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One Look Back
You turn your head — one look, that's all — and see Aunt Bee planted in the farmyard like a lighthouse, lantern high, ringing that little bell as if it were church Sunday and she was mad at heaven.
The look costs you. A wolf comes out of the grass to your left, silent as spilled ink, and its jaws snap shut on the hem of your pajama shirt — you hear the cloth die, hear it stop being blue somehow —
— and Sera's horn swings down like a falling star. There's a crack of pink light, a smell like a struck match, and the wolf blows apart into smoke and complaints.
“GO!” bellows Aunt Bee, in a voice you'll be hearing in your bones for years. “I held this farm before you were born, child — GO!”
You go. The split tree swallows you and Sera whole.