Tuk couldn't breathe. But not because he had folded himself inside a basket so tightly his knees smashed against his cheeks. Sharp bits of straw scratched against the smooth skin on his arms and legs, but he did not feel them. He closed his eyes and pictured his older brother and sister safe at home. They were helping his father with the salmon run. Standing on their family's wooden platform over the raging river they would pull salmon almost as big as Tuk out of the water with the nets made hemp twine and poles fashioned from long pine saplings. His younger brother would be at home with his mother who was pregnant with Tuk's fifth sibling. As the middle child, Tuk had been sent to help his grandmother who he called Mana. His family was wealthy. His mother curated the dentalium shells used as currency by coastal people. She was beautiful. Tuk closed his eyes wishing he could smell the warmth and comfort of his mother now. His heart beat in his brain. Not much air came through the small holes in the basket, but he couldn't inhale. The full moon shone brightly through the open window of the rustic one room house. A light breeze drifted in through the round window above the bench where he had been sleeping only moments before. Dark red blood pooled on the dirt floor around the back of his grandmother's head four feet in front of him. She stared unseeing at the heavens. Tuk knew she was dead although his conscious thoughts had ceased. He was hot, so hot he might ignite. Dread flooded through him. And then a cold rush of air spread across his shoulders. Tuk knew he would die.

"Well look what I found here, John," drawled a deep man's voice as he threw the top of the basket across the room. It shattered a clay jug sitting on the table. Tuk could only see a pair of beaten leather boots, torchlight reflected in the black polish, but he could smell the rank sweat of a large man, the whiskey on his breath and the gunsmoke swirling around the barrel of his rifle.

In a flash, he was staring into the man's cold blue eyes, yanked from the basket by his hair. 'Eyes of a killer,' thought Tuk before his head smashed against the floor and his vision went dim. When he opened his eyes, he saw flames consuming his grandmother's body lying next to him. The large timber planks above him were ablaze. Crisp moonlight still shone through the window. Tuk heaved himself to his knees, and his head swam. Smoke seared his lungs, but he lunged at the round window and rolled out into the cold night air cooling his singed face in the fragrant earth: a smell he loved, the smell of home.

"The little bugger is getting away! I told you to finish him!" screamed a husky voice from somewhere in the darkness. Tuk didn't look. He didn't think. He didn't breathe. His legs propelled him into the forest. His forest, not theirs. The forest of his childhood. A childhood now dead and burning along with his grandmother. But he would realize that years later. The forest gave, provided and protected Tuk and his family. It provided them much the food they ate, and when one of the mighty redwoods fell, they would cut its timbers to build their homes and shell out the canoes they used to fish for salmon. Tuk had played, hunted, and foraged among the tall trees every day of the ten short years of his happy life. He had run through them since he could remember. But never like this. Never in a sprint with the surge of adrenaline of a boy being hunted. Nothing in the forest had ever caused him fear until now. He saw only snippets of the landmarks he knew so well illuminated in the bright night as if time had sped up. Faster and faster, he ran through the wet ferns, and over rocks and logs. Shouts followed him, but he paid them no heed. And then they were upon him and every second seemed an eternity. They circled him sneering and taunting, the light of the torches reflecting in their menacing eyes and throwing shadows against tall tree trunks. Every detail seemed amplified: the sweat beading on their foreheads, the stench of liquor and dirty men, the soft lap of the torch flames, and the reflection of the moonlight on the butts of their rifles.

A loud growl from the darkness silenced the men. Two cocked their rifles. The third held the torches. Tuk watched the hatred in their eyes turned to fear. Everyone and the forest was absolutely still. Suddenly, a large beast lept out of the darkness landing on one of the men's back and sinking its white teeth into his hairy neck. He pitched forward, blood spurting from the bite, dropping his rifle. "It's one of the beasts," yelled one of the men, "get the witch!" A shot rang out. The beast looked up, unimpressed, and locked eyes with the shooter. It dropped the first man's lifeless body and lunged. The second rifle hit the ground, and the man screamed as the beast's sharp brown claws made contact with his chest knocking him to the ground. The third man fled dropping the torches which briefly flared illuminating two lifeless bodies on the forest floor, then sputtered out leaving Tuk and the beast together in darkness the moonlight could not penetrate. The beast panted, its eyes glowing yellow in the blackness that enveloped them. Tuk inhaled sharply, the cool air soothing his ragged lungs. Slowly the yellow eyes moved closer until their owner sat before Tuk. Tuk reached out and stroked the beast's nose. It's large, wet tongue soothed and healed his scratched, burnt skin. " Hle, you found me, you saved me...Mana is dead." Tuk took irregular staccato breaths until he succumbed and sobbed into the beasts thick, soft fur. He cried for hours, and the moon dog nuzzled and licked him tenderly until Tuk passed into the dream world, cuddled next to the beast, warmed against the cold night air.

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Vile smells wafted from the little hut deep in the forest. Built of blackened wood, it appeared old and dilapidated with one small window covered with a blood-stained animal hide. In front of the hut were oddly shaped piles of stones, bits of broken farm equipment, and bones. Plumes of black smoke billowed into the sky from the stone chimney. Other than the smoke, the hut was completely hidden from view deep in the forest where the thick underbrush consisted of tortuous vines and thorny bushes. Ed bushwacked his way through the dense foliage with a machete. He was a large, hairy, unpleasant man who had escaped prison in New Orleans in 1848 and made his way with thousands of others to California in search of gold. His large muscles rippled under a torn, filthy white shirt as he heaved and slashed his way deeper towards the witches hut. His hair and mustache were as wild as his black, beady eyes. He paused, hitching up his dark blue filthy Levi's jeans and looked up. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he caught sight of the witch through the open door of her hut.

She was an old woman. Her face was wrinkled and leathery but not from sunshine and coastal air, from hatred and smoke and evil. Bent over, she appeared at a distance so small she could have been a child. When she rose to her full height, she was less than five feet tall. Her tattered black robes were pushed up over her elbows revealing dark skinny arms covered in warts and boils. The witch had haunted the Redwood forest for centuries. The people who lived there feared her, and she hated them all. She took pleasure in causing destruction, chaos, fear, and pain and employed her magic to stop the annual salmon run, ruin crops, and summon stormy weather. When the gold seekers had come and started assaulting the descendants of the trees, she cackled with delight and joined in the slaughter. Some of the white men were wizards. Others weren't, but all were greedy and disrespected the people who lived in and loved the coastal forest. She happily assisted in their torture. But the great redwood trees were not on her side. They protected the native people unleashing beasts to chase off the gold miners. She hated the beasts, unable to control them and convert them to her cause. Bears and snakes, goats, whales and even magical creatures all ran to the aid of the coastal villages. They were loyal only to the redwood trees and their human children. She loathed them and tried every spell that she could to stop the animals who so wrongfully protected those who had not appreciated her skills, not bowed down to her power, not respected her magic, and they would pay. She stood over her cauldron, a hearth in the middle of her hut, and stirred the thick black tincture she had boiled for weeks. As smoke wafted up forms took shape which made her cackle and shriek madly. She had seen the moon dog's rescue and knew the fool who had ran was almost upon her hut. She was ready, the black magic she had created in the bottom of her cauldron would end the protection the trees had given their people. And she would laugh and watch them die.

Ed visibly shook as he neared the witches hut. The putrid fumes caused him to cough and gag as he approached the dark black door etched with menacing symbols. John and Charles were dead, but he wasn't sure anymore what he feared more, the beast he had escaped, or the help he sought, but he knew the witch was their only hope in stopping the beasts that increasingly seemed to protect the native people with deadly force. The witch looked up at him from her cauldron and Ed immediately wished he had not come. She laughed sending ice down Ed's spine, her red eyes, fixed on the trembling gold miner.

"Come in," she hissed. And against his will, Ed's legs stepped into the cottage. The fumes inside were so thick he could barely breathe. "It's ready, the potion that will give me the strength to stop the animals that have been protecting these people." Ed could not speak, his knees felt weak. He coughed and his eyes burned. "SIT!" she commanded, and Ed fell onto a stool next to the large black cauldron. "You can help me stop the wretched beasts."

"I-I can?" stammered Ed. Intense heat radiated off the cauldron.

"Yes," said the witch in a soothing voice which did nothing but heighten his fear.

"Huh-huh how?" he asked, the flames from the fire reflecting in his terrified eyes. Sweat trickled down his forehead leaving a clear path through the dirt and grime. He wretched with nausea and the room began to spin. Then the witch drew some fo the black liquid out of the cauldron with a metal ladle and poured it into an ornate gold cup. Ed watched in horror as she brought it to her lips. As she drank, a thick black smoke consumed her. Ed heard her shriek and thought perhaps she had poisoned herself. But his relief and hope vanished as the haze cleared, and she again appeared, now taller, larger, and more heinous looking than before. The gold miner couldn't move. He was paralyzed with fear at the sight of the evil witch now raising her wand at him.

"Petrificus totalus aeternum lapis!" she screamed, and a blinding light filled the hut. She smiled at her work with a look of deep satisfaction.

"Thank you, Ed," the witch sang wickedly and glided toward the figure sitting on the stool. She ran her gnarled fingers down Ed's forehead, across the bridge of his nose, and over his lips.

"Aeternum lapis," she whispered in his ear. "Forever stone." She walked around him one more time admiring her work. "And now I will stop the moon dog and his friends," she cackled.

And with that, she apparated from the hut.