The crowd erupts with loud cheers, and a crush of faeries surrounds me. They're speaking English, but there are so many questions at once I can't focus on one long enough to answer it. The profusion of attention overwhelms my senses, and I can't breathe. Jonah hurries to my side and extricates me from my admirers.

The party begins immediately upon the King's announcement, and Jonah is steering me away from the commotion. The trees are having a good time, singing and gyrating to the music. I never knew trees could be so much fun.

When we walk a good distance away from the festivities, the trees in our vicinity stop singing and shush each other like a class of kindergarteners. When it's quiet, one giant oak says, "Agatha, come sit under our branches."

I want to run back to Queens so I can tell everyone about the trees, and the fairies, and Jonah, but then I remember that I have no one to tell. What will happen to me if I admit that I'm not a Knight?

I sit down on a pile of leaves and lean against the oak's trunk. Jonah is looking at me with round, concerned eyes. No one has ever looked at me that way before. It makes me self-conscious.

"Why does a tree have so many voices, and how do all the voices know to say the same thing? And why can I hear them and others can't? And why is it such a high pitch? I always thought that a great big tree like this one would have a deep, wise voice," I say while imitating the deep tone.

The oak laughs.

"Humans can hear the trees. They just forgot to listen. Think of the stories where trees talk. Why do you think humans put faces on drawings of trees? The reason you hear many voices is because a tree is a multitude of parts working together for one goal. When a tree speaks, all of those parts are joining together to form words. That's why you hear all of their voices."

He stops talking like his thoughts took him away, and then he looks up. "I don't know why it's so shrill. I guess that's just the way they're made."

Thinking about something other than what King Ohad said relieves some of my stress, but now that our conversation has run its course, I don't want to talk anymore. I want to sit in the silence of the trees with Jonah on the grass next to me.

After some time passes, Jonah touches my leg. "Agatha, have you ever been to a party thrown in your honor?"

"No."

"Well, there's one right over there. Do you want to go and see what it's like?"

I was so lost in my thoughts that I forgot about the party. I've never been to a party, let alone as the guest of honor. I'm suddenly so excited that I want to run over there.

Instead, we walk quickly. The faeries look my way but none of them approach me right away. Jonah seats me at a table in the corner. I'm served an overabundance of strange food, all of which is delicious with the exception of some yellow beans. We eat and drink and I watch the faeries dancing. I've never felt so happy in my life. The party goes on for hours with all sorts of faeries clamoring for my attention. It's exhausting, and when I start to fade, a sweet faerie named Hetty informs me that I'll be staying at her home.

I nod my head. She nods back, but she's looking up. Someone grabs me under my armpits and lifts me off the ground. I try to scream, but I'm drawing air in, instead of out, so I make an odd noise and choke on my spit.

"I'm Zeal, Hetty's mate," says the deep voice of my abductor.

We're flying at high speed, and the only thing that's keeping me from plummeting to my death is the strength of his fingers. I want to get down. And I want a safety harness!

"Breathe!" he exclaims with a laugh. He says it three more times before I do. "Now, open your eyes!"

I want to shout No! but I'm unable to speak. I wish he'd grabbed me differently because I want to cover my eyes with my hands, as if the added protection will make this less terrifying.

"Come on. Open them. I won't let you down until you look around."

I want to yell at him for putting me through this horror and then fight my way loose from his grasp. Unfortunately, I'm not a temper tantrum kind of girl, and I certainly am not a fighter. I do what I'm told because I always do what I'm told. I open my eyes.

The brightly colored trees whirl past my feet. We're flying so fast, they're more like streaks of color than individual trees. I'm seeing the Manhattan skyline as no other human being has ever seen it: soft, shimmering indigo shadows, with gleaming points of light dotted throughout and merging with the stars. The brilliant shapes erupt from a sea of radiant trees, set against the backdrop of the purplish-blue sky and highlighting the beautiful faeries flying about.

Just as I start to relax, Zeal plunges into the trees, dives down under the canopy, then swoops up. I'm in a house. A tree house.

He sets me down on the wood planks beside the door in the floor. Branches pass through the spacious multistoried home, creating screens and archways. The leaves make up the exterior walls. Hetty is walking down a spiral staircase that wraps around the thick trunk in the center of the house. Everything has the appearance of nature. There are so many flowers and candles it's like I'm in a garden.

Hetty guides me into the living room and over to a topiary with small green leaves that's shaped like a couch. "You can sleep here."

I nod, even though I'm not sure how comfortable it will be sleeping on a bush.

"We require a bed, please," she says to the sofa. The bush slowly lowers its back and sides to make a perfectly flat bed, complete with headboard. "Oh, you'll need to be a lot softer." The bush explodes into a million tiny blue flowers.

Hetty spreads out a blanket made of feathers and then says something in that language the King used, and a pillow made of clouds appears.

"Do you need anything else, dear?"

I shake my head. I wouldn't know what to ask for after witnessing that.

She looks at me with watery eyes for an uncomfortable amount of time, then grabs my hands and takes a shaky breath. What am I supposed to do if she starts crying? "Zeal and I would like you to know how terribly honored we are to have you in our home. If you desire anything, please, let us know."

She continues to stare at me as if she expects me to say something profound. I avert my eyes and notice there's no bed for Jonah. I rip my hands from hers and spin in a circle. He's not here! He wouldn't leave me without saying goodbye. But I left! I left without telling him where I was going.

"Where's Jonah?" I sound so calm, like I'm casually asking about my friend, instead of having a panic attack.

"Oh, he'll be along soon. He chose to walk," Zeal explains.

"Where will he sleep?"

Hetty smiles. "Why, under your bed, of course."

I can't tell if she's joking. It's difficult for me to figure out why some people think certain things are funny. This doesn't sound funny. Jonah can't fit under the bed. But Hetty was so genuine when she said it. It's stupid to ask her what she meant, so I ignore it. She gives me another of those weird looks and wishes me a good night.

The bed is beautiful. It's like something rich people would sleep on. I'm afraid to sit on it because the topiary might get mad that I'm crushing its flowers. It might grow thick thorny vines and strangle me to death.

I reach down and stroke the petals. "It's just a bed. It knows you're going to lie on it. Get a grip," I whisper while testing the bed with some firm pushes.

It stays quiet, so I push on it harder. Nothing moves and no thorns appear, so I take a deep breath, spin around and sit. I freeze, squeezing my eyes tight, bracing for anything, but nothing happens. I let out a breath and cautiously climb under the blanket.

This bed is amazingly plush and smells like vanilla and lilacs. I sink deeply into the velvety petals and fall asleep instantly.

I'm on a boat in a rough sea. There's a storm. The waves are enormous. We're not going to survive. I must open my eyes.

I'm in a tree. I was dreaming about a boat, but in reality I'm in a tree. How is this my reality? Why is the tree swaying?

The tree is humming and dancing to its song.

"Please stop. You're making me ill."

The tree stills without a word. I'm in Hetty's house, in the topiary bed, and Jonah isn't here. They lied to me! Hetty said he would sleep under my bed, but he couldn't be under there because that's weird. I should peek to be sure, but it's scary to look underneath a bed in the dark. He couldn't fit, either.

I muscle up some courage and work my way to the edge of the opulent bed. I dip my head down to prove to myself that he's not there. It's pitch black. I'm stupid for hoping he'd be there.

A pair of luminous red eyes appears in the dark, and my entire body seizes.

I sit up and try to catch my breath. I automatically bring my hand to my chest to check my heart, which is pounding frantically. "Jonah, you should warn a person before you do that! You scared the life out of me."

Jonah materializes from the floor up and hovers beside my bed.

"That's really creepy." It doesn't scare me that he's able to do that. I accept it as who he is, but I'm being honest when I say it's creepy.

He yawns. He has a wide mouth that I can only see when he talks or smiles. Normally, his face is a black void with giant red eyes. Light doesn't reflect well off of him, so he has a shadowy form and no real shape. Although I've touched him, he's solid. He seems to know that his appearance alarms people because he often pulls the hood of his cloak over his face, which makes him scarier.

"You're very scary-looking," I say.

Jonah rubs his hand over his sleepy face and gazes down at me. He scratches his arm and says in a gravelly voice. "Really? Because you just took a few years off my life. With your big blue eyes on the front of your head, staring at me. Thought I was a goner there for a moment."

I can't tell if he's joking. "I scared you? How could someone as small as me frighten someone as huge as you?"

"I'm going back to sleep."

"Jonah?"

"Hmmm?"

"Why are you under my bed?"

"Because I'm a Knight Crawler."

"Wha-"

"Go to sleep."