It was a perfect afternoon. The green-gold light hung heavily around her, dappled by bright pockets of unfiltered sunshine. She ate three dark berries from a thorny bush, thrilled by her daring—they could be poisonous, after all. She waited in delicious agony for five minutes, daring the poison to seep through her blood and into her heart, before two squirrels jolted her from her reverie by running up a very tall tree. They argued exactly like her parents did when they thought no one was around, only louder. Her parents liked to argue in whispers.

She decided to be Beauty, walking through the woods to the Beast’s castle. Of course, Red Riding Hood was better suited to the circumstances, but Alva didn’t want to be attacked by a wolf and she didn’t want one to eat her surviving grandmother, either, even if she did barely know the woman. So she was Beauty, creeping though the forest with quickened breath, darting from tree to tree, imagining herself with a long, romantic green velvet cloak and hair so blond as to resemble moonlight, and without any warning there it was—the haunted castle.

She walked towards it, her feet kicking up puffs of dust. The sky was still blue, the sun was still golden, but it didn’t seem to matter here, like the house wasn’t allowed to be warm. Alva’s breath quickened in earnest as she approached the front door, dark and dusty, pockmarked where a handful of daring souls had carved their initials. She felt sad and scared at the same time, the way she did when one of her nannies brought out the ruler or when she made too much noise at dinner, like she wanted to start crying in little gasps. But eleven was too old for that kind of behavior; thus she was rigidly composed when she touched the door, flattening her palm against it.

It was cold and clammy, far too cold and far too moist for a dry summer day with the smell of sun-warmed dirt in the air. Alva quickly seized her hand away, disgusted and terrified. That’s what came of being childish, she told herself, backing away. She’d allowed her imagination to get the better of her—she’d probably overheated her brain. It was time to go back anyway; in fact, she’d have to run to be there before her hour was up.

She was shivering as she turned away, but she couldn’t stop herself from looking back as she stepped into the woods, and she couldn’t shake the feeling the house didn’t want her to go.

Twenty years later, a few yards from where her eleven-year-old self had stood, the reality of what she’d just done crashed into her.