I try to let sleep take me. I try to let my body sink into the green give of the bower. But I think only of the smell of wild thyme on the wind and a brown-skinned boy who would not do as these pale beings bid him. All I have tried to shut away, he has brought back, quick as any dream. When I was small, when Titania and Oberon argued over me as though I were some disputed necklace, they called me Indian, a word I have learned that pale men—fairy and mortal—use for anyone with a color near mine, no matter what blood made them. To them, we are enough alike that we should share one word. To them,
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