She’d always heard the snarls and the screams. She remembered being a toddler taking her first shaky steps toward that shadowed place in the glen before her mother swooped her up in her arms and back into the sunlight. Her mother laughed, called her a “curious girl,” but Penny heard the fear in her voice, the tremble in the tone. She was scared. Scared of that shadow in the glen, scared of the darkness there.

Penny wasn’t. The bump in the rhythm of her heart, the sudden speed she felt when she heard those snarls, heard those screams—she wouldn’t call it fear. Heightened senses, her ears felt sharpened and sensitive. She felt everything in her body strain toward that shade, toward those snarls, snaps and screams.

But her mother’s fear kept her still. Her mother’s hovering, protective presence. Her mother’s love that she didn’t wish to forsake in the name of curiosity.

She was a curious girl, but a good girl. An obedient girl. The kind who did her chores, finished her tasks and did as she was told. She worked hard to be called caring, to earn the title of “darling girl,” “sweetest girl,” “little angel on Earth.” She earned them all, and looked only at that shadowed spot in the glen from across the sunflower field in the full bright of day, and only after her chores. Some days, she didn’t look at all.

She hummed to stop herself from listening for the snarls and the screams.

She grew older, grew lovely and tall, and the humming became unconscious. It just became something that she did. The people in the town called her an “enchanting girl,” “a radiant girl,” “a goddess on Earth,” but the praise didn’t please her the way it used to. Her mother’s smile and her soft voice saying, “my dearest girl,” didn’t warm her the way it used to. She could barely hear them over her own humming, over the sound of the water shushing against dishes that needed to be cleaned, over the laughter and cries of young ones who needed tending, over the lamented words of friends who needed her time and attention.

Penny gave it all and never thought on it, until one day, she looked out the window in the full bright of day, across a field of sunflowers, and saw trees swaying over a shadow in the glen.

She lifted her hands to touch against the leaves as she walked across the field of sunflowers and marveled at the sound of wind. Her ears felt as though nothing but her own humming had touched them for years. She heard the snarling again, the snapping and the screaming. She heard it and her heart beat again like it had been stopped for a century.

The wind fell to stillness when she came to stand before the shade, the pale toes of her bare feet edging right along the seam of sunlight and shadow. She looked forward where the green of leaves became so dark it turned black. She heard screams on the edge of breaths and snarls exhaled roughly through nostrils. She cocked her head to one side, then the other, and felt blood pounding through her skin.

She felt like a living creature, like someone out of control, like anything but a good girl, or an obedient girl, like anything but a little angel on this Earth. And she felt fear. She felt fear.

But not enough.

One step forward and the shadow swallowed her whole. Penny heard a last, little scream that didn’t come from the shade. It was her mother, a mother’s cry, across a sunflower field in the bright light of day.

“Hello, little Penny, darling girl, sweetest girl,” a voice immediately greeted her. It was cold and cruel, meaner than any voice she’d ever heard in the light. It hated her. It thought nothing of her.

“Hello,” Penny replied, because she was a polite girl, a kind one. She blinked in the black, wishing for a candle, wishing for a match, wishing maybe that she’d never come. It was frigid in the dark; damp and icy; and in the shadows something crawling touched her skin and slid over her feet. Something wet and clinging squished between her toes.

“Are you hungry?” The voice softened, but it wasn’t kind. It was seething, curling, twisted and sharp. “You’re hungry, I know.”

And Penny’s stomach did growl, felt almost painfully empty. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten, felt as though she’d never eaten before. Her stomach roiled, feeling hollow, feeling so starved it might devour itself.

“Eat,” the voice said, and in the dark, Penny could smell peaches, ripe and fragrant. A smell so bright, she could almost see them, could almost taste them. She leaned toward them, her stomach a cavernous knot of pain, then leaned right back again.

“It’s ugly here,” she said, and couldn’t trust such beautiful peaches in such a foul, dark and wretched place. “Why do you want me to eat? What will happen?” She trembled in her white dress and wished for a sweater, she wished for her mother and to be far away from here.

“Too true; it’s ugly here. I shouldn’t have offered.” The cruel voice tisked at her, a sound that shot spittle against Penny’s cheek. “Everything here is too ugly for a pretty thing like you.”

“That’s not what I said,” Penny said, and didn’t know why she was arguing. But she made herself breathe in deep air that smelled of peaches and let out a breath. She blinked again, bit her lip against her hunger and could make out her own white dress in the dark, her own pale skin. “I just—I’m sorry. That was rude of me to say.”

Penny thought she sensed a pause in the voice before her, from this creature in the dark she still couldn’t see; she thought she heard a word begin and then stop.

The screams and snarls sounded closer around her. Closer, it sounded like crying. It echoed off walls she only imagined curling around them on all sides, and closer, it sounded like crying. The ceiling felt low, felt suffocating and stifling. She breathed in deep again, swallowed against the scent, and exhaled.

“Why are people crying?” she asked.

“Hmph,” the voice said. Penny could make out a shape now, something hulking and low to the ground. It shuffled around, a wide, misshapen mess of mud and flesh limping across the slimy floor. “Because everything’s ugly here. Wouldn’t you cry too?”

Penny took a step after the creature and felt the ground squelch sickly between her toes. “Wait.” She reached out a shaking hand to touch at a humped shoulder blade. The skin felt rough and torn. “Don’t go yet.”

A kind voice, a familiar voice, her mother’s voice called from afar, from the light, from the sunflower field, and Penny also heard shouts of the men. Her rescuers had come, and so quickly. She’d only just fallen.

Penny turned back and could see now where she’d come from and how she’d come here. She could see the way back and even remembered the tune she used to hum, felt it familiar on her tongue and ready to whisper through her lips and fill her ears.

“Leaving so soon, enchanting woman?” the voice spat. “Radiant woman, goddess on Earth?” The creature shrugged off her hand and dragged its ungainly body across the putrid floor. It turned its head toward her.

Penny could see it now in the light from a wide sunflower field. Skin like a dry, cracked riverbed covered its back, sores red and oozing around its mouth. The tray of perfect peaches still seized in its rough hands and to see them they were even more wrong, even more to be doubted and refused. Golden ripe and glimmering in a world of rot and filth, of degradation, ugliness and pain.

“Penny!” her mother called. “Penny, come here. Come to me.”

Penny looked at the peaches and understood. Bait, the loaded trap. A bite and she’d be caught. A bite and she’d belong here, a pretty thing, an enchanting, radiant, perfect thing no longer. A bite and this world would be her world, like the sunflower field and the laughing children who needed tending. Screams and snarls and cries, a voice that spat and hated her.

A milky eye regarded her, peered at her out of a face so ravaged and torn it turned the stomach to look upon. Blood and pus and disease where others had freckles, dimples or lines from laughter.

“Penny.” Her mother’s call grew grave and steady. “Penny. Come here now,” she said, and Penny could sense her close, could feel that aching, warm and wonderful motherly presence just behind her back.

She looked straight at the clouded, infected eye that looked up her and felt her heartbeat slow in this ugly place. At the crook of the eye beside the bent and broken flesh of a nose, Penny saw a tiny tear, just a tiny bead of water that shone and glittered when it caught the light.

Feet sinking in the filth, Penny lunged forward, snatched a perfect peach off the tray, and sunk her teeth into it, mouth filling with cool, sweet juices that ran over her lips and down her chin.

Just then, an arm seized her around the waist and pulled her back into the light, into the field full of sunflowers, into the arms of her mother.

The hugs of relief and gratitude only stopped and shifted when her mother, when her rescuers, saw the bitten peach in her clean, pale hand, saw the juice on her lips and chin. Her mother’s legs seemed to give out beneath her and she sank to green grass in the bright sun by a wide field of sunflowers.

Penny looked at her, looked at the mournful and judging eyes around her and offered no apology. A good girl, an obedient girl, a perfect and radiant girl no longer. Mud covered her soft skin, dirt marred her youthful face, broken through by those streaks of juice like trickling rivers through a starved land. Her mother’s eyes searched hers for an answer, cheeks wet with tears that shone and glittered when they caught the light.

“I need to know,” Penny said, and had no other answer.