Growing up, she’d loved these bedtime stories best, the ones about heroes who traveled through the stones and found themselves in a strange land full of monsters and magic. She had begged Gran for them, and for many years she’d fallen asleep dreaming of Anwen.

The creature leapt nimbly atop a stone at the center of the henge. It sat and watched her with knowing eyes, as if waiting for something.

“Did you bring me here on purpose?” Emry whispered.

The creature didn’t answer. Instead, it bowed its head, giving her permission to come closer. Emry approached it gingerly, her hand extended. Its fur was soft as silk, but shockingly cold. Emry gasped, pulling away as though she had plunged her hand into a bank of snow.

Help me.

The words were as clear in Emry’s mind as if the creature had spoken them aloud.

“How?” she asked.

Send me home. To the world beyond the stones.

“I can try,” Emry promised. She had never seen its like. How lonely it must be, all by itself in a strange place.

She thought back to Gran’s stories, remembering the soft, rhythmic words that had long ago lulled her to sleep.

So the girl pricked her finger, and her blood dripped forth onto the stones, each precious drop containing iron, from the world of man, and salt to ward away the monsters that thirst for such a place.

Emry smiled as she spotted the tangle of wild berries, thick with thorns. They would do. She pressed her finger to a thorn, watching a bead of blood gather at the tip.

Carefully, she smeared a drop of blood to either side of the stone doorway.

The creature blinked at her, watching. And Emry reminded herself of the next part of the story:

But what the girl had given was not enough. And so she cut deeper into her flesh, until it was not just blood that flowed, but magic. As her magic dripped onto the altar, she bid the door to open in the language of the ancients.

Emry dragged her palm across the brambles, hissing from the pain. The creature jumped down from the stone where it had been sitting.

Here, it seemed to say. When Emry pressed her bleeding hand against the stone, she felt a deep vibration that thrummed through her, setting her teeth on edge.

Gran’s stories had never included the words she would need to open the doorway. But no matter: this was why she had learned not just spells, but the languages they came from.

She cleared her throat and spoke the words that would open a door. “Aperi ianuam.”

Nothing happened. Emry made a face and tried again. “Openian duru,” she ordered.

There was a sharp crack, as though a branch had snapped underfoot. But it came from deep in the forest.