“Brittle, look! A red and pink spotted one!”

Brittle glanced over his timber shoulder as Rochelle proudly held another new find aloft. His rising hopes deflated at the realization that it was not a mushroom, but a newt. The fifth forest friend Rochelle had found so far. Mushroom hunting, it turned out, was much more successful when your foraging partner did not get distracted by every creepy crawly thing that slithered, skittered, or scrambled across her path.

“I’m starting to see why you haven’t found the mushroom yet,” Brittle said.

Rochelle pretended she didn’t hear. She held the newt close to her face and pursed her lips, cooing, “I dub thee Sir Newton.”

“Good grief.” Lastar’s voice echoed from the other end of the hollow, rotted log Brittle was searching along. Despite the demigod’s insistence to be of no help whatsoever, he still stubbornly hung around, using both shadow and brush to disguise his presence. Didn’t stop him from talking though. “For a budding herbalist, you’d think she’d know better.”

“About not getting distracted?” Brittle asked.

“That newts are poisonous.”

“Son of a gum tree.” Brittle whipped around, cupping his twiggy hands around his mouth to amplify his wee voice. “Rochelle, put that down! It’s poisonous!”

Rochelle glared back at him, as if offended by Brittle’s concern for her welfare. “It’s not going to bite me, Brittle. Sir Newton is a perfect gentleman.”

“A common misconception.” Lastar’s voice rang out from within the rotted log once more. “She’s thinking of venom, which is delivered through a bite. Newts, much like the one she’s holding, leach toxins through their skin.”

Rochelle’s eyes grew as wide as plates. She swiftly placed the newt back onto the ground, whispering her apologies for disturbing such a perfect gentleman before promising it would never happen again.

Brittle tapped his cork bark toes against the ground with a slow shake of his hollow head. His exasperation was not aimed at Rochelle. After all, who was Brittle to judge for wanting to pick up every shiny thing that caught the eye? Nay, his irritation was reserved for Lastar. “Now you suddenly know everything there is about animals?”

“I never claimed otherwise.”

“But your shapeshifting,” was all Brittle got out before realizing he couldn’t finish his statement without it becoming a proverbial slap across the face.

“What of it?”

Perhaps it would be easier to get his point across with an example instead. “All I’m saying is that chickens don’t normally have three legs.”

“I know that!” Lastar replied. The insult had seemingly lit a fire within the demigod’s belly, because he continued on with more passion than Brittle had heard from him all day. “It is possible to be an expert on one and not the other, you know. Shapeshifting is not a simple feat. You don’t wake up one day able to copy whatever form you like. It takes years of practice. Decades even, for some.”

Decades for at least one, it seemed. Brittle mumbled his apologies. “Sorry.”

“You should be! It’s a tender subject. Now, before I commence giving the silent treatment, which you so rightfully deserve, I’d like to point out that the human should stop touching her face. She needs to wash her hands effective immediately, else she’ll break out in blisters.” And then, as if to convince himself that he was definitely not getting involved, Lastar took on the cold, disinterested demeanor expected of a spy. “Not that I care.”

Rochelle watched Brittle approach with what might have been pity on her face. Whatever the look was, Brittle hated it. And found himself wishing her easy smile would come back instead. At least that didn’t make him feel half the size he was.

“You don’t have to repeat any of that.” Rochelle wrinkled her nose as her gaze swept from Brittle to the rotted log. “I still don’t understand why he just won’t talk to me directly. It’s not like I can’t hear him.”

Brittle’s shrug was almost as convincing as his answer. “Forest sprites are shy?”

“Grumpy is more like it.”

“He’s right, though. You should probably wash your hands.”

Rochelle, naturally, had her own peculiar way of making a simple task infinitely harder. She ducked beneath the overhanging bows of a nearby pine and reemerged seconds later with a sticky glob of sap cupped within the center of her upturned palm. She smeared the sap over her hands, taking care to coat in-between each finger and around the wrists. Rochelle met Brittle’s flabbergasted stare with a wry smile. “What? Never seen anyone clean their hands before?”

“Not like that,” Brittle replied, making a mental note not to hold hands with her for the rest of the day, maybe ever.

Finished making herself impossibly sticky, Rochelle bent and gathered a handful of wet moss and wicked the sap away. “See?” She proudly displayed her freshly scrubbed hands. “All clean.”

Humans were very strange creatures. This one was especially so. And yet, despite Rochelle’s many, many shortcomings, Brittle could not help but like her. No, he feared it was worse than that. He wanted her to like him. And while he didn’t quite understand what the difference between the two was, he knew he would readily waste all afternoon flipping over rocks and catching newts if it meant spending it with his new friend.

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Brittle was about to suggest returning to the hunt when a shout rang out in the distance. It was immediately followed by a second and then a third – the latter of which sounded remarkably less distant than the first. The trio of voices bounced back and forth, growing in volume as they drew unmistakably closer.

“This way, this way!” they called to one another. “We heard it coming from this way.”

“Oh no.” The easy smile fled Rochelle’s face as her body went rigid, like a faun stumbling across the path of a hungry bear.

“What is it?” Already, Brittle’s wee imagination was running with possibilities. Bandits? Pirates? Goddess forbid, ax-wielding lumberjacks?

“It’s the boys from the village. The ones who throw rocks at me.” Rochelle spun around on her heel. Her frenzied gaze swept back and forth along the mossy forest floor, searching for a burrow in which to scurry. “Hide, Brittle. Quickly. Don’t let them see you.”

There was no need to tell him twice. While Rochelle herself had been a pleasant deviation from the norm, Brittle knew all too well the sort of trouble that came from crossing paths with the wrong human. Rochelle went high, clambering into the needled bows of the nearest pine, while Brittle went low. He dove into a bank of flowering sedge weed and had just enough time to wedge himself out of sight, when the first of the boys came bursting out of the underbrush in a flurry of leaves and broken branches.

His footsteps slowed to a stop as something on the ground caught his eye. “Over here!” he yelled and then crouched down to examine the wet soil. “I found tracks.”

Two others soon arrived. All three were teenagers from the looks of it. The first two were awkward, gangly things with faces smeared in dirt and bits of forest debris caught in their shaggy brown hair. They were similar-looking enough to be related. The third and, consequently, last to arrive was short and round, with flaxen curls and a flushed pink face. He swaggered up to his companions and glared at the unusual markings left behind.

His pink face wrinkled in annoyance. “Those aren’t tracks.”

“Yes they are,” the first boy insisted.

“Not any kind I’ve ever seen.”

The second boy was the smallest of the three. He knelt beside his older brother and studied the markings with a shrewd eye. His gaze followed the strange imprints all the way to the flowering hedge Brittle was using as cover. “Whatever they are, they go into that bush.”

“Well,” puffed the pink-faced boy, “what are you waiting for? Go check it out.”

“You first,” said the first.

“Scaredy cats.” Set on proving he was braver than his companions, the smallest of the bunch slunk forward, mindful to arm himself with a stick as he tiptoed towards Brittle’s hiding spot.

Fear lanced through Brittle’s hollow core. It was too late to run. The trio were undeniably faster and Brittle feared he’d be set upon the moment he sprung free of the hedge. He froze in terror instead, helpless as the boy’s shadow drew closer. Brittle felt the words to the Great Maker’s prayer rise up from his soul. The old impulse to call out to his creator, however, turned to ash upon his tongue. What had once been a source of great comfort now felt like empty, meaningless words.

Tucking his head into his shoulders, Brittle awaited his fate, anticipating the worst. The flowering branches parted the same moment something warm and slimy landed on his head.

“Don’t move.” Lastar’s low voice stifled Brittle’s reflexive scream.

Brittle obeyed. The warmth that pooled upon his head seeped deep into his bark and spread. The heat wormed its way into his hollow bones as a noxious humming filled the space between his ears. A creepy crawly sensation took hold – disturbingly similar to that time a swarm of ants tried to nest within his hollow core. The buzzing heat rippled up and down his trunk, inside and out, filling him with the irresistible urge to tear at his bark with his bare fingers.

Brittle remained stock-still because, hovering scarcely inches away, the boy’s face was staring right at him. A puzzled look stretched across the teenager’s dirt-smudged mouth.

“Well,” his older brother called from behind. “What is it?”

“Just a stump,” the boy said. “Awful strange looking though.”

“Strange how?”

“I don’t know. Looks kind of diseased.”

“Rude,” Lastar muttered low enough that Brittle feverishly hoped only he would hear.

The boy blinked and then leaned closer, peering harder than before. Fortunately, staring at a disease-riddled stump was just as exciting as it sounded and he soon lost interest altogether. Wiping a dirtied hand under his nose with a sniff, the boy turned back around to rejoin the other two. “I swear I heard something.”

“Maybe it was the forest witch,” the pink-faced one teased.

“Shut up. Let’s go.”

Brittle remained frozen in place, barely remembering to breathe, as he watched the trio wander off. It wasn’t until the echo of their voices disappeared in the distance that he felt safe to move. Tentatively, he reached up and poked the source of warmth fixed to his head. Its skin was soft, moist, and hopefully not brimming with harmful toxins. “Lastar?”

The demigod flinched at his touch and then leapt away, ridding Brittle’s body of the strange buzzing sensation as he did so. Lastar’s bullfrog form landed between Brittle’s feet with a floppy thump. He attempted a few pathetic hops, croaking, “Rabbit. Rabbit. Rabbit.”

“Lastar, I know that’s you,” Brittle said. “What did you just do?”

“Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well I do.”

Lastar’s bullfrog shape practically deflated on itself with a dramatic, full-bodied sigh. “I shapeshifted the both of us so they wouldn’t see you.”

“Thank you,” Brittle said, before he forgot to say it at all. “But why?”

The three-eyed bullfrog blinked each eye one after another as he considered his response. “Because the consequences for letting you get hurt would be dire. And I don’t mean from those who employ me either, if you catch my drift.”

“You mean Mar–”

Lastar hissed at him to stop talking, nudging his slick green head in Rochelle’s direction. She’d emerged from hiding as well. Or at least was attempting to. The branch caught around Rochelle’s left ankle seemed to be thwarting her efforts to fully extract herself from the tree. “That was incredible,” she gasped, still tugging uselessly to free her leg. Not the best plan, Brittle wagered, considering she was currently hanging upside down over the ground. “I’m starting to think your frog friend really is a forest sprite.”

“Still not talking to you.” Lastar tilted his slimy head at Brittle and cleared his throat. “As thrilling as this misadventure has been, perhaps it would be a good time to note the hour.”

Brittle lifted his head towards the sky. A prickle of shock ran through his hollow bones at the realization that the sun was already beyond the treetops, dipping low in the west. “Fiddlesticks! It’s almost dark already.”

“So?” Rochelle pried her leg free of the tree and fell into an unceremonious pile onto the needle-littered ground. She rolled back onto her feet as if nothing had happened at all. “I’ve got candles if we need it.”

“I’m sorry, Rochelle, but I’m already late for supper.” Brittle checked his pockets before starting off through the trees in the direction he fervently hoped was home. “We can try again tomorrow if you like.”

Her voice called after him. “Meet me at the pools again tomorrow afternoon?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Brittle promised. “Just don’t pick up any more poisonous newts before then.”

“No promises!”