“It is not weakness to accept help from a friend at times, you know,” Sam said, deeply frowning. “I worry for you in these forests.”

I ignored him and turned my back. Before I crossed the treeline, I looked back to see Rosemary still watching, standing stone-still behind the garden wall. <<You will come home to him>>. I did not know who she referred to but I hoped it was my father or Vincent—and not Sam—she meant.

The governess followed after me, of course unable to sense what Rosemary felt toward me, and soon we were in the thick of it, hopping over roots and climbing the rocks along the northern route. I wanted to see the moonrise.

“Slow down, won’t you?” June asked, her breath puffing out in white clouds as the temperature dropped. “Don’t you ever stroll? We have been at nearly a run this whole time.”

This whole time? I wondered how much time had passed. It was just about nightfall, and we were almost to my favorite clearing. The moon would arch its back over the land, drifting above a mountain peak and illuminating the frozen lake my family had owned for generations.

But once I broke into the clearing, I realized the moon had called forth more monsters than only myself.

With pink rotting skin and a wild charcoal smile stood a grippling.

I had not meant to lead my governess into very certain death, but the probability of us both living to see another moonrise over Kendrick Lake faded with the sun’s final rays.

Episode 16: A Beast and Foolish Humans At Kendrick Lake

The most startling thing about true and wicked monsters was that they appeared against the subtle gray of the evening fog and the lush and sultry hue of the evergreens. As if the wonders of Lykke were so magnificent that the devils had no choice but to rival them with hideous intensity.

A grippling. Tall and upright, like a man. But with pale-pink and rotting flesh, its body made of sores as if it had been peeled alive. Its eyes dull and lifeless, but its mouth curved into an almost pleasant smile. Hairless and, perhaps, heartless.

But the most alarming thing about grippling was just that. Its grip. For it desired to live more than any other creature, and if it were to catch a living thing, it would embrace it and squeeze and press until it crushed the life out of them. A grip with no release.

It was not my first time beholding a grippling. I knew what needed to be known. They were faster than they were cunning. Outrunning them was nearly impossible, but outsmarting them could do the trick.

The breath of my new governess trembled at my back. She began to pray, her airy words lighting from her lips and falling like the mist. God would not save June from this. But I might.