And there was his beanpole.
It was leaning up against a tree, not lying in the trail where he had left it. As Leo drew nearer on tentative feet, he saw a red scarf tied near its top end, like a flag to attract his attention.
The sight of that scarf made his stomach lurch. Foolish, he knew, but he couldn’t help it. Who had tied it there? It was the same fabric as the scarf signaling the turn in the path, though the dye was brighter. Someone knew he would come searching for his pole. But no one had seen him come this way.
No one but the goat and . . . and whatever that apparition was.
He could be pretty certain the goat hadn’t tied the scarf to his pole. But why would that . . . thing? If it was that thing. Who else, though?
He stood dithering, staring at his beanpole, which, for all that it lacked features, stared accusingly back. As though it were saying, “How could you leave me behind like that? Anything could have happened to me! Anything at all!”
Leo’s mouth twisted. Then he put out a hand and took his weapon, nearly expecting to be struck by lightning the moment his fingers touched the wood. Nothing happened. He stood in the damp and the drizzle of the mountain forest, alone with a beanpole in his hands. He felt silly.
“Monsters,” he growled. “Dragons eat them!”
And he turned to find himself face-to-face with the veiled apparition.
“Dragon’s teeth!” Leo bellowed.
“Silent Lady!” the apparition screamed at the same time, and each leapt back from the other, Leo landing in a damp patch of moss and slipping so that he came down hard on his rump. The apparition disappeared behind a thick tree trunk.
Leo sat on the moss, clutching his pole, his hat tilted back on his head, mouth open so that drizzle fell into it. His heart was racing so fast that he could scarcely breathe.
But the apparition did not come out.
It was still there. He could see the end of its white veil caught on a branch and also the edge of one sleeve. After a moment, he could have sworn he heard it breathing.
Did apparitions breathe?
“I’m not scared of you!” he said at length.
“Me neither” came a small voice from behind the tree.
“I’ve got a weapon!”
“Um . . . I don’t.”
Leo frowned. “You’re not supposed to have a weapon.”
“I don’t.”
“No, I mean, ghosts don’t carry weapons.”
“I ain’t no ghost.”
Well, that put things in a new light. Leo wiggled on the moss and noticed the dampness seeping into his britches. Using the beanpole for support, he got back to his feet. “If you aren’t a ghost, what are you?”
“I don’t know.”
Leo saw a hand reach out and take hold of the bit of veil caught on the branch. It was a tiny hand covered in a thick glove. After a moment’s struggle, it freed the bit of dirty linen, and now the apparition disappeared entirely behind the tree. But he could still hear it breathing.
“Are you a monster?” Leo asked.
“I don’t think so. Are you?”
“No.” Leo frowned. There was nothing horrible about the apparition’s voice. It sounded too much like a child’s. Did monsters take the shape of children to lure unsuspecting prey?
Then a terrible thought came to him, and he knew that he was right as soon as he thought it. He sighed and rolled his eyes, in that moment more irritated than even Foxbrush could make him.
“Wait a minute. You’re nothing but a girl!”
The apparition looked around the tree trunk. “Yup,” she said.
And she was.
The last thing, the very last thing Leo needed was some girl trailing after him. Not if he was going to seriously hunt this monster.
And hunt it he would. Now that the fright of the shrouded something was so prosaically explained, all his vigor renewed with driving force. The world had to be more exciting than marbles and algebra and sniveling girls, and he would discover the source of that excitement if it took him until suppertime! Leo would walk—soggily, to be sure, but walk no less—in the footsteps of his heroic predecessors.
Just not with an odd little girl following him.
“Go away,” he told the girl after squelching a few yards farther up the deer trail.
“Why?” she asked.
The drizzle had changed to full-fledged rain now, and Leo’s patience was as flattened as the hair on his forehead. Was it really so much to ask for a little somber ambiance without her snuffling three steps back?
“Because. You’ll get in the way.”
“Of what?”