1. KING

Once upon a time there was a king who had a daughter that he loved very much, and when she disappeared, he called you to the throne room and requested your services.

“Tell me what happened to her,” he said. It had been three days since the Crown Princess Jieqiong had last been seen.

You were a prophet, which meant your job was to give advice on what wars should be waged and what crops should be planted, not to find missing daughters. You reminded him of this.

“I deal in futures,” you said. “Not in pasts. I can’t know what happened.”

Your voice broke, like you were a young girl again. The king’s mouth creased, downwards, like he was remembering that time too, years before you’d come into your power. When you’d just been a companion to his daughter, a friend instead of a prophet, and you gave her stories instead of prophecies for her amusement.

“The future then,” he said.

This, you could do. There was nothing fixed about the future, but you could search for the most probable outcomes. You could look for Jieqiong in your scrying mirror. You could dream that she might come back home.

Sometimes, a prophecy was just another kind of story: If you told them like they were the truth, that could be enough to believe in them.

“I’ll prepare the materials,” you said.

All magic was clumsy when unfocused. The mirror would just be a mirror if you couldn’t put your heart into pulling the future from it. You wouldn’t have enough energy to conjure up the prophecy without the herbs you’d imbue with power, to be used to create an amplifying circle around yourself.

As you were bowing and leaving the room, the king asked, “She truly didn’t say anything to you? I know you were close.”

“She didn’t,” you said, which was a lie. Which was another type of story, all on its own.

2. GUARDS

Once upon a time there were royal guards, and you really didn’t know how they kept their posts, because they were incompetent to a staggering degree.

Sorry. You had a bad habit of losing objectivity where Jieqiong was concerned.

In the days you spent siphoning power into the herbs, the king sent half his knights to search. The rest of the guard compared stories. They were calling it a kidnapping.

“I was at the watchtower,” one guard said. “Nobody passed through the main entrance.”

“Nobody left her chambers,” another said. “I was outside the entire night, except for right before dawn, but Lin was there immediately to cover my shift.”

“Nobody passed by,” must’ve-been-Lin confirmed.

The king turned to you. He looked like he hadn’t slept since Jieqiong’s disappearance. “Yue, does it seem like there could have been magic involved?”

“I’m a prophet,” you reminded him, because your magic was restricted to its niche, and also you’d have said anything to protect Jieqiong. But the worst part was that you truly didn’t know what she’d done. You hadn’t fully believed that she could manage without your help.

“She could have left on her own,” one of the guards finally ventured. “Isn’t there a horse missing from the stables?”

“But why would she go?” the king asked, exhausted.

Nobody had the heart to answer him. He was a good king and a good father, all things considered. But a king had to be a king first.

3. KNIGHT

Once upon a time, there was a prince.

There were many princes, actually, come from neighboring kingdoms to forge alliances, but honestly this particular prince wasn’t important—it was his knight that caught Jieqiong’s eye.

You’d seen her through many seasons of life, over the years. You’d never seen her like this, though you’d often wished that she’d look at you like that.

The knight was like you, gifted; he showed you and Jieqiong at the welcome feast. He waved a hand and the flower in his other one disappeared from sight, rendered invisible.

“You’re a mageknight,” you said. You turned and saw Jieqiong looking at him with a pleased, shy interest.

“I picked up on some things, over the years,” he said. “From my travels.”

Jieqiong wasn’t allowed outside the palace, for good reason—it had taken years of war to gain the kingdom’s safety, and the king tried to give Jieqiong her freedom within its walls. But even then, it seemed her whole life was curtailed in borders, in polite distances and courtly etiquette. You’d seen how she held herself back in all situations, for fear of what gossip could spread. You’d always treasured that she spoke freely to you.

Jieqiong tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Tell me more,” she said.

The proprietary distance between them closed as the night went on. For weeks after, Jieqiong was not the same as she’d been before they’d met. She received letters that she refused to let you read.

4. PRINCESS

Once upon a time there was a princess that you’d known since you were just girls, and when she disappeared it tore a pit in your heart you didn’t know how to fill.

Before Jieqiong left, she shook you awake in the dark and said, “I need your help. When my father asks, don’t tell him where I’ve gone. He knows we’re close.”

“I don’t know where you’re going,” you said, bleary, and Jieqiong said, “I’m leaving to see the world.”

Now you were awake. “You’re not serious,” you said. “You’ll die.” There were the cliffs that lined the kingdom’s territory. The beasts in the woods, kept out by the kingdom walls. “If you disappear, how will we know what happened?”

“Isn’t not knowing better than knowing for sure that I’m dead?” Jieqiong retorted. “Can’t there be hope in that?”

“Is he involved? That knight?”

Jieqiong flushed.

“If you asked, I’m sure your father would let you marry him,” you said.

“But I can’t keep living like this,” Jieqiong said. “Always asking. If I keep waiting, the walls around me just get closer. Why can I do less now that I’m a princess than when I was just a girl? Yue, please.”

“Tell me you won’t go,” you said.

“I can tell you and it won’t make any difference,” Jieqiong said, so you knew she was leaving, for real.

It was possible she could still change her mind. Selfishly, you wanted the knight to have ensorcelled her. But you also wanted her to be free, and for that to happen, then she needed to want to go of her own volition.

Mostly, you just wanted her to be happy.

“I won’t tell,” you said, and Jieqiong’s entire face brightened with relief. “What do you need?”

“Tell me which route to take?” she asked.

You did the best with your mirror, though you didn’t have your herbs. You hoped it would be enough.

“If you make it through the woods before sunrise,” you said, “you should be safe. But I can’t see further than that.”

“My sweet girl,” Jieqiong said, putting her arms around you, “thank you.”

5. PROPHET

Once upon a time, you were just yourself, which meant you dealt in futures and couldn’t change the past, and no matter how you reframed it, you were never going to get Jieqiong back.

But the thing about stories was that you could tell them like they were the truth, and maybe that would be enough to believe in them. A retelling was a form of reshaping. A new perspective was a way of slanting the details, of turning a thing to show all its sides.

This was another way to say that retelling was a way of lying. But maybe if you said it right enough, you could turn it into truth.

When it came time to perform your scrying, the king had his guards bring your mirror to the throne room.

You almost didn’t want to look. What if Jieqiong was dead? Would it be your fault for not having done more?

But the future was not fixed, and you had appearances to keep up. There were ways to look without looking. There were ways in which Jieqiong could be out there, alive.

You broke the circle of herbs on the ground with your foot, unnoticed. You stepped up to the mirror.

“What do you see?” the king asked, and suddenly he wasn’t a king—he was a father, and Jieqiong just a daughter instead of a princess. “Is she—tell me, is she okay?”

This is what you told him:

6. THE TRUTH?

Once upon a time there was a princess who fell in love, the kind of love true enough to make you brave. This isn’t to say that she was unhappy before, or that she didn’t want to stay; this is to say that she found something worth leaving for, which is all anyone can ask for. And she went for it and she was happy. By god, she was happy.