The maze was a lot darker than the clearing. Her eyes adjusted slowly, but soon she could see to go forward. Which way? Details from her dream returned. She could almost see the little girl in her red pea coat leading the way. Turn left, then right and then right again … just keep going.
She made one last turn and there it was, just as it had been in her dream—the cottage. Above a bell barely seen in the night hung motionless. The steeple cast a long shadow over the hedges. Thick ivy lit burgundy by the autumn moon covered most of the stonework and the windows. Oh! The door was bare. Someone had been inside and recently. But Bara wouldn’t bother with the door. She ignored the windows. As she had in her dream, she went around back, heading for what had been her goal all along, and there they were—three crosses, two wooden and one iron.
In her dream, she’d wanted to dig up the middle grave. Now the same yearning. The wind was in agreement. Dig, it whispered. A large rhododendron bush sat to the left of the cottage. Her eyes focused on something stashed between the house and the bush. It was an ancient wheel barrel. A collection of wooden handles emerged from the body of the barrel, a rusty pair of pruning shears and—score—a small rusty spade. She claimed its handle and went to the center grave.
Loose dirt gave way with ease. The soil should have been solid, hardened by time and the cold night, but it was no firmer than sawdust. Natural earth was never so porous. She’d been to cemeteries before. Untended graves were always covered with growth. From death comes life, her mother had said.
All around the cottage were signs of life. The grounds could have used a gardener to cut back the greenery. The maze hedges grew as tall as trees, but on the three grave mounds, it was different. Something had reacted with the soil and eaten away its substance. Nothing grew. Most unnatural.
Nothing is natural about any of this, Bara reminded herself. Then she quieted her thoughts and returned to digging.

The spade hit something hard and its head came off. Fortunately, the job was near done. She smoothed away the last of the dirt to reveal an iron container. The size of a shoe box, a raised cross spanned its length and width. She traced her finger over the cold metal, gripped the sides, and pulled. The lid gave way and landed with a soft plop in the earth.
There wasn’t much light, only that of a waning moon, but it was enough—the box held a dagger about the length of her forearm. The handle was the same iron as the box and covered in etched glyphs. She had no idea their meaning. The blade was made of some odd metal. It was green, not the green of rusty copper, but a metallic green that glinted in the moonlight.
The atmosphere of the night grew suddenly heavy. The blood rushed from her head and into her limbs. Someone’s watching. She came to her feet and grasped the dagger in both hands. Movement through the cottage window stole her glance. The window! How could I have been so stupid? Her dream memory had been incomplete. She’d remembered her way through the maze. She’d remembered the desire to dig up the grave, but she hadn’t remembered the window.

A pale face formed out of the darkness. Not possible! It wasn’t her stepmother who stared back. It was the dark-haired boy. Had she been pulled from reality into dreams?
There was the sound of rushing feet. Colin and Amy came around the cottage. Colin was at her side. He hugged her. Bara pulled away and pointed at the cottage.
“In there!” They looked but there was nothing to see. “The dark…” Bara trailed off when she looked at Colin and rephrased. “The Wisp was there just a second ago. I swear.”
“We believe you,” Amy returned. “But we need to get out of here, out of the forest.”
Colin took her arm and noticed the dagger.
“Where did you get that?”
He quickly lost interest in his own question. A powerful howl tore through the nighttime forest. The Wolf was near.
“Forget it!” Colin said. “Tell me later.”
They ran around to the front of the cottage and headed for the hedges. Bara stopped.
“Wait! I don’t know if I remember the way.”
Colin propelled her forward.
“It’s okay. We made a trail.”
Colin and Amy had broken off branches as they’d made their way through the maze, clearing them away each time they’d had to backtrack. It worked wonderfully and would do so in reverse. A trail of debris led them out in only moments.
“Now what?”
Amy pointed to where her pink scarf hung off a branch at the entrance to the forest. “There it is. Let’s go!”
With the help of a phone compass, they traveled the path they’d beaten to get to the maze. Eventually, they found a familiar trail. They were back in the real-world forest of Windfall. With dawn not far off, they tumbled onto the grounds of St. Cat.