Peaches

that can always be found near the animals people keep.
    Humans have been known to kill faeries and use us as festive, glowing decorations for certain rituals. But the Sky Eaters and a few other tribes considered the practice barbaric. I rarely felt nervous at all as I sat and ate among them, and it was always fun to observe them. They were colorful, for one thing. The women grew their hair long and fixed it elaborately, and the men—Tik Tok the shaman being the exception—cut theirs short. They had a great tradition of artistry, and made themselves beautiful clothes. They tried to listen to the gods in the trees and the clouds and the water, though they could never hear clearly exactly what they were saying.
    It was during one of these visits that I first saw Tiger Lily.
    The children were teasing her. That, in itself, wasn’t what captured my attention; in the typical village, children are generally almost as cruel as adults. What caught my eye was her stillness. Her absolute stony composure, as if the village could have been burning and she wouldn’t have noticed or cared. She was like a dark cloud. She stood, not eight years old yet, black hair disheveled and down to her waist, arms crossed over her chest.
    The taunting escalated to pushing until finally a girl, Magnolia Bud, pushed her against a vat of cool, day-old turkey broth, and all the children suddenly joined in to hoist her into the pot, then close the lid down on her. Magnolia Bud then sat on the lid while all the children whispered excitedly to each other and the girl underneath struggled and then went silent. A group of crows nearby got caught up in the excitement and squawked at the children shrilly.
    Finally, hearing the commotion, a woman (Aunt Agda, I learned later) appeared, and the children ran away. Not knowing the turkey pot contained a child, she then went off to her chores.
    For several moments, there was no sound. And then the lid finally moved, and Tiger Lily climbed out, gasping for breath, shaking and exhausted. She walked home quietly. Tik Tok helped her wipe the broth and strips of turkey from her face. And when Magnolia Bud was found two days later on the village path, having choked to death on a piece of turkey from that night’s soup, and with a crow sitting on her hip like an omen, the children—and indeed most of the adults—decided that she was guarded by crows.
    Whether that was true or not, I couldn’t hear deep enough into her mind to know. But one afternoon, after the children had called her crow girl and run away for fear of her, I watched her slip a raven feather into her hair. After that day, she kept it in.
    From then on, I was a goner. A devoted fan. I don’t know what Tiger Lily must have thought of me. I didn’t seem to be on her mind at all. She must have noticed my increasingly constant presence fluttering along behind her, or up above her, or perching on one of her tassels, but it was as if she accepted me as part of the scenery.
    And I wasn’t the only one to cling to her unnoticed. There was also Pine Sap. He’d been born skinny and a bit asymmetrical. One of his hazel eyes always seemed to squint a little, making his face appear asymmetrical too. Try as he might, he couldn’t work up the bloodlust that made the other boys flourish on hunts—he was always too busy thinking things through. Somehow as children he and Tiger Lily had been shuttled together—both misfits or, as I liked to think of them, strange exotic birds, one too fierce to be hemmed in as a girl, and the other too hesitant to be respected as a boy. Since then, she had never shaken him, though she often tried to. Still, Pine Sap wasn’t the type whose ego was wounded easily. His admiration for Tiger Lily was hard and fast and stuck, and failed to waver even when she ignored him completely.
    Often when I flew past the village I saw his mother, out in front of their hut calling for him, her dark bushy hair all askew, her voice hoarse from another fight with Pine Sap’s father. Pine Sap would arrive, quiet and eyes to the ground, and wait for her to pour her anger onto him. “Look at how crooked you are! You are the shape of those crooked poplars up on the cliffs!” or “How did I produce such a strange creature!” She showed her love for him by trying to shrink him in public and private. And Pine Sap listened calmly, and nodded his head from time to time to let her know she didn’t go unheard. It was almost as if he was giving her