Foxfire by Katelynn Humbles

Grandmother warned me never to chase foxfire.

It slipped through cedars, cobalt flames bobbing lures on black hooks. Trickster foxes. Corpse-lures wrapped in stolen skin. It feeds on fools and grief, she said.

But grief found me first. My sister wept in the dark, and love is a sharper knife than fear.

I ran, thorns raking my skin, the forest warping—bark breathing, roots twitching. Sap bled sour-smelling from their wounds. Beneath a wax-bleeding lantern, something crouched—pale as a fish belly, mouth too wide, teeth thin as bamboo slivers.

“Found you,” it crooned, as the forest folded shut around my bones.