When Red pulled back into consciousness, the first thing she knew was that she had soil in her mouth. She spat in disgust and then clamped her hands to her aching head. Already she could feel a bruise forming at her temple. Thin rays from above lit her dim surroundings. She looked around with gritty eyes.

She had fallen into a hole of some kind, that much was clear. Underneath her, broken branches and roots sprawled like dismembered limbs. She ached as though she’d been kicked by them. Reaching out, she felt the walls of earth around her and gave a dry swallow. The damp earth clung to her fingers. She could feel roots protruding from it, some tiny, some large. Bracing herself, she stood up and raised her eyes, prepared to face her growing fear that she had been swallowed by one of the Hangman’s Catacombs: one of the seven infamous deneholes in this area of forestland. The cavernous holes were known as the Hangman’s Catacombs, due to the numerous people who had disappeared in the woods over the years before the railings had been constructed. It was known that the holes tunneled for miles below the earth into a twisting labyrinth of caves. Did the deneholes exist in the fairy realm as they did in the mortal world? The question hung in Red’s mind, only to vanish when she saw that the branches loosely covering the hole were no more than about six feet above her.

Daylight poured in through the gap where she had fallen through. No, this wasn’t a denehole, she realized. This was something worse. As her head was starting to clear, her mind worked logically. Running her hands around the earthy walls again, she registered what she had missed the first time: the walls were not a natural formation. Apart from the roots, they were smooth. The hole had been dug for a purpose.

The hole was a trap.

She sat down calmly, ignoring the rush of adrenaline to her limbs. She had been in worse situations and she had learned that the most damaging thing she could do was panic. Quickly, she worked out the dimensions of the trap. Its diameter was about five feet; its height, about eleven. With practical thinking and the right tools, she might be able to climb out. She drew out her knife and, with a hard thrust, plunged it into the side of the hole. It slid in easily and sat there. Red tested its resistance by leaning a little on the handle. The blade held firmly, promising to take her weight. She withdrew the blade with some effort, then stood up and set about hunting for her first foothold.

On the other side, something shifted in the darkness. Red stopped moving immediately. Stupidly, she had not even considered that she might not be alone in the trap. Warily, she took another step, straining to hear. There it was again: shuffling in the dry matter beneath her feet, accompanied by a small sound. Whimpering. Slowly, she knelt and took a long, thin branch that had fallen from above. With it she began to turn over the leaves, lifting and sifting. Upon the third sweep of the stick, Red found herself staring at the pitifully thin form of a young fox, its ribs protruding from its coat.

It stared back at her with the dull, hopeless eyes of something that has given up and is waiting for death. It did not look like it would have to wait long. Briefly, she thought of the water in her flask. Then, steeling her heart, she looked away, turning back to the task in hand. She had to think of her own survival. If the fox was dying of thirst then it must have been in the trap for a few days. There was every chance she could be resigned to the same fate.

Soon she found what she was looking for, a chunky root growing out from the side of the hole, a couple of feet from the bottom. She tested it with her weight, and it held firm. Stepping up on it she felt around above, searching for something, anything else to grab on to. Her grasping fingers came into contact with something cold and rough: a piece of rock held tightly by the earth. Encouraged, she stepped back down. Now she needed something to place between the root and the rock, which could then serve as another foothold. She dropped to her hands and knees and began hunting. A piece of wood would be ideal—a strong branch that she could carve into a point with her knife and then drive into the walls of the hole.

It was then she made a second discovery. Her hand came into contact with it as she rooted around beneath a pile of dead leaves. Somehow, even before she saw it she knew what it was. Her skin crawling, she held the object under the shaft of light. It was a little yellow shoe. A child’s shoe… with tiny flowers stitched into it. It must have belonged to a little girl, she realized. A little girl, no more than three or four years old, trapped down this hole, alone in the dark. What had happened to her? Suddenly Red was afraid. Using her fingers, she shook out the dirt that was caked inside and for a moment just sat there, simply holding the shoe and staring at it. It looked like it had been down there for a long time. In places the leather had rotted away but the label inside confirmed it was from the human world. She shuddered and dropped it. It had belonged to somebody—a child, with a name and a family. Somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s sister, maybe. A child just like James.

She tried to tell herself that whoever—or whatever—had dug the pit would surely only use it for the purposes of food—for catching wild animals. The child must have fallen into the hole by accident—but then, if she had been rescued, why had her shoe been left behind?

Unnerved, she glanced at the fox. It watched her with its empty amber eyes. Whoever had left the trap wouldn’t have any use for the pathetic creature; it was nothing but skin and bone. It would barely make a meal for the crows. Despite her resolve not to get involved, she knew then that she could not just let it die. Slowly, she edged over and knelt at its side. It looked up at her and tried to shuffle away. Her ears caught the merest hint of a weak growl in its throat. This was promising, at least. It still had some spark of fighting spirit left. She reached into her bag, withdrawing her flask and a small tin camping dish she used for food—when she had food, that was. She poured a little water into it, careful not to overfill it in case the poor creature gulped it down too quickly. Then she dipped her fingers into the water and let a couple of cool drops fall onto the fox’s hot, dry nose, before placing the bowl as close as she could to its mouth and then backing away into the corner. She had done what she could. Now it was up to the fox.

Rooting around, she found a sturdy wooden branch. She snapped it using the heel of her boot, then began to sharpen one end with her knife. Out of the corner of her eye she stole a glance at the fox. Its tongue had curled out of its mouth as it sought the droplets on its nose.

“Poor thing,” Red murmured. The fox’s ears twitched slightly at her voice. To her amazement it then raised its head and leaned forward to the bowl of water.

“Go on,” she whispered, willing the animal to drink.

The fox lowered its muzzle to the water and began to lap at it slowly. It eyed her warily as it drank—and it drank for only a few seconds before lowering its head to rest, but Red was encouraged.

In the minutes that followed, she continued to work steadily, sharpening her branch into a point, then beginning another. After a few minutes, the fox lifted its head to drink a little more before resting again. Already there seemed to be a spark of life in its eyes. She carried on with her task. And, at intervals, the fox continued to drink. When the bowl was empty she filled it once again, listening as the fox lapped noisily. She wondered whether the water would be enough to save it—for surely the maker of the trap would take pity on the skinny creature and release it—or whether, by helping keep it alive, she was simply prolonging its suffering. She pushed the latter thought from her mind. She was ready to put her plan into action.

She took off one of her boots and, using the heel, began to knock one of the sticks into the wall of the earth at about waist height—halfway between the roots and the rock she had discovered earlier. With each whack of her boot, she felt her underarms prickling with perspiration. By the time she’d finished, the branch was a sturdy peg in the wall of the trap, with a good few inches left for a foothold. Still holding her boot in her hand, she stepped up onto the root nearest the bottom of the pit, then, with her free hand holding the thicker root above her head, moved up again onto the foothold she had just made. Then came the tricky part. While balancing on the foothold, she now had to repeat the process of knocking another branch into the earth. Only this time, she was balancing precariously on her foothold and pressed against the side of the hole while trying to drive the wood in with her boot heel. And this was where her plan began to fail.

As she attempted to hammer in the wooden peg, the earth above her crumbled and disintegrated, showering her in dirt as it broke and fell down on her. Some of it fell in clumps; other parts crumbled to a dust that flew into her eyes. She held her breath, determined not to inhale it, and persevered with the wooden peg for a few more moments, but to no avail. The earth nearer the entrance was brittle and dry and would not allow her to knock the peg in. Dismal, she clambered down, shaking dirt from her hair and clothes. Her idea was not going to work.

She wiped the sweat from her brow and took a sip of water. It would need to be rationed now, for there was no way of telling how long she would be in the hole. She looked over at the fox and saw that it seemed to have perked up a little, although it was still weak.

“Looks like you and I have more than just a name in common,” she told it. “We’re stuck down here together.”

She had not long finished the sentence when she heard a sound from above. Something was moving through the woods. Immediately she was alert, pressing herself against the side of the earthy wall, beneath the shade of the branches above. The hole was plunged into darkness as the light was momentarily cut off; something was obscuring the gap in the branches through which she’d fallen. Then, one by one, the branches that had been placed across the entrance to the trap were being lifted off. She knew then that this was no animal, nor a passerby. This was the setter of the trap. As the light filled the trap once more, Red knew there was no point in trying to stay hidden. In seconds there would be nowhere for her to hide.

Boldly, she stepped forward out of the shadows and turned her face up to the light. “Hello?” she called. Sunshine dazzled her eyes. Silhouetted against the light was a ragged, hooded figure with long, grizzled hair.

Red recognized her immediately. The old woman!

An odd mixture of feelings went through her then. A small glimmer of relief at being found was tainted by uncertainty. If the old woman had set the trap, how had she managed to dig the hole? She looked too frail for such a task. But then another thought occurred: perhaps the trap was old, dug by another, and the old woman had just found it and claimed it as her own.

Wordlessly, the old woman threw something into the hole. Red’s concerns melted away as she saw it to be a strong-looking knotted rope. The woman was helping her to get out. Grateful, Red held the rope and tested it with a firm tug. The rope held true. Quickly, she grabbed her tin camping bowl from in front of the fox and shoved it in her bag. The fox was sitting up now, peering into the light above with fear in its eyes. Red shot it one last look, hoping she would be able to persuade the old woman to let it go—for surely it would be worthless to her. Then she began to climb.

At first, she was able to use the footholds she had found earlier, but halfway up, when her sore hands were taking the brunt of her weight, the pain brought tears to her eyes. By the time she reached the opening, her body was shaking with exhaustion. Soon, one arm was flung over the side of the hole, closely followed by the other. The old woman was standing before her silently, her face obscured by her heavy hood as it had been before. She reached forward and offered her hand to Red. This time, Red had no other option than to accept it.

As the gnarled fingers took her own, the old woman released a small breath that could have been from the burden of Red’s weight. But as Red was tugged closer to her, she was overcome by the awful, cloying scent of that one small exhalation, and as she played the sound back in her mind it became more like a sigh. It smelled like things that were rotten and decaying. She collapsed on her knees at the woman’s feet, managing a single glimpse of the face that was concealed beneath the hood. The thin, red mouth was twisted into a hideous grin.

Then, with one hand still clasped around Red’s, tightening like a noose, the other was drawn back. Helpless, Red could only watch as it came rushing toward her… and dealt her a vicious blow to the head.

Although the blow to Red’s head did not render her unconscious, it stunned her badly. Crumpling to the ground, she heard the low sound of something moaning—a creature in pain—and knew it to be herself. Mingling with it was another sound: the cackling of the gargoyle-like fairy in the trees above. She tried and failed to sit up, forced instead to lie helplessly on her side. Her vision clouded. She did not have the strength to put up a fight as her wrists and ankles were bound behind her.

Before her she saw the woman hunched over at the mouth of the hole, hauling something out of it. The fox was trapped in a woven net, and it was struggling feebly and whimpering. The woman turned toward Red, and then she felt something thrown over her also, something rough and scratchy. It was secured tightly above her head, and then she was being dragged over the ground. Stones scraped spitefully at her thin back and there was a peculiar pricking sensation at one of her ankles.

“Who are you?” Red managed. “Why are you doing this? Let me go!”

The woman did not reply. Twisting her hands in their bonds, Red fumbled for her knife, already knowing that it would be gone. The woman must have removed it after striking her. Through the weave of the cloth, Red could make out the sunlight flickering through the branches above. Her head throbbed. Still, the creature in the trees screeched, its cries thinning as she was dragged farther into the woods.

Soon she had recovered enough from the blow to start struggling. The fug in her head had cleared, but the woman paid no mind. Red then yelled, though it rewarded her with nothing but a sore throat. She quickly gave up calling out after noticing that the woman seemed curiously unconcerned. It meant that there was no one to hear her.

When the woman stopped, Red twisted around within the confinement of the sack. It smelled terrible and was stained with something dark. She pressed her face into the itchy fabric, squinting through the weave. A small wooden cart lay ahead. The woman unlatched the back of it, then Rowan felt herself being hoisted up. She heard the woman grunt with effort as she lifted her, and then she landed heavily on the flat wooden bottom of the cart. There was a smaller thud as the fox was tossed in on top of her. She felt its thin body roll off and land beside her. There was a bang as the hatch was slammed back into place and latched once more, preventing her from rolling—or jumping—out. Then came a creak and a clatter from above, and when she tried to sit up, she found that some kind of mesh had been closed over the top of the cart too, forcing her to lie down.

“Where are you taking me?” she yelled. “Please—let me go! You have to let me go!”

Her pleas fell on deaf ears. If the woman heard she did not show it. Instead, Red heard her moving to the front of the cart, which then began to rumble over the uneven ground.

Next to her she felt the fox, trembling with terror, its breathing shallow. When the cart stopped a short while later, the fox had stopped moving altogether. She heard the mesh thrown back and the hatch pulled down, and then something creaked: a door. The top of the sack was seized and once more she felt herself being dragged, out of the cart and over a threshold onto a hard floor. From the coldness of it seeping through the sack, Red guessed the floor was stone. Seconds later, when the sack was cut open, she saw that she was right.

She was in a small, ramshackle cottage. It was crudely built of stone, with a wooden door and small, uneven windows. In the farthest corner, a huge black pot bubbled over a fire, billowing thick steam. Stories of wicked old witches in the woods filled her mind. There was an awful smell about the cottage. As she looked up at the low thatched roof, the source of the smell was revealed as her eyes met with a gruesome sight.

Animal skins of every description hung from the rafters. Some large, some small, older ones that were dry and newer, fresher ones. There were pelts of badgers, rabbits, foxes, deer, and squirrels, plus many more that she was unable to identify. The stench that filled her nostrils was death. In wooden cages dotted around the edges of the cottage, more animals were crammed in. These were still living, but Red could tell from their eyes that they knew the fate that awaited them. They had seen and they understood.

She squirmed, trying desperately to loosen her bonds. The woman had left the cottage and was outside, unloading the cart. A moment later she returned, throwing a smaller sack onto the cottage floor before disappearing again. It landed against Red, and she knew it to be the fox. She maneuvered herself into a position to be able to rest her hands upon the sack. Through the cloth she could feel its pitiful body, still warm but utterly motionless. It was dead, as she knew it would be, and Red was glad, for at least now it would be spared knowing what was to come—unlike the poor creatures trapped around her.

The woman’s form filled the doorway once more, and Red lay still, watching through narrowed eyes as a basket of herbs and plants was placed just inside the door. When the woman left for a third time, Red scanned the cottage for something, anything she might use as a weapon. Her sharp eyes caught sight of the hilt of a small knife on the hearth, next to a mound of vegetables. She wriggled like a caterpillar over the stone floor toward it, cursing that the fireplace had to be in the corner farthest from her. She had made it only halfway across the floor when a wheezy laugh sounded from behind her. The woman had come back.

Red tensed, swallowing hard. She forced herself to roll over. The woman watched her, bemusement on her crooked face. Summoning the remainder of her strength, Red wriggled with all her might to close the gap between herself and the knife. But she was too slow, too awkward, and the woman had crossed the floor and was upon her before she’d gotten anywhere close. Grabbing her by the ankles, the woman pulled her into the middle of the cottage before releasing her. Then, slowly and deliberately, the woman threw back her hood and reached into the tangled mass of her hair. From it she untied a thick lock of grizzled gray hair and let it drop to the floor. It landed next to her, and Red could see small pieces of fabric knotted into it and, looped into a tiny plait, a tarnished locket. It was open, and inside were two portraits: one of a man, and another of a woman.

Confused, Red stared up at the old crone—and gasped. Before her eyes, the woman was changing. Her hair became lighter and smoother until it was the color of honey. Her eyes were amber, and her limbs long and slender. In a matter of moments, the wizened crone she had first encountered was gone, replaced by a much younger woman. Her face was hard and thin; her mouth, cruel.

It was like she was a completely different person.

Moving far more quickly now that she had shed her disguise, the woman knelt and seized Red by the hair with one hand, forcing her head back. Red winced, but managed to refrain from yelling out. With her other hand, the woman tilted Red’s chin slowly, as though admiring her.

“You’re a feisty one,” she said softly. “I came as soon as I heard about you. In my best… garment, no less… though you were not fooled, even by the appearance of a helpless old lady.” She paused and gave a soft little sigh, and once again Red was subjected to that terrible scent that was her breath—of things dead and rotting. “I haven’t had a young one for some time now,” she whispered. “But I’m ready for a change. You’re going to be very… useful.”

“What are you talking about?” Red said, horrified. “What do you mean?”

The woman did not answer. Instead, she stood and moved over to a thick animal pelt resting on the floor and serving as a rug, then kicked it back to reveal a trapdoor. She heaved it open, then pulled Red up. A dark little wooden staircase led down into a cellar. Cold, damp air drifted up from it.

Red swayed on her feet, the bones on the insides of her ankles digging into each other from being bound so tightly. Standing, she was able to see much more of the cottage—though none of what she saw was a comfort.

A large work surface stood at the back, smeared with dark stains. On it were several dead birds, some of which had been plucked. Their feathers filled a wicker basket nearby. Assorted animal skulls were heaped in another basket, next to a mortar and pestle containing a fine white powder. Bottles and jars littered the other surfaces—their contents dark and slimy-looking. An unfinished iridescent garment glittered from where it lay folded over the back of a wooden chair, a needle hooked into it, waiting to finish the job. As she looked more closely Red saw that the material the garment was made up of was hundreds upon hundreds of tiny wings: butterfly wings, all stitched together. She turned to face the woman who by now she had guessed could only be a witch.

“I can’t feel my legs,” she pleaded, swaying again.

The witch smiled back at her, and from the folds of her long dress produced something pointed and glinting: Red’s own knife. Stooping, she brought the knife down in a sharp slash, slicing through the bonds that held Red’s ankles. Then, with no time for Red to feel surprise or relief, a hard shove sent her flying into the depths of the pitch-black cellar, before the trapdoor was slammed shut and bolted from the other side.

With her hands still tied behind her back, Red had no means of saving herself, and though she tried to regain her balance on the steps, she failed. Luckily she did not have far to fall, and she broke it by landing heavily on her left side into a thin pile of damp, stinking straw. She lay there, too frightened and stunned to move.

Seconds later she received her next shock when a gloomy voice spoke out of the darkness.

“So… she got you too, did she?”