“You have to eat that now,” Viola told him seriously.
“I… I do?” Barclay asked, horrified.
Viola looked him dead in the eyes. “Do you want her to eat you?”
As he fearfully bent down to scoop it up, Viola let out a howl of laughter.
“I’m sorry, I just… I didn’t expect you to actually do it,” Viola said, wiping tears out of her eyes. “I don’t know how many times I have to explain to you that Mitzi isn’t going to eat you.”
“She’s a dragon,” Barclay grumbled, kicking the sick off his shoes. “What am I supposed to think?”
Mitzi climbed back onto Viola’s shoulder and pecked at her golden pins, very undragonlike. Viola smirked at him while she scratched Mitzi’s chin.
Barclay frowned. He wasn’t used to being the one who didn’t know anything, and he didn’t like it.
“So what class is Mitzi?” he asked.
“You’re skipping ahead. There’s still the second class, the Familiar class. They’re the most common Beasts to bond with. They have a small amount of power and are very easy to control. A lot of Guild apprentices have them.” Viola began counting off on her fingers, which Mitzi bent down to try to nibble. “Mitzi is in the third class, the Prime class. She was not very easy to find, but when she gets bigger, she’ll be very powerful.”
“What do you mean by ‘apprentice’?” Barclay asked.
“Having a Beast makes you a Lore Keeper, but the most prestigious Keepers work for the Guild. And they start out as apprentices. Masters can take on up to three of them. You usually start when you’re between ten and twelve.”
Barclay furrowed his eyebrows. “How old are you?”
Viola looked away and cleared her throat. “Anyway. The fourth class is called the Mythic class. They’re incredibly rare and hard to find. Guild Masters sometimes have them. They’re very, very powerful. Closer to monsters, as you might call them.” She met his eyes seriously. “Your Beast, a Lufthund, is Mythic class.”
“What?” said Barclay. That seemed all the more reason to get rid of it. Powerful and monstrous was a combination he wanted nothing to do with.
Viola turned the spit over the fire, not looking at him. “So you can imagine how I feel. Those ingredients for the trap were hard to find. I’ve been searching since Summer! This was my one chance other than Midwinter. And even if I made a mistake and summoned the wrong Beast, I still could have bonded with it. But you got in the way.”
“I told you, I didn’t bond with it! The Beast bonded with me.”
“And like I said, that doesn’t make sense. The Beast doesn’t forge the bond—the Lore Keeper does. You use summoning ingredients to lure the Beast. And once they’re in the trap, you touch them, and it just… snaps. You feel this spark. And then the bond is formed.”
That was most definitely not what happened to him. Maybe Viola didn’t know as much about Beasts as she thought she did.
“What if the Beast doesn’t want to bond with you?” he asked.
“They don’t have a choice.”
“Well, no wonder Beasts try to break their bonds all the time. It doesn’t sound very fair.”
Viola’s mouth dropped open. “That… That almost never happens! You don’t know what you’re talking about. Beasts are companions! Their Lore is made for bonding. It makes them stronger, just like it does the Keeper, which is why Lore Keepers have been doing it for hundreds of years. And once you have your Beast’s trust—”
Suddenly Mitzi sneezed, and a bright light burst from her mouth. The force of it sent her tumbling backward into the snow. She seemed unfazed, though—she immediately rolled over and began gnawing on her tail.
“I don’t know why I’m arguing with you,” said Viola, sighing. “Any Master in the Woods would be thrilled to have you as an apprentice, and you don’t even want your Mythic class Beast.”
Barclay’s stomach gave an unexpected clench. Thrilled to have him as an apprentice? Him? “W-well,” he stammered, caught off guard. “I don’t want to be an apprentice either.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” She glared at him.
Even if Barclay did believe that his entire predicament was her fault, he couldn’t help but feel a little sorry. He knew what it was like to work hard and still not feel as though you’d achieved anything. It was frustrating, and it hurt.
So, rather than pushing the subject, he said, “You mentioned there are five classes. So what is the fifth class?”
“The Legendary class, the most powerful, ferocious Beasts in the world. There are only six. You already know of one of them.”
“Gravaldor,” Barclay murmured, shuddering. “Can people actually bond with them?”
“They have in stories. But not for a long time, maybe centuries.”
“But you were trying to trap Gravaldor. What makes you think you can?”
“It’s not that I think I can. It’s that I need to.”
“But that sounds—”
“You know, I’m just trying to help you, and you’re being very rude,” she snapped. Then she crinkled her nose. “And smelly.”
Barclay was so surprised by her outburst that he felt more annoyed than sorry. Touchy, touchy, Master Pilzmann would say about her. Besides—he sniffed his armpits—he smelled just fine.
He stalked off and sat on the base of a giant tree. It was freezing cold. They still had three more days until they reached Sycomore. And his only companion was the very person who had gotten him into this mess. This was not the adventure that Master Pilzmann had promised him—this was a nightmare.
Something groaned loudly above him, and Barclay stood and whirled around. He saw nothing.
Suddenly his shoulder stung. “Ow,” he said, pulling the fabric of his coat and sweater down to see if his cut had opened up again. The wound looked fine, but the Lufthund in the Mark had stopped its usual prowling across his skin and stilled, as though on alert.
Then Barclay heard the sound again. It reminded him of Master Pilzmann’s snores—deafening and guttural.
“What is that?” Viola asked from several yards away.
“I can’t tell,” Barclay said, his dread rising, his Mark stinging all the worse. They had been walking for so long that it’d been easy to forget he was in the Woods… and the Woods was deadly.
Suddenly the ground beneath him shook, and roots ruptured the earth. The tree that Barclay had been sitting on bent down low, and he realized the sound he’d heard was its trunk contorting. It twisted and coiled, and the more Barclay stared at it, the more the bark began to look like scales.
The roots withdrew, slithering, and something tremendous burst from the ground, sending a cloud of dirt billowing into the air. Barclay and Viola coughed and stepped back as the roots whipped around and hissed, like a giant tongue.
As the dirt dispersed, two bright amber eyes narrowed at them.
The tree was not a tree at all.
It was a Beast.
EIGHT
In the books Barclay had read from the library, the heroes emerged in times of greatest peril. No villain was too villainous. No monster, too monstrous. For a hero’s heart was ironclad and full of courage.