All the unsuspecting strangers she brushed up against ignored her like one ignores the rain. For once she felt empowered to go unnoticed, like she was winning the little game they all unknowingly played.

The crowd had come to a halt, packed in like canned sardines. It was evident they all stood before some sort of stage lined with torches and a backdrop of a painted forest. A man holding a hollowed out, ivory horn stood above them, put the instrument to his lips, blew and out came that sound that beckoned them all to it. The crowd went quiet. A portly man that smelled of sweat and drink beside Snow was so enraptured that he didn't notice his mug had begun to slip, the contents spilling out onto his boots.

She pulled on Mat's pantleg and the skeleton peered down, but in a quiet enforced by so many people, her voice escaped her.

"Here," he said, "get on my shoulders," and grabbed her waist.

"Don't be a baby," he grunted as she tried to push him away, then lifted her off the ground and hoisted her up over his head.

There she saw that she wasn't the only one nor the oldest perched on another's shoulders for a better look.

A stage, it was. Performers who were unmistakably supposed to be faeries, rushed onstage and huddled around a fire made of painted wood. Dressed in tatters, they wore masks with severe underbites and low brows, their skin splotched with nondescript runes. Off stage, extras shook a thin piece of sheet metal that struck up a low rumble, and right on cue—

"What's that noise?" bellowed the largest of the three faeries who shoved a finger in his ear and wiggled it around.

"There!" hissed the woman who wore her hair in thick braids through which some many somethings were moving. She pointed to the sky. "Something wicked this way comes."

A tapestry of a big black hole was dragged across the stage and two men, one woman dressed in burlap sacks painted grey, a crude attempt to replicate armor, with wooden airships around their torsos tore through the cloth. The scene was so childish the girl laughed only to be silenced by a multitude of glares.

The faeries were quick to pick up spears and turn them on the newcomers who stepped out of their airships with dramatized poise and threw their hands up in surrender.

"We mean you no harm!" said a man with high cheekbones and a manicured beard the color of sand. "Please, we've journeyed far to escape a planet in distress—"

The burly faery with the square jaw Snow took to be the natural leader prodded the man's breastplate with his spear.

"What is this place?" the human woman with a hangdog face asked dreamily.

"Helithica," said the female faery, voice harsh and sibilant. "From where do you come?"

Squinting, Snow tried to make sense of her moving hair until a very real snake raised its head from her crown to lick at the cool night air and a collective gasp rolled over the crowd.

"Earth," said the third human with copper hair tied back in a loose plait, casting a disgruntled look at the woman's serpentine hair. "It's as Garthick says; our planet, it's torn asunder—"

"Go," the big faery with the spear said, poking Garthick in the chest. "Go back."

"Please, I beg you—there's nothing left to return to."

"Yes, we are at your mercy," Hangdog said, falling to her knees, hands clasped together in a show of invocation.

Garthick did the same with a low bow, then punched his companion with a muttered "Zackariha" in the crook of his knee when he hesitated to follow suit.

The big faery raised his spear above his head and another gasp escaped the crowd, but his female companion was quick to intervene.

"Alaster, let them be for now. I want to hear more of this planet." She took him to the side where it became clear the others could not overhear. "Just look at the contraptions they rode in on like shooting stars," she hissed, eyeing the ships. "Let them teach us their wonders so that we might take them for ourselves."

"You talk too much, Melisthane," he huffed, accentuating his underbite. "My spear is hungry, and they look tender enough to eat."

"Later. First, let's play."

A tapestry of a setting sun was rushed across the stage, behind which the actors exited, followed by that of a rising sun and the rustling of a scene change. The cloth was whisked away to reveal grassy hills with windows, or rather, dome-shaped houses with gardens sprouting from the roofs.

Garthick and Zackariha reemerged, dressed in plain linen shirts and trousers.

The faery who had kept quiet in the first scene, who was slim and slouched like he couldn't be bothered to stand up straight, entered last with a thick roll of parchment under one arm and a quill in hand.

"Good day, Garth."

"Good day, Umber—say, I don't suppose you've seen my wife Annabelle?"

"Can't say that I have."

Garthick contemplated this, stroking his beard.

"What brings you to our tiny slice of Helithica?" Zackariha asked with a sugar-coated smile.

"A decree."

"Another?"

"Indeed."

"And pray tell, what's this one say?"

"Oh, only that you'll give up mining, felling trees, hunting, gardening—"

"But how will we survive?!"

"Zackariha, have we not graced you with magicked houses that sprout all your Earthly eats?"

"Yes, but—"

"Have we not shown you how to harvest what nature sheds?"

"Yes, but—"

"Have we not provided every single thing that you could ever need to live comfortably?"

"Everything but our dignity!"

Umber backhanded Zackariha who turned ready for a fight if not for Garthick who placed his hand firmly on Zackariha's chest, eyes on Umber.

"Truly, you have not seen my wife?"

Giving no indication that he had heard, Umber took a step back, and with a flick of his wrist, the parchment unraveled to the floor and rolled and rolled. He held out the quill.

"So you see, you have all that you could ever need," Umber said with a dignified air. "Sign the decree, and we won't whisk it all away."

Garthick gave Zackariha a dramatic dose of side-eye, then plucked the quill from Umber's hand and signed while his companion sulked.

Passing back Umber's quill, Garthick held up a single finger of inquiry and said: "About Annabelle—" but Umber had already snatched back the parchment and was on his way. The hangdog woman leapt out from behind a hovel with a giggle and grabbed Umber, who went down with a wicked smile; neither Garthick nor Zackariha seemed to notice.

"Mark my words, you've sold our souls to devils," Zackariha said as Umber and Annabelle began to make a racket similar to that of the couple outside Mad Hare.

Gasps and giggles rippled through the crowd.

Mat's grip tightened on her ankles.

Cue another scene change.

Annabelle waddled onstage looking very much pregnant, and Garthick puffed out his chest, looking like a proud papa.

"Annabelle, my darling, you're glowing with our good fortune!"

"Your seed never bore fruit before," Zackariha sneered.

"Yes, perhaps it's the clean atmosphere!" Garthick said, cheerily.

Groans and barks of laughter burst from the audience.

"Who said it's yours?" Annabelle said behind her hand with a knowing eye on the crowd before she let out a cry and went to her knees, clutching at her stomach.

"Anna, what's wrong?"

"It's time, the baby's coming!" Zackariha said.

Both men rushed to stand between her and the crowd, making no move to help Annabelle whose scream rose to a crescendo until she gave a final shriek and something green shot into Garthick's hands. With an oath he dropped it—a painted dwarf in a mask that ran circles around the actors while those in the crowd shrieked and laughed.

"I-I don't understand," Garthick said as Umber entered.

The dwarf leapt into the faery's arms with a shrill: "Daddy!"

Whoops sprung up from the crowd amidst a rush of boos.

Spright for a woman who had just given birth, Annabelle leapt up and the happy family exited, arm in arm, the dwarf hooked between them, legs swinging.

Zackariha saddled up to the crestfallen Garthick with a snide, "Look at you. You've lost it all—your ships, your wife, the people's respect! Will you continue to slave away the rest of your days, or help me take back what's ours?"

A flurry of tapestries opened up on a clean-shaven Garthick, shoulders square, all good humor in him gone. Back in his burlap armor not fitted with a cascading cape, he stood on a pedestal to address the crowd.

"We came to Helithica a poor people—on our knees, we begged the faeries to let us stay, but we knew not then that their generosity came at a price. Too steep a price!"

The crowd gave a collective shout and their fists shot up into the air. Even the children on their parents' shoulders cried out.

Spittle flying, Garthick ranted about the faeries unjust philosophies and likened the humans to sheep trapped in a wolves' den, ignorant of the inevitable slaughter.

"We grinned and bared it as the rot set in," he said, tapping his own temple like a lunatic brimming with conspiracy theories, "while they conducted their tests on our ships and slept with our lovers, planting their seeds to sprout nefarious half-breeds to crew their own army and snuff us out!"

This time, the shout stretched long and sonorous and was met by a swelling rumble—the crowd was stomping its feet.

"If we let them have their way, they'd be gods over us!"

The crowd went wild.

"No more."

The noise was thunderous.

"Today, we take back what is ours!"

Another wave of tapestries and faeries suspended by a web of ropes to wooden Xs were carried and propped up at the front of the stage.

Snow had thought the crowd couldn't get any louder; she was wrong.

Garthick and Zackariha entered, looking quite pleased.

The faeries hissed as Zackariha goaded them and Garthick bellowed: "Light 'em up!" raising his arm like a king right before the axe drops on an execution block.

The crowd cheered, whooped, whistled and applauded making Snow's head ring and her skin curdle.

Extras rushed to the sides of the stage and lit two tinder piles stacked high into the shape of teepees soaked in pitch that went up faster than a dry field catches lightning. The smell of smoke that had already infiltrated every niche in town grew two-fold. With a cough, Snow pulled her cloak over her nose.

The faeries screeched and shook as if an energy too powerful to be contained tore through their bodies.

"Look!" Zackariha said, pointing up at the airships that were being hoisted up by ropes on pulleys, shaking as they roared to life.

"Please, no more!" a faery squealed.

Scene change.

Black tapestries painted with stars waved violently as pilots shot across the pretend sky like children playing sky pirates. They landed, pulled out their wooden swords, and faeries rushed out of the night to attack.

The crowd's banter, whoops and boos rode the tide of battle. In the end, the stage ran black and scarlet with streamers and it was the faeries' heads (crudely painted and hollowed out watermelons) that rolled.

Scene change.

Garthick rushed out on stage in great distress, Zackariha at his heels.

"What plagues you? We're winning the war!"

"No," Garthick said, rounding on him. "We've killed the most men," he said, stumbling over the last word, "but there's more—where is the council hiding?!"

"General," a soldier said, sidling up to Garthick. "We found a bonespook scuttling around outside the camp."

Two soldiers wrestled the perp onstage: Umber, his clothes torn, hair untidy and nose bleeding a black blood. Mat gave his head an irritable shake and Snow realized she was digging her fingernails into his scalp. They shoved Umber to the ground and on his knees he crouched, head bent in front of General Garthick, but it was Zackariha who spoke first: "Well, looky here, it's the magic man with the robust—"

A searing glance from Garthick silenced him but didn't prevent a laugh from rippling through the crowd.

"Well met, old friend," Garthick said, removing a dagger from his belt to rest against Umber's neck.

"You domesticated cretin, you think I fear death?" Umber said with a lopsided grin.

"I can hardly wait to find out, but first, tell us where Alastor is."

"I'd never betray my kind."

Garthick gestured offstage and lackeys in burlap wrestled the dwarf onto the stage.

"Tell us, or the boy dies."

"He's Annabelle's son—"

"Yes, but he's no son of mine, and he's long outlived her."

One of the soldiers restraining the dwarf pricked him in the neck with a blade. Black blood rode the clean edge to the tip in some parlor trick.

"Fine," Umber snarled, "but only because you don't stand a chance do I tell you that they lie in wait to ambush you in the Holóspiritus."

"Of course!" Zackariha said, driving his fist into his palm. "The enchanted forest at the heart of Helithica."

"Kill the halfling," Garthick ordered with a bored sweep of his hand.

A soldier swung his sword and another threw a melon, carved and painted in the dwarf's likeness, which clunked and rolled as the actual dwarf pulled his shirt over his head.

Umber screamed in fury.

"We fly to the Holóspiritus," Garthick ordered with a sweep of his cape.

The scene ended with a fake Umber head rolling across the stage and out into the crowd that proceeded to throw it around, each toss causing whatever was inside to pinwheel and hit bystanders in the face.

"It's blackberry jam!" someone cried to another round of laughs.

The backdrop of the luscious forest that bore witness to the humans' arrival had returned with Garthick and his army.

"You heard the bonespook," Zackariha said. "It's a trap."

"A trap we know about. We can use that knowledge to our advantage. I with a few trusted men will go in; I'm the one Alastor wants. You will captain the fleet—"

"Not a chance. We crash landed on this hellhole together. We're gonna eradicate its vermin together."

The duo shared a long, stoic look that made Snow want to gag, then Garthick nodded and turned to the next nearest soldier. "Leave no tree line unseen. Alastor's not one to half-bake grand plans; when the faeries and their weremutts run out to escape whatever trap they've laid, shoot them down."

The soldier bowed and took his leave. Mat turned, seeming to want to do the same.

"I want to stay," Snow hissed, pulling on a lock of his hair.

Not a body budged to let him pass. The portly man beside them gave Mat a shove, and he rigidly about-faced.

Garthick turned to his soldiers. "We do this for the future of mankind. Today we die, so that those once known as Earthlings survive and can be born again as free Helithicans."

An eerie silence fell over the crowd.

Garthick led them into the forest—actors painted and dressed as trees, their arms covered in leaves—until they reached a clearing. Faeries waded out to greet them with the one named Alastor leading the throng.

"Garthick!" he cried, arms open wide as if the two were old friends. "Look at you. You arrived in Helithica a starry-eyed boy, now you're a man, here to demand all things not yours—"

"Yes, you humans have truly proven yourselves predictable," Melisthane hissed at Alastor's side.

Zackariha eyed her with a predatory grin. "I can't wait to slice you open to see how you make that sound—"

"Enough talk!" Alastor bellowed.

The big faery removed the spear hitched to his back and thrusted it at Garthick who sidestepped, removed a sword from the sheath at his belt, swung it over his head like the gladiators of old and brought it down on Alastor who blocked it with a hearty laugh.

The crowd's verbal cues punctuated every violent arc of Garthick's sword and thrust of Alastor's spear.

Zackariha tried to lunge at Melisthane at the very start, but others were quick to get in the way. Wielding two swords, he was so light on his toes that his weapons were a blur as he cut his way through the horde.

Scarlet streamers shot out over the crowd every time a warrior fell, mortally wounded. Melisthane threw fiery streamers after every meaningful swish and flick of her wrists, and every warrior on the receiving end gave a piercing scream and wriggled as if licked by fire. With every step, lunge and slash that brought Zackariha closer, Melisthane waded further into the moving bodies until she clamored atop a rock and shouted out over the battlefield, veins in her neck popping at the sheer force of her voice: "APÓLYTOS KÓLASI!"

A rumble pricked Snow's ears. It reverberated up Mat into her own legs as humans and faeries leapt toward the center of the stage to avoid singeing their backsides; a piece of the stage had been lowered and now very real flames shot up through the floorboards, forming a ring of fire around the battlefield.

Zackariha finally reached Melisthane but it was she who looked upon him with a crazed glee. It was easy to imagine flames dancing in her eyes as he swung his sword at her neck—the actress ducked behind the rock and Zackariha hauled up a prop by its snaky hair. With a great battle cry, he brandished it at the crowd.

Distracted by the spectacle, Alastor was slow on the uptake and quickly found himself on the lethal end of Garthick's sword. A black streamer arced over his head. He grinned and pulled the sword and its handler close until, with a swift thrust, he impaled Garthick with his spear.

Alastor spat something in a pretend tongue with what was probably blackberry jam trailing down his chin, then fell against Garthick in death.

At the sight of their fallen leader, the faeries tried to bolt and leapt over the ring of fire only to be gunned down by the humans. A man on the side of the stage was throwing little black balls into the fire that exploded in showers of sparks evidently meant to mimic gunfire over the jeers of the crowd.

Extras ran up to throw red and orange streamers—fire fell from the sky, consuming limbs and boughs. The trees lost their leaves and the actors turned their backs, painted black, to the crowd.

Something ugly clicked in Snow as she realized she was witnessing the Burnt Forest's inception.

As flaming branches fell like fiery spears without discrimination on the remaining warriors, the humans, too, made a run for it, and in the chaos that is war, were mistaken for their adversaries and gunned down by their comrades. At this, furious gasps erupted from the crowd and charged lulls plagued pockets of onlookers.

Zackariha unskewered Garthick and died by his side, consumed by fire.

The curtains closed and with them the crowd went silent. But no one budged.

The audience buzzed with anticipation as the torches were extinguished and the flames beneath the stage put out.

The curtains opened on a single woman standing as still as a pond that knew no breeze against a tapestry of soot and skeletal trees. Her long black hair and long black gown shown as downy greys in the moonlight.

Her lips parted with a sad song about humanity's sacrifice, a song Snow overheard a woman beside them tell her little one was The Dirge of Garthick.

It was one they all seemed to know; the crowd joined in at the second chorus.

Triumph to ashes, Lord Garthick advances

A warrior among demons was he, was he

The curtains closed again and the crowd began to murmur and break away.

Snow fought the urge to rip her mask off, her little game of rubbing elbows with strangers a forgotten farce as Mat made his way through the ebb and flow of moving bodies, back toward the squat building with the rough-hewn cobbled wall. In the hustle, Snow could see what Mat seemed not to: a man with his back against that wall, not dressed in the same getups as everyone else but in a long, deep-purple cloak, hood pulled up and the light from the fires lending a glare to his half-moon spectacles. Snow gave a warning tug on Mat's shoulder and he pulled up short, cut a sudden right and made a beeline for Mad Hare. Snow watched the man over her shoulder as he slipped around the last corner this side of Myst.

Where the crowd thinned, Mat hoisted her off his shoulders.

"I really don't remember the play being that dark," he said sheepishly.

"They gained the whole world—what about the faeries?" she bristled, visibly shaking. It bothered her all the more that she didn't quite understand why she was so bothered; it was a silly play.

"Life isn't fair," he said after some time, "and the conquerors are the ones who get to tell the stories."

They're not all gone, you know, she wanted to say in fit of anger, but it seemed a secret bigger than herself, too big to be wielded as an argument against a stupid celebration.

It seemed an unspoken agreement between them that they had both seen enough. He guided her back down the main stretch and she let him; she had lost her appetite to know these people better.

As the crowds thinned and they got ever closer to the edge of town, Snow spotted those same children playing pin-the-tail-on-the-faery.

"Why do I always have to be the faery?" wailed the smallest boy, tears in his eyes.

"Because you're the ugliest," said a big boy with a mess of red curls and a splatter of freckles on his face.

The others snickered.

"Run," Freckles said and pushed the boy who took off with a pained groan while the others covered their eyes and started to count: "1, 2, 3...."

In blind anger, Snow rushed the bigger boy, ripped the bushy tail out of his hand—

"Hey, what—"

--and finding a very real wooden tack at the end, shoved it into his chest and punched it hard for good measure.

Freckles stumbled and gave a startled cry as Mat ripped her up by the armpits and took off, not caring about the people he bumped into along the way.

"What'd you do that for?!" he said angrily as he set her down in the weeds just off the main drag out of town.

"He was being mean!" she said, crossing her arms.

"Yeah, kids suck, it's kind of their thing."

"I'd say adults are pretty sucky, too," she spat

He ran a hand through his hair and another lick of unreasonable anger lanced her as she suddenly wished he would take off that stupid mask.

"Yeah, they can—"

They both went stock still as a mangy dog with one ear sticking straight up trotted up to the girl and began sniffing about her cloak. She waited for it to freak like the horses, but at the wag of its tail, put out a hand. It licked her fingers before quickly losing interest and trotting off into town.

"Why wasn't it afraid?" she asked, studying the glisten of its saliva on her fingers.

"Too stupid, probably," Mat said and grabbed her hand, hauling her off in the direction of the cottage.

Back in her bedroom, they sat on the edge of the bed, her mask shoved under her pillow; she couldn't bear to look at it. Mat was turning his over in his hands.

"In hindsight, maybe introducing you to more people during FestiFae wasn't the way to do it. I didn't go last year, but that's really not how I remember it."

"How much of it is true?" Snow asked.

He snorted. "Likely not more than the geography," he said and both looked out toward the Burnt Forest neither could see in the dark.

Snow closed the shutters, then fell back on the bed with a dramatic sigh. Despite the horrors, she could not help but feel they had gotten away with something grand. Every time before, she had stepped out of hiding on the eve of something terrible—her brother leaving, her brother dying—but this time, she had made it back unscathed. During that play, with Mat's hands on her ankles in that sea of people so eager to see those they had killed die again, it had felt like the two of them against the world.

To be back together alone in the cottage with the world none the wiser felt like an odd little victory.

"They really think they got them all."

Only when Mat asked "What?" did she realize she'd said it aloud.

"How do the humans know all the faeries are dead?"

"Because not a single one's been spotted in more than eighty orbits."

"How do you know?"

His mouth gaped and he chuckled. "I guess I don't then, do I?" he said not as an omission but in good humor. "Seriously, it was a stupid play put on by backcountry loons. Don't give it a second thought."

Not trusting herself, she looked and studied her toes, harboring asecret she had no plan to share.