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Ugh, the Grayling mansion. Other families Olive simply ignored, but this old viney estate -- she could feel a growl come over her every time she passed. The Grayling grounds stretched from one end of the Winding Woods to the other, curved around the longer shore of Sunken Lake, and once a year -- around August, usually -- a Cyclorn's nest would inevitably hatch in the clouds directly above.

In other words, it touched three different realms of Creatures. Four, if Styg's hunch about the Pit were correct; and if you could even consider the Pit a realm.

So when Olive overheard the Grayling's Proxy, a stumpy little Rock-Gnome named Ferl, first mention a summer job at the estate to the headmaster of her school, she felt instinctively that it was a bad idea. And when Styg's mom started talking it over with to hers, after one of Ferl's visits to the medicine wagon for Heart Wash, Olive's feeling of dread only grew. And grew. And grew until finally it became a certainty as she stood before the gates of the estate in late June, her family days gone on the Medicine Circuit and nowhere for her and Styg to go but in.

"You'd better be right about the pit being here," she said.

"I can't wait to find out!" Styg replied, grinning hugely at the mansion as he struggled with Olive's bookbag on one shoulder and his own on the other.