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.