Concentration, Rhea decided, was fragile—especially under siege by subpar orchestras of the natural kingdom. Gus and Tavo tapped out a new genre: ‘Cockroach Nocturne for Thimble, Apple Pip, and Existential Cat.’ Gorbaclaventichun yowled rhythmically at the wall, which Rhea suspected was a protest against both music and narrative conventions.

She glared at her half-written notes. ‘I just need peace. Or at least a quieter infestation.’

‘Focus Pocus In-My-Locus!’ she muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose. The spell wasn’t for silence, but for clarity. It backfired spectacularly.

Instead of her thoughts sharpening, the room did. A wave of pure, untamed magic pulsed from her, a physical manifestation of her fury. Dust sifted from the rafters. The golden shoe of Cinderella skittered across the floor. Gorbaclaventichun’s fur stood on end as a deep, resonant hum vibrated through the very wood of the hut. The chaotic plinking from the cockroach band faltered. Gus lowered his comb-kazoo, his antennae twitching in the charged air. He exchanged a look with Tavo, who gave a single, solemn tap of his thimble. Then, a new sound began: a slow, hypnotic, and surprisingly steady beat. They weren’t just being quiet; they were actively changing their tune, providing a rhythmic anchor in her storm of frustration.

The steady rhythm cut through her anger but not the spell’s momentum. Rhea took a deep, shuddering breath, closed her eyes, and realised too late she had focused on the wrong thing: the book. It responded instantly. That familiar, storybook pull gripped her—a whoosh of ink and parchment, a sensation somewhere between a sneeze and a leap into an unflushed cauldron. Reality wobbled—and she landed with an indelicate splorp in the centre of a mud-caked pond that smelled of ancient ducks and regret.

She blinked and spat out what might have been an ancestral frog. Around her stretched the oddest little town she’d ever seen: Sloggendorf, where every roof drooped under the weight of moss and the roads had resigned themselves entirely to the concept of mud.

Villagers peeked from behind mouldy doors and leaning well-buckets. Several children shrieked, pointing at the dripping newcomer. An elderly man gasped, ‘A ghost!’ while a stout woman shielded her cabbage basket as if Rhea might curse it into something even more vegetable-adjacent.

Rhea wiped muck from her cheek and gave her audience a dramatic bow. ‘Relax! I’m not here to destroy your town. I only bring a touch of high fashion—mud is very in this season.’

No one laughed. A nearby dog eyed her with a sympathy reserved for fellow lost souls, then gave a small, commiserating whine before retreating.

She looked down at her boots, now reduced to abstract sculpture. ‘Lovely. Shoes ruined. Social standing is unsalvageable. My hat—oh, the humanity. And for my next trick—mud facials all round! Free exfoliation for the entire village of Sloggendorf!’ She struck a pose worthy of a soggy witch-advertisement.

A child whispered, ‘She’s so dirty…’

Rhea grinned. ‘If I’m the dirtiest thing you’ve seen this week in Sloggendorf, you haven’t been looking at your laundry.’

And with that, she trudged toward the not-so-glorious town centre, determined to find out what sort of owl kept everyone indoors—and whether her reputation, if not her boots, could possibly get any filthier.

A stroll later, Rhea concluded that the townsfolk of Sloggendorf were the world champions of worrying out loud. As she slogged through the market, every alley echoed with rumours, each more deranged than the last.

A nervous laundress grabbed her arm. ‘You’re a witch, aren’t you? You must know of the monster in the barn! Its eyes glow like cursed coals, and at night it shrieks a name no mortal tongue can speak!’

Rhea raised an eyebrow. ‘Glowing eyes? You mean like every nocturnal animal in existence? And are you sure it wasn’t just hooting? My cat makes more terrifying noises when his dinner is five minutes late.’

She moved on, only to be cornered by two old men on a stoop. ‘It’s no normal beast,’ one wheezed. ‘It curses your buttons to unfasten themselves! Has a passion for poor tailoring, it does—I heard it myself. My sleep’s never recovered!’

‘An agent of sartorial chaos, you say?’ Rhea deadpanned. ‘Terrifying. I’ll be sure to wear a belt.’

By the well, a child in a hat three sizes too big hissed, ‘My uncle says the barn is full of echoing spells! None of them makes sense, but the mud tastes different now. Like onions!’ His friend nodded sagely: ‘If you step near, your shoes will try to run away.’

A town gossiping circle closed in. ‘It repeats those spells to hypnotise you,’ said one. ‘Just shouts nonsense into the dark! ‘Beak!’ ‘Tree!’ ‘Nearly!’ Things like that! We must find a real solution.’

Rhea suppressed a smirk. The barn owl’s main crime, it seemed, was shouting surreal words. But her amusement vanished as she remembered the story’s original ending. She already knew the ‘real solution’ was to burn the barn.

Before she could declare herself an expert in barn-based disaster, a commotion rattled the muddy square. A would-be hero strode in, all oversized boots and bravado, sporting a sash that read Valerius the Valiant (pending) in shimmering gold. His nameplate, hammered crookedly onto a stick he carried like a sceptre, simply declared ‘Hero (Provisional, Temporary, Pending).’ He stood atop an apple crate, his voice booming as if it belonged to a much taller person. ‘Fear not, good people of Sloggendorf! I—am the Hero—and I don’t just have a plan but a very, very good plan. So excellent, so exquisitely effective, it has two verys in the title and twelve footnotes, but I usually stop at the third.’

Rhea edged closer, whispering to a stray chicken, ‘Pending?’ What’s it pending, a basic understanding of courage?’

He whipped out a scroll. ‘Step one: Panic. And you have it. Good.’

The crowd nodded nervously.

‘Step two: Triple lock all laundry! Good.’

‘Wouldn’t want the button monster getting any ideas!’ Rhea said to a maid next to her, who shivered and moved away.

Valerius’s eye twitched. ‘And step three… we burn down the barn! Very, very good.’

The crowd rumbled with a mix of approval and nervous indigestion. Rhea rolled her eyes so hard she felt a muscle strain. She, more stubborn than mud on her pointed hat, made up her mind. ‘I think I’ll skip the fire, thanks. Someone should actually check on the owl before Sloggendorf wakes up roasting.’

Ignoring a chorus of warnings and the hero’s offer of a ‘Very Very exclusive shovel,’ Rhea slipped away from the crowd and headed for the infamous barn. She ducked under a broken fence and pushed through creaky doors, armed only with wit and mud stains.

Inside, thick hay muffled her steps. The air buzzed—literally. There, perched regally upon a broken beam, was the owl itself. Not the stuff of nightmares, but a hornet-colored blur of feathers, its eyes gentle, its tufts like little horns, and a grand, unbothered bearing.

Rhea and the owl stared at each other. The silence in the barn was absolute, broken only by the faint rustle of hay. She had faced down a wolf, outsmarted a prince, and now she stood before… a bird. A very calm, very quiet bird. For the first time, she felt a flicker of genuine fear. Not of being eaten, but of being wrong.

She took a tentative step forward, her voice barely a whisper. ‘Hello? Are you… the monster?’

The owl blinked once, a slow, deliberate motion. Its head tilted, its gaze intelligent and ancient, but it made no sound.

Rhea’s confidence began to return, bubbling up through her apprehension. ‘Right, the silent treatment. Very mysterious.’ She planted her muddy boots more firmly in the hay and tried again, her voice stronger. ‘Look, the people out there are about one marshmallow away from burning you and this entire barn to a crisp. They think you’re muttering spells and cursing their buttons. You have to give me something to work with here.’

The owl ruffled its feathers, preened a stray one on its wing, and continued its silent vigil. It was a gesture of such profound indifference that Rhea’s patience finally snapped. She had been woken by a cockroach marching band, threatened with four million moons of imprisonment, surveilled by crickets, and now she was being completely ignored by the one creature who held all the answers.

‘Oh, for my cauldron’s sake!’ she yelled, her voice echoing in the dusty space. ‘Just say something! Anything! For the last time… SPEAK!’

The single word bounced off the wooden walls. In the ringing silence that followed, the owl finally opened its mouth. A low, resonant hoot filled the barn, a sound that was not monstrous at all, but surprisingly clear. It formed a single, inquisitive word.

‘Beak?’

Rhea froze. Her jaw, which had been set in a look of furious determination, went slack. She stared at the owl, who stared back as if waiting for a proper response. The defiant energy drained out of her, replaced by a profound, familiar weariness.

She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted again, slowly and clearly, exaggerating the movement of her lips.

‘CAN. YOU. HEAR. ME?’

The owl watched her mouth intently, then hooted back with perfect, cheerful confidence.

‘NEARLY!’

‘Oh, you have got to be kidding me,’ she groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose and squeezing her eyes shut. ‘You’re as deaf as Grandma Iris.’