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The ground slams into me hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. Before I can push myself up, another root whips around my wrist and cinches tight.

Then another catches my forearm.

Another snakes across my waist.

“Fuck!”

I rip the knife from my belt and hack through the one around my wrist. Black sap sprays across my hand as it splits apart.

For half a second, I’m free.

Then three more punch through the dirt.

They wrap around me so fast I barely have time to swing before they drag me backward, my boots carving trenches through the soil.

“Sage!”

Through the flames, I catch sight of her.

She’s fighting against the panicked crowd, shoving past bodies and forcing her way toward me.

No.

“No!”

She keeps coming.

“SAGE, GO!”

She can’t hear me.

Or she refuses to.

Then the smoke behind her moves.

Not with the wind.

Against it.

Something is standing inside it.

My knife lowers.

At first, all I can make out is height. Too much fucking height.

It rises above the corn, a narrow shape unfolding through the smoke where nothing that large should be able to stand.

A scarecrow?

No. Not human either.

The smoke thins.

Something branches from its head.

Antlers.

No.