WHEN SAM AWOKE the next morning, she was curled up on the pillow-strewn floor of her makeshift castle like a tiny forest animal. An animal that somehow had access to bedsheets and had managed to get one of its feet tangled in them.
The smallest of knocks echoed on the door. Sam bolted upright.
“Breakfast,” Aunt Vicky said.
Sam expected to hear the doorknob rattle. Her mother always did that, the knock barely a precursor to the door swinging wide open. It didn’t matter if Sam was studying or sleeping or even changing her clothes. A closed door was not a thing her mother could abide for even a few seconds.
And if Sam dared to lock it anyway … Samantha never listens, her mother would say at dinner. I just don’t know what I need to do to get through to her.
I’ll find a way, her father would answer.
Today there was no rattle, no scolding. Aunt Vicky moved up the hall, knocked on Caitlin’s door, and kept going. Same as she had done at dinner the night before.
Sam remembered to breathe.
She scooped her hair into a ponytail and dug a fresh T-shirt and pair of shorts out of her suitcase. There was definitely no point in unpacking it now that she was going home. As soon as the next full moon, if she could pass all of Ashander’s tests in time.
But how much time was that?
The watch! Sam pulled a small pouch from her backpack and unzipped it carefully. Inside were her three best necklaces, a charm bracelet, and a watch with leather straps that her mother said was very expensive. He’s sorry. He wanted you to have this. Most importantly, the face of the watch had a cutout that an itty-bitty moon was slowly traversing. Her watch showed the phases of the moon!
She wrapped the watch around her wrist and fastened it, nice and tight. Was this what the Knights of the Round Table felt like when they put on armor? Or what Joan of Arc had felt the first time she’d lifted her sword? Almost like she was ready for anything.
Sam took one more breath and left the safe confines of the room, taking great care to shut the door behind her, waiting for the satisfying snikt of the latch. The house was quiet, and her footsteps creaked over the old floorboards. Smiling Hannah had already left for work. The computer equipment on the kitchen table had expanded overnight so that there was barely any space to eat. Aunt Vicky sat in a chair by the empty fireplace, quietly crunching a bowl of cereal. It was so quiet, in fact, that Sam could hear birds chirping—birds!—outside the open kitchen window.
Caitlin hadn’t come out of her room yet. In Sam’s eagerness to leave, she hadn’t waited to hear the click of Caitlin’s door opening first. Rookie mistake, and one she never would have made at home in LA. But if she was quiet enough, she might be able to turn around and—
“Morning,” Aunt Vicky said through a mouthful of what looked—and sounded—like oat flakes. “Grab some cereal, if you want. Armen and Lucas will be here soon. You don’t drink coffee, right? That’s not a thing kids do?”
Some kids drank coffee, but not Sam. When she’d stolen sips of her mother’s, it had been bitter and disgusting.
“Chocolate milk?” she asked hopefully.
Aunt Vicky frowned. “No, sorry. Just regular milk. But I can put it on the list. Hannah’s going shopping after work today. We can get all your favorites.” She winced a little. “Well, maybe not all of them. But some of them. Chocolate milk, definitely.”
“Thanks,” Sam said. She stepped into the small kitchen area and tugged at a cupboard, searching for bowls and cereal and everything she needed for this conversation to be over.
“Just one cabinet to the left, yeah, that one,” Aunt Vicky said. “I know the bowls don’t match the rest of the decor—insomuch as there is a decor—but they have chickens on them. I’m a sucker for chickens.”
Sam hid her smile. She’d been a guest in the house for less than one day, and yet this was a fact she would already bet her life on.
“Do you … want to meet the chickens?” Aunt Vicky asked. Her half-finished bowl of cereal sat in her lap.
Under normal circumstances, Sam’s answer would have been an enthusiastic yes. Was there any other possible answer to the question of meeting chickens? But she had things to do today, and those things involved a fox and a forest and mysterious emissaries. There was no time for chickens.
“I was thinking I’d take a walk in the woods this morning,” Sam said, trying to channel Caitlin’s ease with adults. “But … maybe another time?”
“Of course,” Aunt Vicky said. She seemed disappointed, and Sam felt a pang of guilt. “I’ve already fed them this morning, but you can visit them whenever you’d like. Lucas insists on checking for eggs, and I’m sure he’d love the help.”
Lucas. Sam had forgotten about him. She did not want to meet a new person, particularly a boy, and extra particularly a boy named Lucas. Not that she had anything against the name in general; she was simply certain that it was attached to a person she would not like.
Her mother used to say, “Caitlin doesn’t have trouble making friends. Can’t you try to be more like her?” As if a person could just wish themselves to be something new. As if every person were some kind of magician born knowing the most powerful spell in the world.
Aunt Vicky deposited her bowl into the sink and sat down behind one of her computer monitors at the kitchen table. The light reflected off her nose and cheekbones and chin, and her eyes were instantly intense. Sam wondered if she looked like that when she was reading a book. Like the only truly real things were on the page—or on Aunt Vicky’s screen—and everything else was an illusion. Sometimes it was a lot easier to live in a book than it was to live in the real world. Maybe Aunt Vicky felt like that with her computer, too.
Sam poured herself some cereal—passing tests was bound to be demanding work that required a good amount of fuel—and perched on the edge of one of the living room chairs while she ate. She had just shoveled a heaping spoon of raisin-y oats into her mouth when the front door burst open and a small man rushed in like a winter wind. He was the opposite of Aunt Vicky: short and thin with a wide smile, light brown skin, and long, dark hair falling past his shoulders. He didn’t look old enough to be someone’s father—or dressed nicely enough to be one, either—but a boy followed him inside. A boy who was not smiling at all.
“Good morning, Vickster! Good morning, Vickster’s niece, whom I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting!” the man said. “I’m Armen, but you can call me Armen. Because that’s my name.” He laughed despite the fact that nothing he’d said was funny. “This is my son, Lucas, but you can call him ‘Hey, you!’ Unless he tells you not to. And then you should call him whatever he likes, since that’s one of the many ways we try to respect each other’s choices in our family. And in the world, too, now that I think about it.” He turned to Aunt Vicky. “Ready to get to work? I brought fresh tea!”
“I have tea here,” Aunt Vicky grumbled.
“Yes, but not tea of any worth,” Armen said. “I know this. You know this. Now the children know this, too.”
He tossed his messenger bag onto a kitchen chair and plopped down next to Aunt Vicky. Within seconds, his eyes reflected the glow of the computer screen, and they both started pointing and murmuring to each other.
Sam knew she should get going, but she found herself standing next to the strange boy named Lucas. He had knitting needles in his hands, and a bunch of multihued yarn, and was doing odd things with them.
Perhaps knitting.
“Say hello, Lucas,” Armen called from the table without looking up.
“Hello,” Lucas said, also without looking up.
They were definitely related.
Sam studied the boy. Unlike his father, his hair was short, buzzed close on the sides with a mop of a forelock in front, like a horse.
“You’re staring,” Lucas said, but unless he had invisible eyes on the top of his head, he could not possibly know that because he was still moving his knitting needles back and forth and looping yarn—now it was yellow—around his finger for some clearly nefarious purpose.
“What are you making?” Sam asked.
“Don’t know yet,” Lucas answered.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said before she could stop herself. “I mean, don’t you have to know before you start? Isn’t there a recipe or something?”
Finally, he looked up at her, his eyes brown and deep set under shaggy eyebrows. “I just like to knit,” he said. “I like the way the yarn feels, and the way the colors change, and I like doing stuff with my hands. I don’t like following patterns.” He looked back down and looped another length of yarn. “That’s what they’re called, you know. Patterns. Not recipes.”
Sam’s cheeks burned. She should have known what they were called or said nothing. Now she’d made him angry. Three minutes after they’d met.
“Maybe I’ll knit a fried egg next,” Lucas said. “Then it can be a pattern and a recipe!” He grinned and his eyebrows shot up, releasing his eyes from their shadowy prison.
Not angry after all. Sam grinned back.
“Take your nonsense outside,” Armen said. “Grown-ups are trying to grown-up in here!”
Sam stiffened and headed for the door immediately, before Armen got more upset. Lucas tucked his knitting into his messenger bag—a smaller version of his father’s and bright red. “He’s kidding,” Lucas called after her. “He doesn’t try to be funny when he’s actually mad.”
Her hand was already on the doorknob leading out. Her heart rabbited. Who pretended to be mad as a joke?
“Don’t you want to finish your food?” Lucas asked, pointing at her half-eaten breakfast on the edge of the table.
Sam shook her head once and pushed outside.
In Los Angeles, the hot, dry air would have wrapped itself around her immediately, like a welcoming hug. Instead, a small puff of cool wind brushed past her, mussed her hair, and kept moving. It was a breeze that had places to go, things to do.
That was fine with Sam, because so did she.
The house and the chicken coop were surrounded by a wild swirl of forest, as if they were nestled in the eye of a very green hurricane. Sam scanned the dense cluster of trunks, looking for a flash of red.
She heard someone coming up behind her.
“Want to look for eggs?” Lucas brushed past Sam’s shoulder, heading toward the chicken coop. He seemed perfectly comfortable, taking a path he’d clearly taken dozens of times before.
“You go ahead,” Sam said, taking a step in the other direction. “I want to check out the forest first.”
“Oh, I’ll come with you,” Lucas said happily. “The eggs aren’t going anywhere.” He started for the trees.
Sam looked from the forest to Lucas and back again. This boy was going to ruin all her plans. What could she say? What could she do? There was no way the emissaries—whoever they were—were going to talk to her with Lucas hanging around, and she couldn’t afford to lose any more time. She glanced at her watch and its little moon, almost full.
“You coming?” Lucas asked from the edge of the woods. He was already at the first tree.
Sam scrambled to catch up to him, shuffling through ideas in her head. She needed some way to get rid of Lucas that did not involve tying him to a tree with his own yarn. Mostly because the yarn didn’t look that strong.
It was hard to see where the yard ended and the real forest began. Sam expected her arms to tingle when she crossed the threshold, as if she’d gone through some magical barrier. And in a way, they did. The treetops blocked out the morning sun, and the air grew ever so slightly cooler. A swift breeze carried the scent of moist earth and pine in its wake.
“The forest here is old, but not too old,” Lucas said. “If it was really old, there wouldn’t be much in the way of shrubs or brambles or saplings—the big trees would take all the sunlight and resources for themselves.” He walked confidently through the trees and bushes and started pointing. “Dogwood, vine maple, Douglas hawthorn, manzanita. Ooh, there’s some poison oak! You should avoid that if you can.”
Poison oak! Lucas knew a lot of very useful things. Maybe Sam wouldn’t tie him to a tree just yet. She looked at the plant and tried to commit its unassuming leaves to memory.
“I learned about poison oak the hard way,” Lucas said. “My dad got it all over his arms and legs, and I had to take care of him for a week! Have you heard the rhyme? Leaves of three, let them be. I made him repeat it a hundred times.”
Sam got an idea. “What’s that one?” she asked, pointing to dense bush with thorny leaves.
“Oregon grape,” Lucas said. “But don’t get too excited. The grapes taste terrible. Trust me. I learned that the hard way, too.”
Sam’s plan did not require her to eat anything. No, it required bravery of an entirely different sort. Heroes do this kind of thing all the time, she reminded herself. And before she could change her mind, she reached out and poked one of the thorny leaves with her fingertip. Hard.
“Ow!” she yelped. A big, bright drop of blood sat on her finger, glistening and red like a berry.
“That’s a deep one.” Lucas winced sympathetically. “Sorry, I should have warned you.”
“It’s okay,” Sam said. “Do you think you could get me a Band-Aid? Blood makes me a little dizzy.”
“Sure,” Lucas said brightly. “The house is right there—”
“Not from Aunt Vicky’s house!” Sam interjected. “I … I don’t want her to worry. Maybe you could get one from your house?” She felt terrible for tricking him, but it had to be done.
Lucas rubbed his chin. “I guess that makes sense. My dad said Vicky has been stressed out about you coming here. She’d probably freak if she saw you were hurt. But we live on the other side of the forest, so it might take me a few minutes to run over and back.”
Why was Aunt Vicky stressed about Caitlin and Sam’s visit? They knew how to stay out of the way. Sam didn’t know why, but it bothered her.
“Thanks,” Sam said. “That would be really nice of you. I’m just feeling kind of woozy.”
She glanced at the red bubble on her fingertip, and her chest tightened.
Drops of blood on the table, on the carpet. Her mother’s voice, panicked.
“Be right back, then!” Lucas said with a mock salute. He headed into the trees, his satchel bumping on his hip as he ran.
“I’ll wait here,” she called after Lucas, only she intended to do no such thing.