Chapter Text
Himmel is seven years old when he gets lost in the woods.
His mother had sent him in here with three simple rules, rules that anyone who goes into the Old Forest should know by heart. "Stay on the Path," Rosmarin had first said, "it is worn because many before you have taken it." That rule is perhaps the easiest to follow, and the first that Himmel broke to pick some fairy fern from inside a ring of mushrooms with bright red tops and white speckles.
She'd kissed his forehead after that, smoothing down the wrinkles in his shirt. "Never stay past sundown, the trees are not kind to those who overstay their welcome," she'd said next. Himmel had thought that one funny—stupid, even—but now he can almost believe it. Hours have passed since sundown, and nothing lights his way but what little moonlight can filter through the canopy overhead.
The shadows cast by the tree trunks seem to loom larger than they maybe should, bleeding together until darkness all but swallows most of what Himmel can see. He remembers seeing an eagle hunt down a leveret one spring, and he feels much like it did, trembling all over and almost frozen in place. He feels like the trees might hate him, and he wishes he'd listened more.
His mother's eyes had darkened before she'd imparted her third and final rule. "Those who go into the forest looking for trouble will always find it." Himmel doesn't think he came here looking for anything but herbs. Everyone always says he's a very good boy with a good head on his shoulders, even though it's filled with clouds—whatever that means—and good boys don't go looking for trouble.
There are dark things in the Old Forest. Himmel has heard stories of trolls and goblins and orcs and all sorts of horrible creatures that call these woods home. He's heard stories of horses that wear human faces, of silver-haired witches that turn people into toads or other equally accursed things. These stories always fill Himmel's stomach with a charm of hummingbirds.
He feels excited when he hears them, and that's perhaps the wrong emotion.
After he loops through the forest to find the same willow tree for the third time, Himmel feels pinned down by the weight of a thousand invisible eyes. A cold hand clenches around his heart and pulls at it through his ribs, and he surrenders to his shaking knees.
"Papa?" he asks, mostly on instinct, even though his parents are back in Anfang. "Mama?"
He gets no answer.
He realizes then that he's lost—really lost—and the Old Forest will swallow him whole, bones and all. Himmel tries to be brave like the heroes from the stories his mother reads to him every night, but he can't. The tears fall like rain, and there's little he can do to stop them. There's no saying how much time has passed when he hears the rustling of leaves that accompany movement.
Himmel lifts his chin to see a woman standing there. She has long, white hair tied in two ponytails that waterfall down her back and wears a simple dress under a raggedy cloak, cinched at the waist with a brown belt. Strangest of all, though, are her long and pointy ears, which stick out on either side of her face.
He frantically wipes at his eyes and sniffles, even as his eyes stay stubbornly wet.
He meets her eyes and finds them empty, like he's staring at a lake that's supposed to be full of life but finds nothing but clear water. Even as she points in a direction that should lead him home, Himmel is gripped by the certainty that of all the creatures that call the Old Forest home, she is perhaps the coldest and the cruelest.
The forest seems to know this too, suddenly quieting as though obeying an unspoken command from her. Himmel feels the weight of all those sightless eyes lift, but his chest is no lighter for it.
The woman watches him, expression not changing one bit, and sets down her basket. With a flash of golden light that's an assault on Himmel's dilated pupils, she summons a golden staff about the sight of a broom. Himmel's blood runs cold. She's going to turn you into a toad, or a frog, or a gingerbread cookie. She's going to put you in her oven and—
But none of that happens.
The earth beneath his feet comes alive instead, wildflowers in almost every color he can imagine taking root and springing up out of nothing. They open their bright faces to the moon, faintly glowing with something Himmel knows must be magic. Each next breath becomes easier as he inhales their sweet scent. A gentle breeze kicks up a flurry of petals, and for a moment they linger in the air, catching moonlight like crystals.
She is smiling at him now, small and faint like the first sliver of a crescent after a new moon, and Himmel knows then that this is the most beautiful thing that he has seen in his entire life.
✦•······················•✦•······················•✦
The Old Forest is kinder to Himmel, after that. He can't tell if it's because the trees are sorry for him—that's an odd thing for trees to be, sorry—or if it's because of some spell that white lady cast. Or maybe it's a secret third thing, that they're all just itching for him to leave. Whatever the case, Himmel cuts through the foliage with much more ease than he did while entering.
He walks until the trees start to thin out, some even cut down for lumber, and he sees the fern and moss of the forest floor fade into the familiar, light-green grass of the meadows where they graze their cattle. Himmel finds the air easier to breathe, and that's how he knows he's almost out. And just as he nears what he knows to be the edge of the forest, he hears it.
His mother's voice, calling out his name.
Himmel startles, standing still for just a moment, then breaks out into a run. He moves as fast as his feet can carry him, tripping over a thick root and then scrambling to his feet. Ignoring the bruises on his palms and knees, Himmel keeps running and running until that voice no longer sounds like the faintest whisper on the wind.
"Mama?"
Her blue hair is messy and unbound, and her amber eyes are brimming with tears when she turns to face him. Rosmarin drops the oil lamp she's carrying and drops to her knees to pull him into the tightest hug she can muster. "Oh, my darling. You're safe."
Himmel presses close to her and breathes her in. She always smells sweet, like the flowers the grows in her garden. "Mama."
"The Goddess brought you back to me." She kisses his forehead, then his cheeks, then his eyelids, sobbing all the while.
"You didn't listen, Himmel. None of this would have happened if you'd—"
"Don't be so stern, Holz. The Goddess—"
"I know," Holz says gruffly, before scooping his wife and son in a hug. Himmel presses up against him to feel the sandpaper of his rough brown beard. He feels warm and safe and just a little guilty, because his father is right. He didn’t listen, and that's what caused all of this in the first place. But then he thinks back to the White Lady and her magical flowers, and he can't say he would have wanted this day to go differently.
Because if it had, he wouldn't have ever seen her.
"Will you read me a story, Mama?" Himmel asks that night when she's tucking him into bed.
"It's late, Himmel."
"How 'bout I tell you a story?"
She laughs. "Alright. Make it quick. Your father insists on us being up at sunrise."
Himmel thinks long and hard about all the stories she has read to him over the years, then starts. "Once upon a time, a boy got lost in the Old Forest."
"Did he, now?"
"The Old Forest was mean and scary, and it didn't like him very much. It-it got really dark really fast, and I—the boy—got lost."
"I know that part."
"Then, outta nowhere, the White Lady appeared. She was a witch, you see, but good—"
"No such thing as a good witch.”
"She was different. She pointed the boy back home and made him flowers with magic. What do you think, Mama?"
"I think," she yawns, "that this White Lady sounds very kind."
"…kind?"
"She didn't just make sure that you got home safe. Anybody could point you home—everybody ought to—but she grew you flowers to make you feel less lonely and scared. That's all there is to kindness, really."
Before Himmel can ask any more questions, Rosmarin blows out the lamp and tucks back into bed. When exhaustion finally takes Himmel, all he can dream of is flowers.
✦•······················•✦•······················•✦
Nothing ever happens in Anfang.
As a village, it is nothing remarkable or special or even memorable. It has its farms, its wells, its unpaved roads, and its church. Anfang is normal, almost aggressively so, keen on being nearly identical to every village north, south, east, and west of here. No traveler might remember this place for anything other than perhaps the occasional knot of tumbleweed that the wind blows in.
To Himmel, who spends more time in his head than he perhaps ought to, this is a worse fate than being sentenced to a thousand year sleep by a wicked witch after pricking your finger on a spinning wheel.
"It's so boring, Mama," Himmel says, sprawled on his back while his mother milks the cows instead of helping her like he's supposed to.
"It's peaceful," Rosmarin corrects. "You'll learn to appreciate it when you're older."
Himmel blows a raspberry. "Nothing ever happens here."
"That's not true! Just last week, Mister Krank came down with the dragon pox, and Mother Abhilfe healed him."
"It wasn't a real dragon," Himmel murmurs.
"Dragon pox has got nothing to do with—" She sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose. "You're incorrigible, Himmel."
There is nothing special about Anfang, except that it sits right at the edge of the Old Forest. Himmel wonders, sometimes, if everyone in this village tries so hard to be normal because of that forest, because everything in it is so, well, not. He knows what's inside there, now, knows that the air there feels like the space between two pages of a storybook.
"D'you think there's a dragon in the Old Forest, Mama?"
"If there is, I'm glad it's staying in there and leaving us good folk alone."
But Himmel just stares up at the barn's thatched ceiling and wishes it were a canopy instead. "Has the White Lady ever seen a dragon before?"
"Why don't you go ask her?"
Himmel sits up as though he's just been struck by lightning. Yes. Why doesn't he go ask her? It's a thought that stays with him through the afternoon and well into the night, even as he's supposed to be asleep.
Himmel just closes his eyes and valiantly fights off the urge to sleep as his mother traces gentle circles into his forehead. As she blows out the lamp and closes the door to his room behind her, he springs to his feet and grabs the cape she once made him from an old curtain and his father's pocketknife.
With no small amount of effort, Himmel hefts his window open and slips out, staring at the ten feet or so between the ledge and the ground. The brackets holding the storm drain to the wall make for convenient footholds, he finds very quickly, and in the dark of night, Himmel sets off into the forest.
Sure enough, he finds that willow tree once more. Its purple flowers are still in bloom, though Himmel can see more bright green leaves starting to take their place. A field of wildflowers still stretches out in front of him, like a sea of paints all mixed together to make something bright and happy.
"Hello?" Himmel calls out, heart beating fast in his chest.
No response but the sound of a distant nightingale.
"A-are you here?"
Himmel starts to feel a strange pressure build up in his lungs, a creeping sensation that comes with the weight of being watched.
"My n-n-name's Himmel. Y-you never told me yours!"
Something doesn't want him here, something wants him gone. There is a sound of rustling in the bushes behind him, and Himmel whirls on his feet so fast he trips over the edge of his cape and lands on his bottom. That something looms over him like a storm cloud casting shadows over a valley, its eyes shining, and Himmel's knife slips out of his trembling hand.
Himmel screams as the moonlight reveals the shape of a horse with a man's torso attached to it by the waist. He has enough wits about him to recognize him as a centaur. He lowers his face to Himmel's level, and lets out an exhale that smells a little like the grass a real horse might eat.
"You are a fool of a boy, human foal."
The sounds of Himmel's distress just die, swallowed by the shadows around him.
"Your kind never stray far from the Path," the centaur continues. "You must be a particularly ignorant one."
"Wha—?"
"Leave, boy. The Old Forest is no place for your kind."
The centaur draws himself up to his full, impressive height and gallops away, leaving Himmel to his thoughts and the silence of the woods.
✦•······················•✦•······················•✦
Himmel finds himself thinking about what his mother said more than he does the White Lady herself, about how she made those flowers for him about kindness. He comes to the conclusion, then, that kindness isn't about just being good or doing what you ought to do. Kindness is going above and beyond to make someone happier, even if it's just by a little.
He comes up with a game—one to see how to make somebody even just a bit brighter—and plays it first with his mother. Not that she knows, of course. Himmel watches her carefully as she goes about her day, cooking and gardening and tending to the livestock.
"Mama," Himmel says one day, completely unprompted. "What makes you the least happy every day?"
Rosmarin taps a pensive finger against her chin. "Cleaning up after I cook," she replies. "I enjoy watching you eat like the bottomless pit you are, my darling boy, but the kitchen is always a warzone after."
So one day, after she's done preparing a dinner of tomato soup and garlic bread, Himmel slips on one of her aprons and joins her in the kitchen. His mother seems surprised, but she doesn't turn away the help, instead directing him to a bar of soap and a knot of steel wool to wash all the dishes.
"What brought this on?" she asks him after it's all over.
"I'm trying to be kind," Himmel replies, washing his soapy hands in a basin of chilly water. "Like the White Lady."
Rosmarin presses a kiss to his forehead and sighs. "I wonder what I did for the Goddess to bless me with such a son."
He plays that game with his father too. He goes out of his way to do more chores, especially the ones Holz hates—cleaning drains, cobwebbing, anything that involves rotten grain—and sees him get happier by the day.
It leaves him feeling warm and happy on the inside, and stores it away like a squirrel hiding acorns for the winter.
That feeling lasts well into the afternoon, when he's jousting with a scarecrow in the barn instead of sweeping it like he's been told to. When he hears the tread of heavy boots and the sound of his father clearing his throat, Himmel lowers the broom he's been using as a lance.
"Sorry, Papa," Himmel says before anything else. "I'll—"
"That's, uh, not a problem." Holz looks like a slug is stuck in his throat. He gets like that a lot when he wants to say something but can't bring himself to. His mother always says he's never been the best with his words. "I, well. I just wanted to say that I'm proud of you."
Himmel's eyes widen. "You are?"
Holz does not repeat himself. He instead procures a wooden sword from behind his back. "For you."
People always react like that to kindness, Himmel finds. When he helps their neighbors raise a barn or helps the old baker by carting orders for her around town or gives the May Queen a crown of blue moon weeds after the festival, they all seem so happily perplexed. At this, he comes to the conclusion that few enough people are kind for its own sake that it comes across as a surprise, and he reckons he ought to do something about it.
"You're a proper hero, aren't you?" Mother Abhilfe tells him one Sunday after he helps her pass around warm soup to all their town's poorest.
The heroes in the stories his mother reads to him are always good, but rarely are they kind. But the White Lady makes Himmel wonder if simply being good is enough, because nobody who doesn't read these stories even knows who those heroes are. She was good, no doubt, but it's her kindness he can't forget.