Lenore’s cottage looks like it grew there by accident. The roof sags comfortably beneath a coat of moss. Ivy crawls up the stone chimney. Every window is a different size, as if the house kept asking for more light and she kept obliging. She keeps bees in painted hives behind the garden fence. She dries lavender and rosemary from the rafters. She sings to her sourdough starter like it is something that might answer back.

The villagers say there’s a monster in the woods. They are not wrong. Haymitch does not have horns. He does not have hooves. He looks almost like a man — if a man had been left too long in the forest and the forest decided to keep him.

Haymitch lives in the forest that stretches behind the stream beyond the old stone bridge. He looks human, at first glance, but something is… different. His skin carries faint textures of bark along his shoulders. Moss gathers in his hair when it rains. His eyes catch light strangely, gold flecked with green, reflecting movement and life around him. He smells faintly of river water, damp leaves, and the earth after a storm. But he is dangerous. Part of the forest is in him. Part monster, part man. Streams ripple faster in his presence. Deer and foxes ignore him, or freeze entirely, sensing the unnatural pulse of life that flows through him. He eats when he must. He moves silently when he wants. The earth bends around him.

The first time he comes to her door, it is because he has been shot. A hunter wandered too far into the woods with a trembling hand and poor aim. The bullet struck deep. Haymitch makes it halfway to her cottage before collapsing directly on her front porch. Lenore steps outside with flour on her cheek and honey on her wrist.

She looks at the ruined garden. Looks at the enormous bleeding forest-creature crumpled among the vines. She grips him under the arm, surprisingly strong for someone so slight, and drags him inside inch by stubborn inch. The cottage smells like beeswax and bread. He barely fits through the door. She lays him on her rug and kneels beside him, examining the wound with clinical calm. Her hands are small but steady. She cleans the wound, murmuring spells under her breath that smell faintly of pine resin and iron. Herbs pressed into the cut accelerate healing. The air shimmers slightly where she moves, protective sigils, invisible to anyone else.

After that, he begins leaving her gifts. Not as thanks, exactly. As instinct. Shiny river stones. Bundles of blackberries. Sometimes a fallen branch carved into a simple doorframe for her cottage. He does not knock. She does not mind. He sleeps on the floor near her hearth. She knits him scarves for winter. The villagers see the cottage smoke rising in the morning and hear faint humming. They never see Haymitch. Only Lenore, flour on her cheek, hands busy with bread or herbs.

Winter comes. Snow blankets the roof and garden. Haymitch curls near the hearth. Lenore places a small scarf over his shoulders. He leans into it without words. Sometimes she whispers spells into the air to strengthen the roof, bless the bees, or keep the forest’s more dangerous spirits from wandering too close. Haymitch watches her, quiet and enormous.

Sometimes, he leans toward her, feeling the warmth of magic and home. He is human in shape, monstrous in presence, tied to the forest and to her. He only becomes a monster when she is not safe.

And Lenore Dove, witch of honey, moss, and bone-deep magic, has never asked him to be anything else. She kneels beside him, brushing a stray lock of moss-flecked hair from his face. Her fingers leave faint traces of herbs and honey along his skin.

“You are mine,” she whispers, voice soft but certain, carrying the weight of spells and old magic. “Not the forest. Not the world. Not even the darkness you carry inside yourself. Only mine.”

He looks at her, golden eyes flickering in the hearthlight, and for the first time since he came to her, he feels still.

She smiles, tilts her head, and murmurs again, “And I will keep you safe. Always.”