She looked about Barclay’s age, with light brown skin, shrewd dark eyes, and very curly brown hair styled in two buns, one on either side of her head. Though most peoples near the Woods were pale, not everyone in Dullshire shared the same complexion. But Barclay had never seen anyone who wore quite so much gold. Her coat was so covered in brooches, buttons, and pins that they entirely hid the fabric beneath. Her dragon poked a claw at the shiny buckle of her satchel.
On closer inspection, Barclay wasn’t sure the creature on her shoulder really was a dragon. It was barely larger than a raven, with silver scales and a sparsely feathered tail. And he’d never heard of any dragons within the Woods.
But, dragon or not, it was still a Beast. It would probably swoop down and bite off his hand if he wasn’t careful.
Barclay crawled backward through the leaves. He pulled his Beast-warding charm out of his pocket and waved it around. It was a rope braided with special bits of herbs and twigs, and it smelled putrid, like a skunk.
“Get away from me, dragon!”
“Dragon!” The girl let out a delighted laugh and scratched the Beast below its chin. “Mitzi is hardly that ferocious yet. She’s still only a whelp—a baby dragon—but we’re very flattered.”
Barclay let out a disgusted sound. The Beast had a name? It was a vicious killer, not some pet!
Then he realized what she and her Beast were.
“You’re a Lore Keeper,” he spat, shakily getting to his feet. “You use Beasts for magic. You become friends with them.”
Each word left a foul taste on his tongue. After all, tales of dragons weren’t the only ones whispered by the townsfolk. Lore Keepers might believe they kept their Beasts under control, but Beasts couldn’t be tamed—wildness was their very nature. In half the gossip Barclay heard, Lore Keepers died from their own Beasts betraying them, and with their so-called friends gone, there was nothing to stop the Beasts from unleashing their destructive magic on the innocent people around them.
So went the story of the Great Fire of Drearyfeld, which had claimed seven unfortunate lives. Or when the poor mayor of Dimfurt had been turned to stone. Or the time the place formerly known as Dismaldorf had been quite literally blown off the map.
The girl rolled her eyes. “You townsfolk are all like trout cursing a Wintertime avalanche.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Barclay said flatly.
“Oh, well, it does in my first language.” This surprised Barclay, as the girl had a perfect accent. “It means you’re all ungrateful. Who do you think protects your kingdoms from the Beasts? What Lore do you think keeps them in the Woods?”
Barclay didn’t trust Lore, and he was certain all of Dullshire would be horrified to learn of such magic just outside their walls.
The girl huffed and turned away from him, bending over a collection of glass jars she’d laid out over the fallen tree. Inside were strange items: holly sprigs with berries like crystal, feathers with metallic-tipped edges, dead bugs as large as Barclay’s fist, a speckled egg encased in amber, and a greenish goo that boiled even in the Winter cold.
The last jar was empty. She stood over it and rifled around inside her satchel.
Barclay wanted no business with magic, so he whipped around and climbed back up the hill. Selby awaited him at the top, huddled behind the closest tree.
“She has a dragon,” Selby said with a mixture of fear and awe.
“That dragon will probably eat her one day,” Barclay growled.
“Mitzi would never eat me!” the girl shouted. “She’s a vegetarian!”
Barclay seriously doubted that. He took Selby by the wrist and dragged him away, but when he peeked over his shoulder, he noticed something. The girl had taken a mushroom out of her bag and was lowering it into the last glass jar. It was stout and curved, with a red dome.
A Mourningtide Morel.
A Lore Keeper like her probably didn’t even know the value of that mushroom. She didn’t deserve it. With his fears quickly replaced by determination, Barclay stormed back down the hill.
“Do you know what that is?” Barclay demanded.
The girl paused and looked up.
“It’s a Mourningtide Morel,” she answered with a hint of pride.
“Yes. We’ve been looking for one all day. If you give it to me, then I won’t tell everyone in Dullshire that there’s a Lore Keeper skulking about in the Woods.” Barclay held out his hand, his face burning red. He flushed when he lied. Whether he got the mushroom or not, of course he would tell the townspeople about her. And they would grab their pitchforks, and they would drive her and her Beast someplace else.
“As if they’d dare to come into the Woods and find me,” the girl countered.
Barclay moved to grab the glass jar, but she snatched it out of his reach.
“Give it to me.”
“Absolutely not. I found it!”
“You’re not even using it!”
“Yes I am! I’m making a trap.”
Barclay scoffed. All she had was a line of jars. What was she trying to trap? Lightning bugs? “A trap for what?” he asked.
“A trap for Gravaldor.”
Barclay’s stomach filled with dread even colder than the icy mist. If she somehow summoned Gravaldor, then the tragedy from seven years ago in Dullshire could happen all over again. Barclay had already lost too much to Gravaldor to let him destroy his home a second time.
He climbed atop the fallen trunk. Even side by side, she was still taller than him, but so was almost everyone. When he took a step closer, her dragon—or Mitzi, as she called it—bared its fangs at Barclay and gave a snakelike hiss.
“You can’t do this,” he told the girl.
“Yes I can. I’m going to bond with Gravaldor, just like I bonded with Mitzi.” She rolled up her sleeve to reveal a strange tattoo on her forearm in shiny golden ink. It looked just like her dragon. “Gravaldor is the Legendary Beast of the Woods. And when I bond with him, I’ll—”
“You want to bond with him?” Barclay echoed, his voice high and fearful. Just the thought of Gravaldor made him picture his parents—the gentle way his mother treated the books that she read to her students as a schoolteacher, the apple treats his father would bake for Barclay when he learned to follow a new rule. If it hadn’t been for Gravaldor, they’d still be alive. If it hadn’t been for Gravaldor, they’d still be a family.
All Barclay had ever done was follow in his parents’ footsteps. Because he believed, down to his very core, that if he worked hard and tried to follow the rules, he could almost get them back. He could earn the life in Dullshire that he should have had.
He didn’t even care about the danger anymore. Or the Mourningtide Morel. Or the dirt under his fingernails.
He had to stop her.
“You’ll kill everyone,” Barclay seethed. “Gravaldor isn’t like your dragon—”
“I told you, she’s a whelp—”
“He’s huge! He’s bigger than trees, with fangs as long as you and me. He’s more powerful than any Beast in the Woods, and you’d be eaten before you’d even be able to feel sorry.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How would you know? You’re just a farmer of…” She deflated, trying to think. “What’s the word for it in your language? They’re squishy. It’s a… a…”