Five holes. That’s what Cappella’s pipe needed, one for each of the senses. A good song could reach all of them, and this was what she wanted to do, to turn her breath and touch into something that felt as vivid as life itself. She wanted to write the truth of the world on the wind.

She put the tip of the knife to the branch and pressed. The wood was hard, but in a way that made it easier to cut a clean hole. She worked carefully until the first one was complete. She set down her knife and put her finger over it. She’d done it. A perfect hole placed exactly where she wanted it to be.

She started the next one. Snow fell as she worked. She fought the urge to rush. Getting it right was more important. As her mother watched, she made the third opening. Then the fourth. She finished the fifth hole and set down the knife.

She touched a finger to each one, ensuring they were uniform and smooth. Finding the tiniest imperfection in the fifth, she picked up the knife once more and scraped. The blade slipped, nicking her finger. She gasped, in part because of the pain and in part because she was afraid that she’d ruined the pipe.

But she hadn’t. She’d bloodied it, but it was nothing that couldn’t be wiped away. It would not be undone by bloodshed.

She looked at her mother, expecting a scolding about taking care with things that could cut. None came.

She wiped away the blood, took a deep breath, and put the pipe to her lips She played a note, long and true.

“Come with me,” her mother said. “I’m going to take you back to where this began.”

This time, Cappella did.

She followed until her mother stopped, fell to her knees, and scraped away snow and grass. Even with her cloak, Cappella was freezing. What was this place? Between her mother’s hands appeared the opening of a tunnel.

“What’s down there?”

“A way in. One last secret.”

Esme took her hand and pulled her forward through the darkness. Down they went, and the passage widened, even as the air felt damp and close. And then they were rising again, and a deep gray circle appeared—an opening. They moved toward it and then through it, and then they were aboveground near the castle. They entered the unguarded courtyard and stood at the base of the tower that loomed over the kingdom.

“I once made a bargain with the woods to save my sister,” Esme said. “It didn’t work. It made the world worse. But out of that same bargain came you, Cappella. You can undo what I have done. Play your pipe, my daughter. Play it like you’ve never played before.”

Cappella looked at the instrument she’d made. It felt nothing like a weapon, and part of her feared that’s what the moment called for. She hesitated.

“Please,” her mother said. “Play your music to rally those who’ve been hurt by the king. Gather them all. I’ll do the rest. I have to end what I set in motion many years ago with the lie I told to save my sister. I need to return to the beginning. It’s the only way.”

Cappella didn’t know what her mother meant, although that was how some songs ended, with a variation of the beginning. Still, she was afraid, not of what her mother planned, but of what her own music might do. What if it did to men what the trees had done to Albrecht’s soldiers? She didn’t want that. That would never be her way.

“Please,” her mother said again.

Cappella looked at the top of the tower, at the rectangle of golden light that gleamed through a broken window. Hans was in there. She knew it. She felt it.

“What should I play?”

“Only you can answer that.” Esme put her hands to the stone and began to climb.

Cappella raised the pipe to her lips. She didn’t know what she would play. But she was a musician. Songs were what she knew best. The answer would come to her. She had faith.

Her first notes were weak. Thin. Broken on their edges. She thought of Hans, and the sound improved. She felt less cold. She added more notes, stringing them like gems, one after the other, mixing sorrow with the sweetness. She played her memories of Hans, of the days when he was a cub and she was a girl and the forest spread before them as if it had no end.

She felt all the good things of her childhood rise through her: her mother’s hand on her head, the smell of Hans’s fur when it was wet, the taste of summer berries still warm from the bush, the sound of music all around her, and the sweet greenness of spring. She could feel it all again and she knew it for what it was: a spell that would last as long as a breath. That was how goodness felt. A brief burst of magic. Beautiful.

She started to feel something new: powerful.

As she played, the music of the forest grew louder. She could still hear her own song rising above it. But there was no mistaking that something in the forest had been awakened. The music it made sounded almost like words, like speech, like something that would force itself to be understood, whether listeners wanted to hear it or not.

As its music blended with hers, another noise began. This one sounded like something straining against the core of the earth itself. It was terrible, terrifying; it made her heart race. Still, she played.

Then came a great cracking sound, like thunder, but from the earth and not the sky. Then a low boom. And another, and another. As if something from the woods was on its way.