Daughters,

You sing, tonight, for I hear the forest echo with your hymn! Even I in my solitude know the sound of salvation. You promised me the Promised Land, and here is only desolation. You taunt me with your melody, for I can neither reach you nor touch you.

She sought us, daughters, but she did not like what she found, for she was still too far away from us . . . I was too far away from us, too. I thought I understood what must be done, but who can know, when the moment of her metamorphosis arrives, what sort of creature she will become? I did not take wing. I have not borne life. I have turned to ash and bone.

~ the woman in the woods

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Minn had been right—the tower was empty. She stood just within one of its two entryways, staring at the painted vertical beams spiraling upward toward the top, where the open roof allowed in a shaft of moonlight, the radiance of which scattered on its way down, disrupted as it was by the numerous lanterns glowing within, the flames of the fire in its center column. Nothing appeared immediately sinister about the place (beyond its deep shadowplay); nothing jumped out as a potential hiding spot, somewhere to keep a young man imprisoned. Minn knew that she'd hardly explored the entirety of this place, but she had wandered amongst many of the cottages and not seen or heard anything . . .

Perhaps from the center, she'd realize something, some code painted into the walls, some secret in the placement of the lights! No, that was stupid. This wasn't some adventure film. She wasn't going to find hidden symbols; these people were too primitive for such measures. But the idea was right, Minn thought: she'd never been up on that platform. Dorothea had stood there to offer words at meals, but the villagers certainly seemed to hang out in the tower for a lot more than meals. The building was important to them, the gathering place, where they shared all their food and camaraderie, and that chimney—it was the thickest she'd ever seen. She wondered whether the fire at its base were lit continually, like an olympic torch.

Minn stumbled down one of the aisles, her heavy ivory dress stained where Wolf's blood had run from his gut down onto her, and also where her own blood had dripped onto her shoulders from the several stitches that'd reopened. She kept the small reddened knife firm in her grip, ready to use if her brother or any of the others leapt from the shadows. Everything hurt. Thirst raked at her throat; nausea swirled in her stomach; thoughts clawed at her attention, and yet she forced them down. Whatever had just happened out there, whatever words had been spoken, they meant nothing. All that mattered was finding her son.

As Minn climbed painfully onto the wooden platform, its artistry impressed her. It was ridiculous to admire anything at all in that moment, and yet the reliability of her senses helped ground Minn. For one, the radiant heat of the fireplace washed up and down her back, and she turned to it to embrace the warmth she didn't know her body lacked. Stepping the several feet toward the hearth, Minn examined the stone column, which was easily nine or ten feet in width. She moved slowly around it, looking for she-didn't-know-what, anything at all that could mean something. But she saw only that in the sides of the chimney, above the flames, were oven doors. Or at least, they resembled oven doors, though they were quite large, more like cabinet doors. She supposed they were there for cleaning purposes, to open and scrub out ash and grime. When she tried to pull them, though, she recoiled in pain; they were hot to the touch. Sucking the tips of her burned fingers, Minn wondered why they tasted strange, then realized they were coated in her brother's gore and was mildly surprised to find she didn't care.

Circling the enormous fireplace, moving to the side of it she'd never quite seen, Minn was astonished to at last find something. A hatch was cut out of the platform floor, hinged on one side, a handle on the other. There was no attempt to hide the thing, and yet, why would these people hide things from one another? Minn tried to mentally prepare herself and lifted the trapdoor, which beneath was a square of pitch dark. Moving quickly, Minn momentarily left the dais and pulled a lantern off its post, then climbed back up and hurried into whatever lay inside that passage.

The way down wasn't long. A short step ladder descended into a shallow chamber, which had been hollowed out of the earth beneath the platform. When Minn's bare feet reached the hard dirt floor, she found she could stand, though someone a foot taller would've had to crouch. It was a cellar, really, a larder. Her lantern revealed a rather mundane room, shelves of plants and jars and bowls, tools like mortars and pestles and crudely carved serving utensils. She wished she could better light the space, knew there must be a way and yet had no time or ability to figure it out, but her small lantern when lifted and turned highlighted only the very normal materials of an antiquated pantry. Minn's heart sank as she examined what she could and found nothing of interest. She was about to head back up in defeat when a particularly dark shadow refused to move at her light, and when she drew near it, she found it was an opening into a second room.

With short breaths, her knife as good as useless in her tremoring hand, Minn crossed into the cave-blackness of that second chamber and found it also to be some sort of storage and preparation area, though here, along the wall, were a variety of sharp tools that caught the gleam of her lantern in a devilish display of light. A long, flat table was in the center of the small space, though there was nothing upon it, and beneath it was (she saw when she crouched) a massive tub of clear water that ran the length of the table. Other than these things, there were only some barrels at the back wall.

That black place harbored an indefinable scent. Minn was reminded of the rabbit corpses the women had piled after skinning. What tasks were they doing here, then, if they freely flayed creatures in the daylit world above? This was surely a place to prepare food, so near the fire, but though a pungency lingered, it wasn't fresh. The whole air of the place was stale, the sharp objects stained, and if that were rust, it made sense, Minn thought, as they'd told her they rarely ate meat. Perhaps this had been a place used long ago, before they'd moved toward eggs and vegetables and bread.

Well, Peter wasn't here, that was certain. There were no hiding places, no more doors leading to other rooms. The barrels were too small to hide anything large; even so, she took a peek into one and found, to her disbelief, her hiking pack, right on top. Digging revealed her clothes, and Peter's as well, and there was much, much more. In fact, as she threw out handfuls of material and shoes and random adventuring paraphernalia like flashlights and compasses and cell phones, a terrible understanding dawned on her: she and Peter, even Shannon and Wolf, had hardly been the first. Where the owners of these belongings were, now . . . they surely couldn't have all acclimated to the group. Who would want to stay? No, they'd probably gone the way of Shannon, the way Peter would, unless she could—

Oh, God. Where was her son?

The close atmosphere was suddenly stifling. Minn hastened from the chamber and back up the step ladder, into the warm light of the hall, and even before she saw them, she was startled by one of their voices:

"Sister, you grow adventurous."

Snapping to attention, Minn found a semicircle of older women and a few old men on the ground in front of her, below the platform. She knew where the young ones were—mating like a bunch of wild animals out there in the orchard. And for a moment, she thought she could take these elders, except that they weren't all that old. Dorothea was among them, as was Hank. It was Hank that had spoken.

"I want my son," Minn huffed. "Just give me my son!"

Their patience continued to be more infuriating than would've been their chastisement. Dorothea stepped forward, smiled at the pathetic image of a woman near mad. "Little swimmer, you're in too deep. The boy will be with you tomorrow. It is a promise."

Minn was so, so tired of feeling helpless, here. Why was any of this happening? How could she get back to any semblance of reality? "I don't want your promises. You're all liars—all of you! You're killing people, here! And when I get out, I'm doing everything I can to destroy you, you hear me?" She was panting heavily; moisture streamed down her face, and she didn't know whether it was blood or sweat. "If you just give me my son," she pled, dropping to her knees, holding out her hands, "I don't care what else happens. I am begging you, please . . ."

"He is with the Weisse Frauen, Sister," Hank muttered, and had Minn been more alert, she might have seen the look Dorothea shot him.

It wasn't much, and yet Minn leapt on his words. "The people—in the woods? Those White Women, you called them? Peter's there?"

"Sister Minnow—"

But the time for talk was over. Minn remembered herself, surfaced from her maudlin swamp and felt the knife in her hand. She held it out, pointed it from one person to the next. "I'm going to him. Don't you s-stop me, you hear? Anyone who tries, I swear I'll aim for your eye!"

Sister Dorothea smiled benignly, clasped her hands before her. "Haven't you practiced enough violence, tonight, Sister?"

"Me?" Minn laughed, verging on hysteria, as she began to back away to the other side of the dais. "Are you talking about Wolf? He was—and what is this?" She jabbed a finger toward her head. "What is everything you've done to me? You're all monsters, every one of you. Don't you come near me."

They didn't. They stayed where they were, watching calmly, almost as if they knew she wouldn't succeed in whatever she attempted. And she knew that they knew—they were gloating! They were pitying her, weren't they? Her blind hope, her pathetic threats . . . but she had to get out of there. Peter was with the White Women, and that's where she'd go. Of course it's where he'd be, with the one thing these people seemed to fear, those sirens in the forest. They'd made her and Peter afraid of them, sworn the Weisse Frauen were some kind of evil, but if those supernatural beings alarmed the villagers, they must be if not altogether good than certainly not as appalling as these humans. She'd rather take her chances with them.

Minn practically fell off the other side of the platform and, looking only once over her shoulder, hurried from the building. They all continued to stand, to stare after her, and she no longer cared what they said or did, so long as they let her flee.

Her bare feet slid on the damp grass more than once, and she had to hitch up her ridiculous dress so as not to trip on it, but Minn ran with an energy grown from the desperation within, seeded in her urgency to find Peter and sprouted into a full-blown determination to save him. None of what had occurred, nothing that her brother had told her, mattered. The boy was her son; nobody could tell her otherwise.

The cottages came to their predictable end. No people were anywhere. Lanterns were lit but otherwise, there were no signs of life, and this was an immense relief. Minn continued across the gloomy grassy expanse toward the makeshift gate, climbed through the spacious gap between logs, and ran without fear of the deep dark forest beyond. She had no light but that which the moon offered, and it wasn't much to see by, but Minn hardly felt the stones and prickles beneath her feet. Though she stumbled as good as blind through the undergrowth, barely avoiding twisting trunks and uneven earth, she moved for as long as her lungs and legs allowed her, until she was forced to take respite in a ravine against an outcrop of root and earth above. Her head pounded with the blood pulsing through it, ached beyond any physical pain within her memory, and her vision began to cross with strange lights, which she was sure were in her mind—daybright flashes illuminating the area around her like bursts of lightning—until the voices reached her ears.

The strange, ghostly intertwining of song, the melodic drawing out of note and word, brought goosebumps up onto Minn's flesh. Her entire body felt airier, somehow, now that they'd come. The light was theirs, not in her mind, and it emanated from a distance, though it seemed hovering in the ravine. So rather than run, Minn pulled herself together and stumbled toward it. The white burned her eyes, as brilliant as it was, and she lifted her arms to shield her sight against it. The singing intensified. Words became clearer, words about ravens and worms and sisters and daughters, but Minn kept on. Black silhouettes moved against that radiant core, at first like fish or tadpoles, but then, as Minn cried out to them, to whoever they were and whatever they wanted, as she begged them for her son, the very moment she drew near enough, the black shapes sprouted arms and legs and heads; they became very human indeed. And the voices became frenzied before they lulled. And the intense luminous white orb took on a very rigid circular boundary.

The beam tilted suddenly toward the ground. Everything near it became visible.

It was a searchlight, an incredibly strong but nonetheless handheld searchlight. Around the light stood too many figures to count, but one stepped forward, toward Minn, who was too stunned to move. Sister Opal took hold of the knife Minn held and threw it off into the woods, then brushed a gentle hand against her face and, her pale eyes shining with beautiful moisture, whispered, "Come home, Sister Minnow. You belong with us."