“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.

Barclay screamed at a pitch so high, the crows nestled in the surrounding trees cawed and fled to the sky. He dashed toward Viola and clung to her arm as the Beast came into full view.

It looked like a giant snake, with bark instead of scales and eyes the color of tree sap. Its head, which had been buried in the earth, was caked in dirt and crawling with worms and beetles. It slinked closer to the pair of them.