“Aahhh!” The forgotten pixie is unseated by Croi’s movements and almost falls. Thankfully, Croi reacts quickly, catching Tinder with a hand. One look at the pixie diminishes her fear. The little creature’s magick is weak, her movements a fraction too languid to be healthy. Croi leaves the road and finds a bush to crawl into. She has no idea where they are, and though the darkness in the Otherworld is not impossible to navigate, she would much rather not. She feeds the barely conscious pixie candy grass before placing her in a nest made of leaves and twigs. She curls up in the hedge beside her charge. Sleep won’t bother her, not this close to the beast in the mountain. Croi folds her arms around her chest, careful not to disturb the pixie, and waits for the pain. It arrives an hour later; Croi stuffs a scarf in her mouth to stifle the screams it brings. When the pain leaves, she’s supine on the ground, destroyed.

Hours later, Croi opens her eyes to sunlight filtering through the straggly branches of the bush she took shelter in the night before. Tinder is stirring. Croi sits up cautiously and finds that she has grown tall enough that the bush has become very uncomfortable. She wraps a scarf around her face as a veil and crawls out of the temporary shelter. A few minutes later, the pixie follows.

It is very early in the morning, but the newness of the day does nothing to the gloom that blankets the surroundings. There is no magick anywhere here. Even the rocks are bereft of magick. Croi looks at the mountain cautiously and blinks. Now she knows where the magick has gone.

Move cautiously. Don’t wake the beast.

Croi doesn’t need her other self’s warning, but she accepts it. “Do you know where we are?” she asks the pixie.

Tinder looks around, her delicate face distressed. Without answering and as if unaware of the beast, she flies up the road toward the mountain. Croi follows her, walking softly. They soon arrive at a cluster of dwellings at the foot of the mountain; these are constructed from wood and grass. The air trembles here as it does in the aftermath of great violence. Croi stops walking, not wanting to take another step into the village, but Tinder seems determined to explore. Finally she mutters a human curse and follows the pixie. The village is obviously empty; a silence has sunk into the bones of this place. Withered gardens decorate the front yards of these dwellings. Broken windows and cracked walls pay homage to decades of neglect. Tinder flies into a dwelling whose front door has been ripped off, and Croi reluctantly walks in after her.

The dwelling contains the detritus of a life abandoned unexpectedly: A table containing plates that used to be full of food that has now shriveled into stains on their surfaces. Unmade beds, the blankets having long become havens for rats; books opened to pages where the ink has faded; time stealing the untold stories. Croi and Tinder visit five dwellings, and in all of them they see evidence of an abrupt end. What happened to the kin who dwelled here? Why are there echoes of screams in the air? Why are the sleeping beast and the mountain that contains him so glutted with magick?