The monster stepped forward. He eyed the shelves. Four rickety wooden slats, one of which was damp and half rotted away. They used to be nice shelves, Mamá had told her, before the rot set in.
“There’s a hole in the wall where Mamá keeps her special things,” she said. “But you have to move the shelf.”
He stared down at her. The knife held behind her back was like a beacon, throbbing in her hand. Maybe she should elaborate on the lie before he noticed. What special thing would her mamá hide away? Something precious. Something frightening . . .
Mamá would have sold anything precious. She would have protected her daughter from anything frightening. So the girl was left to stare back at the monster, unable to think of a single thing.
“Have you seen what’s inside?” the monster asked.
“No,” the girl whispered, more certain than ever that he would see through her. “Mamá said I was too little.” Her voice wavered. Her hand hiding the knife shook.
Her fear made the monster smile. “Then let’s see for ourselves, shall we?” He turned his back to her and reached for the shelf.
With a grunt and a heave, he lifted it slightly and pivoted it away, then let it drop with a big thunk. He stared at the revealed wall for a moment. His voice was darker than dark when he said, “I don’t see anything. There’s nothing—”
The girl pretended the monster was a pig at the butcher. With all her might, she plunged the knife into his flank.
And just like a stuck pig, he squealed. Blue-white light shot away from his amulet, a panic flare that exploded against the shelves, collapsing them and setting the remains on fire.
The girl recoiled, tears and smoke blurring her eyes. She had just done a bad, bad thing. No whipping in the world would make up for it. And yet she didn’t feel sorry.
The monster babbled and cursed in a language she didn’t understand. He swatted at the knife in him while the flames ate the shelves and spread to the sack of cornmeal.
She should flee. She knew she should. But the monster’s flailing hand managed to bump the knife handle just so, and it slid out a ways. Blood drenched his beautiful robe, but the knife was barely sticking in him now. The girl had not killed him enough.
She darted in. Grabbed the knife handle. Yanked it out.
And plunged it right back in.
It scraped bone this time; she felt that scrape down to the roots of her teeth. He spun around to face her, but his knees buckled and he fell back against the wall. The knife point thrust out of his abdomen, making a tent of his lovely, bloodstained robe.
“You . . .” he gasped. “Disgusting half-breed.” His back scraped the wall as he slid to the floor.
His amulet was still glowing, its heat creating an ever-widening circle of char on his robe. “You rotting piece of . . .”
The sorcerer’s head lolled against his chest. Fire spread around them; its heat seared the girl’s face. She didn’t have much time.
Yet she hesitated. Maybe she still hadn’t quite killed the monster. If so, he would burn alive in the next few minutes.
Shimmering blood formed a pool around him. Its edges lapped the base of the collapsed shelf, now a bonfire. The blood sizzled, and a scent like cooked meat filled the air. She knew exactly what she was smelling, but she hadn’t eaten all day and she couldn’t stop her belly’s instinctive rumble or keep saliva from drenching her tongue.
Her hands flew to her nose and mouth, and she backed away from the glowing conflagration, the monster’s cooking body, and the final scraps of Mamá’s winter stores.
Her back banged against the ladder. She whirled, reached for the rungs, and yanked herself up as fast as she could.
She had to flee. No one who sassed an animagus—much less attacked and killed one—got away with it. She’d get no help from the village; she and Mamá were barely tolerated as it was. She had to pack as much as she could, as fast as she could, and get far, far away.
It meant leaving Mamá’s body behind. Their tiny cottage. The vegetable garden. All the things she loved. The only things she loved.
She stared at her mamá’s limp hand, unable to move. Smoke curled up through the planks of the floor. Her lungs and throat were starting to sting.
“Run, my sky,” she imagined her mother saying. “You know how much I want you to live, yes?”
Well, she had wanted her mamá to live too. Grief swelled inside her, until it exploded into a single gut-wrenching sob.
But that was all she allowed herself. She wiped frantically at her eyes to clear them of tears and stiffened her cheeks and put on her big-girl face.
The girl ran to the door, pressed her ear to the wood, and listened: the muffled stomp of a hoof pawing at snow, the jangle of a bridle, someone barking an order in that language she didn’t understand. The animagus’s people were just outside. She would have to sneak out the back.
Quieter than a mouse, she stretched up on tiptoes, fingered the iron door hook, and slipped it into its eye, latching the door. It wouldn’t hold long if someone tried to force their way in—the door was old and splintered—but it might buy her a few seconds.
She grabbed her ragged cloak from its peg by the door and whipped it over her shoulders. Her fingers fumbled as she tied it at the neck. Mamá’s cloak hung beside the door too; the girl wasted a precious moment staring. Mamá would never wear it again.
But it would serve as a blanket. Sometimes, on the coldest nights of the year, Mamá had pulled the cloak from its peg and draped it over them on the bed. They’d spent many days’ worth of hours cuddled together beneath that cloak.
She grabbed it and bunched it up, then shoved it into the basket they used for gathering herbs.
“Cloak, fire, and food,” Mamá had told her. “Remember that, if you ever need to flee.”
The girl’s feet twitched to run, but her mamá was right; she wouldn’t last long without food. Leftover stew was spilled and soaking into the floor, half covered in detritus from their destroyed furniture. Salt pork was stored in the cellar, but smoke bubbled out of the trapdoor and flames licked the top of the ladder—she dared not go back there. Maybe the cheese wheel? A gift from the blacksmith, which they’d been saving for Deliverance Day. It was around here somewhere. . . .
She searched feverishly, heart pounding and lungs burning, as smoke continued to rise through the floor planking. No cheese anywhere to be seen. Maybe it was buried under the rubble.
Being very careful to not look at her mamá’s limp hand, the girl tried to nudge aside the fallen table with her leg. It scraped loudly against the floor but hardly moved at all.
Someone rattled the door, trying to enter.
The girl froze.
It rattled again as the girl whimpered, her feet melded to the warming floor. The rattling turned into pounding. The door strained against the latch.
Run, my sky.
She hefted the herb basket that was heavy with her mamá’s cloak and fled past the hearth and the pile of ruined, smoking furniture, toward their hut’s single tiny window. It wasn’t a real window with fancy glass, but rather a large shutter that swung upward, which they would prop open during the summer months to invite the cooling mountain breeze.
The girl unlatched the window. Behind her, pounding sounded again, along with a flurry of angry words, as she cracked the shutter open and peeked outside. Icy air hit her face.