But something dark and winged and somehow slithering through the air was moving away from us. My jaw dropped open, and then the wings tilted, and the thing was turning, circling…
It was circling around the schoolyard.
“Get inside,” I shouted, breaking into a run. I pushed children stumbling toward the schoolhouse, searching for Lidi as I went.
The enormous winged wyrm banked, turning toward us for another pass.
Lidi and her best friend ran hand-in-hand for the doors. Miss Hex threw the door open, wide-eyed, and then looked up at the sky. Her jaw unhinged in horror too, and for a split second, she looked as young and terrified as her charges.
“Get them inside and keep them safe!” I shouted at her.
The rogue thought ran through my head that I could let the monster wyrm eat any of the little assholes that bullied Lidi. But even as I thought that, I was running for the edge of the clearing. Some children were still frozen, staring up at the wyrm as it circled again, dipping lower this time.
“Move! Get into school!” I shouted.
In the distance, the bell was ringing, over and over, frantically. Miss Hex must be yanking at it desperately.
The bell got the kids moving, automatically, as if they were conditioned to run toward school when the bell rang. Thank every last fucking god. There were just a few more kids now up in one of the trees, and they were jumping down.
Two of them ran past me toward the school. But when the third boy landed, he fell heavily on his knee. His face twisted with pain.
“Get up!” I ran toward him as he launched himself up, hobbling along, before his leg went out under him again.
I grabbed him, and together, we half-stumbled, half-ran across the field.
The wyrm circled again, this circle smaller, tighter, closer. The flutter of its wings pushed air down on our heads.
“Go!” I shouted, turning back at the steps to the schoolhouse, because something primal in me—something that wasprey—knew that the wyrm was coming in again, and this time, it wasn’t just a probing swoop.
Two other children broke from the schoolhouse and ran to help their friend.
The bell had stopped ringing.
The children’s little fenced garden by the front of the school was full of sweet pea and carrot plants, littered with their spades and watering cans and—there. A shovel.
I grabbed it and turned, swinging it already, as the wyrm’s wings cast a low shadow over me.
As I turned, I saw its dreadful eye fixed on the children, who were half-dragging their friend up the stairs.
I slammed the shovel into the wyrm’s head.
It was so much bigger than I’d realized. It tilted to one side, its wing clipping the grass, and its grim eyes fixed on me. It had an awful, snarling mouth.
I raised the shovel between us, readying for another pass, and backed toward the schoolhouse.
“Hurry!” Miss Hex shouted over the hustle of children’s feet on the porch.
“Hurry!” she shouted again, and this time I knew she was calling for me, but the wyrm was coming in for another attack, and I didn’t dare turn back.
The door slammed shut so hard I felt a ripple under my feet.
I hit the wyrm with the shovel again just as its teeth scraped against me, and it turned, coming back in for another pass. Pain lanced through my body, but I barely felt it.
When my back bumped the door, the wyrm landed, snarling, right in front of me.
Lidi was screaming inside. “Open the door, let her in!”
“Don’t open it!” I shouted, knowing that I couldn’t hold the line against the wyrm. If that door opened, it would slither past me into the school.
