Someone You Can Build a Nest In

Nebula and Locus Award Winner!

Hugo Award Nominee

An NPR, Washington Post, Book Riot, Library Journal and Audible Best Book of 2024!

"This novel is monstrously perfect, in every way" —P. Djèlí Clark for The New York Times

“This unusual queer romance is a heartfelt fable about disability and the possibility of reconciling conflicting needs through love and understanding.” —The Guardian

"Sweetly furious, darkly funny, and gruesomely wholesome. It's a love story for the unloved, a happily-ever-after with a higher-than-average body count. I just adored it." —Alix E. Harrow, New York Times-bestselling author of Starling House

Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she's fallen in love.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by impolite monster hunters, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.

Badly hurt by the hunters, Shesheshen’s nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human. Homily is kind and would make a great co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young can devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, Shesheshen realizes that eating her girlfriend isn’t an option.

Just as Shesheshen’s about to confess her identity, Homily reveals something else: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?

Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, so now she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As Shesheshen’s hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, the bigger challenge remains: learning how to build a life with, rather than in, the woman she loves.

“A stealthily funny, slyly smart, and remarkably touching story. Its wisdom will creep up on you as surely as your affection for its monstrous main character.”—Veronica Roth, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of When Among Crows | An NPR, Washington Post, Book Riot, Library Journal and Audible Best Book of 2024!

One of the Best Books of the Year So Far from: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Polygon, Reactor, and Bookpage!

A British Science Fiction Association Nominee for Best Novel • A Baltimore Science Fiction Society Nominee for Best First Novel • A Locus Recommended Best First Novel

An Audie Award and Compton Crook Award Finalist

"Someone You Can Build a Nest In made me a John Wiswell fan for life." —Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Book of Love

“People fall in love with monsters all the time, but few monsters are as lovable as Shesheshen...” —The Washington Post

“This unusual queer romance is a heartfelt fable about disability and the possibility of reconciling conflicting needs through love and understanding.” —The Guardian

"Wiswell raises the bar on the outcast as protagonist . . . the ultimate monster slayer story, if the monster is just a misunderstood creature searching for love.” —Library Journal (starred review)

"A romp that’s both bloody and sweet.” —Bookpage (starred review)

“A stealthily funny, slyly smart, and remarkably touching story. Its wisdom will creep up on you as surely as your affection for its monstrous main character.”—Veronica Roth, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of When Among Crows

“Been in the mood for a love story and whoooo boy Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell did not disappoint.” —Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother, via Twitter

"Someone You Can Build a Nest In is sweetly furious, darkly funny, and gruesomely wholesome. It's a love story for the unloved, a happily-ever-after with a higher-than-average body count. I just adored it." —Alix E. Harrow, New York Times-bestselling author of Starling House

“Surprisingly sweet, unsurprisingly horrific, and entirely humane—only John Wiswell could have written this monster and her book, and I'm so very glad he did.”’ —Arkady Martine, Hugo Award-winning author of A Memory Called Empire

“Someone You Can Build a Nest In is the future of fantasy: a fairy tale with boundaries, an imaginative world created in the shape of collective values rather than the boring old id, a portal to a place you've really never seen before instead of just a princess in a different outfit. This novel is going to change the entire genre.” —Meg Elison, Hugo and Locus award-winning author of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“This novel is for anyone who has ever felt like an outcast—or been bewildered by society’s absurdities. I fell in love with Shesheshen’s wry voice and dark sense of humor.” —Ray Nayler, Locus Award-winning author of The Mountain in the Sea

“This is a fast-paced and gloriously weird novel, full of explosive shenanigans and touching sentiment. It also manages to be an exploration of the queerness and the surprising fragility of monstrous bodies, as well as their resilience. . . a remarkably accomplished debut.” — Liz Bourke, Locus Magazine

“Wriggly, heartfelt, and carnivorous.” —Max Gladstone, New York Times-bestselling co-author of This is How You Lose the Time War

"Inventive enough to push the boundaries of romance and dark fantasy . . . A wonderfully weird horror romance." — Kirkus Reviews

“I love the wonder and the darkly enchanting danger of this story. It makes me think of fairy tales, but John Wiswell understands what so many have forgotten: that true fairy tales are gruesome and magical at the same time, and he nails it here.” —C.L. Polk, bestselling author of Even Though I Knew the End

"The wonderful thing about Wiswell’s monster, Shesheshen, is her sensible vulnerability.... I can guarantee you won’t ever forget Shesheshen and Homily, and will be warmed inside forever." —Julie E. Czerneda, Aurora Award-winning author of the Night’s Edge series

“Clever, funny, and oddly gentle for a book about a man-eating monster, John Wiswell's debut delivers a surprising blend of fantasy, romance, and horror. Make sure this is on your TBR if you want those squishy-warm feelings of falling in love...and those squishy-in-general feelings of viscera, gore, and other things humans prefer to keep on the inside.” —Jodi Meadows, New York Times-bestselling coauthor of My Lady Jane

“John Wiswell's remarkable ability to turn expectations upside down and present new, delightful, gruesome, thoughtful viewpoints on narrative is on full display in this debut. Someone You Can Build a Nest In is the best kind of horrifying, beautiful, by turns hilarious and heart-wrenching, and entirely unforgettable: a story about what makes a monster, what makes a person, the scars of trauma, and the transformative (and sometimes traumatic) act of falling in love.” —Vivian Shaw, author of Strange Practice

“Someone to Build a Nest In is charming, horrifying, sweet, and funny—everything I could have wanted from John Wiswell's debut novel and more! With the perfect blend of humor and darkness, it’s a wholly fresh take on a monster story.” —A.C. Wise, author of Hooked

“A beautiful monster story with a heart, Wiswell treats his outcasts as heroes. He is an author the world desperately needs.” —J.R. Dawson, author of The First Bright Thing

“Horror blends with heart and whimsy in Wiswell's trope-twisting debut. It's monstrously fun!” —Beth Cato, author of A Thousand Recipes For Revenge

“The coziest, most unexpectedly wholesome love story about a monster who devours humans and wears their bones that I've ever read!” —Naomi Kritzer, Hugo Award-winning author of Catfishing on CatNet

"It is perhaps a little weird to say that a book with as much body horror as this has would also be warm, cozy, and sweet, but that's perhaps appropriate: it's a weird book. I mean that in the most positive way possible. Wiswell has crafted a story in which the monsters aren't nearly as terrible as the humans who are both their hunters and their prey, and yet Shesheshen is also unapologetically monstrous. I've never seen anyone pull that off with a fraction of the skill shown here. Besides being a masterful inversion of fantasy monster-slaying tropes, this is a fantastic examination of what it means to be family, and how that trust can be horrifically misused." —Jenn Lyons, author of a Chorus of Dragons series

“Oozing with—among other things—Wiswell's inimitable charm and tenderness, this is a monstrous love story like nothing I've ever read before.” —Premee Mohamed, Nebula Award-winning author of Beneath the Rising

“Someone You Can Build a Nest In is the most original monster story I've read in years. The star of this novel, Shesheshen, is a truly terrifying and other-worldly shapeshifter who absorbs human bones and organs to craft her own body—and has now fallen in love with a woman pledged to kill her. John Wiswell expertly blends horror, humor, romance, and bloody disembowelments in a story about a monster who will not only swallow your heart, but make it her own.” —Jason Sanford, author of Plague Birds, finalist for the Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards

"A good book is a predator, and this one had no problem dragging me off, kicking and hooting, into the tall grasses to make a meal amidst my ribs before finally taking my heart for its own.” —Jordan Shiveley, author of Hot Singles In Your Area

"This ace monster romance has Wyrm-ed its way into my dark heart! And poses an important question: how badly can your in-laws treat you." —Crime Reads

"Shesheshen’s journey is one of trust, vulnerability and understanding. It’s a coming-of-age story presented in a completely unexpected way. [A]n inventive, gross and truly funny work of fantasy that’s surprisingly touching." —Geek Girl Authority | John Wiswell is a disabled writer who lives where New York keeps all its trees. He won the 2021 Nebula Award for Short Fiction for his story, "Open House on Haunted Hill," and the 2022 Locus Award for Best Novelette for "That Story Isn't The Story." He has also been a finalist for the Hugo Award, British Fantasy Award, and World Fantasy Award. His fiction has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Tor.com, the LeVar Burton Reads podcast, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Diabolical Plots, and other fine venues. His debut novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In, will be published by DAW Books in April 2024. He can be found making too many puns and discussing craft on his Substack, johnwiswell.substack.com. | Part One: THE WYRM OF UNDERLOOK
 
Chapter One
 
Each year when Shesheshen hibernated, she dreamed of her childhood nest.
 
Oh, the warmth of it. A warmth unlike anything in the adult world, soft and pliable heat keeping her and her siblings alive. In that warmth, they were fed raw life. Her father’s ribs, rich in marrow, cracking delicately in their mouths, and providing the first feast of their lives. His fat deposits were generous, and his entrails sheltered them from the cruel winter elements. If Shesheshen could have spent her entire life inside the nest of his remains, she would have.
 
But all childhoods end. Hers ended when one of her sisters bit off Shesheshen’s left heel. Her siblings matured too quickly and hungered for more than their father. Shesheshen had to defend herself using jagged fragments of their father’s pelvis – his final and most gracious gift. The assault was a gift from her siblings, too, for she spent a week dining on their savory carcasses.
 
Mourning wasn’t natural to her. She missed the succulence of her siblings for some time, and had the errant moment of nostalgia for sharing their body heat. Little of her prey was memorable. Of her mother, she only remembered her wide maw and the artificial steel fangs she’d worn. Still, Shesheshen would always miss the nest that her father had made out of himself. He had been a good parent, and a better setting.
 
Nothing matched that nest. These ruins were little more than an unloved cave. Where weather had caved in the ceiling, ornery spruce trees grew and plugged up the gaps. Poison ivy and spiderwebs were the few decorations, overgrowing everything architects had once labored over.
 
Deep beneath the ruins lay an underground hot spring that some aspiring human had connected to a bathing room. Nowadays the chamber was flooded with humid murk, gone brackish and amniotic from Shesheshen’s excretions. It was nearly opaque down in the waters. They were a refreshing place to hibernate through winter seasons.
 
The quality of the water was likely why hunters hadn’t found her yet. Her lair had unwelcome visitors again. They did not even wipe their shoes.
 
She heard them before she saw them. The water of the hot spring stretched into so many cracks in the building’s foundations. Sounds from all ends of the property traveled through the network of water, alerting Shesheshen when something worse than a bear was coming.
 
“Good gods, above and below. Rourke? Do you smell that?”
 
“Yeah. Like death without the sulfur. This is no wyrm.”
 
There were two visitors. Both human men, with two feet each, trampling over the weeds at her threshold. They paused in the foyer, snuffling and fighting with their gorges. Her foyer opened to many hallways, and one would lead them to Shesheshen. It was fortunate they didn’t know which one. She had to act before that changed.
 
The one called Rourke said, “Malik, don’t pass out on me. Put your mask on.”
 
“I’m fine,” the one called Malik said. “The contract is for a wyrm. Could it be an Eastern wyrm? From the Al-Jawi Empire?”
 
“Those smell like burned bread. This just stinks of infection. I’m telling you, whatever is in this place isn’t a wyrm.”
 
The one called Malik spat upon the floor. He didn’t clean up after himself. “Then what is it?”
 
The one called Rourke muffled his coughing, probably behind a fist. “I’m not sure. But we need priests. At least three of them.”
 
Shesheshen liked priests. They tasted righteous.
 
“Did I hear you two mention priests?”
 
Shesheshen had thought there were two. She was wrong—distracted and foggy-headed from having her hibernation interrupted. Whoever had yelled was a third voice, matched by the clank of heavy armor heading into her foyer.
 
She listened carefully around his footfalls; the noise of his gear was cacophonous, but she believed this third man was the last.
 
The one called Malik said, “Sire Wulfyre, from certain environmental details we have reason to believe we need religious assistance—”
 
“For the last time,” the third man interrupted, “my family is not employing the entire region. You said you were experts. Experts don’t need to hire bonus people. That’s the point of expertise. You want priests now? Do you two hunt monsters or just pray at them?”
 
The one called Rourke said, “Sire Wulfyre, you’re not going to want to come in here yet. The odor is overpowering.”
 
“Don’t tell me what to do. I’ve slain lords. The Wulfyres have killed off wyrms since—”
 
His words dissolved into wet choking sounds. The metal plates of his armor clicked musically, to Shesheshen’s sense of it, as though he was bending over. This third man was definitely retching. She hoped he had a helmet on so it painted the inside. It would serve him right for trespassing.
 
Rourke said, “We warned you about the odor.”
 
Sire Wulfyre said, “Next time come outside and warn me. Give me one of your breathing masks.”
 
Malik said, “This is sensitive equipment.”
 
Sire Wulfyre said, “Equipment my family is paying for. Now find this wyrm and kill it before I go looking for monster hunters who actually hunt.”
 
Listening to all their words was exhausting. They were so noisy for professional killers. Any self-respecting hunters would’ve used the element of surprise. Why, if Shesheshen had been cold-blooded enough to kill people as a source of income, she would’ve slipped in here while she slept and poisoned the pool with rosemary and lye so she’d die in her sleep.
 
But Shesheshen was not a monster hunter.
 
She was prey.
 
Three armed visitors, and she was still weak from hibernation. From the weakness in her flesh, she ought not have roused for weeks. Tensing her soft tissues made them tremble as though threatening to liquefy. She didn’t have the strength for a great battle today.
 
She had to do something, and soon. These murderers couldn’t be allowed to find her room and corner her. They’d do something awful like set the place on fire or collapse it atop her.
 
She opened pockets in her flesh and took in her first real breath of the season. The air was stale, making it feel as though icicles were forming along her innards. She shuddered, using the air to puff out her body, and emerged from her pool. Water streamed from the many lumps of her body, gone loose from weeks of slumber. Her lumps sloshed warm water across the stone floor, until she was wholly exposed. All that submersion in water left her flesh sodden white. She took a step, and collapsed against the nearest wall.
 
It was always tricky, getting the hang of being conscious again. Hopefully the monster hunters hadn’t heard that. It would be embarrassing to die in this state.
 
Most bones that she kept inside herself during hibernation digested down to nothing.
 
Her kind did not naturally have many solid structures, anymore than hermit crabs on the north beaches naturally had shells. Her mother had worn prosthetic steel fangs to compensate when she hunted. That one memory of her mother taught Shesheshen the importance of keeping tools around.
 
Along the floor of the bathing room lay iron rods and dense stones, which she’d left out last season. She rolled across them, letting them cut through external layers of her flesh with a sting that felt like waking up. Her innards squeezed those rods and stones, aligning them into a loose skeletal structure. A steel chain once used to bind her now made an excellent spinal column, flexible without breaking when trebuchets lobbed debris at her.
 
Inside her chest, where humans put their lungs, she placed an open bear trap. It was her prized skeletal possession. It did not trap bears anymore. Instead, she kept it as a secret pair of jaws, for when people need to be bitten.
 
The harder ends of her makeshift bones tore apart her insides, and her poor tissues had to generate cartilage and tendons to adjust. It was an ache that left her shuddering against the wall. Was this how getting older felt?
 
Wulfyre was louder now, audible through the limestone walls and down her hallway. He hollered, “I want the wyrm slain before Mother reaches the countryside. Do you know how upsetting it would be for her to encounter that thing? Of course you can’t. Now you say you don’t even know what it is.”
 
Malik’s voice was softer. Shesheshen had to strain to hear him. “The creature has left many markings in the stone that could be claws or teeth, and we haven’t found any droppings yet. We’re still deducing what it is.”
 
“Father died fighting this thing, so I can promise you my family knows what it is. It’s a wyrm.”
 
That was a familiar word. Shesheshen had been called a wyrm many times, often by startled priests. She’d also heard drakes, harpies, qilins, kappas, and giraffes called wyrms. In her experience, it was a slur for whatever thing greedy humans wanted dead and were too afraid to kill themselves.
 
“Wyrm or not,” Rourke said, “if you really want this thing dead, there is only one way to go about it. To purge it and harm it enough to slay it, you’re going to need to burn this lair to the ground.”
 
“Oh yes. I’ll just burn a stone building. Thank goodness I hired professional advice.”
 
“It could be tucked anywhere in here. With enough oil, fire will find it.”
 
“This place is my family’s ancestral home. Of course you don’t care about the priceless heirlooms being destroyed. But I hired you to bring me the wyrm’s blood. One of you two can read, can’t you? It’s in your contract. Mother wants its heart. We can’t exactly bring her a heart that’s burned up.”
 
Malik said, “Perhaps we should talk strategy in private.”
 
The Wulfyre kept ranting. “No strategies that include broiling it. If you want to get paid, you’re slitting it open over a vase. Mother was very clear: blood, not fire.”
 
Well, this was interesting. This Wulfyre family was going to be disappointed when they learned she didn’t have blood. She didn’t have one of those pesky mammalian circulatory systems.
 
Rourke said, “You’re not paying us enough to die in here.”
 
“Go on, then. Breach the contract. Then you’ll be outlaws. Let’s see how much business you get with Mother and L'État Bon hunting you.”
 
Malik whispered like a man who didn’t know how to whisper. “Rourke. Come on. We have rosemary oil. Locals swear it works.”
 
Then there was the rustle of leather being pulled off of blades. Rourke said, “How much rosemary do we have?”
 
That made Shesheshen grip the limestone bricks of her wall. These people had rosemary oil?
 
She cursed out of multiple orifices. These monster hunters had done their research. One of the things she couldn’t tolerate was rosemary. Once a local girl had candied it and fooled her into eating it, and Shesheshen pissed bile for a week.
 
As it was, her flesh struggled to keep her aloft on her makeshift bones. She needed to eat and gather strength. A fight would not go pleasantly. The last thing she wanted to wake up to was dying.
 
Getting older had given her wiles. While the humans chatted about how best to kill her, she went through some growing pains and formed two relatively passable legs. She hobbled for a while, convincing herself that these knees and ankles mostly worked.
 
On a rack beside the door was a set of wigs she’d made from the scalps that people hadn’t been using anymore. She selected a wig of sooty black hair for her disguise. Then she added a red riding hood; it was a leftover possession of a bygone occupant of the lair.
 
As her innards churned to form an esophageal passage, she wrapped the red garment around herself, pulling the hood low to hide how little of a face she had. It was an old role. By shifting her body mass within the cloak, she gave the illusion of a lithe frame. The belled-out bottom of the cloak gave her plenty of room to hide most of her body mass. She had passed as a human on plenty of excursions. 
 
Shesheshen pushed downward on the door as she opened it, so that the wooden door scraped along the stone landing. The sound stung her ears, and if it bothered her, it was likely to make these men soil themselves. Part of the plot was announcing herself in advance.
 
She ran with wet feet slapping the floor, loud as she could be. They would know something was headed in their direction, and they would be ready for a nightmare.
 
What they got was a girl’s harried face poking out from under a red riding hood, gloved hands flailing. She turned as frightened a face as she could on them—it was easy to make, since they made three frightened faces at her.
 
All three of the murderers she’d eavesdropped upon stood in her foyer. Two of them wore practical chainmail and leather gear, with awkward half-masks over their mouths and noses. One man was much younger, shaped like a barrel that had grown arms, with several jeweled piercings in his ears. The other was a withered old root of a man with tufts of gray hair sticking out of every spot on his uniform, and eyes the green of pine needles.
 
These two must have been Malik and Rourke, standing in front, each holding pole-arms with their blades pointed down the hall at her. They protected the third man.
 
The third man hid behind them, wearing golden plate armor all the way up to his throat. Who wore gold for defense? It wasn’t holy, it was terribly heavy, and it was one of the softest metals Shesheshen had ever bitten. His chestplate was molded to have the likeness of nipples and rippling abdominal muscles. Parts of her salivated at the thought of crushing that chestplate. At his hip, he held some kind of crossbow at a bad angle, more likely to hit one of his underlings than her.
 
Well, it was easy to pick out which one was Wulfyre.
 
Shesheshen said, “Sires and masters. Thank the good gods, above and below, that you came. The wyrm could wake at any moment. Please, keep your voices quiet or we’ll all be skinned alive.”
 
She kept her own voice soft, since a whisper was easier to fake than a full-throated human voice. It took quite some concentration to keep a vocal passage open and functional like this. It would be easier once she consumed one from a person. Perhaps one of the hunters would donate.
 
The older hunter, Rourke, lowered his pole-arm. “What are you doing here, lass? The townsfolk said no one has approached this lair in years.”
 
“Sire,” Shesheshen said. “The wyrm has kept me in darkness so long that I have no memory of when it kidnapped me. It held me in one of the lower chambers of this place.”
 
The younger hunter, Malik, made a holy sign in front of himself, then asked, “It held you?”
 
Rourke said, “I thought anyone abducted by this thing would've been consumed before she went to hibernate.”
 
Well, the old hunter was right about that. Shesheshen never left food in the cupboard before hibernation. If you did, the remains spoiled and attracted scavengers. Scavengers were a nuisance when you were trying to regenerate.
 
She mimicked Malik’s holy sign with one hand, then resumed clutching her cloak. For some reason, clutching at clothing was a classic human sign of being pathetic. In her experience, clothing never ran away from you even when a monster literally ate your head.
 
“Sires, the wyrm spares my life for my songs. It can only slumber when I sing to it the dark songs of distant lands. I know not where these verses come from, and they chill me to my core. Yet if it wakes, she will destroy the village with its ravenous appetite.”
 
“Your squeaky voice?” said the man in gold, definitely Wulfyre. “I guess a hellbound monster would have shitty taste in music.”
 
Both monster hunters shot glares at their employer. Yet those glares were gone before Wulfyre saw them. Hedged sincerity. A classic human trait.
 
Malik asked, “What is your name, madame?”
 
Shesheshen pondered. “Roislin.”
 
It was a plausible Engmarese name. Someone she’d eaten had probably had it.
 
Rourke said, “Roislin. My name is Eoghan Rourke, and this is my partner, Nasser Akkad Malik. Our employer here is Catharsis Wulfyre, son of the Baroness. We have seen so much pain that monsters have created in this world. Nobody should be left alone with a beast that unholy and wretched. Come with us. We’ve got water and honeycomb in our wagon. Right, Malik?”
 
“That’s right,” Malik said, holding out a hand for her. “We’ll get you out of here. You’ll be in town by tomorrow.”
 
Town was the last place she wanted to go. It was full of wretched humans, precisely the kind that hired monster hunters in the first place. What she needed was rest and isolation.
 
Adding more squeak to her voice, she said, “Sires, if we flee together then the wyrm will be on us before we reach the second hill. She knows my scent above all at this point. Instead, I need you to retrieve me a weapon.”
 
Wulfyre was the one to say, “A weapon?”
 
“Please. On the main island of Engmar, in the west, there grows a flowering plant that the locals call Summoner’s Jaw. It is the only herb the beast fears. It can rend her skin and make her husk wither. A curse from the good gods, above and below. If you can collect it, I can keep her slumbering until you return, and we can be free.”
 
Actually, she was not even mildly allergic to Summoner’s Jaw. Merchants called it a remedy for minor cuts and bruises. However, Engmar was multiple nations away. By the time these would-be murderers finished their trip, she would be fully rested, fed, and ready to deal with them. If she got lucky, they’d spread the rumor of her one weakness so that later hunters would make the same mistake.
 
Malik said, “I’ve heard of Summoner’s Jaw. It’s used for medicinal purposes. Stands to reason that devils would be weak to medicine.”
 
Rourke lowered his mask, then unstrapped his bowl helmet and held it over his chest. “Roislin, I am also from Engmar. I have traveled the world many years, and seen many cultures. To stay in this cave, singing a monster to sleep, in the hopes we will find its bane? You are the bravest hero I have ever encountered.”
 
“Fuck off.” Catharsis Wulfyre barged between the two monster hunters, causing Rourke to drop his helmet. It clanged off the floor, and Wulfyre kicked it so that it skidded out through the entrance of the lair. “I’m not riding around the countryside until my ball hairs turn gray looking for magic weeds. Mother is paying you to kill the thing this week. It cannot be alive when she arrives.”
 
Malik said, “Sire, this herb is the key to slaying your monster.”