You travel the edges of the Greenwood, looking for the road that leads to the world. How many roads have disappeared? you wonder. No one sweeps them clean anymore and few carry their old names. Gone are the fairy knolls, the bridge of trees, the fairy’s walk that once might have pointed the way to mortals seeking the path between briar and lily. Now it has become difficult for you to even find the roads out of the Greenwood. They are covered with iron and rust, with concrete and steel. The grass no longer sings to announce the way, the brush no longer parts to let you through. The old ways are going, soon to be gone for good.
It is love that drives you out of your woods. Love for the clans who mistrust you now, who know too much about you and are consumed with envy. It was the love of your realm that sent you in search of the one thing that might restore vitality, life, and the power of a world both bright and dark. It was love that changed your body from a pure vessel, untouched by age to one ripened by love, torn open by love, altered forever in the act of creation. It was love that kept you in the world too long.
You should have left the child on a stranger’s doorstep, even on the steps of a church, though the spires could spear your heart and the crosses burn your flesh. But once you looked into that perfect rosebud face you could not part with her—flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood. You could not stop the tears that flowed any more than you could dam the milk from your breasts. And you knew that only this love could heal your world. So you stayed, wanting more time.
And then it all went so very wrong.
You hid your sorrow; you hid the love that had changed your body. You designed a desperate plan with no certainty of succeeding, hoping for delay. And when the truth was known you did what was necessary, committing murder, holding some hostage to your bidding and forcing others out into an exile you refused to imagine to buy but a little time and confuse them all.
And you knew that He would not rest idle but seek to find. You brought her in the world to strengthen the world through love, but He will use her death to strengthen His world through hate. And if He succeeds, then the balance of your world will tip like a fallen candle whose wick is drowned in the flow of scalding wax.
Oh, for love that aches, that heals, that makes all things possible.
And so you have come alone, treading the paths that no longer announce themselves. But you know it is here, in a city of glass and iron and stone that you must seek first. You must find the hound. You must stop him. Leash him. Or take his heart.