“We have been thrown down, but we will rise again. We have been turned out, but we will return. No matter how stubbornly it clings to the year, no Summer lasts forever.”
One of the three original founders of the freehold of Miami, Rose Thorne was the most fervent supporter of Tom Hood’s vision of a changeling society. Taken in 1939 by a Fae Knight of Flowers, her durance was a half-recalled nightmare of crawling through the Hedge on her belly,
torn and bloodied by the Thorns as she hunted for the rare blue roses her master fancied. She escaped more by luck than anything else, her long years of wriggling through the tiniest gap in the Hedge to pluck out the precious blossoms allowing her to find a path her Keeper’s dogs could not follow. Rose is one of the oldest changelings in Miami, and with that age comes a great deal of respect. Within her own Court, Rose has attained an almost mythical status, especially since she vanished into the Everglades. Now stories of her circulate like a kind of changeling Robin Hood — if the stories are to be believed, Rose Thorne has done everything from appear to homeless children to protect them from gang violence to drive off a hunting party from Faerie that had cornered several young changelings. Of course, the official position of the City of Endless Summer is quite different. Officially, Rose Thorne is a madwoman skulking in the swamp, having abandoned any vestige of Clarity and made deals with the Others to assure her eventual return to power. Within the Spring Court, these rumors are the subject of numerous crude jokes, but outside of the Antler Crown, Rose’s sanity, at least, is not exactly considered rock-solid. Rumors about Fae complicity are mostly accepted as political rhetoric — but the paranoia that lurks so often in the changeling heart can’t help but wonder.