‘Don’t be shy, Bird Girl,’ it said now, coaxing. ‘We’re friendly folk. And you’re not exactly rich in friends, are you? Come through here where it’s warm and safe, and you’ll have companions enough to last you a lifetime. Aren’t you hungry? Thirsty? Tired out and a little sad? Let us look after you.’

There was one story about a girl who went out in the woods and met a fey being, a wispy thing with gossamer wings, and the being offered the girl a tiny cake with a flower on top. She only took one bite. That bite meant the girl could never, ever go back to the human world. She could never see her family again, her mother, her father, her little brothers. She had to stay in the Otherworld for the rest of her life. Cara kept her mouth firmly shut. In the darkness of underground, she could feel the thunderous beat of her own heart.

She was hungry; far hungrier than she should have been, considering she had only walked part of the way to Wolf Glen before she made the mistake with that hole in the rocks or whatever it was. But she had drunk from streams along the way and she had a full water skin slung over her shoulder. Odd that the skin had not split open when she fell. But then, she had landed softly, even though the ground beneath her feet was hard-packed earth.

‘Cara!’ The way it called her name was like music, almost. Like the chime of a strange bell. ‘Oh, Cara!’ Then a peal of laughter, as if this were some kind of game, no more than an amusement.

You won’t make me move, she thought. You won’t make me speak. I’ll wait you out. How long would it be before anyone realised she was missing? How long before anyone started looking? How long could she stand in one spot, in utter darkness, without growing faint? If she so much as reached for the water skin they’d come rushing in, she knew it, and she’d never ever be able to go home to Wolf Glen.