Willa Hext planted ivy the way other women planted roses. She wanted a wall of black thorns around Treetomb, so thick no child she lured in could ever crawl back out. For three springs her vines had crept wider along the forest edge. Then the woodcutter came. She heard his axe before she saw him. Chop. Chop. Each stroke bit the young ivy at the treeline, where her newest shoots had just taken root. Green juice stained the blade. He kicked the cut vines into a pile and reached for more. By nightfall he would clear a month of her work. Willa did not rush him. She crouched behind a leaning picket fence, its boards cracked and soft with rot, and watched. A pale moth with bone-colored wings landed on her stained knuckle. She let it rest. Then she looked past the woodcutter, toward the muddy yard behind the fence. A boy stood there in striped pajamas. Barefoot, filthy, wide-eyed. He stared at a spot of empty air and whispered a name. Nobody answered. Nobody ever did. The woodcutter's son, Gideon. The one the father watched from the corner of his eye while he worked. Willa smiled her black-toothed smile. She lifted her basket of woven bones and shook it. Candy rattled inside. The boy's head turned. He did not fear her. He pointed past her shoulder at nothing and said a name she did not know. "Come closer, lamb," Willa said. "I have sweets." Gideon stepped over the rotting fence. His bare feet sank in the mud. He took a candy from her hand and did not eat it. He only stared at the empty air beside her and whispered. The axe stopped. The woodcutter turned. He saw his son's hand inside the basket of bones. He saw the old woman crouched at the treeline. His face went white. The axe hung loose in his grip. "Keep cutting," Willa said, soft and sweet, "and the forest keeps your boy." She closed her green fingers around Gideon's wrist. The boy did not pull away. The woodcutter dropped the axe. It thudded in the dirt beside his pile of dead vines. "Please," he said. "He's all I have." "Then leave my woods alone." The man nodded fast. He backed away, hands open, eyes on his son. He left the axe where it fell. He left the cut ivy in a heap. Willa let go of Gideon's wrist. The boy walked back over the fence to his father, slow, still whispering to the air. The woodcutter grabbed him and ran. Willa picked up the fallen axe. Good steel. She would bury it deep in her roots where no blade could trouble them again. But the boy had seen her now. And the boy spoke to things she could not see.

The wall troubled Willa all through the night. Her ivy climbed thick and black around Treetomb now, but something gnawed at it. She found chewed shoots each morning, the bark peeled back, the sap dripping dry. She never saw the thing that did it. By the time a vine browned and died, it was too late to mend. If she could not see her enemy, her wall would rot from the inside. She knew who could see. The boy. She found Gideon at the treeline, where his father let him wander too far. The woodcutter stood back among the stumps, axe idle, watching the old woman close on his son. Fear held him still. He had learned already what her green fingers could do. Gideon did not run. He pointed past her shoulder and whispered a name to the empty air. His pale eyes fixed on things Willa could not find. "Come, lamb," she said. She took his muddy hand. "Show me what you see." She led him along the ivy. She watched his face, not the vines. When his breath caught, she stopped. He stared at a tangle of black leaves and pointed. His lips moved. "There?" Willa asked. She saw nothing. Only ivy. But the boy's finger did not waver. She reached into the leaves with her stained hand. Something warm pushed back. Fur. Teeth. A long jaw snapped shut on empty air where her wrist had been. Willa fell back in the dirt. The ivy thrashed on its own. Leaves tore loose and spun down. A thing she could not see was ripping her wall apart, right in front of her, and only the boy's finger marked it. She grabbed the woodcutter's axe from where she had buried its handle in the roots. She swung at the spot Gideon named. The blade bit something solid. A screech split the air. Blood she could not see spattered her apron warm. The ivy went still. Willa breathed hard. The boy lowered his hand. Then he lifted it again and pointed somewhere new, down the long black wall. He whispered another name. Then another. His finger moved from place to place, marking thing after thing she could never have found alone. Her wall was crawling with them. Willa wiped the blade on her apron. She looked at the small pale boy and smiled her black-toothed smile. Across the stumps, the woodcutter took one step toward his son and stopped. "He stays with me now," Willa called. "My eyes. My little hound." She closed her green fingers around Gideon's wrist. "Go home, woodcutter." The man did not move. He could not take the boy, and he could not leave him. Willa turned her back on him and led Gideon down the wall, to the next thing only he could see.

The next morning, Willa found fresh ruin. Three vines hung chewed and gray. She needed the boy's eyes to catch the thing before it bit deeper. She went to the shed where she kept him and reached for his muddy hand. Gideon pulled away. He folded his arms and stared past her at the dark mountain over the trees. "No," he said. His whisper was flat. "You killed one. They watch you now." He pointed at empty air near her shoulder. "They don't like your hand." Willa's grin hardened. She snatched his wrist. He let his arm go limp, a dead weight, and shut his eyes. She shook him. "Show me, lamb." Nothing came. No gasp, no pointing finger. Without his willing sight, she held a cold little hand and saw only leaves. The boy had learned he could refuse her. Fear would not move him. It never had. She let go. She paced the floor and thought. Threats broke his father, not him. So she tried a different thing. "You see them always," she said. "Day and night. They crowd your bed." Gideon's eyes opened. "I can keep them off you. Light hurts them, does it not?" She went to her shelf and took down an old lantern with a warm glass heart. She lit the stub inside. The flame bloomed gold through colored panes. Gideon flinched at the brightness, then leaned toward it. For the first time, the watchful shapes at his back seemed to shrink from the room. "Hold my hand," Willa said, "and this light stays burning by your bed. You walk the wall with me. You keep your little lantern." She crouched to his level. "A fair trade, hound. You help me. I help you sleep." The boy looked at the lantern. He looked at the shapes only he could see. Slowly, he put his hand in hers. His grip was firm now. Chosen. They walked the ivy together. His breath caught. He pointed, and this time his whole arm steadied with purpose. Willa reached in and felt teeth, fur, a snapping jaw. She swung the axe. The screech came. Blood she could not see soaked her apron. Gideon pointed again, and again, down the long black wall. He named each one. She killed what he marked. By dusk the ivy hung still and whole. The gnawing had stopped. Willa wiped the blade and smiled her black-toothed smile. She had her eyes back, willing now, bought with light instead of fear. She pressed the lantern into his hands as promised. But Gideon did not look at her. He held the lantern up and stared at the treeline, where the shapes had gathered thick. More than before. They did not flee the flame now. They watched it. They watched him hold her hand. "They're angry," he whispered. "You take me every night. Now they'll come for the house."

Night came, and the shapes came with it. Willa stood on her sagging porch and watched the treeline. Gideon had warned her the creatures would attack the house. She could not see them. She could only see the boy flinch as he held his lantern high. His breath came fast. "They're close now," he whispered. "All of them." Willa grabbed his hand. The cold flooded her. Suddenly she saw them. Dozens of thin black figures stepped from the trees. Their eyes were pale and empty. They moved toward the house with slow, patient steps. She swung her axe at the nearest one. It slid aside like smoke. The blade hit the fence and split a rotten board. "They won't let you cut them," Gideon said. "Not tonight." They climbed the porch. One touched the wall, and the wood blackened under its hand. Another breathed on a window. The glass cracked and fell. Willa backed into her doorway. She still gripped the boy's wrist, her last weapon, her stolen eyes. But seeing them did not help her now. There were too many. Then a figure came last from the trees. It stood taller than the house. Smoke curled from its shoulders. A violet light burned in its chest. The smaller shapes went still and bowed their heads as it passed. Willa knew without words that this one led them. It fixed its glowing eyes on her hand clamped around Gideon's wrist. "Let the boy go," it said. The voice came from everywhere at once. Willa did not let go. "He's mine. I bought him fair." Far off, a dog barked. Willa turned her head. Lantern light bobbed between the trees. The woodcutter came running, axe in one hand, his dog surging ahead. He had never stopped searching for his son. The animal had led him straight to the house. "Gideon!" he shouted. "Gideon, I'm here!" The boy's head snapped toward his father's voice. For one breath, Willa felt his grip loosen. She clutched harder. That was her mistake. The tall shadow raised one long arm and pointed at her, the way Gideon always pointed at empty air. The smaller figures turned as one. They did not need the boy's permission to be seen now. Willa saw every pale eye swing to her. She let go of Gideon at last and swung her axe wild. It passed through nothing. Cold hands closed on her arms, her throat, her hair. They pulled her off the porch and down into the grass. "Run to your father," the tall one told Gideon. The boy ran. The dog met him halfway and circled him, barking. The woodcutter dropped his axe and caught his son in both arms. Willa fought. She bit and kicked and cursed. Her green-stained fingers tore at shapes that would not tear. The shadows dragged her toward the trees, toward her ivy wall, the one she had fed with marked children for years. Her black-toothed grin was gone. She screamed the boy's name, then her own threats, then nothing. The dark closed over her mouth. The tall shadow watched until she was gone. Then it looked at the father and the boy. It did not move toward them. It turned and walked back into the trees, and the smaller figures faded after it. The lantern in the grass still burned, its glass heart glowing gold. Gideon picked it up. Erik Thornwood lifted his son onto his shoulders. The dog pressed close against his leg. "We're going home," he said. "We're not coming back." Gideon looked once at the dark line of the forest. The shapes did not follow. For the first time, no watcher stood behind him. He held the lantern tight and did not point at anything at all. By morning the ivy wall had turned brown. No one tended it now. The thorned hedge Willa had grown to trap the children she marked began to wither from its roots. The vines loosened their grip on the trees. Somewhere deep in Treetomb, under the ruined wall she had built with stolen young, the forest took back what she had taken. The children she marked would find the edge of the woods open at last. And the old woman who had promised that no child would ever escape became the only one who never did.