Allegra was dying, and all Sloane could do was watch.

      Folding her fingers around Allegra's small hand she staved off the urge to cry. Her sister looked so helpless and fragile, to the point where Sloane was terrified she might simply shatter into pieces at the slightest provocation.

      It was heartbreaking considering less than a week earlier, eight year old Allegra Washington had been a happy, healthy child. The mysterious illness had come on so suddenly that for Sloane it still felt like a dream, or rather, a horrible inescapable nightmare.

     It seemed like only yesterday that Allegra had rushed into the two room cottage they called home, proudly holding up a bright blue ribbon with a number '1' etched on it in gold.

      "I got first place in the spelling bee!" She exclaimed. "Georgie didn't know that spaghetti had an 'h' in it, so I won!"

      "That's great, Ally," June, their mother, replied as she hurried around the kitchen in search of something.

      "Can we go get ice cream to celebrate?" Allegra asked, unaware that her mother was distracted.

      "I'm sorry, sweetheart, I have to work tonight," June said with a heavy sigh. Sloane could see the disappointment in Allegra's small face and the guilt in their mother's eyes. Allegra hadn't learned how to mask her feelings, she hadn't learned how to smile when she wanted to frown, or how to laugh when she wanted to cry.

      "Hey, now, that doesn't mean we can't do something! It's not every day my kid sister wins a spelling bee," Sloane interjected. "I think I saw some brownie mix in the cupboard."

      "Yes, yes!" Allegra exclaimed, racing to her room to put away her things.

      June placed a hand on Sloane's shoulder and managed a tired smile.

      "Thank you," she said quietly before leaning forward to place a kiss on the top of her head. "I'd be lost without you Sloane."

      "You're going to be late if you don't get going," Sloane replied. It always felt awkward to receive praise for something Sloane felt any decent person would do.

      "Right! Keys, keys, where are my-- oh, thank you," June said when she turned to see Sloane holding the keys up. "I'll be home late, don't wait up. Make sure Allegra does her homework and takes a bath."

      "I know, Mom..."

      A loud crash had brought both mother and daughter racing towards the back of the cottage. They had found Allegra sprawled across the floor, the chair she had presumably been standing on lying on its side. She was so still, so lifeless, that at first they thought she might be dead. When Sloane dropped to her knees beside the little girl she felt the heat radiating from her without ever having to touch her.

      Allegra hadn't opened her eyes since.

      It just didn't seem fair.

      A muffled moan from the opposite side of the room caused Sloane to look to where her mother was tossing and turning in the extra bed a nurse had brought in. She hadn't slept properly since this whole ordeal started and she refused to take any sort of sleeping medication to help.

      When the moaning grew louder and more desperate, Sloane rose from her spot beside Allegra and made her way over to her mother. She placed a hand on her shoulder and shook her lightly. She hated waking her, but it seemed worse somehow to leave her caught in the grips of whatever nightmare currently plagued her.

      "Mom," Sloane said, her voice soft. "Mom, wake up." 

      June Washington jerked awake, her eyes staring past Sloane before finally focusing. The moment their eyes met, June burst into tears.

      "You have to go into the forest, Sloane," June wept as she ground her fists into her eyes. "I'm sorry, baby, but it's the only way." Sloane was surprised by the anger that welled up in her chest when she heard those words.

      This again?

      "Mom, stop," Sloane insisted, kneeling down beside her mother. She was doing her best to be patient, to be gentle, but under the circumstances it was difficult. "I know you're scared, but I need you to be strong. I need you to...to be here."

      "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she murmured. "You have to go, Sloane, you have to go. You have to find him. It's the only way. It's the only way."

      Sloane grit her teeth against the slew of profanities fighting to escape her mouth. "Listen to me, mom, if the doctors..." she paused when a nurse walked by pushing a cart of medicine. When she spoke again her voice was lower than before. "If the doctors hear you talking nonsense like that they're going to take Allegra away, do you understand? Do you want that to happen?"

      Again.

      June shook her head, her hands still pressed over her face obscuring it from view.

      "Then you have to stop talking about the forest like it's anything more than some trees and dirt," Sloane continued, feeling her control over her own emotions beginning to slip away. "There is nothing in there that can help Allegra. There is no--"

      "Don't say it," June gasped, her hands falling away to expose her tear streaked face. "Don't say it, Sloane. You'll make him angry. You'll-"

      "No such thing as a goblin king," Sloane finished, an irrefutable finality to her words. It was as though she was finally putting an end to some long argued debate. The lights in the room flickered briefly causing June to begin rocking back and forth in the bed, muttering to herself.

      "Into the forest... it's the only way... into the forest... find him... find him... beg him if you must..."

      Unable to sit by and watch her mother's slow descent into madness while her baby sister lay dying in the bed beside her, Sloane threw herself to her feet.

      "Fine," she said, her voice sharp. "Fine. I'll go to the forest."

      June stopped rocking. "Thank you," she said, the relief in her voice was palpable. "Thank you, Sloane."

      "You have to promise me one thing," Sloane said.

      "Anything, baby, anything," June replied, grasping at her daughter's hands.

      "When I come back and tell you that there was nothing to find, you have to promise me you'll stop talking about the forest," Sloane said.

      June was quiet for a moment and Sloane was afraid she had gone too far this time – that she had pushed her mother too hard.

      "All right," June said at last. "Okay, all right, Sloane."

      A lump formed in Sloane's throat and she simply nodded before pulling her hand free. She was worried about leaving her mother alone, worried that June might say something to tip off the doctors that she wasn't well, that she didn't see things the same way normal people saw them. At least, that's how Sloane had always interpreted it.

      Even now, at seventeen, Sloane recalled with vivid clarity the stories her mother used to tell her when she was a child. Stories about the forest and about the self proclaimed goblin king, who had saved their lives. June, seven months pregnant, had gotten lost in the woods following a tragic car accident that claimed the life of Sloane's father Jeffrey.

      June claimed she had fallen into a ravine and broken her back, that she would have died there in the woods if he hadn't come. When she was a child, Sloane had loved hearing the story, it was the only time June talked about her late husband, the only time Sloane heard about her father.

      After Allegra was born, however, Sloane had been forced to become a mother when she herself was still a child. Fairytales no longer held their appeal and she hated it when her mother would disappear to a place that Sloane didn't know how to reach.

      None of it had been easy, but Sloane had managed and she loved her baby sister more than anything in the world. She just wished that just once she could be the one who cried, who sought comfort, who let it all out while her mother held her and told her it would be okay rather than the other way around.

      "Take care of Allegra, okay, Mom?" Sloane said at last.

      As though suddenly reminded of her dying daughter, June looked over to the bed where Allegra lay. She kicked at the sheets tangled around her legs and once freed, slipped out of the bed to occupy the chair Sloane had been in earlier. June caught Allegra's small, unmoving hand in her own.

      "It's gonna be okay, baby," June cooed, stroking the back of her hand. "Sloane is gonna make it right, she's gonna make it right. You're going to be better soon."

      Sloane felt her heart squeeze in her chest and for a moment she couldn't breathe.

      Though she knew she would find nothing in the forest that would save Allegra, a small part of her couldn't help but hope she was wrong.