and each evening she returned home refusing to breathe a word of her adventures. This was the condition. They could only be friends (she and Klaus) for as long as she kept silent about their adventures and spoke of him to no one. It was a condition she was more than happy to keep.

The little girl knew very well that Klaus was not of this world. He could make things happen just as he wished, could take them both anywhere she could imagine in the span of a breath, and was so very kind and considerate of her in a way no one had ever been. She knew very well that he could not be human, and yet she revered him all the more for it.

Every afternoon she waited for Klaus beneath the same hawthorn tree with her elegant, green dress and dirty, bare feet, and every afternoon without fail he came. So it was not odd for our young heroine to be lying there when the stupid boy wandered by on his search, the stupid prince whose enchanted kiss would alter their lives (cursing them both). It wasn’t odd, simply unfortunate.