The sun had set, and the first stars peppered the sky.

Mat toyed with a blade of grass between his teeth, enjoying the warmer weather too much to care about his damp back on the wet ground.

"Dinner," Gran called from the window.

Mat strode inside, greeted by a burst of warm air smelling of egg noodles and cooked cabbage. "Smells good." He took a seat and shoveled a generous portion of the casserole onto his plate.

"Cabbage?" she asked, brow piqued.

"Anything smothered in cheese."

The old woman gave an affirmative grunt and scooped up her own helping.

Mat eyed the third and empty place setting, got up and moved toward the bedroom door.

Gran grumbled: "Leave her alone. She wants to go hungry, that's more for us."

"She's gotta eat something sometime." He knocked as he noticed her boots missing from the mat, her cloak missing from the hook. He mumbled what he saw, trying to remember the last time he'd seen her things.

"What? Speak up, boy."

"Her cloak is gone. Her boots—how long have her things been gone?"

Gran shrugged. "Maybe she snuck out while I was cooking."

"I was outside. She wasn't outside." Panic building, he flung open the front door and moved out onto the porch.

"Mat, I'm sure she's just washing up," Gran shouted out after him.

The bruised sky was blackening, the only light pouring from the cottage into the night. Unease settled in his chest like a stone as he scanned the empty yard, no lantern, not a head of white to be seen--

A hideous scream erupted from the direction of the Burnt Forest, turning his head with breakneck speed. There was nothing, no one but him--another scream. All his blood rushed toward his heart, depriving his brain of coherent thoughts as he bolted toward the wail. Gran shouted his name as he sprinted into the tall grass, slipping and sliding in the mud, the wet stems slapping against his legs. At the tree line, he stumbled to a stop and tilted an ear, trying to listen over the din of his own heart pounding in his head. He wasn't sure what he would cough up first: his lungs, his heart, or the casserole.

It was her, he was certain.

The panic in him building, he both dreaded and desperately awaited another signal.

Another scream, this time much closer, this time cut short.

He shot into the woods. Eyes adjusting to the dark, he ambled around trees, crashed into others and stumbled over monstrous roots, the bark pulling at his clothes like dull blades. Not much for dashing, he gulped at the sooty air; he sounded like a man drowning. He stopped behind a colossal tree to catch his breath and await another signal, but he needn't wait long--rustling and muffled grunts slunk from behind that very tree. His legs couldn't carry him to the other side fast enough, but once they had, his brain grappled with what met his eyes: a frenzied ball of grimy grey hair, red cloak, flying fists and feet and gnashing teeth violently jerked about on the forest floor. He blinked at it dumbly before he recognized it as a wolf attacking the girl, fighting for her life. Her blood (sap) fed on her red cloak, the wolf's snout was smothered in it. With matted fur and loose skin hanging off its lithe frame, the wolf appeared to be starving. Slow on the uptake—it occurred to Mat to intervene, and all he could think to do was divert the beast's attention.

"HEY," he shouted.

Not the most foolproof plan, but it worked. The wolf swung its head around, large on its emaciated body, its teeth webbing with sap in a snarl. Before Mat could decide what to do next, the girl reached around and shoved her finger into its eye. It yelped before turning on her, darting for her neck. She rolled to the side, throwing up an arm to protect her throat. The wolf bit down, and she wailed, sending tremors up his spine.

Mat tore his eyes away and looked frantically about for a blunt object, a sharp stick, anything—but all was a black expanse held together by dim seams.

His skin crawled as the girl let loose another piercing scream. The wolf had given up on her throat and now had its jaws wrapped around her torso, pulling and shaking its head from side to side while she grabbed fistfuls of dirt and fur.

Mat dropped to his knees and began groping around in the dark, grabbing at the first stick he touched. There was no time to wonder whether it was sharp or sturdy enough to skewer a wolf. He screamed at the beast and thrust the stick down into its back. It let go of the girl with a squeal and turned on him, yanking the stick in half. It leapt at Mat who stumbled back, tripped on a root, sat back on the ground—hard—and brought up what remained of the stick in time for the wolf to impale itself. He sent up a quick prayer that the stick would hold its weight as blood pooled in the wolf's left eye and it snapped its jaws, inching ever closer, wetting Mat's face with saliva and sap. Its blood began to seep down the stick, slickening Mat's shaky grip. He leaned all the way back against the earth, the wolf's muzzle slowing with death. Only when its eyes dulled, and its jaw went slack mid-grin did Mat pitch it to the side.

He crawled to the girl, a mess of dirty tendrils, sap and a ripped cloak. She was laying still, her eyes wide and pleading, chest heaving.

"You're alright. Everything is going to be alright," he said, his words hollow and shaking as he fretted over how best to lift her.

He placed her hand on his neck, urging her to take hold as he snaked an arm under her knees and wedged the other under her shoulder blades. He awaited a protest. When none came, he straightened his legs. A howl tore through her and she began writhing in his arms.

"Stop," he grunted, instinctively grabbing tighter so as not to drop her.

She gave a pained whimper and blacked out.

Her blood warmed his front, reminding him to hurry. He took off in the direction he swore he'd come, careful this time to step over roots and wide around boughs.

Standing outside, looking in at the abnormal silence of the Burnt Forest, where no birds twittered, where no leaves rustled and no critters skittered was one thing. It was another to stumble through it in the dark after having learned there was life inside it after all. It was now a silence that breathed.

He picked up the pace.

A howl tore through the quiet and Mat nearly dropped her. His fear felt like a thing alive, ready to rip out of his chest and run away without him. He crouched low, kept still, and pressed her to his chest as sweat rolled into his eyes and mouth.

Maybe the sickly wolf had a pack after all.

Mat didn't think he could fend off another attack, not with the girl in his arms that now shook with her dead weight.

Dead.

Determined to not have his throat ripped out where he crouched cravenly among the roots, he resumed a brisk and clumsy pace.

All the trees, every dirty ditch, bend and bough looked the same. His mind, tightly wound and addled by an onslaught of morbid scenarios, couldn't make sense of the landscape. Just when the thought of holding the girl while she bled out as he wandered about lost slipped into his mind to feed, he caught a dull glow beyond the trees. He took a few tentative steps toward it before recognizing it for what it was: moonlight. Hope flickered in him like a firefly at summer's end. He sprinted through the tree line and into the golden grass that whispered as they passed.

Brandishing a shovel, Gran was hobbling across the field to meet them, moving with the speed of a cloud on a windless night.

Mat didn't slow. He pushed past the old woman, silently cursing her for running out here, knowing it'd take a tiny eternity for her to shuffle back.

"What happened?" Gran huffed, trying to keep up.

"Wolf."

She pitched incredulous questions at him that he let them fall without answers all the way back to the cottage. Once there, he had a mind to place the girl on the bed or couch but couldn't decide which and was still standing in the living room, trying to decide, when Gran shambled in. The old woman made quick work of cleaning off the table.

"Put her here." Gran laid down a quilt, atop which he placed the girl, though she was sticky as she went.

Both he and Gran looked to the stain on his shirt. In the pallid glow, they saw what Mat had already known: it was a deep and inky green. Everywhere that the girl had been ripped open, the thick, sappy substance glistened in the lantern light.

"What the hell is that?" Gran asked, lip curling. "Where's the blood?"

I don't know, he had meant to say, but the words lodged in his throat as his eyes roved over the damage done. The lanterns lent a cadaverous pallor to her skin.

"If there had been any doubt before...." Gran said, looking like a cockroach had scurried over her foot.

"You have to help her."

Wavering, her eyes locked onto his, but before he could scream at her to hurry, she stepped to the table.

"The cloak's in the way. Lift her."

Mat returned his arm to the girl's upper back and cradled her head as the old woman unhooked the cloak's clasp and pulled it out from under her. Sticky with sap, the fabric held fast; Gran had to use a deft touch to remove the bits closest to the wounds, green tendrils pulling on the cloak and her fingers. When she tried to drop it to the floor, she had to give her hand a fierce shake before it finally fell with a squelchy slap.

"Boil me a pot of water."

Feeling as if he'd aged a decade in a single sprint, Mat didn't move. Her words slogged through the fog enveloping his mind.

"Mat! Boil some water," Gran insisted, before returning her attention to the girl.

Every touch took extra effort; the sticky substance wasn't coagulating so much as hardening into a shimmery shell. Gran grabbed a kitchen knife and began cutting away the girl's clothes.

Mat walked numbly out to grab a bucket full of yesterday's rainwater off the porch and like a magnet, the Burnt Forest usurped his gaze. He half expected to find a pack of wolves dotting the tree line but none were. It was a ludicrous thought. Nothing, not even wolves could survive in the Burnt Forest. But maybe werelings could.

"Hurry up, boy!" Gran's shout carried through the open door.

Mat climbed out of his mind, moved inside and poured the water into a cauldron. He placed it over the fire with all the haste of one with nothing else to do.

"Snap out of it! Get me rags. She's losing all her--" Gran faltered, unsure how to finish that sentence.

He did as he was told. She barked at him to bring more. He did.

"I need you to press," Gran said as the towels spilled out of his arms onto the table.

The old woman laid rags over the girl to keep her modest, then demonstrated her instruction by holding another towel, already greening, up to the gaping wound in the girl's side.

No.

He'd been here before. The déjà vu felt like a cruel joke.

"Mathew."

"I don't want to." Please. He was a child again, trapped in his mother's basement, standing over the table that had already known so much blood as more ran in rivulets between the cobbled stones under his feet.

"No time to play squeamish." Gran grabbed his hand and thrusted it atop the wound. "She's bound to bleed, or sap, or die out. I need to clean away the excess to get a better look at what we're dealing with, though I doubt I'll understand it any better," she added under her breath. "Quick, grab the pot."

He put it beside the makeshift surgical table.

She dipped a rag into the steaming bucket of water and began wiping the green sap away while flushing out the wounds with a baster she had fetched from the pantry, leaving dark fissures in the girl's body behind. Once she had dropped the last sopping green rag into the bucket, Gran went still, a torn look on her face.

"What is it?"

"I don't know how to treat her."

Gran nibbled on her bottom lip, then, as if remembering the patient was short for time, bolted to the pantry and returned with raw honey and animal grease. Bottles and bottles of it clinked and rolled after she dumped them onto the table. "Like anyone else, I suppose. Tilt her on her side."

Mat obliged. It was the bite on her side that was most concerning. Flaps of skin hung loose where the wolf had wrenched its muzzle back, exposing pitchy green tissue.

Mat dripped a generous dose of honey in and around the wound before Gran made quick and precise work of closing the bite with a needle and thread, then did the same for the less threatening punctures and scrapes. Mat slathered animal grease onto the seams to protect against infection. Once finished, the old woman wrapped the girl's side, while Mat stared at her one sooty boot, only now noticing that she'd lost the other. A sob threatened to punch up his throat, but he swallowed it.

They watched her tiny chest rise and fall as Mat relayed all that had happened in the Burnt Forest and told Gran the wolf had been sick, starved at least.

"Probably wandered into the woods to die. Froth at the mouth?"

He shook his head, trying to remember. "I don't think so."

Gran paused, then asked: "What was she doing out there?"

Mat had no answer, though he had a guess.

"She lost so much of that goop, or whatever the hell—you should be prepared—"

"We're not going to think about that right now," he said with an air of finality.

For once, Gran shut it.