The heat found her before the screaming stopped.

  Aoife pressed herself into the gap between the chimney and the eaves, making her body small. Smoke coiled past her in thick ribbons, stinging her eyes, and coating her throat. Below her, through the gaps in the floorboards, firelight danced.

  She could hear him moving through the orphanage. Heavy footsteps that felt deliberate. The crash of furniture being overturned, walls being torn open. He wasn't running, wasn't hurrying, but he was searching.

  The younger children had already stopped crying. Aoife tried not to think about what that meant.

  She'd been in the root cellar when the Hound came. She had been stealing preserves. Brigid would have scolded her for it, would have given her that look that said I know exactly what you're doing, and we'll discuss it later. That was what would have happened, what should have happened. Instead, Brigid wouldn't be scolding anyone ever again. Aoife had seen her through the cellar grate. Seen her fall beneath the Hound's scythe.

  Now Aoife moved through the burning orphanage like smoke herself, sliding through spaces that shouldn't fit a girl her size.

  “Cunning,” Brigid had called her once. “You've a thief's instincts, girl. You're good at finding the gaps. Use that head of yours for something better than apple tarts.”

  She was Brigid's oldest ward at seventeen, and the old routes had become tight squeezes long ago.

  A beam crashed somewhere below. The Hound snarled in frustration, but not pain. "Where is it, witch? Where did you hide it?"

  He was in Brigid's room. Tearing it apart.

  Aoife moved along the crawlspace toward the back of the house, where the roof met the wall at an angle that created a narrow channel. The smoke was thinner here. The fire hadn't reached this corner yet.

  She lowered herself through the window that was never locked and dropped into the storage room. She landed softly and listened.

  Footsteps and they were coming closer.

  Aoife slipped behind a shelf of old linens, pressing her back against the wall. The door hung crooked on its hinges. Through the gap, she saw shadow move against firelight. The Hound's silhouette filled the hallway. The creature was too large. His form was wrong. Aoife had never seen a duine sí before, but she had heard the terrifying stories of Cú Dubh.

  He paused at the doorway, and Aoife stopped breathing.

  The yellow eyes swept the room. Passed over the shelf. Passed over her. He sniffed the air, but the smoke made him choke.

  He moved on.

  She waited until his footsteps faded, then counted to ten. Then ten again. Then she moved.

  Brigid's study was two rooms away. The fire was eating through the east wall, flames licking up the curtains, but the desk still stood. Aoife crossed to it in four quick steps, fingers finding the seam in the wood that Brigid had shown her once on her sixteenth birthday.

  The hidden safe held items of great importance to Brigid. Heirlooms and pictures. Some special ingredients for her concoctions. That wasn't why Aoife was there. She sorted through the well-ordered materials until she found a tin case. She held it for a beat.

  When the time is right to use this, Brigid had told her once. You'll know.

  She moved the top, and the hinge gave a small whine. Aoife paused, wondering if the sound had given her away, but the Hound's crashing sounded distant in the fire.

  Inside was a locket on a tarnished chain, and beneath it, wrapped in cloth that smelled of lavender and something older, was a silver knot of rope.

  It fit in her palm. The silver strands tangled through themselves in ways that hurt her eyes, loops folding into loops, shifting when she looked at them directly. The silver shimmered, and it felt cold against her skin.

  The Snaidhm na hAimsire, the Time Knot. Brigid had only told her about it once, and even then, it was brief.

  Her fingers found the first thread. Brigid's voice came back to her, fragments from a happier time.

  “You'll untangle it, and while you do, hold the moment you want most clearly in your mind. The time and place you need to be. It will bring you there, but not tonight. Tonight we celebrate you. When the time is right to use this, you'll know.”

  That was back when Brigid was whole. When Brigid was alive. Aoife tried to hold the thought.

  Brigid in the kitchen with flour on her hands, scolding Aoife for tracking mud through the hall. She thought of the orphanage before the fire. The younger children running and playing. Back before the screaming had ended, before the fires began to consume her home.

  The threads began to loosen.

  The locket sat in the tin, waiting. She looked at it curiously for a moment, but her focus returned to the Knot when she heard a loud crash.

  I can fix this.

  Her fingers were shaking, but still she pulled. She wiped away a tear that blurred her vision and looked at the tangled strands. The Knot was almost undone. One more loop. One more…

  The door exploded inward.

  The Hound filled the frame, yellow eyes finding her instantly. He lunged without hesitation, blade raised, and Aoife saw his face clearly for the first time. The body was human-like, with two arms and two legs, standing on its feet. But the face…was something different. The sleek face of a black-furred hound. His mouth opened, and his fangs were bared. She saw Brigid's blood on his small scythe. His hand reached for her…

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  The Knot came loose as she fell backwards. Her last thought wasn't of Brigid. It was of him.

  She hit the sand hard. The air tasted like salt and felt frigid against the skin. Wet sand held against her cheek.

  Aoife gasped, and her lungs seized on the sea air. She began to cough out the burning she'd been breathing moments before. Her fingers were still curled around the silver rope that had once been the Knot.

  This wasn't the orphanage, or Brigid. The Knot had brought her somewhere else entirely.

  She tried to get her bearings. A beach stretched in both directions, grey sand meeting grey sea under a grey sky. She hoped she was still in the Drowned Isles, but couldn't be sure. Brigid's orphanage was near the coast, but this beach was unfamiliar.

  As she tried to remember if she knew those cliffs, she felt the rope evaporate in her fingers until they curled around nothing.

  She couldn't see a village or civilization. There were no lights in the distance, but also no fire.

  A scream cut through the fog.

  Not like Brigid's scream had been, something shriller. High and thin and terrified. A child's voice.

  Aoife was running before she decided to move. Her legs were unsteady, her head still spinning from whatever the Knot had done to her, but the sound pulled her forward. Over a rise of dune grass. Down toward the next waterline.

  A boy. He was tiny, maybe three or four years old. He was on his back in the shallows, arms raised, and on top of him…

  Aoife clenched her jaw.

  A dog. Black-furred and massive, lips peeled back from teeth that were already red. It had the boy's arm in its mouth and was shaking, shaking, and the boy had stopped screaming because he couldn't breathe while the water was turning pink around him.

  Aoife's hand went to her belt. No knife. She'd left it in the hollow wall behind her bed. A secret place meant only for her.

  The dog was twice her weight. Feral, by the look of it, with ribs showing through matted fur and eyes wild with hunger. She couldn't fight it. Couldn't overpower it.

  Cunning, Brigid's voice whispered. Find the gaps.

  The beach. What did she have?

  Driftwood was around but brittle. The rocks were too small. The water was shallow here, tidal pools scattered across the sand, and in one of them…

  A dead fish. Days rotted, from the look and the smell. The gulls had been at it.

  Aoife snatched it up and ran straight at the dog.

  "Oi!" She hurled the fish at the animal's head. It hit with a wet splat, and bits of the fish curled around its head. The dog snapped up in Aoife's direction, jaws releasing the boy's arm.

  It eyed Aoife before looking at the rotting fish that now floated beside it. It reached for the meal. Meat was meat, and the fish smelled like an easier choice than something that fought back.

  The distraction had worked, but the boy didn't move as the dog ripped through the loose flesh of the fish. When the dog had swallowed its share, it turned back toward the boy.

  Aoife continued to close the distance. She bent down as she ran and grabbed a handful of wet sand and shells. She flung it into the animal's eyes. It yelped, snarling, and twisting away. Her legs carried her into the shallows, where she picked up a length of kelp that had been floating. It was thick and rubbery, whipping it across the dog's muzzle once, twice, driving it back.

  It snapped at her but didn't lunge. Trying to figure out this new threat.

  "Go!" She didn't know if she was shouting at the dog or the boy. Both, maybe. "Move!"

  The dog took its opportunity and lunged. She sidestepped and brought her heel down hard against its ribs. It yelped and stumbled. It turned on her, but she gave it no time to recover and bashed her heel into its face.

  The dog turned. Snarling, but fleeing, up the beach and into the dunes.

  Aoife dropped to her knees beside the boy. He was pale and shaking. His arm was a mess of torn flesh and blood, but he was breathing. His eyes found hers. They were wide, confused, and full of tears.

  "You're alright," she said. Words she had said countless times to the other children in the orphanage. Words she learned from Brigid. "You're alright, I've got you."

  She tore a strip from her shirt and wrapped it around his arm, tight enough to slow the bleeding. He whimpered but didn't pull away.

  "What's your name?"

  He didn't respond. His face was frozen in terror.

  "Well, I bet it's a strong name. You'd have to be to fight off a dog that size. I can't believe how strong you are." She tied off the bandage and looked at his face. He wasn't crying, but Aoife wasn't sure that was necessarily good. "You know what Brigid… my mam used to tell me when I got hurt?"

  He shook his head.

  "She'd say, 'Well, at least your head's still attached.'" Aoife made a big show of looking around the boy's head. "It looks like maybe it came loose over here…" She reached back and tickled him behind the ear.

  The boy let out a sound that was half sob, half laugh. His hand went to his neck, feeling her fingers.

  "Nope, I was wrong, still on."

  He almost smiled. She went to reach for him to pull him up, but that's when something pulled her.

  Not her body, not physically, but something deeper. Something behind her ribs and beyond her heart. It hooked her and dragged her back. The world smeared at the edges.

  "No!" She reached for the boy, but her hand passed through him like smoke. "No, wait!"

  The beach dissolved.

  If the way to the beach had been instant, the way back was a blur of time. She watched the seasons change around her in seconds before she was slammed back into solidity and staggered. Same beach, same cliffs, but the light had shifted. It was warmer and golden. The summer heat on her skin where there had been spring chill.

  The boy was gone.

  The pull came again. The world once again blurred before she slammed out of it. For some reason it reminded her of when she used to skip stones down by the beach.

  Now it was autumn. Brown grass was hanging low on the dunes behind her.

  The pull.

  Winter. Frost on the rocks. Her breath fogging.

  The pull.

  Spring. Rain on her face.

  The jumps were shorter now. She could feel it. The time in the blur was shrinking, and the hook in her chest was losing its grip, but it was not finished with her yet.

  Summer and then autumn.

  The last pull felt different. Angry. Like something vast and old had noticed her and wanted her gone. Not just moved, but punished. It dragged her forward with a violence that made her teeth ache, and when it finally released her, she hit the sand hard enough to taste blood.

  Aoife stayed down. Her whole body trembled. Her skin felt wrong, stretched too tight, like she'd been pulled through a space she wasn't meant to fit.

  Same beach. Same grey sand. Same grey sea.

  She didn't know how long she lay there. Long enough for her breathing to slow. Long enough for the shaking to fade to a tremor.

  "Didn't see ya there."

  Aoife's head snapped up.

  A man stood ten paces away and eyed her warily. He had nets bundled over one shoulder. Weathered face, salt-stiff beard, the clothes of someone who'd spent his life pulling fish from the sea. He was looking at her with mild concern, the way you'd look at a drunk who'd wandered onto the strand.

  "You alright, girl? Tide's coming in."

  Aoife pushed herself to her feet. Her voice came out rough, scraped raw. "The year. What year is it?"

  The fisherman's brow furrowed. "What year?"

  "Please. Just tell me."

  "Ten o-two."

  Aoife stood very still. Brigid, the Hound, and the orphanage were over a year past. She thought the hook was pulling her back, but instead, it brought her forward. Past her own present. Past the night she'd lost everything.

  "Closest port?"

  "Our village has docks…"

  She shook her head, "No, an actual port."

  "Ballinacor."

  Ballinacor was perfect. Brigid traded with Ballinacor.

  "Which way?"

  "By land?"

  She nodded.

  The man eyed her. "About two hours that way," and pointed east over the dunes.

  Aoife nodded and started in that direction.

  It would take her half a day to get back to the orphanage from Ballinacor if she found the right fisherman, but all she could think about was the fire.

  A year had gone by, which meant that Brigid and the children were now ashes or in the ground. Aoife had tried to save them and missed it all.