At the edge of the quiet forest, where the meadow grass grew long and the first fireflies were just beginning to blink, Fern the unicorn stood very still and looked up.
Something was wrong in the cedar tree.
Ember the young phoenix was up there in the high branches — all ruffled and bright and embarrassed — tangled in the strings of a yellow kite that had blown in from somewhere over the hills. The strings wound round her tail feathers like a cat's cradle gone wrong, and the more Ember fidgeted, the tighter they pulled.
*Gently, gently,* Fern thought, and she walked into the forest.
The strings led the way. They were blue and orange and green, winding through the ferns like a trail someone had left on purpose, looping over mossy roots and under a fallen branch that smelled of rain and old bark. Fern followed them slowly, her hooves quiet on the soft ground.
She heard Ember before she saw her — a small, cross sound, like a kettle that hasn't quite decided to boil.
Then she saw Pip.
Pip was a small green dragon, very solemn, crouched beneath the cedar tree with his chin on his knees. He had been trying to help by breathing tiny careful flames at the knots. The knots were fine. The kite was slightly singed. Pip looked at Fern with enormous apologetic eyes.
"I thought heat would help," he said quietly.
"It was a very good idea," said Fern, and she meant it.
*Gently, gently.* Fern looked at the knots. They weren't impossible knots. They were just — shy. Pulled too tight because something had yanked at them too fast. She knew that feeling.
She lowered her horn to the first string.
She breathed in slowly — cedar and cool night air — and rested the very tip of her horn against the knot. She didn't pull. She just waited. And the string loosened, the way a fist unclenches in warm water, and curled to the ground like a ribbon that had decided to rest.
*Gently, gently.* She moved to the next one.
Pip watched with his mouth open. One of his tiny ears twitched. Above them, Ember went very still, her feathers beginning to settle from ruffled orange back to their proper warm amber.
One by one, the strings came free. Each one fell with the softest little sigh.
And then the kite lifted.
It rose slowly, tugged by a breath of wind Fern could feel moving through her mane, and it floated up through the branches and caught — gently, perfectly — on a high fork in the cedar, where it hung like a little yellow flag against the dark leaves.
Ember shook out her feathers. She glowed. The whole cedar grove went warm and amber around her, and a sleepy owl somewhere above them made one surprised sound and went quiet again.
Pip looked at the kite, then at Fern, then at the kite again. "Will it be all right up there?" he asked.
"I think it likes it," said Fern.
She walked home through the soft dark, the cedar smell still caught in her mane, her hooves slow and sure on the path through the ferns. Behind her, the grove glowed amber and still. Ahead, the meadow fireflies blinked on and off, on and off, like tiny patient stars.
The kite rested in the high branches, yellow and quiet, like a folded wish the forest had decided to keep.
