A harmless mouse scuttled along the forest path. Or at least, Trisha Leiferkus hoped she looked harmless. Then she could sneak through the woods to carry out her mission.

Her mentor, the warrior-sorcerer Maalik, had ordered her to investigate the Bone House. It was new. And with the hut's appearance, unending night had fallen across his estate's forest. Even now, the noon sky gleamed black.

 

Passing over a small hill, the shapeshifting girl stopped before an obstacle, one obscured in the near dark. Trisha traced its outline with her whiskers. Curved. Like a softball. Leaping up for a better look, she landed on a wolfhound's skull.

The animal's skeleton lay there, its dried heart within its ribs, its desiccated veins extending past the skeleton's spine to a nearby pair of dryad's wings. Trisha knew dryads. Noble tree faeries. You couldn't take their wings. They had to give them in kindness. But why give these? To drive some sorcery, certainly, but what?

The skeleton rested on the edge of a small clearing, one lined with trees leaning away from the center, as if repelled by what waited there: the house, built from bones large and small, femurs jutting at random spots. Other bones littered the small hovel's yard.

 

Trisha trembled. All of Earth's mythological creatures were real on Arana. Was this a Baba Yaga's hut? Baba Yagas were evil, powerful witches. Did they have bone houses?

A tiny, elderly woman shuffled out of the hut. With a coarse shawl and headscarf, she leaned on a staff. The woman studied the ground, then picked up a bone from the yard, putting it in her basket.

Trisha ducked inside the wolfhound's skull, hoping to keep spying. But the skull creaked, and the woman looked up.

"Who are you?" the old woman asked, moving her hands in a mana-harnessing gesture.

The skull's teeth snapped shut, clamping Trisha's tail. The girl squeaked, not hurt, but unable to pull free.

"Let me go, Baba Yaga. I'm a harmless mouse."

The woman laughed. 

"I'm no Baba Yaga. And you are no mouse."

Trisha, trapped within the skull prison, tugged her tail in various directions to try escaping. While struggling, she glanced out an eye socket of the skull. On the ground lay six white twigs, tiny even compared to Trisha. Two resembled hammers.

"I am Mysteria," the woman said, her eyes again scanning the ground with its myriad bones. "This house is a wraith's tomb."

"What are you doing here?" Trisha asked, stretching her paws, trying to grab a "hammer" twig.

"The wraith roams, poisoning the forest. Sucking the magic, the very life, from every plant and animal it meets. A dryad lent me her wings to turn my wolfhound into a wraith destroyer."

Trisha snagged a "hammer." Wedged it between the skull's fangs. Pulled it like a lever. Her tiny mouse arms strained. The skull's teeth shifted. Just a little.

Just enough. 

She slipped her tail free.

Mysteria picked up another bone from the yard, then dropped it, shaking her head. 

"Before I could complete my spell, the wraith withered poor Wolfie. If I return all his bones, he will revive. But I can't find some. Maybe they're too small?"

 

Trisha zipped away, retreating over the hill. She didn't know whether to believe Mysteria. Maybe. . . maybe Mysteria was the wraith.

Her heart rate shot up at this possibility. She didn't know either way, and she couldn't risk it. She knew enough—Mysteria, the wraith, the dryad wings—to report to her mentor. Maalik would know what to do.

Trisha stopped short. There he was! Ahead and coming down the forest path, the man shrouded within his billowing black cloak, face hidden within his hood.

But something odd was happening where Maalik's cowl touched the ground, brushing the sparse grass along the trail's edge.

It gave a sizzling sound.

The man drew closer, revealing his face. . . Not Maalik's. Beady eyes glared out of deep, craggy wrinkles.

Then the stranger's cloak hit a sassafras tree with innumerable leaves. The leaves withered and died, as did the newcomer's face, its eyes sinking into its head, its skin thinning, then the whole visage transforming into a skull, half its jawbone missing.

The wraith!

 

Trisha squeaked and tried to flee but failed, frozen to the spot, the wraith radiating unnatural, paralyzing terror, leaving Trisha only able to stare in horror. She focused on her front right paw, desperate to move it. To shift it even a little. It lifted! The spell broken, Trisha stumbled away, then ran back toward the Bone House. She had to help Mysteria.

As Trisha crested the hill, the wraith's power hit her again. She collapsed. Wolfie's skull loomed nearby. Her eyes fell once more on the tiny twigs, white like. . . bones. In a flash, she remembered something from school. The ear had the body's three smallest bones, including the malleus, shaped like a hammer. Were these all that were needed to complete Mysteria's spell? Her body quivered as the forest's temperature plummeted, the wraith's cowl devouring everything, its edge wisping closer, so close Trisha choked on the stench of decay.

She grabbed what she hoped were Wolfie's ear bones and pitched them into the skull.

 

Silverish-gold mana swirled out of Trisha, sucked into the wraith as it floated over the hill. Pain ripped into her like thick icicles stabbing her heart. She ceased trembling, too weak to even shiver against the brutal cold. Her mouse body transformed against her will back into a girl, and she glanced at Wolfie, hoping—

 

The wolfhound's heart began beating. The desiccated veins attached to the dryad wings shrank, pulling the wings onto the dog's spinal cord. A skeletal Wolfie rose on unsteady feet. Skin appeared all over the massive dog, and flapping his wings, he soared toward the treetops. There Wolfie shook his naked body. Thick brown fur sprouted everywhere but his new, wet nose, which sniffed furiously at the reek rising from the wraith.

Wolfie dove.

Into the wraith.

Through the wraith.

The wraith screeched, its shriek the most piercing of whistles, the agonizing din forcing Trisha to cover her ears with her hands.

Brilliant white cracks rippled across the blackened sky, like a dark window about to shatter into innumerable shards. Through the cracks beamed shafts of sunlight. They blazed downward, hundreds of rays piercing the wraith, hundreds more perforating its hut. Both collapsed into hissing piles of ash. After a few moments, the remnants of the wraith and hut faded away.

Silence. Then birds began chirping as the sky brightened. 

Wolfie landed next to Trisha. Nuzzled her.

Tears streaming down her face, Mysteria limped to Wolfie and Trisha. She hugged them both. "Thank you, little mouse-girl. You saved us." 

Wolfie yipped, and the woman laughed, adding, "Yes, Wolfie, you saved us, too."

The short woman mounted the wolfhound like a pony. With a flap of Wolfie's wings, the two flew away, Mysteria waving goodbye.