Once in a faraway forest not such a long, long time ago, when everything seemed real for sure and certain, there lived two brothers.

They were only the next mountainside over at their grandparents' castle. But they were only there at certain times, midsummer, like some kind of magical beings.

The older brother was Jason. He had red hair. The younger was Jeremy, who was more fair and had a smile missing four teeth on top.

The huntress princess liked to visit the brothers for wild games in the forest and, to tell the truth, their presence was more important and magical to the girl than she to them, for she was always alone. She did not even know what she was. Some days she was a mermaid, or a native indian princess, or a girl on a horse, or the horse, or an apprentice witch with a broomstick.

She rode her horse into the brambles, or crossed the stream that was bright and full of living beings in the play of light on rocks, or walked the shadowy trails beneath trees alongside a mountain spring until the woods turned blue in the dusk, and later on she had learned enough to make a small fire on the boulders above the cave where the fox lived.

For in those days not such a long long time ago you were not expected to be seen until someone noticed it was dark and they became afraid and angry at you.

So the boys appeared in summer. One day Jeremy and the girl decided to dig a cave in the hillside next to the castle. They were very persistent with a shovel until the grandfather spotted them and asked what the hell they were doing.

There was a grim, quiet little house in the shadows, its windows shaded, far away through the forest. It was two houses away. The brothers and the girl stood just far enough away, whispering.

"That is the house of a witch," Jason said. "It is a man witch, very bad. I dare you. I dare you to slap the house. We all have to do it."

We stood there as the shadows seemed to darken, and the more he said it, the more it became true. At last, he made a run for it. The other two were right on his heels. Slap. Slap. Slap.

And it was done. They had taken the power of the bad witch man.

There was a thick knot of vine hanging from a tree, that the brothers had cut free, so you could swing on it over the deep ravine that cut through the forest. The light coming through the canopy was bright, and the leaves were very green and real.

They took turns swinging across the gulley. The problem was, the vine didn't reach to the other side, so you had to hold on and swing back like a pendulum. You kicked off the edge and flew, over the precipice of rock and water below, and midway out it felt like your arms could not hold on, and then you were back on the ground.

At the last swing of the day, something happened to end it. Jason swung out and there was a pop, or a drop, and a yell. He swung back in. The vine had unknotted and dropped and jarred his jaw. He looked more scared than anything.

Then one magical year another boy and his mother came to live at the castle. But his first day in the enchanted forest he visited the princess horse mermaid. It was snowing. The snow was deep and everything turned white, with ice coating the branches. They took the sled to the hill beneath the empty winter mansion. They flew across the white sea and pulled the sled back up again, over and over. This was the girl's new best friend.

He was very dark, native or Mexican or both, he never said, and he came from a city of dreams, a fantastic place of light called Los Angeles. He was smart, smarter than the girl in so many ways, and he had a sharp way of talking. He talked about all the beautiful women he had loved in Los Angeles, Julia and Diane. He was going to the same school, but he said he could not start on time when school began because they were waiting on his papers.

"They think I'm an alien," he said. The girl did not understand. Was this one of his sharp jokes? Did they think he was from another planet?

There was always something to do in the enchanted forest. Sword fights, building of shelters out of branches. There was a back trail, high on the mountain, filled with mountain lions and other terrors, that the boy said he walked from the castle to the girl's house one day just to throw a rock and see if she would come out.

But you were asleep, he said.

But the boy's mother was very beautiful, and she got married, at a wedding where the boy was excited to have a new father and everyone was very happy to be leaving. Except the girl. The girl smiled and smiled even though she couldn't see anything but a blur as she gripped the metal chair. The power of the bad witch man rose and stirred through gray shingles.

One by one, the brothers and the boy from the light city were all banished from the enchanted forest. That's what happened, if you did bad things.

The next time she saw him he was invisible. That's how they punished you. You were still required to be present and attentive but no one would look or talk to you until the elders of the forest decided God had forgiven you. You were, nothing.

The girl could see him though, because she could see ghosts. He was very quiet, looking down at his hands with all these hundreds of people around, very handsome. She wondered what crime he did, smoking or sex or what. Those were the kind of stupid things that got you banished.

The girl did not get banished. One day, she ran away and never returned. There were things that were real, and nothing she had been told was one of those real things.

A few days since past, the girl heard that Jason, who no one had seen or heard for a while, was found, just his body, on the streets of Las Vegas. But it had been so long since anyone told the truth, she knew it was just a malicious lie from somebody else's bad dream. Because he is still there, right there, green leaf patterns on his face, swinging off the precipice.