going back for Mommy and then he would come for her.
What had happened to Mommy? She tries to remember, pressing her small hands against her face and wishing she was home in bed where it is warm and safe. (Only it isn’t safe any more. That’s what Mommy had told her. That was why they were leaving.)
Mommy had stayed behind at the edge of the last clearing to do some of her magic. Donna remembered her words, spoken to her father, not to her: “My wards are stronger. I’ll set them here and here.” A pause. “And one over there.”
Daddy had argued. He said they should stay together, but she had insisted that “keeping Donna safe” was the most important thing.
“Go on,” she’d said to her father. “I’ll be right behind you. Keep my little girl safe.”
He always listened to Mommy.
And now, Donna is alone, sitting on an overstuffed backpack and waiting for someone to come back for her. There had been a scream, and it sounded like Mommy. Her father had told her not to worry, that it was probably nothing—just a bird—except Donna knew there weren’t birds in the Ironwood at night. The only things in the Ironwood at night were the wood elves, and they didn’t sound like a woman’s sharp scream cut off too quickly.
Tears threaten as she waits, and she has a horrible urge to go to the bathroom. She even considers relieving herself behind the next tree, so she can still see the bags and the path, but she’s afraid to move. Especially after she heard that terrible sound. The trumpeting howl of some kind of beast—a monster, the kind of thing you only read about in fairy tales. And, even then, the monster is always defeated by the princess. That’s the way her daddy tells the stories.
Donna jiggles her legs and fiddles with her jacket. Her hands are cold.
And then the noise comes again. Not the one Daddy had tried to say was a bird. But the long howl that makes her bones shake.
Donna stands up and creeps to the path. The fear is bad enough that she feels all numb with it, all across the top of her head, and her ears make a funny noise. But she has to see what is making the noise.
She has to see that her parents are safe.
The air shimmers between the trees and there is her father, running toward her, his face white and stricken in a way she’s never seen it before, not even when they set out from the house and she knew he was worried about being seen. He had been tense but in control.
The expression on her father’s face is so much more terrifying. Not that he looks afraid, though perhaps he is, but it is as though he is trying to keep some sort of terrible emotion from escaping.
He grabs her from the path, scooping her into his arms and turning around and around. Searching for something …
“The bags!” He looks into her face. “Where are they?”
“I hid them,” she whispers. “I’m sorry, did I make a mistake?”
“No darling, you did great,” he says. He squeezes her so tightly against him that she can’t breathe properly. “Show me.”
They reach the bags and he places his daughter on the ground. He opens the heavy backpack, the one Donna had so much trouble moving, and pulls out a small axe. The blade flashes with magic.
Her eyes widen as he hefts it in one hand and grabs her shoulder with the other.
“Donna, if I tell you to run, you’ll run. You will listen to me. You—”
“Where’s Mommy?” she wails, unable to keep the tears from filling her eyes.
Her father closes his eyes for a moment. A bleak expression crosses his face as he opens them again. “She’ll be here in a moment. She’s right behind me.” His voice breaks. “Just listen to me, okay?”
“No she isn’t,” Donna says, knowing that he’s lying to her. Something he has never done before. “Did the monster eat her?”
He removes his spectacles and tucks them inside his coat. “Not the monster you’re talking about,” he says grimly.
“I don’t—”
“Get behind me, Donna,” he shouts as the Wood Monster bursts onto the path. Blue flames surround its dark muzzle and its eyes glow like two fiery embers.
Donna bites back a scream, hanging onto her father’s hand, trying not to let him push her back. She wants to hold onto him, and if he insists on her staying behind she