Deep below the surface of the earth, a dead girl told herself a tale.

Once upon a time, there was a girl with a golden braid. She’d been born in the woods and forced to leave. She’d returned again, though she was not the same.

She thought she’d remain in the woods forever, rooted there by what she’d suffered. But then a song had called her, and she’d pulled herself up from the depths.

Her feet, which had once worn red shoes, were nearly as hard as stone. They were something no mere knife could cut. Not anymore. And they carried her back to the castle, one last time, to do what needed to be done.

She could have eaten the king and ended him. She could have done what Ursula had tried and failed to do. She could have done what Esme had been willing to do. She could have let him fall.

But she wanted something else for the man she’d almost married.

Her time with the trees had told her the thing he’d feared most since he was a boy. She let him live that fear, knowing that the last thing he’d ever see before he fell was a blade of his own construction flying toward his eyes.

And then she let him live through it. She chose to let him live like this, fallen, eyeless, mutilated, with nothing left but his voice and his memories. He’d suffer more that way, she thought.

She sometimes rued her decision to let him live, especially after she heard what he did with that beautiful voice. But here’s the hard truth: A man without remorse cannot be redeemed.

Even so, she loved living in the forest where she’d been born, but this time as a tree herself, her roots intertwined with theirs, their music and hers rising through the soil and into the cupped hand of the sky that fed them. Every day she felt wonder. She felt joy. She was alive.

Was she the queen of the forest? Perhaps in size. But she was no more important than the greenest shoot. She was a part of something even bigger than herself, something she could feel, especially at night, when the trees were at their stillest.

The halves of the kingdom and the forest beside it had reunited once more.

They had reunited, but they were not the same. At the request of the werebear who once was a queen, the forest had spread its arms all the way around the kingdom. Ursula and Sabine lived in the woods together, for that’s where and how they had always been happiest. Saddest too. But that is where one lives best—in the spaces formed and sanctified by joy and sorrow.

Ursula, who had been saved by the love of another bear, did not remain queen. She had no interest in it anymore. She also never drew blood again, although she taught many werechildren how to protect themselves should they need to.

Nor did Cappella become a queen, though she had a claim of sorts to the throne. She was not only the daughter of Esme, not exactly. She was also born of generosity and grief, a daughter without a father who became a woman who was enough. She’d always been enough, even if there was no part of her that ever could become a warrior.

Cappella did become a partner to a werewolf. A wolf who’d always loved her. Who’d given her a red cloak. And whose life she was able to save, not with a weapon of destruction, but with one of creation.

The werewolf who was a warrior, but not the monster he feared he’d become, also did not become king. He wanted only to spend time with his wife. To listen to her music. And to watch their children adore her, as children always had.

That left Esme. She had no more call to make gold, and indeed could not have done so, even if she’d wanted to. The pact she’d made with the woods, the gift of her womb for gold, had ended. She’d received Cappella. And Cappella had undone the sadness that golden wishes had wrought.

Esme was the last blood relative who could take the throne.

Even she did not.

She had learned something from the gifts given to her by the woods, who had no ruler but who lived together, shading the young from the harshest rays, sharing nourishment from beneath, lives and roots intertwined, creating and sustaining life, even beyond death.

Why shouldn’t human beings do the same?