Coils of dark smoke trailed Gerik as he moved silently to the front door of the house with ostriches. The birds themselves were slumbering in the back pen, looking like rounded hay bales in the darkness. Farmhaven was asleep. Only one dog bothered to defend the territory, a stout mongrel slipping out from between two of the squat houses. But when it started to growl at us, Molly hissed for it to be quiet and the dog rolled on its back in apology and then sat up and watched us from afar.

  Gerik reached the door, now only partially clouded in his darkness, having said that we’d need to keep an eye on him in case anything went wrong. We were either about to invade the house of an incredibly dangerous and partially supernatural magic-wielding serial killer, or some simple country boy with a penchant for flightless birds. Best to be on our toes.

  The coils of smoke were Fridu’s. Magic. Sent to help the thief. It was the smoke that touched the door first, testing for hidden traps, magical defenses, or surprises of any kind. The smoke failed to find anything, but Gerik would be a better judge. The smoke coiled around his hands, coating him. I watched without breathing. The mongrel startled me by brushing up against my leg. I looked down at her. She was holding a doll’s head in her mouth, the same one we’d seen earlier when the boys were playing catch. The dog dropped the head and then looked meaningfully down at it, nudging at the doll’s head in the dirt.

  “She wants to play ‘fetch,’” Molly whispered.

  “We’re busy,” I told the dog. “We’re criminals for justice.”

  “Don’t lie to dogs,” Fridu said, her voice low. “It’s bad luck.”

  “I didn’t lie,” I said. The dog pawed at the doll’s head again. I looked away and watched the thief running his hands over the door, all along the edges, over the frame, around the handle and the lock. He looked back to us with a shrug, his hands still coated with smoke and his body half submerged in the darkness. He turned back and took out a set of lock picks, but then paused and tried the door. It opened. He put the lockpicks away. The dog picked up the doll’s head, circled around me once, then dropped it again. A small whine followed. Molly petted the dog, staring in its eyes.

  “We can’t play, now,” she explained. “We’re hoping to kill a man who murdered my mother, and to end a Fox Geas on my friend, and I’m personally hoping to torture the man for several days and then give you his actual head to play with, so that you can roll it all around in the shit-stained dirt of this village.” The dog seemed to accept this and simply followed as we went in through the door.

  Inside, there wasn’t much light, but Fridu whispered some words and a new sense of vision flooded my eyes. Everything was muted, but I could see. Fridu had already linked our minds, so I didn’t have to whisper to ask her what she’d done; all I had to do was think the question.

  “Starlight Eyes,” she answered. “A spell. I gave it to you.”

  “And the others?” I asked.

  “You’re the only one who needs it. Molly and me, and Gerik as well, we can see in the dark.”

  “Oh.” It made me feel like an outsider. Lately, everything was making feel like an outsider. An intruder. We were breaking into a house in a land that I still couldn’t believe existed. The only thing that felt real was the dog, and maybe even she would sprout wings, like that cat in the tree.

  The interior was small. The floor was hard-packed earth, with planks of wood simply pressed down into the soil, like steppingstones. The walls were hung with plants on hooks. Some were doing well. Others were struggling. A couple needed a graveyard. A rough iron stove was burning the last few cinders of a wooden log. There was a bed. A small table with a single chair. A wash basin and a couple chests holding blankets and battered pots and pans. The air smelled like lard, soil, and smoke. There was one other door, presumably leading out back to the ostriches. I didn’t see anywhere to take a piss. I wanted to take a piss.

  There was nobody in the bed. Nobody sitting at the table. Nobody home. The dog sniffed at things. We all looked around. It didn’t take long.

  “Not here,” Molly said, looking at a coarse bookcase featuring six books with broken bindings and three bowls that reminded me of Aztec pottery.

  “Not unless he’s really good at hiding,” I said. I looked under the bed. Of course I did. That’s where the monsters hide. But there was nothing except a selection of stray sandals. It looked dusty under the bed, but I wasn’t sure if it counted. Does it matter if dust gets on the floor, when the floor is made of dirt?

  “Something’s wrong,” Fridu said. I tensed up. Molly gripped the shaft of her axe tighter. Gerik had been tapping at various sections of the floor, but looked up to the witch.

  “The plants aren’t aligned,” she said.

  “What’s that mean?” I asked. I was standing by the rear door. Undoing the latch, I slid it slowly open, revealing that, yes, it opened to the pen with the ostriches. It wasn’t a magic portal. Not unless you were really into flightless birds.

  “It means they’re not speaking correctly,” Fridu said, holding the leaves of one of the plants in her fingers, rolling them back and forth.

  “You can speak to plants?” I asked. If I could speak to animals, then it didn’t sound absurd that she could speak to plants. Well, yes; it did sound absurd, but it no longer sounded impossible.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Not in the way you’re asking. It’s more like, I’m not sure how to explain it, a current? Maybe that’s the best way. I hear them like a current. Picture yourself standing in a river, feeling the rush of the water moving past you. It’s a familiar river. You’re there all the time. And then one day you step into the river and the water is flowing a different direction.”

  “That would be odd,” I said.

  “That’s what these plants have,” Fridu said, touching another of them. “A current in the wrong direction.”

  “What do you think it means?” Molly asked. I found her question to be somewhat soothing. I didn’t want to be the only one who didn’t understand.

  “I’m not sure. Let me try something.” Fridu raised her hand and a soft green light covered her fingers. The dog had jumped up onto the bed and curled itself for a slumber, but now raised its head with interest, staring at this new light.

  “Be yourselves,” Fridu said, talking to the plants. She moved from plant to plant, touching them, whispering. The rest of us watched. Tension rose in the small house with the dirt floor. Whatever Fridu was doing, it seemed to be a ritual in a religion I couldn’t comprehend. Gerik and Molly were motionless and silent, watching. I was full of nervous energy, wanting something to happen and hoping nothing did. I petted the dog’s head, feeling uneasy and needing the comfort. I’d left the door to the ostrich pen open, so I closed that, noticing that one of the ostriches had stood. It was watching me.

  “Private business,” I told it, closing the door. And then I turned around and almost stepped into a hole.

  There hadn’t been any sound. No warning of any kind. No rumbling. No shifting dirt. But now there was a stone stairway leading down. None of the others had noticed. Fridu was watching the plants, and Molly and Gerik were watching her.

  “Guys,” I said. They turned around. I pointed to the steps.

  “Okay,” Gerik said, in the tone of voice that means, “That’s odd.”

  “Well, fuck me,” Molly said, stepping closer to the stairway, peering down.

  “Ah,” Fridu said. “That explains it.”

  “Not to me it doesn’t,” I told her.

  “Green Door. A spell. You hide a doorway or an object in… I guess… the life of something else. Plants, in this case. It’s often plants, because plants don’t wander off.” She touched one of the healthiest plants and said, “This is the stairway. Hidden here.” She touched one of the dead plants and said, “This is what we were seeing before. The dead earth.”

  “How important is it that I understand this?”

  “Not at all. There weren’t stairs. Now there are. You got that part, right?”

  “I noticed them first, so, yeah, I got that part.”

  “Noticing them first gives you the right to go down them first,” Molly said. She meant it as a challenge.

  “Fuck no,” I said, failing her challenge. “Thieves should go first, to check for traps. Or maybe a barbarian should go first, to kick ass. College students should go last. Or, maybe not at all.”

  “I was just teasing,” Molly said. “Of course I’m fucking going first. He killed my mother.” She was at the top step, looking down. The stairway descended for possibly thirty steps, terminating at an iron door. Molly put her sandaled foot on the second step down and then I found myself dropping down into the stairway from the side, getting in front of her.

  “Fuck this day,” I said, and took the lead.

  “Get out of my way,” Molly ordered. She had a hand on my shoulder, pulling back. I felt something flare in me. The fox tattoos felt warm. Alive. Writhing. I felt them sliding closer together. No more than an inch. A frightening distance.

  “I’m going first,” I told Molly, shrugging her hand off my shoulder. I took another step down. The stairs weren’t wide. There was only room for one at a time. Molly tried to bull her way past me, pressing my shoulder against the wall.

  “I said I was first,” she told me.

  “I said you weren’t,” I said, pressing back, reestablishing my position.

  “Could you two either fuck or go down the stairs?” Gerik asked, looking down from above.

  “Try both,” Fridu said. “I bet you could do it.” The dog looked down over the edge. I wondered if it had a cute comment too.

  “It’s not going to happen,” Molly and I said at the exact same time. Gerik laughed. Molly took the time to curse him and I used it to my advantage, moving farther down the stairs, hurrying to the iron door. But then there was a rush of darkness and Gerik was standing next to me.

  “You had the right of it before,” he said. “Thieves should always go first. There could be a hundred traps. Especially on a door like this, hidden the way it was. It means somebody has secrets, and wants to keep them.” His graveyard voice was even lower than usual. He turned and reached for the door, with Fridu’s magic smoke slinking down through the air to coat his hands once more, when I took his shoulder and moved him back. I’d seen the stairs first. This was my right.

  Then there was a knife at my throat.

  “What’s gotten into you, Josh of Apartment 3B?” Gerik asked. His eyes looked like coal. “You do not touch me when I’m going about my work. You do not do that.”

  I barely heard his words. I was focused on the knife at my throat. I was wondering how to move it away. Lightning bolts and fireballs were out of the question in the small confines. Was I fast enough to knock the knife away and sink my teeth into his neck? I would have to check. I would have to—

  “Stop,” Fridu said.

  I didn’t like the sound of her voice. Did she think she could order me around? I knew better than she did. I could scent the sweat of her fear. I could almost taste the blood in her throat.

  “Move back from Josh,” Fridu said.

  “He thinks he can—” Molly began.

  “Move back from Josh,” Fridu said again, harsher this time. Gerik went into his shadows. It didn’t matter. I could still see him. Nothing could hide from me. I could feel Molly’s indecision. I could taste the scent of her sweat, the call to battle that shivered her skin. But I could also feel the trust she had for the witch. She and Gerik hurried several quick steps back up the stairs.

  “What’s happening?” Molly asked.

  “What’s happening?” I heard a voice echo. It was my voice. Frightened and weak. How was I speaking? And why? I didn’t want to be speaking. I wanted to bite.

  “It’s the Fox Geas,” Fridu said. “It’s getting into his head. He’s dangerous right now.”

  “I’m dangerous all the time,” I thought to myself. I did not want to share these words. The others did not need to know about my cunning or my teeth. I did not like the bottom of the stairs. I did not like the iron door. It was a thing of men. It was wrong.

  “What’s happening?” I heard again. My voice, again. I shivered. Was there two of me? No. There were four of me. One single college student and three foxes, howling from within, building a fire.

  “You have the foxes working their will inside you,” Fridu said. “A Fox Geas burns you in multiple ways. There’s the fire that consumes your body, but also a fire that devours your brain.”

  I said, “But what can—”

  “Knock him out, Molly,” Fridu ordered.

  “With pleasure!” the barbarian said. She all but leapt down the stairs at me.

  “Huh?” I yelped. “Wait!” But Molly didn’t wait. Her axe flashed out. The flat of the blade. That cold, hard, magic steel.

  And it all went black.