Suri wondered if it would hurt to lose a limb.

If her arm were torn off, the pain would, no doubt, be excruciating, but the ash tree that was missing its branch was quiet — no screaming, not so much as a whimper. They sat not too far from one another, Suri on a huge rock in the middle of a babbling stream, and the tree on a cliff’s edge above her. Large and dignified, the old ash, who went by the name of Esche, wasn’t the sort to blubber. Its elderberry cousins, which grew in the highlands, might moan or whine, and a willow — well, a willow would sob continuously for a month, but not Esche. In general, ashes weren’t the sort to complain. They were a noble, tough breed of wood, but even so, Esche was more steadfast than most. During the previous spring, Suri had witnessed a woodpecker stabbing at Esche’s bark for an entire day — and the tree hadn’t so much as flinched. Now, he was once more exhibiting the same sort of stoic perseverance.

Suri was certain she would cry if their roles were reversed. Esche’s limb, which had fallen into the stream, had been a big one — a lower bough as thick as Suri, not that she was all that stout. The juniper sapling down by the frog pond always proclaimed the girl to be skinny, which was a clear case of the fern calling the oak green. Still, there was no denying the truth in the sapling’s assertion; Suri was small for her age.

Tura had speculated that Suri was likely eleven, but the girl felt confident she was a full twelve and a half — and for a twelve-and-a-half-year-old girl, she was unquestionably small. Not squirrel-small obviously, nor even fawn-small, but certainly the-lower-limb-of-the-old-ash small.

Even as slight as it was, the branch had landed at the edge of a waterfall, and it was large enough to divert a small amount of the river’s flow. When seen from Suri’s stone perch, the torrent now appeared like a partially drawn curtain. Seeing the disruption raised two important questions.

The first had gnawed at Suri so many times that she had considered performing an experiment of her own to solve the puzzle: Can I stop a waterfall if I lay in the stream right where the water spills over the edge? The answer to that one was apparently no. Now that it had fallen, Suri could see that the branch was actually thicker and longer than she. This fact was something Suri was willing to admit to herself, but never in a million years would she concede the point to the juniper sapling. If that fallen limb wasn’t enough to entirely block the water — and it wasn’t because only a foot-wide gap was being cut out of the falling curtain — Suri had her answer on that score.

The second question, and the one Suri couldn’t believe she’d never wondered about before, was what’s behind the waterfall?

In her own defense, Suri had no reason to expect anything except a solid rock face that matched the rest of the cliff, but that’s not what she was now looking at.

“Do you see that? Do you? There’s a tunnel under there!” She turned to Minna for her reaction.

The wolf sitting on the river’s bank yawned.

“Don’t give me that. We need to see where it goes.”

Minna yawned again.

This was unexpected. Minna had always been interested in exploration. Together, she and Suri had investigated nearly every cave, meadow, hollow, and thicket in the forest, and most of those places hadn’t appeared half as interesting at this. Suri displayed her indignation by placing not just one but both hands on her hips. “Are you seriously telling me you’re not the least bit curious?”

The wolf made no reply.

Suri then used both hands to point at the gap in the drapery of falling water. “A tunnel. One that goes behind a waterfall! How has this been here all our lives and neither of us knew about it? It’s like waking up to discover you live on the back of a turtle or something. This is” — she struggled for a word that could sum up the monumental magnitude of the revelation — “big. No, it’s huge. If not for the storm last night, we’d still have no idea — none at all!” She stood up, leaned over, and stared at the dark crack in the stone, glistening from the wet. “It could go anywhere. It might lead to Nog!”

Minna lay down.

Suri’s hands returned to her hips. “You don’t believe in Nog? Hah! Let me tell you something, oh wise one, I was there. What do you think about that?” She grinned at the wolf. “Tura said I was stolen by crimbals and taken there, but I escaped. I was just a baby at the time, must have crawled out on my hands and knees, I guess. There’s just no other explanation for Tura finding me alone in the forest the way she did.”

Minna panted, her tongue dangling.

“Okay, I see what you’re saying. If I had been stolen away to that magical realm but was lucky enough to escape once, then exploring a crack that might take me there again would make me as crazy as a weasel drunk on winter wine.” She nodded. “Sensible conclusion as always.”

Suri thought a moment, tapping a finger to her lips. “Ah-hah!” She raised that same finger in protest. “But what if I wasn’t kidnapped? What if I was saved? What if my parents were cruel? They might have been beating and starving me, and the crimbals took me away to their world to protect me from the evils of this one. Nog could be a beautiful place filled with free- flowing honey and ripe strawberries!”

Suri saw the blank stare Minna was giving her and sighed. “I suppose you are wondering if that were the case, why would I leave Nog and crawl back here?”

The wolf began licking herself.

“Oh,” Suri said surprised. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to put words in your mouth. My mistake. But maybe I was just too young to realize that they were doing me a favor.”

Suri looked back at the crack, then up at the ash. Esche wasn’t as ancient or as majestic as the old oak, Magda, but the way he cast a shadow from the top of the falls — like a giant draped in a luxurious green cloak — was impressive. Grand as Esche may be, and as tragic as the loss of his limb was, Fribble-Bibble couldn’t be pleased with having such a huge obstruction dividing the water of his stream. It ruined the aesthetics of the falls. Granted, Fribble-Bibble wasn’t normally one for vanity, never the kind of river spirit to get twisted in knots over appearances. The very idea of water tying itself in a knot was absurd, but the branch was interfering with the flow, and Fribble-Bibble was all about cascading.

“It won’t stay that way,” Suri told Minna. “Fribble-Bibble is going to push that branch off.” Suri was certain the wolf knew this, but it was a great excuse for saying the name Fribble-Bibble out loud, she liked the way the sound tumbled out of her mouth. “Fribble-Bibble won’t let it stay there long, so we don’t have time to argue about this further.”

Minna continued to lick her fur, something Suri couldn’t understood. The two were sisters, both of them found alone in the same forest and taken in by Tura as infants. They each enjoyed a good late-night run, sleeping in the shade, and basking in the sun. They each preferred fish when they could get it and loved howling at the dark, but licking fur was where they parted ways. Suri hated getting hair in her mouth, but Minna didn’t mind at all.

“Fine. Stay here if you want. I’m going to have some fun.”

Suri was in the mood to explore. The recent storm that had attacked the forest and kept all three of them trapped in their little home beside the famous hawthorn tree, which gave the glen its name. Suri, Minna, and the old mystic, Tura, had huddled around the flickering glow of the fire in the hearth, listening to the wind howl. “It’s the Northern Wind singing his farewell,” Tura had said.

Suri believed Tura because the mystic was as old as most trees and perhaps a few stones. She knew everything there was worth knowing about. But while the old mystic was right, the Northern Wind wasn’t a particularly gifted singer. His howl didn’t sound anything like the way Suri and Minna harmonized their bays, making a beautiful, mournful, and yet sweet sound. The Northern Wind, who went by the less formal name of Gale, just shrieked.

Not only was Gale’s goodbye refrain tone-deaf, it lasted too long. The storm had rattled and ravished the forest for a day and a night. Suri didn’t like being trapped inside. She imagined few did, but she had more reason than most to hate being enclosed. Six years before, she’d been following a badger to its burrow and was nearly buried alive for three days. For months after that, she’d refused to go inside their little cottage, and she slept in the garden until good old Gale brought his buddy Winter to the Crescent. When the nights eventually turned bitterly cold, she was forced to go back inside, but even then, she slept right next to the door.

Tura was always telling Suri she needed to conquer that fear, and the young mystic did try. Her curiosity helped. Exploring the caves and crevices along the Bern River was a positive first step. Going inside the dark, wet caverns was scary, but in a good heart-pounding way. Doing so was made easier because Suri always had Minna with her. Being brave was easy with a sister at your side, especially when that sibling was a big and wise wolf.

“Last chance,” Suri said. When the wolf didn’t even look over, Suri tossed off her tattered wool cape and carefully untied her belt of bear teeth. She coiled it inside the wrap for safe keeping. Then she waded into the deep pool.

Being spring, the water was cold. Not bite-your-tongue-and-curse-your-mother cold like when ice covered the lake, but it took quite some effort for Suri not to cry out. Looking back at Minna, she forced a grin. “Water’s great.”

Suri swam fast, aiming for the separation in the curtain where the surface of the little lake wasn’t dancing from the falling water. She passed through and found a slippery ledge. Hoisting herself up, she got to her feet on a convenient stone shelf, which was a good two feet behind the falling water.

How has this escaped my notice for so long?

Under the falls, the crash of water was deafening, made louder by echoes coming from the cave behind it. Peeking in, Suri couldn’t see much except that it was tall and narrow — too narrow.

“Can’t spend yer whole life being terrorized of entrapment,” Tura had said. “Fear, for the most part, is yer friend. It keeps you alive, and stops you from doing stupid stuff like trying to fly or jumping in a fire. But, when yer scared of sumptin’ you ought not to be, well then, there’s just nothing for it but to grit yer teeth, spit in its eye, and challenge your dread to an arm wrestle. That’s the best way ta get past it. Just got ta get in there and take charge of things. Let yer fear know yer not gonna stand for its silliness.”

Suri peered into the dark cleft in the stone, shaking. While she wanted to believe she shivered because of the cold pool or the chilly mist drummed up by the colliding water, she knew better. She was scared, and even more so because she was —

Minna came into view, her head bobbing across the surface of the pool. Her tall ears twitched, tossing off droplets. Claws raked the stone as the wolf joined Suri on the rock shelf beneath the falls, and she gave a massive shake, throwing water in all directions.

The fear, which had clutched Suri’s heart a moment before, was thrown away, too. “I knew you’d come.” Suri grinned.

Together they entered the crack that narrowed further as it descended into the cliff.

----------------------------------------

As her eyes adjusted to the dim light that filtered through the falling water, Suri noticed the unmistakable outline of a door. Almost anyone else would have seen nothing but an oddly straight irregularity in the stone, a queerly symmetrical bevel, but Suri knew it was an opening. She understood the truth of the matter in the same way she perceived most things of this sort — something told her.

She didn’t hear an actual voice. No one whispered in her ear, “Psst! Door here!” Suri understood it as a notion that had popped into her head, but the feeling wasn’t her own. This happened to Suri fairly often, and the understanding that the ideas came from somewhere else was obvious in cases where the thoughts opposed her natural inclinations. Once, when she saw a beehive for the first time, she thought it was a fruit and planned to hit it with a stick to knock it down. As she picked up a stout switch, a thought had popped into her mind suggesting that hitting it wasn’t a good idea. So odd was this cautionary thought — as no one who knew her would ever accuse Suri of being prudent — that it caused her to laugh. After striking the hive several times, Suri stopped laughing.

Tura explained such intuitions easily enough. “How is it you think the squirrels know to gather nuts for winter? How do spiders know the pattern for a web? How do birds learn how to build nests? It’s the same thing. You’re hearing Elan, the world speaking to you.”

Being stubborn and not remotely careful, Suri originally struggled to heed the alerts, but after enough painful lessons, she learned to pay better attention. Once she started to take note, Suri became aware of more than mere warnings. She began hearing the same announcements that other things in the forest did — like the one that went out every autumn to tell the birds who didn’t like snow to take flight. She also knew when bad weather was coming even while the sky was still blue. She also could tell when the murderous bear, Grin the Brown, was in the area. In this same way, she knew the vaguely rectangular outline in the stone wall at the back of the crevice was a door. The only question remaining then was how to open it. The door to their little cottage was opened merely by pushing on it, while a string tied to a bunch of stones closed the door with their weight.

Suri pushed on the stone.

Nothing happened.

She turned to the wolf with a grin. “We have ourselves a challenge, Minna.”

Puzzles were always fun and took a plethora of forms. The most obvious were the various incarnations of the string game. Tura had introduced her to the amusement that could be obtained by taking a loop of string and weaving patterns between her fingers. The old mystic only showed Suri one design, then left her apprentice to build on it. “Listen to Elan. If a spider can hear how to weave, so can you.”

Another great puzzle, equally challenging and infinitely more exciting was how to climb a tree. Each one was a complex maze of branches. Finding the right route to the top was often difficult and sometimes risky — usually dangerous, oftentimes life-threatening. Climbing trees, more than any other activity, honed Suri’s skill at hearing and listening to the voice of Elan. In the high branches, tests were pass-fail, and often, failure was not an option.

Suri loved puzzles, and this stone door showed every indication of being a marvelous one. Not only was it a unique challenge, but opening it came with the added reward of discovery.

What is behind such an incredible door?

She went on to try every manner of shoving, sliding, hammering, and even kicking. None of it worked. She was glad because such a solution would be too easy. Standing back, Suri rhythmically tapped the tips of her fingers together and pondered the situation.

The door, or an outline of such, was not terribly big, shorter and stouter than the one they had at home. This made her suspect the entrance was indeed to Nog, as crimbals were known to be little creatures. In a wood as big as the Crescent Forest, the magical folk were reputed to have hundreds, or even thousands, of doors leading into their realm. Tura had told her countless tales of people accidentally falling through such portals as mushroom rings, hollow trees, and still ponds. Suri couldn’t recall a single story with a stone door, much less one that couldn’t be opened, but that did nothing to dissuade her. After all, keeping outsiders from entering the crimbals’ world was usually the point of the stories. As a result, the legends were no help.

Suri began to pace up and down the length of the narrow crevice, her wet feet slapping the stone. It didn’t help her think, but she did feel a little warmer. Minna opted for sitting down, but she had a thick fur coat.

“What do you think?” Suri finally asked when pacing in the small space made her dizzy.

Minna began to lick the fur on her foreleg.

“Oh, don’t start that again. We have a puzzle to solve! Honestly, Minna, your head just isn’t in the game today.” Suri stopped, folded her arms and stared at the door. “What do we know? The door is short and wide. It’s made of stone, and it refuses to open through any normal means. That would suggest the maker did not want people entering. It’s also not easy to see, which supports the same idea. So all we have to do is consider what would a person do to prevent us from getting in?”

Suri tilted her head left and then right. An epiphany dawned and she stood on her head. Viewing the door from upside-down, she’d hoped the new perspective would reveal a secret. It didn’t. She sat on the floor after that. With her back against the wall and her legs stretched out, her toes could almost touch the door, and she sighed in defeat. Turning upside down had given her a headache, and it was difficult to think, except . . .

“The door is short.” She said this as much to herself as to Minna, which was just as well given that the wolf was now completely occupied by licking the water off her fur.

Standing on her head had gotten Suri thinking about which way was up and height in general.

Some birds build nests elevated in trees to keep their eggs safe. Squirrels climb to higher branches to escape bigger animals.

Suri looked up. She did so not merely because of a series of clever observations, but on account of the thought popping into her head. Initially, she’d theorized that turning upside down might have caused the notion to break free and drop into her mind, but that didn’t seem right in this case. When Elan whispered, it rarely had a familiar voice because, being everything, it must have so many. For this reason, hearing her was easy but listening difficult. Suri would often experience a flash of insight, then ignore the idea, believing it to be one of her many pointless thoughts. Looking up, however, didn’t feel like Suri’s idea. That was the clue. Looking up was a notion given to her.

Suri stood and studied the top of the outline. The bevel made a little shelf, one just above her eyesight. To someone shorter — a crimbal — it might seem very high indeed. And high up, according to mother birds, meant safe.

Suri reached as far as she could and let her fingers feel along the top edge, exploring what her eyes couldn’t see.

The stone was smooth, polished to a glossy finish, and perfect without any variance . . . except one. Oddly, it wasn’t on the shelf, and her fingertips didn’t find it, but her palm had brushed by an inconsequential bulge on the surface of the door. Examining it more closely, Suri discovered a tiny diamond-shaped protrusion. Placing her palm on it, she pressed.

Nothing should have happened. Suri was pressing on solid stone, and yet, the diamond gave way. The instant it did, the stone door began to move.

“We did it!” Suri exclaimed while jumping back.

Minna abandoned her grooming and got to her feet. The two watched as a giant slab stone slid sideways. The instant it did, a brilliant green glow emanated from inside, and for a moment, Suri wondered if she’d done the right thing.

I don’t really want to go back to Nog.

Suri didn’t think it would be so bad if Minna came with her, but Tura would wonder where she’d gone. It wouldn’t be right to not say anything. She considered just taking a peek, and only going in for a few minutes, but that was how all the stories started. A visitor would enter for just a moment or two, but upon returning home, they’d find that a hundred years had passed. As it turned out, Suri didn’t need to worry. The door didn’t lead to Nog.

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Beyond the stone door was a stone room. Not much larger than their cottage, but a lot less cozy. It’s difficult to squeeze homey out of rock. The place was cold and hard, but that was the nature of stone. The room was round with a domed ceiling — just how Suri imagined living under a mushroom cap would be. Thick stone pillars created a ring that held up the dome, and strange markings decorated the walls. In the center, a giant glowing green ball that was mostly submerged in the floor gave off an eerie light that filled the place with a disturbing radiance. Because light normally came from the sky, having anything lit from underneath seemed unnatural, and when added to the sickly green color, the chamber appeared absolutely creepy.

The room wasn’t empty. Chests and boxes were faceless shadowy figures standing in the shadows, and what might be a water well was near the back. A five-foot-high stack of deadwood was stacked pretty much in the center of the room. The heap covered most of the glowing stone, making it appear like the whole thing was the smoldering embers from a magical fire.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Suri smiled with delight. Tura often sent her off to find fuel for the fire, but the process was arduous. In summer, plants hid the fallen branches, and in winter the snow made it impossible to find anything dry. Suri had found a treasure, a surplus of sheltered dry and seasoned wood.

Looking closer, it took only a few seconds to realize her mistake. The pile wasn’t wood at all. She was repulsed to discover a huge stack of cleanly picked white bones. The skulls around its base was what gave away her oversight — hard to mistake a pair of eye sockets and a row of teeth for a log.

“Bones,” she said to Minna. Neither one had set a single toe in the room. They both stood at the doorway, Minna’s pristine fur bathed with the emerald glow. “What do you think this is?”

The wolf lifted her nose and sniffed, then presented the sour expression she put on when she didn’t find her supper appealing. Suri didn’t like the smell of the place, either. The odor was similar to a fetid pond or an abandon deer kill, and she could tell that even without Minna’s nose.

The chamber clearly wasn’t Nog, so after checking to make certain the door wouldn’t close behind her, Suri had Minna wait while she crept in. Moving carefully, she circled the pile, and she immediately noticed two things. The first was that being in the room was drastically different from being outside. It felt like she’d gone underwater. There was a terrible muffled sensation as if she’d entered a bubble, or someone had put a bag over her head. Suri felt strangely cut off from the rest of the world in a way she never had before. She repeatedly looked at the stone door and Minna, reassuring herself the way out was still there, still clear. The idea of being trapped in such a place pushed her courage to the limit.

Grit yer teeth, spit in its eye and challenge your dread to an arm wrestle. All that was easy to say in a sunny garden with daffodils all around, not so simple —

That’s when Suri noticed the other thing. All the skulls on the pile were facing out, watching her. The question — the conundrum that caused Suri to lose her arm wrestling contest — was: Were they always facing like that?

She couldn’t remember, and in her confusion, she knew that they were indeed watching. Each pair of empty eye sockets were trained on Suri, and not one looked happy or welcoming. Most seemed to have sinister grins, although some had no lower jaw at all. In another moment, Suri was positive one would try to talk. The idea of a skull without a jaw struggling to speak was disturbing. The certainty that it would shriek in some horrible high-pitched way, set Suri running.

Her foot caught part of the pile and sent bones skipping across the floor. Once outside, Suri slammed the bump on the wall and set the door to closing. She knelt down and squeezed Minna. There was no better remedy for fear than hugging the soft fur of a wolf.

The door closed. The light disappeared. The smell vanished. Suri could breathe again. She let go of Minna and moved to stand when she touched something cold. For a brief instant, she glared at the foot-long bone, thinking it had chased her. Then Suri realized this had been one of those she kicked, the only one lucky enough to clear the doorway and escape. Outside the room, away from the green glow, the bone was ordinary, good-sized, and clean. She picked it up, surprised at how light it was.

Hollow, she guessed. Must have been a really big bird. I could make a flute out of this.

Tura had many flutes. Some were made out of hollow sticks, but a few were created from the wing bone of a turkey or the leg bone of a lamb or deer. None were as big or as hefty as this one. Given Suri felt cheated out of her treasure of deadwood, she wanted to take away something from the adventure. A flute — her first flute — would be just the thing.

Why a pile of bones had been hidden inside a secret stone room was a question best sealed behind the now closed door.

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“Found a bone, did ya?” Tura asked as Suri and Minna returned.

The old mystic was perched on the Sitting Rock, just outside the door of their cottage, weaving a basket from a pile of willow branches. She had on her summer linen, belted with the long leather strap that wound around her a half dozen times and still the end dangled down to her ankles. This always made Suri wonder if Tura had been much bigger long ago. Perhaps she was once a giant or had been born a bear and grown into a woman.

What will I be when I grow up? And with such endless possibilities available, why did Tura pick an old woman?

Suri would have chosen a swift, a finch, or perhaps even a hummingbird — definitely something that could fly. Old women, with their sagging skin and brittle white hair, wouldn’t even crack the top one hundred.

Suri held up her prize and smiled. “Yep. Found it under the waterfall. Thought I’d make a flute of it. You can show me, right?”

Tura took the bone and turned it over and back. As she did, her eyes narrowed. “Found this in the pool?”

“No, Ma’am.” Suri shook her head and grinned at Minna. “We found a secret room, behind the waterfall.”

Suri expected shock, surprise, excitement, and imagined Tura responding with: How in Elan did the two of you find such a marvelous secret as a hidden place?

Tura merely nodded. “So, there’s one under there, too?”

Disappointed, Suri frowned. “There’s more than one?”

“Two that I know of. Father showed me the first. I discovered the second on my own.”

Tura’s father was a topic Suri was long interested in, but which the old mystic rarely spoke of. Suri only knew that ages ago, he had brought Tura to the forest from a settlement in the south, and the two had lived in the wood in the glen for years and years before Suri had appeared. By then Tura’s father had left. Where he’d gone Tura never said, making Suri think Tura didn’t know.

Every time Tura spoke about him, she got weepy and changed the subject, which frustrated Suri. She wanted to know more because Tura’s father had predicted that she would find a baby in the forest, and he’d told her to raise the girl as a daughter and train her to be a mystic. How he’d known about Suri was a mystery that continually tantalized her. Her father had told Tura he would come back, and she constantly waited for his return. Given he was right about the abandoned infant, Suri waited, too.

“I don’t know that you want to make a flute of this,” Tura said.

“Why not?” Suri snatched it back and held it up, looking for what imperfection she might have missed. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothin’ except it’s a human bone.” She slapped her forearm. “From right here.”

Suri looked perplexed. Then she held out the bone and compared it to Tura’s arm. They were roughly the same size.

She’s right. I don’t want to put my lips to a stranger’s elbow.

“I’m surprised ya didn’t know. The rest of the skeleton musta been there. I guess some injured soul crawled in and died.”

Suri shook her head. “Not like that. Not at all.”

“This was the only bone you found?”

“Not like that either.”

Doubly disappointed that Tura was not impressed with her discovery and that the bone wouldn’t be made into a flute, Suri was losing interest in the conversation.

“What then?” Tura asked.

“Room had a big pile in the middle. Thought it might be firewood, but no. Turns out this whole day is just one big disappointment after another.”

“A pile of bones? Human bones are stacked in a hidden room under the waterfall?” Tura said while looking at Suri’s onetime prospect for a flute.

Since Suri had just explained all that, and it wouldn’t make sense for the old woman to be asking again, Suri guessed Tura had been speaking to the bone. Tura spoke to many things, and a bone wouldn’t make a list of the most unusual. Tura didn’t press, reinforcing Suri’s guess, but it left her wondering if the bone had responded, and if so, what it had said.

Suri’s curiosity grew when Tura stood up. The old woman ducked into their home and reemerged wearing her old cloak, staff in hand.

“You should stay here,” Tura told her. “Check the garden and wash the strawberries.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have an errand to run.”

This was Tura’s all-purpose response for something she didn’t want Suri to know about. No amount of questions, or degree of persistence, or volume of tears would pry the truth from the mystic. Errands were things that had to be done. Never were they pleasant or enjoyable, so Suri needn’t fear missing out on something fun. Tura had assured her of this many times before. As such, Suri did not protest, and Tura set off up the trail, but she paused part way and looked back. “How big is this pile?”

Suri shrugged. “’Bout as tall as me.”

Tura nodded grimly. “Don’t wait up then. I might be late.

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The garden grew on the sunny side of their cottage. Suri viewed it as part of their home — the better part — the portion without the roof or door. This was where the onions lived along with tomatoes, beans, carrots, and cucumbers. Few of them ever bickered. In late summer, there would be towering sunflowers and sprawling vines of pumpkins and squash. The border of the garden would be in bloom with an abundance of peony, bell flowers, and bachelor’s buttons. The flowers made the garden rich with color but also argument. Pumpkins and squash constantly warred over territory, and the poor flowers trapped beneath their broad leaves complained, refusing to bloom if not treated better.

A small spring-fed pond was nearby and gave birth to a tiny creek that trickled and laughed. There were several perfect sitting stones to rest on, and a moss-enriched walkway of flat stones that Tura had placed long ago. A waist-high stone wall draped in ivy formed a half circle, but existed only as a place to put unwanted rocks.

The garden had no need for defense. Tura had long ago explained to the thieving raccoons, mooching deer, and pilfering crows that the garden was off-limits. The inhabitants of the wood knew better than to steal from Tura. The one exception was the goulgans who were decidedly less intelligent than even a rabbit. These burrowing pests popped up in the garden with regularity and could not be reasoned with. What they lacked in intelligence, they made up for in cunning and persistence. They disguised themselves as plants, and were equipped with thorny teeth to bite any who might attempt to evict them.

Unlike groundhogs and squirrels, goulgans didn’t grab and dash, they set up house. Once in, they spread out and invited more of their kind to join them. When they reached out with their talons and strangled the carrots, smothered the beans, and starved even the great pumpkins and sunflowers of water, it was clear that the goulgans’ motives were pure malice. The never stole anything — they only murdered.

When she was old enough, Tura appointed Suri Garden Sentinel, and it was her job to defend the flowers and vegetables from the rampaging monsters. Goulgans were not terribly large, and Suri tore them out by hand, throwing them beyond the garden wall where they screamed and raged at her. This method, while effective, hurt as she was frequently bitten. The little monsters had small but sharp teeth. One day, Suri squared off with a particularly nasty goulgan, who had slipped in unseen and established a firm stronghold behind the sitting stone near the wall. She had tried to pull him out but failed. During the battle, she had been badly bitten, and in her anger, Suri had cursed the goulgan. To the best of her memory, she had called it a brideeth which was a new word Suri had learned from Tura. The old mystic had begun teaching her the Divine Language, saying it had special powers, and while Tura hadn’t actually taught Suri that word, the mystic had used it often enough to express anger and pain that Suri felt confident she had used it correctly. As it turned out — a tad too correctly.

The next morning the goulgan was dead. Suri found it withered and brown. Some parts were even black. More than that, a dozen other goulgans in the vicinity were also dead, and for weeks afterward, they stayed out of the garden altogether. But by virtue of being so dumb that they made rocks appear shrewd and dirt brilliant, the goulgans eventually returned. Suri was forced to repeat her curse on a regular basis to keep the garden clear, and that evening after Tura had set forth on her errand, Suri realized it had been quite some time since she’d screamed at the garden.

As expected, the garden had once more been invaded by an army of goulgans. As night rolled in, she managed to spot fifty in the dim light. Suri sighed, and shook her head. Even as awful as goulgans were, Suri took no pleasure in eradicating them, but she knew death was common and necessary in the forest. One fallen tree gave room to wildflowers and new saplings. Bigger animals ate smaller ones, but Suri noticed the ones that killed never gloated. They didn’t cheer, or laugh, or dance. Death was a solemn event like sunset or rain.

Minna came over to watch. She sat on the grass beside the sitting stone near the wall — the sight of Suri’s first great battle — and waited. The wolf knew what was coming, and yet each time looked surprised when Suri screamed her curse. Suri had gotten better at it over the years, and she was able to put real venom into her words. By morning the garden would be brown with goulgan corpses.

“So, you possess a power, do you?” a raspy voice said.

Suri jumped. Her eyes went wide as she stared at the garden, surprised the goulgans had learned speech. But the voice hadn’t come from them. The words had been uttered from the forest. Any speculation that the goulgans had spoken was erased when the voice then asked, “Where’s my bone?”

----------------------------------------

The voice did not sound pleasant. The words had less a tone and more of a texture that was best summed up as a bristly pinecone. It dragged out each word the way Grin the Brown hauled off her kills through tall grass, both accompanied by the same dry-brush noise. If the words and the reality of a disembodied voice speaking to her from out of the shadows wasn’t enough to cause alarm, Minna began to growl. The wolf rarely made any sounds. She was a person of few words, but when she spoke, wise were those who listened. Growling for Minna was tantamount to a declaration of war. Whatever was out there, Minna did not like it.

“Who are you?” Suri asked.

“I don’t have a name anymore. I don’t need one. And you don’t have the right to ask. You are a thief. A bone is missing from my pile, and I want it back. Don’t try to deny it. I followed your scent. Now give it to me.”

“Okay,” Suri said, peering into the forest and seeing nothing. “I’ll get it.”

Suri had set the bone inside her cottage and started to retrieve it, when a thought popped into her head: Not a good idea. Don’t turn your back on it. You’re in danger. Be careful. All of this was crammed into her mind in the instant it took to begin a pivot. She stopped and noticed the branch of a cedar tree moving. Suri looked closely, but the growing darkness and leaves conspired against her. She saw nothing. After that, she walked backward.

Don’t trip. Whatever you do, don’t fall. If you do, it’ll be on you in an instant.

Messages flooded her head as if she were downstream from a busted beaver dam. Maybe Elan spoke more when Suri was in trouble, or Suri was just more attentive when scared. Either way, Elan had never been this chatty.

It will be on me in a second? Suri didn’t like the sound of that. What would?

She forced herself to move slowly, dragging her heels to check for obstacles. Minna moved with her. She, too, backed away. The wolf had also likely heard the warning. Maybe it was the big ears, or how close she was to the ground, but Minna always heard Elan better than Suri, making the wolf wise beyond her years.

Suri found the bone where she’d left it and carried it outside. “Want me to just throw it to you?” She asked this because all other alternatives gave her gooseflesh.

What kind of thing keeps bones? Even Grin doesn’t do that. She eats them. Maybe that’s what’s going on here. The pile could be like a squirrel’s storehouse of nuts, but . . . it’s spring and there are a lot of bones — human bones.

“Don’t be rude, child,” the grit-on-a-cat’s-tongue excuse for a voice replied. “Bring it to me.”

“That’s okay. I think I can tell where you are. I’ll toss it.”

“You stole the bone. Forced me to come here. Have the decency to return it in a civil manner. I don’t want to be rooting around in the brush to retrieve my property.”

Decency? Suri found the word an odd choice. They were, after all, talking about a human bone, which brought up an interesting thought. “Where’d you get it?”

“From a very handsome young man, a beautiful fellow with a lovely face. Bring me his bone.”

Minna’s ears twitched, and she growled again. Her lips pulled back this time, showing fangs.

It’s moving. I don’t know how I know, but I’m sure. The owner of the pile is coming closer .

The thought that the Bone Hunter might be invisible was more than a passing concern. Lots of things in the forest were impossible to see. The breezes, who were too numerous and fleeting for anyone to remember their names, were. Leshies couldn’t be seen in the daytime, and Gale, himself was a no-show. If the Bone Hunter was like them, Suri was in trouble.

That was another idea that popped into her head, and with it came her own conclusion that the handsome fella with the pretty smile hadn’t just fallen over and died. He had been killed by the Hunter, and now all of his bones were on the pile. His skull would be there, and was likely a jawless one that she had been frightened by.

Perhaps the Bone Hunter doesn’t just want what I took. Maybe it is after a new skull. And why did I think it instead of him?

“You don’t have to be afraid,” the Bone Hunter said. “It won’t hurt.”

“What won’t?” Suri asked. She didn’t really want an answer. Who would? She only wanted the thing to keep speaking, so she could guess where it was.

The Hunter didn’t answer.

“What won’t hurt?” Suri asked again, louder.

Still, no answer.

Run! Elan hadn’t just slipped this thought into her head, the idea had exploded as if every part of the world were screaming at her.

“Minna!” Suri shouted before bolting up the trail.

She didn’t really have concerns about the wolf, Minna was faster, and proved it by passing Suri, leading the way in the growing dark. The sun might not have fully set outside the forest, but within the Crescent, night came quickly, and with it fell a darkness that was nearly absolute. Suri didn’t know where to run. Tura would be her best hope, but she hadn’t seen which direction the mystic went. At that moment, Suri relied on the wisdom of Minna and followed her blindly down the path.

When at a full run in the forest, few could catch Minna, unfortunately that included Suri. Soon after the race began, Minna outdistanced her sister, and the white wolf faded into the darkness. Before long, Suri grew tired. Not so much so that she couldn’t run, but enough that she could no longer sprint.

She slowed down.

It’s catching up.

This was another warning she assumed came from Elan because it didn’t make any sense. Minna was ridiculously fast and could run without stopping for hours, but Suri wasn’t a slug. A deer, or even Grin the Brown, could catch her, but nothing that spoke of decency could. If Suri was tired, the Bone Hunter must be exhausted.

It isn’t.

A ridiculous thought. If Suri had more air, she would have laughed, but . . . I had laughed before as well and suffered from bee stings for nearly a week. What would be the price this time?

Apparently it didn’t matter as Suri couldn’t go any faster. She knew she was going slower and slower.

It doesn’t get tired.

This was a miserable thought. Her head was full of awful things that day.

What am I going to do?

This was a homegrown notion. She knew that because it arrived with a degree of panic caused by the understanding that she didn’t know the answer. Worse yet, Suri didn’t think there was a solution. Not a helpful one, at least.

Puzzle it out.

“What?” In her utter shock and disgust, Suri spoke the word outloud, wasting valuable air.

Of all the times to be cryptic!

Suri was rapidly running out of breath and speed, she was also losing light. The trail she followed, which was less a path and more a vaguely eroded gap in the underbrush, was disappearing, and like Minna, it would soon be gone altogether. Trees on either side were phantom shapes, and if she hadn’t known the route like her tongue knew the back of her teeth, she would have taken a fall by now.

It will be on me in a second.

Suri still hadn’t managed to answer the question of what it was.

Puzzle it out.

Suri wanted to scream but couldn’t afford the breath.

Puzzle. Puzzle. Puzzle.

At this point, Suri had no idea if she was hearing anything or just losing her mind. She hadn’t been this frightened since that time she’d nearly been buried alive. Thinking would become impossible once terror set in, but she wasn’t there yet. If she heard something behind her, if she felt something, that’s when fear would blindly reign.

Puzzles are problems. String games are puzzles. I usually like puzzles. Not now. Right now I hate them. This one is awful. I like good puzzles, puzzles that are fun like —

With the last fleeting haze of light, Suri saw something just ahead and on the right — the red oak. She called it the Puzzle Tree — Petree for short. Petree was one of her favorite climbs. The tree was huge and had a multitude of branches that made getting to the top a challenge.

I can’t keep running, but I can still climb.

Suri still had the bone in her hand, and she stuffed it into her belt before leaping. She caught the lowest branch, the only one close enough to the ground to get a hold of, and then up she went.

She had climbed Petree more than a dozen times and knew the route.

Flip up, stand, and run across the branch. Climb left, find the knot, plant a foot and push. Take a big stretch to the broken nub and then swing!

The swing was one of the hardest parts. It took her days before she had enough courage to try. The nub was at least twenty feet off the ground, and falling from that height and through the lower branches, would break bones.

Catch the forked branch. Pull it down. Get a grip. Up, right, left, left, right and find the nest.

The nest wasn’t an actual roost, just a set of three branches near the top of the tree that formed a triangle and created a perfect seat. Suri planted her butt in the crux, hooked her arms around the branches, and looked down. Everything below her was darkness.

Maybe I lost it.

Suri waited, feeling the deep, slow sway of the tree that used to frighten her so, but at that moment was wonderful. She struggled to listen for any sounds of pursuit over the racket of her own gasps for air.

By the Grand Mother, I’m noisy!

She wasn’t the only one. Around her, Gale was playing in the branches, causing them to click and clack.

“Not nice of you to run away.” The sound of the voice chilled her. “Why don’t you come down and give me that bone.”

“Take it!” Suri jerked it from her belt and threw. The sound of a handsome man’s arm tripped through the branches.

A long pause followed and Suri waited.

Is that it? Is that all I needed to do?

“Now why don’t you come down.”

Aww, for the love of Fribble-Bibble! “Leave me alone.”

“Alone?” the teeth-on-stone voice said. “But you are alone . . . all alone. Even your dog is gone. It’s just you and me now. Time for us to get better acquainted. Do you know who I am?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

“I’m you in a hundred years, or what you might have become, if you hadn’t stolen that bone. Don’t you see? I’m going to do you a favor. You don’t want to be me, do you?”

“There’s no way I could be like you. I don’t even know what you are!”

“I’m what those like you become. Little ones with power grow up to be big ones with desires. You don’t want to die do you?”

Suri wasn’t certain if the voice was closer or not.

Is it climbing? Can it figure out how? Took me days with daylight.

“Of course you don’t. That’s why you’re in the tree. You’re terrified of dying and you’ve only been alive a few years. Imagine the lust for life after you’ve been living for several decades. And just picture how powerful you’ll be by then — so potent that the rules won’t apply to you. When the day comes to leave your body, and move on, you’ll refuse, same as I did. But there’s a problem. Your body, your wonderful home for so long, is weaker than you are. It rots. That’s why everyone else leaves. No one wants to live in a rotting shell. But you’re powerful. You don’t have to. You can keep it — not perfect — but well enough. All you need is a good meal and some beauty sleep. The faces of those you eat keep you pretty and watch out for you, serve you in the hopes that one day you will free them. You won’t. You can’t. They make your bed and then you lie in it.”

That’s when Petree began to dance.

Only once before had Suri been so high in a tree during a storm. She never wanted to do that again. This wasn’t that — it was worse. Petree shook so hard that Suri came out of the nest. If not for her two arms hugging the branches, she would have fallen. As it was, she dangled, legs kicking as the oak did a fine impression of Minna shaking off water. Suri finally knew what a droplet on a strand of wolf fur felt like. Then came the scream. Nothing living was capable of making a sound like that. A high pitched, soul-chilling cry ripped through the night.

Suri continued to hug her new friends, the limbs near the nest, who she had grown to love in mere seconds. When Petree stopped his acrobatics for a while, Suri took a chance and settled herself back in the Nest and waited.

“Suri? Suri, are you up there?” Tura called.

Suri didn’t answer.

What if it impersonates people?

“How do I know you’re really Tura?”

“Because if you don’t get down here this instant, Minna and I are going to go home and finish off the last of the strawberries, and you won’t get any.”

The voice sounded like Tura’s, but the brusque tone was unmistakable. Suri climbed down, which was difficult to do in the dark. Occasionally, she stopped to look below, to be sure an old woman and a wolf waited and not some hideous creature. Hitting dirt, she found Tura and Minna digging a hole beside Petree’s roots.

“What are you doing?” Suri asked. “And where’s the . . . thing?”

“Finishing up my errand,” Tura explained.

“Tura,” Suri looked around concerned. “There was a . . . I don’t know a . . .” “

A raow,” Tura replied. “Yes, it’s gone now.”

“Gone where?”

Tura looked at Petree as if the two shared a secret. “Doesn’t matter does it? What’s more important is the strawberries. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.”

Tura had the bone that Suri had thrown. She placed it in the hole and covered it up with dirt. Patting the loose soil down, pressing it firm, she smiled. “There, that’s the last of it.”

“Tura, what’s a raow?”

“Strawberries, dear. Think about the strawberries.”

“Are you bleeding?” Suri asked seeing dark slashes across Tura’s face that were dripping blood.

Tura’s cloak was shredded into ragged strips. She held her arm clutched to her side as if it was hurt.

“Tura? What’s a raow? What kind of a mystic will I be if I don’t know everything you do?”

Tura sighed. “There are somethings, we shouldn’t ever know.”

Suri folded her arms in defiance.

Tura frowned. “Fine. A raow is an evil spirit that invades a . . . ah . . . a person . . . a person . . . who is lost. Yes, that’s it. There. Now you know. I sealed this one up in the oak. Not the best choice. An ash would have been better or even our hawthorn, but . . .” She looked up at Petree and patted the trunk. “This old gal ought to do fine.”

“Gal?” Suri said. “I thought Petree was a he.”

“Petree?” Tura smirked. “That’s not right. Her name is Evla Turin.”

“Why did you name her that?”

“I didn’t, my father did.” The mystic winced as she started walking for home, leaning heavily on her staff. “He has an obnoxious tendency to name everything after himself.” Tura raised a finger toward the heavens and shouted. “Onward to strawberries!”