Stories always begin the same way: There was and there was not. There is possibility in those words, the chance for hope or despair. When the daughter sits at her mother’s feet and asks her for the story—always the same story—her favorite part is hearing those words, because it means anything is possible. There was and there was not. She is and she is not.

Her mother always tells the story the exact same way, with the exact same words, as if they were carefully rehearsed.

There was and there was not a girl of thirteen who lived in a city to the south of Mount Arzur. Everyone there knew never to go wandering too close to the mountain, because it was the home of divs—the demonic servants of the Destroyer whose only purpose was to bring destruction and chaos to the Creator’s world. Most people even avoided the sparse forestland that spread out from the southern face of the mountain. But sometimes children who thought they were adults would go wandering there during the day—only during the day—and come back to boast of it.

One day, the girl wanted to prove her bravery, and so she went into the forestland. She planned to go just far enough to break off a sprig of one of the cedar trees that grew there, to bring back as proof. What she found instead was a young woman, trapped and tangled in a net on the ground, begging for help. It was a div trap, she told the girl, and if the div returned, he would take her prisoner.