LORI
The mirror was cracked. The forest had a blood-orange sky that felt like it was pressed too close to the earth, like the clouds were choking. Wind howled, but nothing moved.
The trees weren’t trees—they looked like claws, and they pointed at me. My feet were bare. The ground hissed when I stepped on it. I didn’t know where I was going, but I kept running anyway, faster, lungs folding in on themselves, breath scraping up my throat like I’d swallowed thorns.
Something was behind me, maybe a shadow, maybe my own scream echoing, circling, closing.
Then I saw a silver wolf. Its eyes were glass. It stood across from me, just past a pool of dark water. I blinked, and my reflection was gone from the water, but the wolf remained and then it opened its mouth and it screamed.
A full-body
