Woodkettle looked smaller from above than it did when approached from the road. The tall copperwood groves that were the town’s main source of revenue were scattered around it, dwarfing its close-packed houses. From ground level those houses looked impressive with their large scale and ornate detail work (the town was primarily inhabited by Larges and wood carving was a major part of local culture), but from the air they looked like simple cottages and were relatively few in number. There were a few sheepcotes around town, but not many; all the lambs in Woodkettle put together could scarcely hope to match the number that the kobakra had taken from Goldknob.

The four landed their barrels outside of Sofia and Dmitri’s home and inserted bungs to keep the remaining flight inside. It would have been faster to alert the workers in the various groves and worksites on barrel, but they didn’t have enough flight left to do that and still be flying when they met the kobakra, and none of them were keen on facing it on foot. By Catalina’s estimate they had two hours before the kobakra arrived and just under one hour of flight in the barrels. Diego recommended they use an hour and a half trying to mobilize the town, then fly out to meet it.

Sofia and Dmitri weren’t home, but they soon found Sofia, Tina, and several other mothers with children too young to tend while working playing together. Oisha, seeing young Tina, burst into tears and ran to hug her. This did not go well: Tina hadn’t seen her grandmother in over a year and didn’t recognize her, so she screamed and tried to get away. Oisha persisted, Tina screamed more, Fyodor and Sofia went to try to calm things down, other children got upset: the overall impact of their arrival was confusion from the adults and a meltdown from the children. And the single source of this mess was Oisha, not one of the toddlers, which caused Diego to freeze, unsure of what to do about it.

Catalina knew exactly what to do. She’d raised eleven children with minimal help from Diego and had often observed parents’ emotions sparking children’s behavior. She walked calmly through the fray, pulling out a small glass bottle and a bit of pinkish crystal as she did so. She muttered a bit, tapped the stopper of the bottle with the crystal, then removed the stopper, pulled a small wire loop from the bottle and blew through it. A stream of opalescent bubbles emerged from the loop and started drifting about the place, to the amazement of the children. She dipped and blew again, making more bubbles, then handed the bottle and wire to Oisha. Soon Oisha was busy blowing bubbles, the children were busy chasing them, and calm of a sort had returned.

In this calm, Catalina approached her daughter Sofia. The two nodded acknowledgement—Catalina was not very good at affection and her children had learned not to attempt it with her—and Catalina said we come with bad news.

Sofia looked concerned. What kind of bad news?

There’s a kobakra headed this way, maybe two hours from town. The shock this statement caused was evident on the face of everyone who heard it.

You’ve seen it? asked Sofia.

This struck the other mothers as the wrong kind of reply. Kobakras were myths, terrifying nightmare beasts used to caution bereaved parents of the dangers of jealousy and as a personification of the idea that not all bad things that happen to children are their parents’ fault. They didn’t actually exist. What did this calm, plump Small with her magic bottle of bubbles and overly-emotional friend mean by kobakra? Was it some kind of code?

We saw it about an hour ago.

And does it really eat children? continued Sofia.

In Goldknob it ate lambs, kids, and calves: the young of being-sized beasts. We assume it would have taken children too if there hadn’t been enough livestock.

This didn’t sound like a code. It was too matter-of-fact, too detailed. One of the other mothers (Claire, woodcarver and mother of six, the eldest four of whom were in the groves with their father) asked, or rather stated in a tone that begged confirmation, you mean an actual baby-eating monster is on its way here now.

That’s right, said Fyodor. He wanted to add and its even worse than it sounds, but realized doing so would serve no useful purpose so he refrained.

The reason we took this trip is to warn you of its coming, said Diego. We used up three barrels each to get here before it arrived. Despite all that was going on, those eight empty gleam barrels they’d left in the middle of the wilds were still very much on Diego’s mind.

We plan to try to kill it, said Catalina, but we might not succeed so you should make ready.

Hearing Catalina say we might not succeed aloud like that chilled Diego and Fyodor. They knew it, of course: Diego had made plans for the group predicated on it, Fyodor privately through that probably won’t was a more accurate phrase than might not, but Catalina was a woman whw said things the way there were, unclouded by emotion. She was the one who had seen the beast up close. She was the one who had the most understanding of magic. When she said they might not succeed, it had the ring of fact.

Sofia was freaking out. Like, really freaking out. Her mother had shown up out of nowhere, used magic as a first resort to calm other people’s children—she never used magic as a first resort for anything, so she must be way more worried than she let on—and told them a mythical baby eater was on its way to her home. Her mother wouldn’t have made the journey unless she thought there was more-than-even odds that Tina would be eaten. Sofia wanted to scream, to weep, to let out the terror that was slowly filling her, threatening to burst her asunder, but she did not. She had been raised by Catalina and had learned that if she showed her fear, if she did anything to make herself look more emotional than rational, then Catalina would freeze up, uncertain of what to do next, and the flow of information would stop. She had to remain calm. Correction: she had to act like she was remaining calm. In the steadiest, most relaxed voice she could muster she said How do we make ready?

Catalina looked at Diego, shaking him from his thoughts.

Bait, said Diego. It is attracted to lambs and calves and has trouble turning around. Make a trail of young livestock that leads past town for it to follow.

If there was any doubt that something serious was afoot, Sofia’s bottled terror erased it from the minds of the other mothers around her. Something awful was afoot, but something too urgent to cry about now. Shouldn’t we hide? asked Claire. Or run?

Diego shrugged. It doesn’t need to see you to know you’re there, he said, and there’s nothing here it couldn’t break into or dig through. If you have to run, try to get behind it.

Far behind it, emphasized Fyodor. Its tail is pretty nasty.

It can be killed, said Catalina—

—but not easily, interrupted Diego before Catalina could finish that thought. If it is readily killed we’ll kill it before it gets to town.

At this point the conversation became hard to follow. There were ten worried mothers and four messengers and this one-at-a-time conversation wasn’t keeping pace with their rising concern and disbelief. Rather than try to follow the branching threads of conversation and subsequent actions individually, let us take a step back and consider how the message the four brought was received.

Oisha had expected their warning to be accepted as truth; indeed, she’d not even considered that a different reception could occur.

Diego assumed it would take some convincing to persuade people that the kobakra was real and on its way, but that once they believed that they’d either accept his plan or propose a better one.

Catalina had decided there was some chance a warning might help and little cost to giving one, which was enough to inform action and the end of her guessing what would happen next.

Fyodor had worked in a public house for more than three decades, spending most of every afternoon and evening talking to and observing people in various moods, and had much more complicated expectations. He expected the residents of Woodkettle to be uncertain about everything: about the reality and presence of a kobakra, about the risk it posed, about the plan to follow. Certainty, Fyodor believed, was the result of time and repetition, and they’d have neither. He expected people to make decisions and project belief based on their personal perception of uncertain risk: parents would act as if there was a kobakra, others less so; shepherds would resist the bait trail idea, others would welcome it; and so on. If the town had a strong leader they’d rally behind that voice; if not they’d split several ways; and if they had internal divisions already they might get sidetracked fighting each other. Fyodor had met people who could give a group of strangers a sense of purpose and unity, but neither he nor his wife had that kind of charisma, and his neighbors were not even close.

Of all of these expectations, Oisha’s was closest to correct, though not for the reason she expected. Sofia had a reputation in town for being very orderly and rational and relatively skeptical. The other mothers at the play gathering that morning saw Sofia accept her parents’ information and recommendations in a seemingly-calm and unquestioning way, and the only way that made sense is if it was all true. They also saw the fear that fueled the calm, that aura of I am doing this and you can either help or get out of my way but do it now because if you slow me down you’ll stop being a friend and become a problem and you don’t want to see what I’ll do to problems right now. That was an attitude that resonated with them, a mood that most of them had had from time to time when their children were in distress and they knew what to do to fix it. It didn’t take long for that mood to spread through the gathering: as soon as they had a task to do, each one went about it with that same unstoppable determination. Some went to inform those working in the groves and yards all around, some to gather livestock, some to pull together weapons or get harnesses that would make it easier to carry babies while running. There was work to do and they did it.

The four messengers found themselves included in this flurry of work. Sofia and Claire, who had done most of the organizing, had sent each with a different group without explanation or permission but with a focus that brooked no disagreement. Fyodor was sent to gather workers from the west grove and then collect weapons for the possible self-defense of the residents in the case the kobakra caught them, and he was the first to realize that this wasn’t as planned. Hearing the others he was with talk about if they fail, meaning him, and it’s coming in an hour, meaning the thing he was supposed to stop before it arrived, reminded him of his actual mission. He broke from his group, returned to the barrels, removed the baggage that wasn’t needed in the coming fight, and was just about to mount up and seek out the others when Catalina walked up as casually as if she were going to pick up the post.

I think our spouses are distracted, she said by way of greeting. Do you want to remind Oisha while I remind Diego?

Sure, said Fyodor. Then, after a moment, um, do you know where she is?

With no change to her placid expression Catalina replied why don’t I get them both while you put on that armor? Without waiting for Fyodor’s response she mounted her barrel and flew off.

Fyodor looked down to where his bout padding lay in the heap of other baggage he’d removed from the barrels, freaked a little that he was so out of himself that he’d not even noticed it when unloading the barrels, freaked a bit more than he was standing there freaking out instead of getting ready, and then began to put it on.

A few minutes later the four were all present, mounted, and flying towards the kobakra. They expect the trip to take half an hour or more, but it took far less than that. They rode half a league to the top of the ridge and saw it not far away, running awkwardly but rapidly on its strange stilt legs straight towards them.

It’s running, said Fyodor. Why is it running?

It must sense the town, even from this far away said Diego, notching an arrow to his bow. As soon as they were within range he said here goes nothing and loosed the arrow.

The target was distant and moving, but it was large and moving towards them and Diego was practiced with his bow. The arrow flew true and sunk into the monster’s shoulder. The kobakra gave a little woof of pain and a shimmer rippled from the back of its hide up to the point where the arrow landed, but it didn’t slow.

It felt that! said Fyodor, partly to praise Diego but mostly in mild shock that they were actually able to hurt the monstrosity. Maybe they weren’t doomed after all!

Here’s another, said Diego, loosing a second arrow. It also struck the kobakra in almost the same place, but this time the arrow shattered on impact as if it had hit a brick wall.

Adaptive defenses, said Catalina. That’s a potent curse.

Meaning what? asked Fyodor.

That shiver was its hide becoming arrow-proof, she replied.

Arrow-proof‽ echoed Fyodor in dismay. They were fast approaching a massive charging monster and it was arrow-proof? They were definitely doomed.

Catalina pulled out a crystal, held it aloft in her left hand while extending her right arm toward the kobakra. She muttered something and the crsytal began to glow brightly and crumble away. The glow passed into Catalina’s arm, through her shoulders, and blasted out of her other hand in a beam that hit the kobakra on the skull. A sizzling sound rose from the point of impact, fur blackened and shriveled, and smoke rose as raw magic cooked the flesh of the kobakra as it ran. But the beam was small compared to the kobakra’s bulk and almost at once another shiver washed up the kobakra, deflecting the rest of Catalina’s beam before she was half-way through her crystal.

We’ve got to keep changing it up! said Deigo, notching another arrow.

They were close now, so close that three of them pulled their barrels up and around to parallel their target; but Fyodor heard in Diego’s words an instruction. He closed with the monster and struck out with his club in one hand and saber in the other. He was pleased to feel the bruising thud of the club contacting unprotected hide, and as a change shimmered over the hide he struck out with the saber—wielding it like a club as he wasn’t really used to using a sword—and was relieved to make a small cut that the new change did not prevent.

Before he could relish this, his first ever contribution to something as heroic as fighting a monster, Fyodor’s attention was diverted by the tail. It’s many barbed strands whipped towards him, spread out enough that he could not hope to entirely dodge them. He turned to take the brunt of the assault with his armor, as he had been trained to do if a guest at the pub had a knife or broken bottle, which did help, but he nonetheless felt multiple cuts and bruises as the strange whip lashed against him.

Diego loosed another arrow, which made it through the current hide configuration. Catalina, seeing the rapid changes to its hide, used up the rest of the crystal to give it another boiling burn. Diego struggled to regain control of his barrel and brace himself for the return of the tail, which was too close to escape and winding up for another swing.

Oisha watched this, unable to help. She had nothing on her barrel except herself. She had practiced and taught self-defense for many years, but only hand-to-hand technique; what she knew about weapons was how to disarm those that had them. She had proposed killing the kobakra originally, but now that they were here fighting it she realized she had no way of contributing. That said, her husband, the love of her life, had just been badly cut by the tail that was winding up for another swing. She needed to act, now. She needed to stop it, distract it, give her husband time to get away. But she was too high up, too high for the kobakra to notice or care about. She had to get down to reach the kobakra, and she had to do it now.

To Diego and Catalina’s shock and horror (Fyodor was distracted and didn’t see) Oisha jumped off her barrel and began to plummet towards the kobakra below.