“Not for hours,” Barclay told him.
“It’s freezing.”
“It’s Winter. What did you expect?”
“I’mhungry.”
“Didn’t you eat lunch?”
“I fed it to Gustav.”
Gustav was Master Pilzmann’s pet pig, who sniffed out valuable truffles hidden in the ground. Normally, Gustavwould join the boys on quests such as these, but Gustav had mysteriously gained weight this past year, so much weight that waddling exhausted him. He spent all day napping by the fire.
“You’vebeen feeding Gustav?” Barclay buried his face in his hands. The mystery of the pig fattening was solved, and once again all of Barclay’s problems proved to be Selby’s fault.
“I don’t like mushrooms!” Selby complained. “They’re slimy, and they taste like dirt!”
Barclay could hardly believe what he was hearing. “Then why are you here?” he shouted. It was the very question that had bothered him for ages. He also felt personally offended—he liked mushrooms very much.
Selby’s pink face flushed several shades pinker, and he burst into tears. “My mom said it was a good future for me.”
This seemed to be a lot of pressure to put on an eight-year-old, and for a moment, Barclay did feel rather bad.
But Barclay couldn’t get distracted. If he wanted to keep his apprenticeship, he didn’t have time to feel sorry for anyone but himself. This job was the only thing that ensured Barclay really fit into Dullshire, and Dullshire, however small and rural and rule-obsessed, was Barclay’s home. He wouldneverleave it.
When Barclay had been very small, before his parents had died, he used to dream of adventure. He spent hours imagining the world that existed beyond Dullshire’s pricklywalls, other towns and cities and kingdoms in far-flung realms beyond the Woods.
But his parents had loved Dullshire—they wouldn’t want such a life of uncertainty and danger for their only child. And so Barclay refused to disrespect their wishes. He tried to forget about the call of adventure, concentrating instead on how tostay. To belong.
Barclay focused back on the mission, and for the next several minutes, the only sounds were Selby’s teeth chattering, his nose sniffling, or his stomach rumbling.
As Barclay knelt to examine a promising fungus, Selby tapped him on the shoulder. “Look. Look.”
Barclay swatted him away and pulled out his forager’s notebook, to compare the sketch to the subject before him. He frowned. He needed a scarlet dome, but this one wasclearlycrimson. Mushroom foraging was a very precise science.
He dug it out anyway and added it to his basket.
I’ve done it again,Barclay scolded himself, inspecting the dirt underneath his fingernails. Master Pilzmann hated how dirty Barclay got himself, and how his hair looked wild only hours after combing it.Repeat after me,Master Pilzmann would always say when he quoted Dullshire’s lawbook.Filth is prohibited—no dirt, no odor, no potty mouths. Cleanliness is orderliness.
“Barclay!” Selby squeaked, and Barclay finally stood up and turned around.
The grass between them and Dullshire wasalive, withdozens—no, hundreds—of tiny, glowing white eyes peering at them between the weeds.
The piles of leaves beneath the boys’ boots shuddered and shook as small figures dashed within them. Selby hopped back and forth as though he stood barefoot on hot coals.
“Barclayyyyyyyy,” he wailed.
But Barclay was frozen, his gaze fixed on a single creature perched on a rock. It looked like a mouse, except without a tail and with six curled spikes protruding from its back.
Barclay had seen Beasts before. Sometimes, on breezy Autumn days, strong gusts of wind carried glimmering insects from the Woods to his town, whose stingers turned your skin swollen and green. He’d spotted Beasts flying in V shapes across the sky, seeking out warmer places for the Winter, and leaving trails of glittery smoke behind them. Occasionally, more vicious Beasts snuck out from the Woods to break into chicken coops and goat pens for nighttime feasts.
When Barclay was four years old, the Legendary Beast who lurked in the Woods, named Gravaldor, had destroyed Dullshire on Midsummer’s Day. Though Barclay had never glimpsed Gravaldor’s face, he remembered how the town walls had crumbled from the force of his roar. Gravaldor had torn roofs off homes with his jaws, sinking fangs into stones as though they were butter. His magic had caused the earth to rupture, making whatever remained of their once flat town now stand on a tilt.
It was thanks to Gravaldor that Barclay was an orphan.
Knowledge of Beasts had since been forbidden in Dullshire. Travelers who spoke of them were turned away from inns, in case they could be Lore Keepers, wretched people who bonded with Beasts and shared their magic. Children who played too close to the Woods were punished. Even the Beast-related books in the library were burned, making the entire subject a mystery.
“I thought the B-beasts stayed in the Woods,” Selby moaned.
