Judy was too afraid to even look at the door.

She had pulled it shut after herself as she fled something indescribably awful, something that had sent fear coursing through her veins like nothing ever had before. She had trembled, sick with it, as her heart pounded madly in her chest and she cowered on the floor with her paws clutched over her ears. How long it had taken between her mad dash to escape and when she had finally dared to look up? It might have been minutes. Or hours.

Maybe even days.

There was something dreadfully wrong with her, that much she knew for certain. Judy had never been so afraid in her life, so paralyzed with it. But she was supposed to be brave, wasn't she? Nick had told her she was the bravest mammal he had ever met, and he wouldn't lie to her about something like that.

"I'm not afraid," she whispered, her voice cracking.

"I'm not afraid," Judy repeated, "I'm not afraid."

But no matter how she repeated the words, she couldn't believe them. Judy cast back in her memory, searching for something she could hold onto. Even her memories seemed to have abandoned her, no matter how hard she tried to pull up some example of courage. Thinking of the Ehecatls she had fought off when they had attacked Nick only sent a thrill of horror down her spine. She had nearly died, for the gods' sake, and it seemed impossible to imagine she had actually stood tall in that dark tunnel and fought the monsters off.

Where had that courage gone? It was easier to imagine that it wasn't her who had done it, that there had been someone stronger than her in every way. She couldn't even remember what had happened after saving Nick, which only added to the feeling. The idea tickled at Judy's mind, and the sense of missing something threatened to overwhelm her. It was a gap like a lost tooth or a fragment of a song that refused to either leave or resolve itself into something sensible. Frustration, not courage, was what finally made her look up, and as it dawned on her where she was Judy almost forgot her fear.

Almost, but not quite.

Still, there was no denying the wonder that washed over her; she was in a room that she knew very well. It was where she had spent every night before heading off to the academy. It was, in fact, her bedroom in her parents' modest barony holding. It was the sort of room that the wealthier scions of noble families she had gone through officer training with would have sneered at, but it was utterly unmistakable. The ceiling was low, but cozily so, compared to how grandly vaulted the rooms of the academy were. There was no marble or obsidian to make up the floor in carefully laid tile; there were only the familiar weathered wooden planks worn to a mellow and golden color. The scratches and whorls in the wood were all exactly as she remembered them; there was the knot in one of the corners that vaguely resembled a well and the gouge near the bed where she had once dropped a practice sword. The bed itself was there too, as it surely had to be, because although it was not extravagantly large it was still ever so slightly wider than the door frame. The desk at its side, its surface stained with the ghostly remnants of ink that had gone somewhat awry as Judy had practiced her letters and numbers, was just as it should be. When Judy reached up, quite hesitantly, from where she remained on the floor, the chair at the desk even wobbled slightly on its legs as she remembered it doing.

The walls of the room, neatly worked out of large stone blocks (there were one hundred and thirty-two blocks; Judy had counted them once when she had been no more than eight or nine and had never forgotten the number) had their alchemical torches in modest fixtures providing a warm glow that suffused the room. But as Judy finally stood, she realized that there was something wrong.

She still didn't dare look at the wall with the door in it, the door which had so far held the monster chasing her at bay without so much as the sound of a rattle or scrape. But the wall opposite it, where there should have been a narrow window with its pleasant view of the east fields, was blank. Or almost blank, rather.

A large crack ran through the blocks that Judy couldn't remember having ever seen before, nearly as long as she was tall and taking an irregularly diagonal course. But it didn't look as though the window had been inexpertly bricked over; it looked as though there had never been a window at all. Judy put both her paws against the cold stone, but it felt so unarguably solid that she would have pulled back if something new hadn't started gnawing at her mind.

The backs of both her paws were the same shade of gray, only slightly lighter than the walls themselves. But that wasn't right, was it? Judy turned her paws over, half-expecting to see something on her palms, but they both looked as they always had: smoothly furred and brightly white. Judy frowned as she wriggled her fingers, trying to recall what was supposed to be different about her paws. There was something but it seemed to dance right out of her ability to reach. There had been...

Judy's thoughts trailed off as a better question occurred to her. Why was she back in her room in Totchli Barony? Or rather, something that looked like her room, because the longer she stood there the less possible it seemed. The walls of the seat of the barony were thick stone, it was true, but her ears were quite sensitive. There should have been some sound, some indication of the little world that it had been as she grew up. But there were no wails or laughs of kits coming from distant rooms or hallways. There was no smell of food cooking coming from the vast kitchen that had been only a floor beneath her room, and there wasn't so much as the slightest hint of anyone else being near her.

But the monster!

Judy's heart started pounding again, the memory of her pursuer suddenly bright and vivid again. She had scurried down the hallway, not daring to look back over her shoulder to see how close it was to snagging her by the neck, and then—

"What about before that?"

Judy asked the question so suddenly she hadn't even realized she was going to speak until the words were out of her mouth. Her voice wasn't steady—it felt as though perhaps she would never be steady again—but it was something to focus on other than the crawling fear spreading from the pit of her stomach and wrapping itself around her heart. There had been a monster. And it had chased her through what were almost the familiar corridors of her ancestral home. But how had it come to that?

Desperately but futilely trying to push the fear aside, Judy tried casting her memory back. For a moment, she couldn't picture what had come before the monster that had chased her, and then suddenly she could.

I stabbed Nick.

Judy fell back to the floor, clutching her muzzle in silent horror. She didn't know why she had done it, but there was no denying the memory, which felt horribly sharp and vivid. Judy could see the look of shock that had crossed his face as the tip of her sword had gone home in his chest as though he was there in front of her, and she couldn't help the tears that streamed down her face.

What little strength she had felt as though it was leaving her along with the tears, which ran hotly over her fingers and to the floor. "I killed him," she said, and the words felt dreadfully true, "I did."

Judy sat dully on the floor, her back to the door and the awful things it seemed to promise even without being able to see it, and wept until she had no more tears to cry. Very little seemed to matter anymore; her desire to puzzle out the mystery she had found herself in had fizzled out. What else might she remember if she pushed too hard? How else had she hurt Nick? The fear of it loomed large in her heart, and she felt as though she might have stayed where she sat forever when suddenly something happened.

There was a knock at the door.

Judy froze, her back suddenly rigid and her ears snapping upright and turning toward the source of the sound. She didn't dare move an inch, her eyes going wide. The monster chasing her had come back for her, she realized. Had come back and wanted to end things. Judy barely even breathed although her heart was beating so fast that her vision seemed to pulse with color at its edges, and she said a silent prayer that the monster would move on.

The knock came again, more urgently.

And still, Judy couldn't act. Fear burned through her, paralyzing her, and every second that passed was an exquisite agony. But then the absolute last thing she expected to hear came from the other side of the door. "Judy?" a voice asked.

But it wasn't just a voice. It was his voice, cautious but still wonderfully vivid. It was Nick.

Unless it's a trap.

The greeting Judy had been about to call out died suddenly on her lips. Was the monster chasing her trying to fool her? But Nick's voice came again, a bit more persistently. "Judy, please, I know you're in there."

"You're dead!" Judy blurted suddenly, "I killed you."

"Well, it didn't quite stick," Nick replied, his words almost cheerful, "I'm fine. Just open the door and you can see for yourself."

"I— I can't," Judy called out, "There's— there's something out there."

"I know," Nick's voice came back, "I know. And I need your help to stop it."

Judy's fear warred with her love of him, and she felt horribly ashamed at her reply. "I can't help you."

Nick's chuckle was somehow happy and sad at the same time. "Darling," he drawled, and the way he stretched out the word made her smile a little, "You're the only one who can help me."

"I'm scared."

Judy had said the words so quietly that she thought he might not have heard them. She almost hoped that he hadn't. "I'm scared too," he said, "You— I broke your mind. But I can't put the pieces back together without you."

What he said shouldn't have made any sense whatsoever. Minds were not like plates that could be dropped and shattered, after all. And yet, at his words, something else about the memory of stabbing him came to her. There had been a savage sense of rightness to the act that had disappeared the moment the blade had sunk into his flesh. But that wasn't quite right. It hadn't vanished; it had suddenly needed to coexist with a horrible sense of remorse.

And then those two feelings had gotten stronger and stronger, each seeming to fight with the other, and it was as though her mind was being torn into two pieces. Judy remembered clawing at her face, as though it could somehow free the thoughts from her head and then—

And then she had been running down the halls of her parents' home, chased by something hot on her heels and hungering to catch her.

"This— I—" Judy sputtered, her thoughts running wildly in no kind of order.

"I know, it's a bit much to take in," Nick said, "So open the door. Please. Let me help you."

Judy turned slowly, and the door loomed in front of her. It was almost sinister in how innocuous it looked, just a standard wooden door lacking any sort of decoration. Judy stood up and walked toward it, and it seemed to yawn into infinity, each of her steps bringing her no closer to the worn brass knob with a gleaming latch above it. She reached out all the same, and the bright bit of metal was strangely warm to the touch.

Judy pulled her fingers away as though it had burned her. "I can't," she said, shaking her head even though Nick couldn't see her, "I'm sorry, but I can't."

"You can," Nick's voice came back, warm and kind and without the slightest hint of his usual cynical air, "I know you can. You're the bravest mammal I've ever met. I meant it when I said that to you the first time, you know."

"You don't understand," Judy said, "I'm not—"

She broke off, feeling more ashamed than ever. She could almost feel Nick's eyes on the other side of the door, but he didn't speak, letting her marshal her thoughts together. "I'm not brave anymore," she said.

"Because you're afraid?" Nick asked mildly.

Judy nodded before she remembered that the gesture was meaningless with the solid barrier between them. "Yes," she said, her voice low, "It's like— It's like there's a piece of me missing."

"There is," Nick said, "And I can help you get it back. But I need you to open the door first."

Judy reached out again, letting her fingers close over the latch. "But what if—" she began, but Nick cut her off.

"Carrots," he said, "Please."

She paused, the warm piece of metal in her paw seeming almost to pulse with the beating of her heart. "I love you, Judy," he said.

Judy turned the latch and immediately covered her face with her paws. Maybe she had just allowed the beast pursuing her into her sanctuary and she was about to be devoured. The Ehecatls had spoken in Nick's voice, after all; had she been so foolish as to invite her own death in?

But when the door creaked open and she heard someone walk in, it was only Nick's familiar footsteps. And then he was suddenly hugging her and Judy couldn't resist hugging him back, her eyes flying open to take in her fox.

He was there, wonderfully real and apparently completely uninjured. He smiled down at her as she nestled herself against his chest, and it turned out that she hadn't cried all of her tears after all. Her love for him seemed overwhelming, and suddenly the fear she had felt didn't seem quite so unmanageable after all. "Nick," she said, "I'm sorry I—"

She couldn't finish. He didn't seem to need her to, and he let her weep against his chest without comment until she had finally regained control of herself. "What happened?" she asked when at last she could speak again.

Her words were still a bit thickened with tears, but Nick seemed to have no trouble understanding her. "It'll be easier to show you," he said.

Mercifully, he didn't head back for the door—even the thought of crossing it was terrifying—but toward the crack in the wall opposite it. "We're not really in... well, whatever castle this is," he said.

"This is Totchli Barony," Judy said, and Nick looked around, suddenly seeming much more interested in the surroundings.

"So this is where you grew up?" he asked, "I'm glad I got to see it before I go."

Judy frowned. "Go where?" she asked.

"Oh, don't worry," Nick said with an airy wave of one paw, "I'll be by your side when you wake up."

"Wake up?"

He seemed to be about two or three thoughts ahead of her, and his words didn't quite make sense. "I'm not explaining this very well," Nick said, appearing somewhat chagrined, "So let's cut to the chase."

He placed both paws on either side of the crack in the wall, and something very odd happened. Nick briefly seemed to become insubstantial, but it wasn't as though Judy was suddenly able to see through him as though he was a sheet of frosted glass. Rather, he seemed almost to unwind, like a ball of yarn unraveling, before becoming solid again. The result on the wall was far less dramatic; the crack running through it simply vanished without any fanfare.

But at the instant the crack vanished, something seemed to click into place in Judy's mind and she suddenly remembered what was wrong about her paws. Her left paw, which she held up before her face, looked like a mirror image of her right, as it had for most of her life. But it wasn't supposed to look that way; the rest of her encounter with the Ehecatls suddenly snapped back into place. And with it, she thought she understood what Nick had been trying to get at.

"This is inside my head?" Judy asked in wonder as she spun around, taking in the room with a new interest.

"Something like that," Nick said; he was smiling but in a rather tired way, "I've been patching up the cracks. But there's something only you can fix."

"I don't understand," Judy said, her eyes involuntarily flickering toward the door; she prayed he wasn't going to ask her to leave.

"You said you felt like there was a piece of you missing," Nick said, "And you're right. There is. It's running around in here and you need to get it back under control."

It took Judy a moment for the impact of Nick's words to sink in, and then the inescapable conclusion hit her. "You mean the monster that's—"

"It's not a monster," Nick interrupted quickly, "Just another piece of you. Your courage, from the sounds of it. Probably some other stuff too. I'm not exactly sure; I've been playing this by ear."

Judy gaped at him for a moment. "You mean I—"

"We," Nick interrupted, "I'll be at your side."

"We need to stop the part of me that's good at fighting? Nick, we can't do it."

"We can," Nick said.

"But—" Judy sputtered, "But it's not fair!"

She knew she probably sounded like a petulant kit, but she couldn't help herself. That part of her that was missing had terrified her as it chased her; the thought of going after it knowing what it was made it somehow even more frightening. "I know," Nick said, "I've been thinking about that a lot lately, actually. Life just isn't fair."

And then, to her great surprise, he tapped her gently on the nose with one finger. "But as long as I've got you, it's been unfair in my favor."

Judy sighed, glancing at the door again. What was beyond it was still frightening, but she supposed there wasn't much choice. "So what do we do?"