Spider-bite midnight: an infected emerald sky strung with clumps of silk-woven stars, a cobweb moon. The Witch of Wishes had conscripted an army of arachnids to decorate the universe for her that night.

She rested on her back on top of the empty stone altar in the glade, with the Fox Who Is No Fox sprawled beside her, a soft, thick blanket beneath them. Their knees were bent like pyramids pointed straight up, so close that they touched and held each other up, her right thigh against his left. A piece of her hair was pinned beneath his bare shoulder, the rest of it spread around her head like black fire.

“Tell me,” she said, “about what happened after the magic princess put herself to sleep.”

The Fox Who Is No Fox blinked up at the poisoned green sky and continued his story, quiet and clear:

Deep in Graiae Forest, the princess slept, on and on and on. She lay in the deepest and darkest part of the woods, where even the stars would not allow their light to flow, and for a long time, no one came.

The Immacula who had spoken to her in the north wing might have gone to her side, but he had been sentenced to languish in the dungeons indefinitely. Unbeknownst to the princess, he had been there that day, in the woods, when she had cast the sleeping spell. Roused by the commotion of the guards, he’d followed the king and his soldiers all the way to the woods’ edge. When the princess had fled into the forest, he had given chase with a mind to stop her—to help her, to hide her, anything but that she should place an irreversible curse upon herself. But the soldiers had snared him before he could catch her. Accused of conspiring with the princess against the crown, he’d been spared only because he excelled in the enigmatic magic of necromancy, and the king knew that his only known necromancer was far too valuable to kill.

All this time the necromancer had wished only for freedom—freedom he’d thought the princess could grant. But now, because of his foolishness, he would never know freedom. Neither would his sister, who’d lived in hiding in the Heartless Hollow with their magicless parents since the day they had been caught a year before.

He would never forget the choice they each had had to make, the way his mother had clasped her palms to his eyes while the king’s ichoromancer had plunged her shimmering hands into his father’s chest, reaching through skin and muscle and bone, through his human heart, and then closed her fist around its center. But not even his mother’s trembling hands could conceal his father’s screams, or the tang of burnt blood he could somehow taste on his tongue. And he remembered how, when it was done, his father had clutched the boy’s shoulder for support while the ichoromancer had performed the same mutilation on his mother. The boy had watched without shield this time as the ichoromancer had yanked his mother’s small macula heart out, for a moment shining like silver in her slick palm before it had crumbled into dust, gone.

Forever after, he could not understand nor accept his parents’ decision to surrender the chance for freedom. For though he was now an Immacula, living in a glass tower with a whole host of other Immaculae, being used by the king when he needed something—a bewitched weapon for some skirmish with a foreign territory, or to heal a stubborn illness, or to resurrect the dead loved ones of those who could afford to pay for a private session—well, at least, even then, he still had his magic, even if he could not use it for himself.

He knew he might never see his family again, except for his sister, an oneiromancer hiding in a musty attic, who had managed to escape on the day the others had been caught a year before, and who had sought refuge with the Forest Forgotten until it had been safe to join their parents in the Heartless Hollow. Every night since he’d become a prisoner, they’d met in their dreams. She reached out to him while he slept and wrenched him away with her to a place where they could be alone, if only for a few hours.

A dream-walker, that’s what she was—not to be confused with a dream-designer, a rare kind of oneiromancer with magic so powerful that they could create new dreams—

Here, the Witch huffed, short and sharp. She’d been listening closely, concentrating so hard on his words that her forehead wrinkled, an ache creeping from temple to temple.

“Enough of this boy and his sister,” she said. “I want to know what happened to the princess. This is a story about her, yes?”

“Not only about her,” said the Fox Who Is No Fox. “There are many others who—”

He stopped at another terse sigh from the Witch. He tilted his chin back to the sky and continued:

Right away the king sent his men to watch the princess’s sleeping form, so if anyone wanted to revive her, they would find their path through the forest considerably more dangerous than usual, as the soldiers’ orders were to kill on sight anyone who attempted to approach.

Even her own father dared not wake her. If he were the one to interrupt her rest, then the princess would die too. Whoever tries to wake me will die, as will anyone whom that person holds dear.

Days passed, and the crown prince did nothing but pace the castle corridors from dawn to dusk, gnashing his teeth and sliding deeper into grief. He neglected his royal duties and ignored the king, who tried in vain to calm him, to control him. The crown prince had known all along that his wife and his daughter were maculae, keeping their secret hidden with the promise to change things as soon as he sat on the throne. But now that what he had feared most had come to pass, with both his wife and daughter beyond his reach, he could not even convince the king to make an exception for the princess, to let her live a free life as if her secret had never been revealed.

Erasing minds is beyond my power, the king said. Even if I pardoned her, the people would never accept her as their princess. Not now that they know what she is.

Then banish her to the forest, release her to the wilds! The prince paced before the throne, fuming. He was the heir, wasn’t he? And yet, he was powerless to save his own family. How would he someday defend a whole country when he had failed to shield his daughter from his own father? Disown her, deny her, send her away—anything but this.

But the king only sighed. It is too late.

So the prince raged and mourned and walked a thousand miles without ever leaving his castle, wandering the halls like a phantom. But soon his despair began to look like something else, something like determination. All this magic had him thinking strange and sticky thoughts: I can’t save my daughter right now, but what about my wife? The dead queen lay entombed in the castle temple, before the altar of the Wandering One, a god whose left hand symbolized life, and the right hand death. Under cover of night, a week after the princess’s curse, the prince summoned the necromancer from the dungeons.

The necromancer said his spell, and the dead queen opened her eyes—but something was wrong. Her lips were rose-red again, her skin flushed and her lungs gaping, greedily gathering air. Though her awed husband stood by her as she awoke, clasping her unstiffening hand, she could not focus on him, did not even seem to know he was there. Her eyes closed, and her heart slowed—but did not stop.

Before the prince could even kiss her newly warmed lips, she slipped into sleep, dreamless and deep. And though he tried, he could not wake her—not with a touch or a cry or a mighty shake of her shoulders. A sleep like living death had taken her, just as it had taken their daughter.

The prince was distraught, but the necromancer had suspected something like this might happen.

She needs magic, he said. Without her natural magic, she will never truly return to herself.

The prince did not divert his gaze from his wife, not once, not ever. How does she get new magic?

The necromancer hesitated. She will need time to restore it. And this was true—but only for a healthy macula. If someone used too much magic in a day, they would fall tired, and only a long sleep would return them to normal. But if, like the queen, they’d been drained of their blood and their magic entirely—then they were dead. The only hope of the queen coming back to life relied upon new magic being given to her. The necromancer also thought of the very rare spell to transfer magic between maculae—but the spell made the allocation permanent, and he did not know if such a spell would work, so he pushed all these thoughts aside. He feared the prince would command him to gift his magic to the unconscious queen, and to defy the prince was to defy the king—neither was worth his life.

So the prince, without knowing the whole truth, sent the necromancer away, re-clasping the boy’s chains before the guards led him back to the dungeons. The wearied necromancer met his sister in a dream that night and—

“Is that it, then?” The Witch pushed herself to sitting. “What of the dead queen? What of the cursed princess? Is that the end of the tale? With everyone falling asleep?”

The Fox Who Is No Fox sat up too. Their shoulders touched, just barely, and his skin felt like smoke against hers, smooth and singeing. “That is not the end.”

“What, then? Does anyone even try to wake the princess?”

The Fox Who Is No Fox stared straight ahead, sucking in his pallid cheeks. She eyed the swirl of scars on the backs of his hands.

“Yes,” he said, “yes. Two, in fact. The nymph and the gray gorgon. But for that, we will need another night.”

The Witch said nothing, only staring at her homespun sky. The web of the moon had sagged under the weight of a captured comet, a squirming skein of fire hissing like a fly in a snaggle of shimmering strings. The envy-green venom was fading, like a bruise almost healed. The spiders themselves skirted the horizon, slumped with exhaustion.

The Fox Who Is No Fox looked at her. “Do you wish for me to stay?”

The Witch said nothing.

Finally he sighed, and stood. “Do you wish for me to come back?”

Still the Witch said nothing.

“Until tomorrow, then.”

He walked to that place at the edge of the forest where the children and the foxes whirled between worlds. It was so easy for them, wasn’t it? To bounce back into the kaleidoscopic crush of their own lives, worlds with a sun that rose on its own; and trees that did not talk to the wind; and a sky so high, they were unlikely ever to touch it.

For her such a dizzying quest was not possible. She could not leave, and she did not want to. No, she did not.

But she could have stories, and it was almost the same. It was almost like leaving, just for a little while.

“Wait,” the Witch said. “Please.”

The Fox Who Is No Fox stopped.

“Yes?” he asked.

And the immutable, curious, indefatigable Witch said, “Stay.”

Crossing the clearing, he knelt down before her. Without looking up, he murmured, “I will stay as long as you wish.”