to calm her down and keep her from getting out again. I didn’t want her dying of exposure in the woods. I wished my radio wasn’t waterlogged at the bottom of the pond.
I heard crying in the next room. I took slow steps to try not to scare her and peeked around the doorway. She sat on an old, mouse-eaten bed, a few mushrooms growing out of the bedpost in the corner. She had her knees tucked up with her arms over them, her face buried in her arms as she cried.
“Hey there honey,” I said as softly as I could. She didn’t respond. “Are you okay?”
“The wolves are after me. They want to get me. He already tried to eat me.”
Whoa. They? A little extreme. At most a wolf might bark or growl at an unwanted guest, but there were too few wolf attacks on humans to take her seriously. A person had better odds of getting struck by lightning than being attacked by a wolf. Unless, of course, he was rabid, but when was the last case of a rabid wolf? Not in the last three years at least.
“It’s okay,” I cooed. “Wolfies aren’t mean honey, maybe you just startled him. Where are your parents?”
“They are so mean!” she shouted, looking up and slamming her little fists into the bed at her sides. “They’re always trying to eat me and I never did anything to them. Wolves are always mean.”
Forget the wolves, she needed to go home. “All right. Well, where do you live? Did your parents take you out for a hike?”
“They wanted to take me to the kingdom, but I didn’t want to go. I want to stay with all my friends, but they said it was too dangerous for all the wolves.” She sniffled. “I ran away instead. I tried to run really far, but there are wolves everywhere.”
I bit my lower lip. This was extreme. I knew how to handle wolves not people.
“Do you know how to get home?”
She shook her head, more tears building up in her startlingly blue eyes.
“Okay, well why don’t you come with me to the ranger’s station, hmm? We can call your mommy and daddy from there and they can come and get you. How’s that sound?”
“What’s a ranger’s station?”
Feeling more confident now, I walked up to her and knelt on the wood floorboards, which were thick with dust.
“A ranger’s station is where all the rangers work. Rangers make sure the forest is safe from people, and that people are safe from the forest.”
She gave me a hard look. “There is no such place.”
Okay, different tactic. But before I got the chance to implement it, there was a faint bang at the cottage door. The girl’s eyes went wide.
“He found me. He’s going to eat me up,” she whispered, frozen in fear.
“No,” I said, smoothing her hair. “It’s just the wind moving the door. Come look sweetie.”
I got up and headed out of the room. The cottage door hung open on a single hinge, swinging faintly in the breeze. It must have fallen off, too old to handle even its own weight.
“Come on out here honey, it’s okay.” Then I had a thought. “I’ll protect you from all the wolves, don’t worry.”
I turned and thought I saw movement disappear behind a second doorway. Unease crawled up my spine. I dismissed it and headed back to the girl’s room.
“See? It’s all right—”
She screamed.
I lunged for the door. Inside the room the little girl was pressed against the wall. A man in a brown overcoat stood in front of her holding a freakishly long knife.
“Look,” he said, a displeased expression on his face, “I really don’t want to do this—”
“Hey!” I yelled. Without giving it a second thought I dove at the man and tackled him around the waist. The two of us crashed into the wall. Behind me I heard the girl scramble off the bed and out of the room. The man snarled and pushed me off him. I tumbled to the floor, kicking at him as I fell to keep him away from me. Then I leapt to my feet and ran from the room. I didn’t get far. He tackled me from behind and this time we fell onto a table with him at my back. Panic rushed through me. He still had a knife—where was it?
Suddenly he flipped me over, and I saw it. The knife was coming down at my face, but at the last