“Why are you here?” I ask the figure. The rippling air around her. What do I want her to say? That’s she’s trapped, forever, like a spirit in a storybook?

She stops pouring, pushes a teacup toward us. We don’t take it. She takes the other in hand and holds it beneath her nose. “It smells of toasted rice. Remember?”

Tai shivers in my arms.

“Why are you here?” I repeat, again.

What do I want her to say? That she’s here to protect us? To save us?

What will satisfy me, us?

She looks in my direction, her eyes lake blue. Transparent. The texture is different. They need to be thickened, to be lived in. They aren’t the eyes of a spirit who is free.

“I came here to feel safe,” she says. “And I stayed, because I felt I could make a real difference.”

And I convulse, arms around my sister, because she is not the texture of a living thing.

I hear the cracking of branches outside the cabin, and my attention snaps away, if only for a moment. I wrestle my phone out of my pocket to glance at the screen. It flickers with those two little words in the upper corner: no service.

More cracking, branches whipped back. A groan of frustration outside, enough to break the spell at last.

“We need to go before he finds us,” I whisper to Tai, transfixed beside me. “We need to go right now and run to the main road. The police should be here.”

“We’re locked in,” Tai whispers back, voice hoarse. “No one can get in.” She glances toward the kitchenette, where I slipped through the small window. “No one.”

The sylph continues sipping at her tea, watching our general direction. I can’t look at her. I can’t decide if every second spent with her will heal me or haunt me. I suspect both.

That’s when a boom rocks the front wall of the cabin. Tai takes my hand, and it’s frigid. I leap to my feet, and I can see the sylph’s scalp. The tender part.

Another blow: The cabin shudders.

“He’s kicking at the door,” I whisper to Tai, dragging her up. There’s no way for him to see inside. But—but—

The banging continues, and the hinges of the front door creak. The small chest Tai must have placed before it jolts forward.

Tai drops my hand when I begin to pull her toward the back window I climbed through. She rushes back to the tea table, back to the sylph, and she says: “We need your help, Mama. He’s coming after us. We need to escape.” As if this trapped creature can help us.