George had come to Zimbezako to kill the beast that ate hunters like the villages ate bread. He stood in the muddy square at dawn and asked the same question he'd asked for three days. Where was the lair? Nobody answered. A woman pulled her child inside and slammed the door. The last hunter who'd tried had walked into the hills two weeks ago and never walked out. Now the villagers looked at George's sword and saw a corpse who didn't know it yet. He tried a farmstead at the edge of the fields. The wooden walls sagged. The sloped roof dropped rain into a bucket by the door. A boy sat on the step, small, in a red-and-white striped sweater and a knit cap with a bobble. Round glasses slid down his nose. He was tying herbs into a bundle, sprig by sprig, humming. "Everyone else runs," George said. "You don't." The boy squinted up. "They're scared it'll come for whoever talks. I'm not scared. My father was the last hunter." George crouched. He kept his voice level. "He went into the hills." "He told me the path before he left." The boy tightened the string on the herbs. "He said if he didn't come back, someone braver would ask. He said give them these." He held up the bundle. Green sprigs, leafy, tied neat. "Rub them on your skin. The beast hunts by smell. These hide you." George took the herbs. He didn't believe in charms. But the boy's hands were steady, and steady hands meant truth more often than words did. "Show me the path." The boy walked him past the barn to a gap in the treeline. He pointed up the slope to a split rock shaped like a broken tooth. "Behind that. A cave. Bones outside it. My father's knife is up there. I want it back." George looked at the rock. Then at the boy, who was maybe ten, who had waited two weeks for someone to ask. "If I don't come back either?" "Then I wait for the next one." The boy said it plain, like weather. "But you took the herbs. The others wouldn't even do that." George tucked the bundle into his coat. He'd wanted a direction. Now he had one, and a dead man's son watching to see if he'd earn it. He started up the slope. Behind the split rock the ground changed. Bones lay scattered in the dirt, cracked and gnawed. A rusted knife jutted from a skull that wasn't animal. The cave mouth breathed out warm, wet air that stank of meat. Something inside shifted, and the shifting was large. George drew his sword. He was no longer looking for the lair. He was standing in it, and the beast knew he was there.