The forest was deep, fey and filled with marvels. Jie had not yet been outside its bounds, had seen the sky through clearings in the trees and peeking through leaves dappled in layers of sunlight, but spirits came and went as they will.

She crouched half under and half tangled inside a bush thick with young spring leaves, hardly daring to breathe, as a tiny translucent-blue dragonet coiled about their pile of berries and scolded a thieving magpie in a voice like distant, clattering windchimes.