Despite his tiredness, Nat lay awake. The windows in the roof were both open, but because his room was at the top of the house it was still baking hot. Apart from the occasional gunfire sound effects wafting up from the movie two floors down and the whir of the fan, the night was still and quiet. As his eyes closed, he thought fleetingly about the tattoo on Woody’s neck, but no sooner had the thought surfaced than he fell asleep.

When he woke, Nat felt even more uncomfortable, but cooler; a refreshing breeze was blowing his hair back from his sweaty forehead. He opened his eyes groggily. The book-lined walls of his bedroom had gone, replaced with trees, their foliage glowing eerily in the moonlight. He was lying on a bed of pine needles and leaves; no wonder he was uncomfortable. Where am I? This is a dream, right? But if it was a dream, he had never experienced one so real before. He looked up at the enormous moon, shielding his eyes — it was so unnaturally bright.

Disoriented and frightened, Nat rose from the woodland floor and brushed his pajama pants with trembling hands. Maybe I’ve been sleepwalking, he thought in alarm. It all seems so real. He felt a stab of terror. It was real: Somehow he’d found himself in the forbidden East Wood in the middle of the night, and he was not alone.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a rustling in an enormous fan of bracken that framed the moonlit path. He watched, unable to move, as a long, thin figure unfolded itself from the middle of the foliage like a charmed snake emerging from its basket. At first, Nat thought it was a man, but as his eyes adjusted to the moonlight, he saw that whatever it was, it was not human. The skin was a mottled, dead gray; the thin legs bowed but topped with powerful thighs, roped with muscle. The hideous torso, sprinkled with coarse black fur, was attached to the head of a wolf with fangs that grew snaggled and pointed. The eyes were a wicked, raddled orange, burning malevolently as they fixed on Nat, making him feel shaky and weak. He tried to move, but his legs wouldn’t do what he wanted them to, which was to run for his life. A scream rose in his throat but died in his mouth, and he realized with sickening horror that the wolf thing was getting closer, although it hadn’t appeared to move. It leered just a few feet away from him, and Nat seemed to be drifting toward the creature against his will; he had a surreal sensation of being gently lifted off the leafy floor of the woods and floating … floating, close enough to the wolf thing to look deep into its eyes. Nat felt himself relax as he stared into their fiery depths, and wondered why he had been afraid.