I'm a Wild Banshee of the Forest." He chuckled lightly. "My mother was a famous witch. My father was a giant." "What's that?" he said, squinting at the map. "A large, strong man," I answered, wondering where this was going. "An enchanted giant," his mouth quirked to one side as he stared up at me. "He married a water sprite. Is that the part of the story you're interested in?" "She gave birth to you in the woods?" "I was born in the forest," he agreed, "but I was born human. As you've already deduced, she wasn't human. She came to us in our dreams." He laughed. "That was her curse. She didn't know what was going on during those dreams, but eventually the visions left her and she started aging rapidly. In the meantime she'd go from being an old, wrinkled woman to a beautiful young woman within the blink of an eye." My face felt hot. "She'd be there one moment and gone the next," he said, gazing off into the distance. "Once, she appeared as a beautiful woman before me with snow falling around us. She smiled, but the only sound that came out of my mouth was a long, drawn-out moan." "Why didn't you kiss her?" I blurted, embarrassed by his revelation. "We do that when we want to impress people." "I was a virgin when I found her. I had been forced to grow up very quickly. She was beautiful, but I had no clue what to do with her." My cheeks grew warm again. "What happened when you kissed her?" I asked. "I thought she would tell me where the golden nugget of power was that she was charged with guarding." "And instead?" "She died." I shivered, wondering what that felt like. "After we kissed, my father went and looked in the direction in which she had disappeared. He searched everywhere, but he couldn't find her. He looked in the river, he searched the forest, he looked behind the trees, he even looked in the air, but she was gone." He looked into the distance once more. "I saw her a few times after that. Each time she seemed more aged than the time before. She was in our dreams, but I never knew that my father was the one who would appear as a human. He'd be standing outside our bedroom, looking for her, trying to figure out where she'd gone. Sometimes she'd be there, but sometimes she wasn't. Each time he'd come to us in his dream, I felt like a child again." I frowned, thinking of this giant man who protected his giant wife from witches. "Maybe this place was their home," I said. "You said she was a forest sprite. Maybe she lived here." "No, it's too big for a sprite," he said, his blue eyes twinkling. "But she did live in the forest, right here on this property." He smiled at me. "It was our home." "Your home?" I echoed. "We had the very best magic toys, too. Once I had a pair of glass slippers from Wonderland. My mother had a pair of winged slippers." He winked. "One of them was mine, the other was my sister's. I'm sure you know where I'm going with this." "Anastasia," I whispered. "She was your sister?" He nodded, but looked away, a sorrowful expression in his green eyes. "One night my sister and I were playing in the woods. We were outside the house making toys out of twigs when the twigs that my sister held in her hands turned into sticks. She looked at them for a while, then held them out toward me. I thought she was giving them to me, so I grabbed them. But they transformed into needles. She was trying to show me that the magic isn't real. The toys are illusions." He exhaled deeply, the corners of his mouth turned down as he looked down. "The world is not what it appears to be." His eyes lifted to mine, hopeful. "It all started because of a wish," he said. "What did?" "My sister looked at her sticks," he said. "She was about five, I was six. She was trying to make a house with sticks and twigs, but she couldn't figure out how to make it work." He smiled. "I told her she'd just have to wish that it would work, so she was busy making it fly through the air. My dad was right over there in the distance, but I didn't want him to see me. I wished for the sticks to be real sticks and for the house to fly through the air, but when I woke up the next morning, there were sticks and twigs. It was magic and we thought nothing of it." "What happened?" I asked softly, feeling like I should add a magical wand to the story for dramatic effect. "My sister started getting sick. She'd get really sick, like feverish and everything. My mom spent all of her time taking care of her, while I played alone, day in and day out, in the woods and by the lake." He stared at his feet. "My dad didn't even say anything about it. He just went about his business. One day we found her body in the woods, frozen in a block of ice." My heart ached. "We never did find the nugget of gold," he added. "We never even found her body. We didn't know what had happened to her." My heart ached so much it cracked open my chest, revealing the contents of my broken heart. "She lived in a home on an estate," he said, as if reading my mind, "but I never saw it again." I stared at him, not knowing what to say. I could hear my own heart beating, could see it beating through my chest, echoing the beat of my blood. It was the strongest beat I'd ever felt in my life, each throb pounding against my skin until I felt like I was being squeezed in a vise. The pain was so great that I felt like I would vomit if I tried to talk. "I miss her so much," he said, his voice cracking. "She was all I had." His words were so harsh that they sliced at my heart, making it bleed more than it already did. I began crying. I didn't want to, but he took my hand and placed it on his heart. I sobbed as it pounded against my palm. I felt so horrible, but it was the most wonderful pain I had ever felt in my life. It was painful and awful, but it was also beautiful. I cried until he stopped talking. He just sat there and stared at his palms. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "It's just the pain of losing her that never leaves me." He moved to sit down next to me on the bench and held my hand in both of his. I took a deep breath and let go of all of the pain, all of the loss, all of the sorrow. I felt a little bit lighter. It wasn't that I didn't feel anything. I did. I just felt that I could push the pain further away and into the darkness of the night. "I know the pain," I said, my voice steady. "It's a lot, though." He nodded. "I didn't want to think about it, but the pain has to go somewhere," he said. "There's only so much of it a person can take before it starts eating them away. I know that's how my sister felt and I can't be like that." He sighed deeply. "I've never felt anything like this before. This pain has a smell and a taste, almost like raw meat, but with a sweetness at the end." I touched his chest, so thin and pinched. "It doesn't have to be like this," I said softly. "You can let it go, just like the magic did. But you can't give up. You've got to hold on to the pain. It's part of you, even though it hurts, but it's not always going to hurt, you know." He looked at me, like he was seeing me for the first time. "You should see your face," he said. "You look like you're about to start crying again." I laughed, a strange mixture of sorrow and happiness that almost had me crying. "What?" he asked. "It just feels good to talk to you," I replied. "Not many people have this much interest in me. It's nice to be so important." He took a deep breath and sighed again. I couldn't tell what he was thinking. I wanted to reach over and touch his hand, but I didn't know what was going to happen. I had never been alone with a boy before, and now there was this strange sensation all around me. I felt warm and safe. There was nothing else that