She should have known better than to trust a tree. Dana stared out across what she’d been promised was a ‘bare trickle’ of a river and wondered just how long it had been since the oak had been able to see past the pines.

The fox who’d been assigned as her guardian looked at her, then at the half-mile wide river swollen with ice melt. Dana was pretty sure the muted muttering was probably commentary on either her intelligence or her parentage, and was glad the fairy who’d accompanied her earlier was gone. There were some things better left untranslated.