Cappella breathed into her pipe as though she was giving life to something new. She breathed out music, and it met every song from every tree in the forest, thousands of strands weaving together. The sound was enormous.

Behind her, the ground shook. Boom. Boom. Boom. Like footsteps, but from no creature she could imagine. Her body jolted, but she stood her ground, playing on, her gaze fixed on her mother scaling the stone tower.

Esme was impossibly high, near the window now, clinging to the stones, trembling. It struck Cappella that her mother might fall. If she did, she would die. She held her breath involuntarily.

Her mother yelled, “Don’t stop playing! Whatever happens, don’t stop!”

The footsteps were closer now, close enough that bits of ice bounced around her feet. From behind came a crash, as though a mountain were tumbling down. She blew into her pipe and turned to look.

There was an enormous gap in the courtyard wall, and in the center of it, tossing stones aside, was a giant tree; no, it looked more like a massive woman with skin made of bark and long hair of whip-thin branches draped in leaves. This was no tree. It was no woman. It was both. Her footsteps shook the earth.

Esme shrieked. Cappella turned as Esme slipped from the wall. She spiraled down. The hand of the tree woman shot out. She caught Esme just before she hit the ground. Then there was a great cracking sound and a rush of wind, and the tree woman snatched Cappella too.

Cappella was so terrified she could scarcely breathe. The tree woman straightened herself. Cappella desperately wanted to curl up in a ball. She clutched her pipe in her fist and trembled.

“Play your pipe,” her mother said. “Play it.”

Cappella did. She summoned the strength of everyone who’d suffered at Albrecht’s hands. She summoned their solidarity. She summoned their help and understanding.

The tree woman lifted Cappella and Esme up to the gaping tower window. Hans lay on a table, his hands and feet bound, his chest oozing blood. Behind him, Albrecht crouched next to Ursula, who was half in her human form, half in her bear form.

The shadow of the tree woman reached him. He turned to look, his face emotionless behind his golden mask. Emotionless except for his eyes. He left Ursula and stepped toward the window, yelling at Cappella, his bladed false finger dripping blood.

Behind him, something moved. Something Cappella thought at first were the stones on the floor. But they weren’t. They were rats. Dozens, hundreds running toward Albrecht, running toward her music.

The rats clawed at Albrecht’s clothing. They climbed his legs and wrapped around his arms and burrowed into his tunic. He swatted at them with his awful metal finger, cutting his own flesh. Still they hung on, and still Cappella played, her music urging the rats onward.

His mask fell off. It rattled on the ground, and his pale skin bloomed with bite marks on his hands, his neck, his face. The rats tore at his golden hair, tossing strands of it to the stones below.

Then a black bear burst in. Sabine, followed by the werechildren in their animal forms. Sabine dropped to her knees beside Ursula, turning into a human as she moved. Cappella played a blast of music just for them, a flash of love so intense her chest ached. She played about bonds that cannot be broken, neither by violence nor the ravages of time. Not even death itself. Cappella was certain of what her song could do, as long as she did not stop.

Albrecht, his arms swinging, staggered toward the jagged opening in the tower wall.

He was coming for Cappella. His eyes locked on to hers.

“You,” he said.

Behind him, something moved. Nicola. She butted her tiny horns into the metal man. It fell and knocked Albrecht forward. He tumbled out the window. The tree woman’s hand shot forward again.

She’d caught him.

Cappella looked down, still playing her pipe, and there he was, swinging hundreds of feet above the stone-covered earth, his hand wrapped around a branch.

“Please,” he said.

Her mother crouched. She held out a hand. “Nephew.”

He looked at her with wild and distrustful eyes.

“I have to tell you something,” she said. “Your mother never spun grass into gold. That was me.”

“So what?”

“It means that everything you’ve believed about yourself is a lie.”

“What does a mother matter?” His face looked newly stricken, and Cappella knew he was saying things he did not believe. That he could not make himself believe. She played louder still.

“You were the one who wanted to take me. To eat me. You were jealous,” he said. “I’ve heard the tale.”

“Lies,” Esme said. “I’m the reason you were born in the first place.”

“Help me, then,” he said.

“Take my hand.”

He reached for it. She held on to him. “Now give me your other.”

As he offered up his hand with the bladed finger, Esme grabbed his wrist.

“This is for my daughter,” she said.

She twisted hard, and she drove the forked blades deep into his eyes. Then she dropped his other hand.

His arms pinwheeled. His legs kicked. He screamed through his fine white teeth.

Cappella looked at her mother, astonished.

“You can put down your pipe, daughter,” she said. “Go and save your wolf.”

Cappella climbed through the window.

“Hans!” she cried.

Red cloak flying behind her, she ran to him.