not to rise, or did for five entire minutes before abruptly sinking back beneath the horizon. So when the sun rose on that particular day, red as heart’s blood, there was a consensus of dry relief. Until it stopped, suspended over the far mountains, and turned black. The sentiment then was boredom – it had done this before, after all, and the observers were not so easily impressed anymore. 

But then it flashed white, like a silver disc hanging in the sky— split, slowly, like a maw opening wide, revealing the gaping tunnel of mouth and throat— this was different— heaved, convulsed—

And spat something small, loud, and shiny onto the glass below.

She popped up with a squawk and a bang, her wings spread rigidly on either side of her heaving chest, heart hammering as she combed through the half-light for anything even remotely resembling home. All that greeted her was the scorching breeze, and that crocodile; it caught her gaze and the contact – even across a hundred miles – blew through her like a gale, her long legs nearly tangling as she backpedaled, tassels swinging, jewelry rattling in the wind. “No, no, no,” she babbled, wings sagging beneath their own weight. “No, no, this can’t—” They shot up again, muscles screeching as she forced a hard (and poorly balanced) spin.

“Who are you! Where am I!” A wobbly, indignant moment later: “What are you staring at!”

command me to be well.

‘Are you a Goddess?’
 
Ultima, Crowned by Nightingales, Fairer Than Morning and the Dearest Ever Dreamt, stared. And stared. And could not stop staring. These were words she was most definitely familiar with, but not in this particular order, and not with a question mark tacked to the end like a snowstorm in July. He might as well have asked if bees recognized royalty, or if the North Star hurtled from the sky the night she was born. Although she supposed that he did have a point, the sudden concession sharp and persistent as a paper cut – she had never quite made it up the mountain, had she? She hadn’t completed the Engagement, had she? Her second pair of wings ached and shuddered as if on cue, the newly forged musculature burning, overtaxed, incomplete.
 
Incomplete. Was that the same as failure? In the millennia since the Wild God was put to bed within the mountain, through all of the Weddings that had been fastidiously planned and held, in all of the Dreams that kept the Wood lush and green, had anyone ever heard of a Failed Bride?
 
That made no sense either, she thought, the oxymoron damming up her throat with something so bitter and medicinal that it could only be the truth. No, she knew. No Bride had ever Failed, not until her, and a surer knife to the gut could not be found. Brides don’t cry, she reminded herself, steeling her expression through sheer force of will. They don’t. They don’t, they really don’t, they are the happiest girls in the world, the Wild God loves them best; but the pressure compounded until at last it came bursting through her golden seams, a scornful, cracked and belligerent, “I will not cry!” And there on the receiving end, her awe-struck assailant. For a second she imagined she might die of the duress – in her dismay, she had quite forgotten he was there.
 
Before the idea had properly crystallized she had tucked her wings in and flounced off in the opposite direction, quick as her gawky legs could carry her, kicking up salt with every— Crocodile! “Not that way!” she announced on her return trip, keeping a wide berth as she marched resolutely past. But there too was the crocodile, its eyes a pair of small garish rubies in the pastel of dawn. Ultima stuttered back a third time, nearly clipping the stranger’s hip.
 
It was an ugly feeling she got from this place, and all the more palpable when that thing looked at her, as if it would like nothing more than to crack her wishbone in half, pick its teeth with her ribs. The delicate plumage on her withers puffed up in waves, every bit of down on her body tensed. No one had ever looked at her like that before. If she hadn’t been so afraid, she would have been scandalized by the nerve; she was a treasure; she was the Intended. She was afraid, though, and out of some base instinct shuffled out of its direct line of sight, hiding in the stallion’s long shadow.
 
“Not that way, either,” she said, quiet, maybe even subdued. Her brain was overrun with questions, and the answers were like castles in the air: what had happened at the summit of the Altar? Who was that horrid old man, and why had he come for her, and how was she thrown into this sky and why did the Wood have to end and w— She blinked five times in rapid succession, tassels swishing as she shook her head. A pause. Then she spoke again, a bit of the vigor returned to her voice, her slender neck arched into a tighter, prouder line. “Is it still looking? I want to leave.”

command me to be well.

Whether it was a frogmouth or a falcon, the Wood held birds in very high esteem. Everyone, even children, had one for a companion on land in sky, and the highest honor within the community was to be bonded to the Lord of Rocs Himself. It was the greatest tragedy, therefore, that Ultima could not fly.

Even as a child she’d been miserable at it; there was some flaw in her make-up, a tiny wrench in the gears of her growth patterns. Physicians formed trains to her doorway for months before finally she refused to see another, resigning herself to a view from the ground, to walking, to running – it wasn’t a terrible thing, she’d recently decided. With so much traffic above the trees, the paths below were always clear, dappled with light and fallen leaves. Rabbits hid in the gnarled elbows of buttress roots. Could you see how the trout streaked swift and silver through the river when you were a mile high? Could you see the color violet petals burned when held up to the sun? She proclaimed loudly that she didn’t think so, and while it was well-known to keep mum out of consideration, after a time all the stories of a life lived in the air did not phase her anymore. Besides, she laughed, wading through the tall summer grass, hair studded with flowers – the Wild God had wingspan enough for them both!

But then she had been stolen, a helpless fledgling, and the old hurt bloomed anew.

So she smiled, “Well,” soft as moonlight, or the little wind that skipped ripples across the top of the goldfish pond. So she smiled, “As a matter of fact,” her first set of wings unfurling with a gentle puff of sand, the edges caught beautiful, bright, and white in the half-risen sun; so she smiled, radiant as the star that fell on her name day – “I don’t wish.” – and put Kubrick to shame.

Dipping into an elegant curtsy, she banked a right, folded those ornamental wings up prim as you please, and swept away without so much as a “Ta!” Rather predictably, the crocodile appeared once again on the horizon and it was only by the grace of her insufferable pride that Ultima did not flinch a third time. Part of her still clung desperately to the notion that this was all a very bad dream, and that any moment now she’d wake screeching and the people of the house would come running to tell her it was alright, the Wild God Dreams still – and may He Dream forever – and He loves you. (So, so much, look— He’s sent the birds to sing you back to sleep, and the stars are so bright, everything’s alright, alright, alright.) 

Another part, small but gaining steadily, had accepted the worst-case scenario and was determined to bore through it. Crocodile or not, she set her sights on a point in the distance and, as if fitted with the blinders of her outrage, one high step after the other, marched resolutely into the east. Morning always broke right behind the Altar – keep traveling in this direction, she surmised, and eventually she’d run into something (or someone) familiar. “I’ve got to find that wretched old Wasteling, or whatever his name is,” she muttered, casting her gaze about the dunes. If anyone could fix this it was him, especially seeing as it was Entirely His Fault. Exhaling, she took another step forward—

And promptly tripped.

command me to be well.

Brides don’t cry. That was one of her very first memories, ages ago when she was very small and the idea of Weddings and precedent Engagements and subsequent Holy Husbands (and may He Dream forever) were about as fathomable as object permanence. 

It was the surprise that did it, not the pain. She had fallen – she was always falling, it seemed – and the tears had welled full and fat in her big gold eyes, and Minerva (who had been much taller then, high as the spires of any cathedral) had swooped upon her, tutting and clucking concern. A day ago Ultima would have never imagined it, but there on the ground, the sand digging uncomfortably into her knees and blowing into her eyes, she missed the stern old bird dearly; even the scoldings; even the exasperated sighs. Because there on the ground, the sand digging uncomfortably into her knees and blowing into her eyes, Ultima felt incredibly, incredibly small. Little Princess Peacock indeed, she thought, blinking furiously in spite of herself. The urge to lie there and bawl for night on eternity was formidable. But then she heard the distant drums of footfall; as Whoever He Was drew to a stop nearby, Ultima put on her second-haughtiest expression, lifted her chin a degree, and refused to make eye contact.

She was the tenth recurrence of the North Star. Stars didn’t cry, either.

Truthfully she was, “Fine, absolutely fine,” having mastered the art of the emergency landing years prior. Her guards used to joke that she couldn’t go ten paces without a compulsory tumble, and as much as she threatened banishment, they were far from wrong. The moment she felt that familiar weightlessness, her center of gravity too quickly displaced, her wings flared for drag and she landed – hard, but it was more jarring than anything – on her cannon bones. She stretched those bones now, stabbing her hooves into the ground like tiny daggers. “This desert is too large and the sun is far too bright and it’s hot and I haven’t a clue where I am and I loathe that crocodile and that Horrid Old Man and—” A warble of rage when a tassel, sent swinging as she finally got upright, smacked her high on the cheek— “But I’m fine,” She faltered for a moment, then stabilized, a lock of hair hanging loose from her coif— “Thank you for asking—”

And snatched his sheepish glance up without warning, hawkish in her intent. A long pause. Another. And then she glanced away, judgment passed: “Haven’t you got anything better to do?” This was less of a dismissal and more of a genuine curiosity – while Ultima had originally planned on ignoring the stranger for the rest of his life, his determination to be a part of hers had won him a mote of her interest. “Is this your job?” But just the one. “Do you live here?” Although he had her attention for the time being, there was still a bit of steel to her, a decided coolness as she shook her wings and stamped her feet, salt skittering off her shins, that said she had not forgotten the earlier slight. 

Flipping her hair, she’d just opened her mouth to launch another barrage of questions when she shut it with a clack, gaze whipping over her shoulder. “Why I— My foot’s stuck!” She yanked on the right one, sputtering beneath her breath as she nearly slipped again; the desert glass had closed around her pastern, and was slowly but surely creeping up to her fetlock. “My foot’s stuck! Is yours stuck?”

command me to be well.