Junie Lovebug was seven years old and half the size of the axe by the woodpile, but she meant to find her mother before the first snow. Her mother had walked out of the village one spring morning to gather herbs and never come back. That was two years ago. The grown-ups had stopped searching. Junie had not. She knew she couldn't cross the wilds in her nightgown with a butter knife. She'd tried the edge of the forest once and turned back when a fox screamed. So today she walked the long dirt drive up to the old yellow house where her mother had grown up. The paint was peeling in yellow curls. The garden out front was mostly dead sticks. No one had lived there since her grandmother died. The key was under a cracked flowerpot, right where her father said it would be, back when he still talked about her mother. Junie let herself in. Dust rose around her boots. She went straight to the bedroom that had been her mother's as a girl, because that was where secrets lived. She checked under the bed. She checked the closet. She was about to give up when she noticed one floorboard sat higher than the others. She pried it up with her fingernails. Inside the hollow lay a folded cloak of pale pink cloth and a small golden dagger, its handle set with bright stones. Junie lifted the dagger. It fit her hand exactly. The cloak was light as breath and shimmered at the edges, as if it couldn't decide to be there. She swung it around her shoulders. The hem stopped just above her boots. It had been made for a child. It had been made, she understood, for her. Her mother had left this for her to find. Something thumped on the porch. Junie froze, dagger up. Two shapes pressed their noses to the window. One was black and shaggy with folded wings and yellow eyes. The other was smaller, brown and white, with a wagging tail and horns like a young goat. They looked like dogs that had been drawn wrong on purpose. The brown one scratched at the door and whined. Junie opened it because a dog that whined couldn't be all bad. The small one licked her knee. The black one walked past her, sniffed the empty floorboard, and sat down beside the cloak like it had been waiting a long time. "You knew her," Junie said. The black dragon huffed. The brown one rolled onto its back. Junie tied the cloak's cord under her chin. She slid the dagger into her belt. The wilds were still too big for a girl her size. But she wasn't her size anymore. She had a blade, a cloak, and two strange guardians at her heel. She stepped off the porch and started toward the trees.

Junie walked into the trees with her stomach growling. She had left the yellow house with a cloak, a dagger, and two strange guardians, but no food and no water. The forest ahead looked huge and dark. She knew she couldn't reach her mother on an empty belly. The black dragon nosed her elbow. The brown horned creature trotted ahead and stopped, waiting for her to catch up. By midmorning her legs ached. She sat down on a root and tried not to cry. Then the brown creature bleated and pulled at her hem. It wanted her to follow. Junie stood and went after it, through a curtain of ferns, into a small clearing she had not expected. A weathered tree stump sat in the middle of the glade. A perfect ring of red-capped mushrooms circled it. The air felt still, like the inside of a held breath. Junie stepped closer. Then a branch cracked at the tree line, and a man walked out with a bundle in his arms. It was her father. Same light brown hair as hers, same crooked smile, though the smile shook at the edges. He wore his old flannel and carried a blue cloth pack tied with rope. Junie froze. He had not spoken her mother's name in two years. She had not told him where she was going. "Junie-bug," he said. His voice was rough. "I knew you'd come this way." She wanted to be angry. She wanted to run. She did neither. He knelt in the moss and set the pack down between them. He opened it. Inside were bread loaves wrapped in wax cloth, dried apples, a water skin, a small tin cup, a folded map, a lantern, flint, and a striped wool blanket sized for a child. Everything a small hero would need. "I packed it a year ago," he said. "I was waiting to be brave enough to give it to you." "You never looked for her," Junie said. "I looked every night in my head." He touched the pink cloak at her throat. "I never gave up on your mother. But I can't be the one who finds her. This road is only wide enough for you." Junie's throat hurt. She pulled the pack strap over her shoulder. It was heavy in the right way. Behind her, the mushroom ring began to glow. The air above the stump split open into a spinning circle of light, pink at the edges, deep as a well in the middle. The black dragon growled low. The brown creature pressed against her knee. Her father stepped back. "Go. Before it closes." Junie climbed onto the stump. She looked at him once. Then she stepped into the light. Her guardians leapt after her. The portal snapped shut behind them, and the glade was quiet again.