To her parents, it was instant. They set the monster outside with a bowl of cream, and as soon as they closed the door on it, a child was knocking on the other side.

They had doubts, of course. And the speed with which their wish was granted didn’t help. Was it some trickery? Were they being laughed at? Had they done the right thing?

But of course they had. They could be a real family, now. Tiffany could live a real, honest life.

It was for the best.

For Tiffany, it took much longer. She was sent outside with a hug, which was unusual. Her parents would not look at her, and that was not. They told her to be careful. They told her to be brave. They told her they loved her. And then they closed the door.

Tiffany sat on the front step, next to a bowl of cream, and waited.

The world tasted like summer: warm and sweet. She was excited for the coming months — Cáille Leá was escaping a seasonably warm and wet spring, following a colder and wetter winter, which Tiffany had spent deathly ill. But her energy bloomed with the trees and she was more than ready to get outside again and get the earth under her feet. She was ready to run and explore and play.

“So go.”

A man — a woman? Tiffany always had trouble telling the difference, which was an unspeakable failing on her part if her parents were anything to go by. She decided to hedge her bets: a person sat on the step with her, though she couldn’t recall where they had come from or when they had got there. They were drinking the cream, sipping it out of the bowl like that was a normal thing to do.

“What?” Tiffany asked.

“Run,” the person said between sips. They had an accent, like the people on the radio. “Explore. Play.”

They were very tall, though folded nicely and didn’t take up any more room on the step than was necessary. Their clothes — loose and long — were mottled grey and brown, and their face was covered by a blank, white mask, tilted up a little to make room for the bowl of cream.

“I’m supposed to wait here,” Tiffany said.

“Yes,” the person said. “But little monsters aren’t supposed to do what they’re supposed to do.”

Tiffany flinched. “I’ll get in trouble. I don’t like getting in trouble.”

The person seemed to think on this, taking a long drink from the bowl before setting it down. They replaced their mask, covering a gaunt, grey mouth and many small, sharp teeth.

“I’ll tell your parents I said it was okay,” the person said. “And then I’ll be the one to get in trouble. And if they try to punish you, instead, then they’ll be the ones to get in trouble with me.”

Tiffany tilted her head. The person was larger than both of her parents, and it seemed to make sense that they would therefore have the authority to make this declaration.

“Okay,” she said. “If you promise.”

“I promise.”

“Pinky swear?”

The person started to laugh, but caught themself when they saw the serious expression on Tiffany’s face. “Pinky swear,” they said, holding out their hand.

They hooked pinkies, and Tiffany grinned.

The person sat on the step, watching her as she ran toward the woods. For one night, she was free.

It was evening when she started, the sun melting red and orange over the horizon, and it was evening what felt like hours later as Tiffany made her way deeper and deeper into the woods. Her get-out-of-jail-free card burned hot in her metaphorical pocket, and she didn’t want to waste it.

She knew the woods, she strayed to them every chance she got, but they had changed while she had been sick in bed. Branches had grown or broken, paths had shifted or disappeared. That was okay. She was eager to rediscover everything.

A path of flowers had sprung up in the spring. Tiny, blue and purple flowers with bright yellow centres, like miniature suns. They grew in erratic clumps but nevertheless made a line deep into the woods, and Tiffany followed them until she lost track of the real sun and found herself bathed in cool shadows.

“Hello,” someone said.

Tiffany stopped walking, stopped hunching over the flowers. She straightened, both her back and the hem of her shirt. “Hello,” she said.

The flowers had lead her to a line of stones that could, if one were generous, be described as a wall. A person perched on one of the stones, their canvas coat wrapped around them to cover their legs and feet. “Hello-allo,” they repeated. “Haven’t seen you before-afore. But you don’t look new.”

Tiffany looked down at herself. She was special, as her ma would say sometimes after a long silence and a sigh. She had claws instead of fingernails, fangs instead of teeth. She was covered — not entirely, but enough — in hard, scaly plates that made falling out of trees trivial but didn’t seem to please her parents at all, not on top of everything else.

She cocked her long, blue ears, curious. “I am new,” she said. “Where am I?”

“Very new,” the person said. Their voice was high, higher even than Tiffany’s, and there was something about the way they spoke that struck Tiffany as very odd. They hit every word individually in a sentence, instead of trailing them together like most people did. “Very, very new. Did the Owl send you?”

“The Owl?”

The person stood. They were shorter than they’d looked at first, when their stockiness and roundness had been hidden behind their clothes.

“The Owl thinks it’s funny,” they said. “Funny-sunny-running, sending people running here without telling them anything. You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, do you?”

“Who is the Owl?” Tiffany asked again, because as far as she could tell, the person had not answered her.

“You’ll meet her, if you haven’t.” The person walked over to her, tilting their head this way and that but never taking their small, gold eyes off of her. “Come on, come along, I’ll walk you the rest of the way, this way.”

They had a scrunched-up sort of face, pale around the edges and ruddier near their eyes, and nose, and mouth. They started walking, following the line of stones. Tiffany was very curious, so she followed, but she kept some distance for herself.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“The house,” the person said. “The house. The house.”

“Which house? Whose house?”

“You’ll meet them, too. They always come back for new people, they love new people.”

Tiffany stopped walking, planting her feet in the ground and her hands on her hips. “I won’t go with you if you won’t answer me straight.”

The person stopped, too, but took a moment to turn around. Even after they did, they didn’t look at her, looking down near her feet, instead.

“You will,” they said, sighing.

“I won’t. I won’t go to this house of yours at all, I’ll go somewhere else, or I’ll go back home.”

“You will,” they said, again.

“Shows what you know.” Tiffany stuck her tongue out at them, then turned and ran back the way she’d come.

She thought the person would chase after her, try and grab her and drag her to whatever they’d been leading her to. But she didn’t hear anyone else running, and when she looked over her shoulder, she was alone.

She’d lost the wall, and the flowers, and she wasn’t sure where she was or what direction home was in. The woods didn’t look any more familiar now than they did at the start, even after she’d spent so much time in them. But if she could get up in a tree, she might be able to see the edge, and it wasn’t possible that she’d gone so deep that the edge wouldn’t lead her home.

She picked a tree and started to climb.