Prologue
The arrow found its home with a thud. The leaves rustled as they were rudely disturbed, crackling their protest. She timidly peered from the oak trunk she had hidden behind, then stepped into the open. The sun bathed her as she surrendered to the space of the clearing, where the doe had been drinking from the brook cutting a path across the ground. She stood over the deer's carcass, meeting its empty gaze. She seemed to be mourning for the life she had taken, which, she knew, was abnormal for a successful hunter. When a time had passed, she knelt next to the body and grasped its forelegs, hauling it over her shoulder, the lolling head resting its chin on the hooves, which brushed the pack strapped to her back. The leather twitched for a moment and made a soft cheeping sound.
She turned away and trekked back into the trees, her gait bothered by the extra weight. Stepping over rocks and fallen branches, occasionally lurching precariously when she missed, she cast her eyes about the woods, pinpointing certain details and attributes of the area. When she found a place that held what she was looking for, she slowly lowered her game onto the forest floor with a huff if exertion, then engaged in skinning the deer with a dagger she removed from its sheath clipped to the belt around her waist.
Once the hide was off and the body separated into convenient portions, she returned to the creek and washed the blood from her paws and refilled her canteen, taking a long draught from it before returning to the place where she had left her catch. She cried out in fury when she saw the bright red pelt of a fox. The animal looked up sharply, then dipped its head to clutch a leg and turned tail and fled, scarlet spots flying from the bare muscle. She scrabbled for her bow and arrows, which she had left next to the dead deer, managed to position it to knock an arrow and release it. The sharpened tip bit into the base of a tree as the fox's tail was swallowed by the underbrush.
She stared ahead, struck by the fox's unprecedented arrival, then shook herself and clanked her bow down at a distance where she could reach it quickly if needed. The molly gathered dry brush that she had found at the edge of the trees and dragged it to the spot she had chosen for the cooking fire, glancing around herself in case of anymore unwanted visitors. She lit the pile with a piece of flint and her dagger, then pushed the meat, which she had placed on stones, near the flames. Finding a cushioned place among the leaves, she set to wait. Soon the smell of roasting flesh drifted through the air.
With the greatest of care, the girl shrugged the pack from her shoulders and placed it in her lap. With her paws free, she was able to undo her cloak and wrestle her top-dressing off. The pack squeaked on her knees and began to fidget impatiently, finally succeeding in pushing a downy nose and mouth into the open. The jaws parted and released another annoyed shriek. The molly tore the fabric from her body with haste and lifted her kit into the open. The tiny paws made a reach for her belly and clung tight to her fur the first chance they got, pulling the baby's mouth to her skin and immediately started to suckle.
The mother sighed as she watched her child's face work to stimulate the flow of milk into his mouth. Overtaken by instinct, she lowered her head and licked the child's fuzzy ears. The action pulled him away from his meal and he mewed in protest, and went right back to eating. His expression of irritation reminded her of the face the child's father would make when she had tried to groom his own unruly fur. And then she was crying, cradling her child as he fed, telling him how much she loved him and how much his father loved him. The babe looked up at his mother's tear-stained eyes and stuck out his milky tongue as if to lick her back, and returned to eating.
She decided to take his advice. Commissioning a nearby stick, she pulled the stones from the fire and hungrily tore at the meat. The child, ever curious, managed to nibble a bit of the fat on the edges. His mother laughed when she saw his lips covered in grease. Standing, she kicked dirt over the flames to kill them and put the extra venison into the pockets of her cloak. She was about to put her shirt back on, stopped, and decided that there wasn't really a good reason to do that. So she took the child's blanket from his pack and wrapped him in it as he nodded off, lulled by a stomach fill with milk, stuffed the cloak into the pack instead, and lifted onto her back. Whether it was intentional or accidental, the mother left her shirt at the campsite, heading off into the trees. She might have made a better effort to remember it, had she known the great wolves would find the piece during the night… with her scent and the smell of deer blood still on it.
XXX
The molly was lost. She was not only lost in her direction, her mind seemed to keep forgetting what she was there for and why. The first change had been the trees: the gaps between them grew larger, their boles became taller and thinner, and their branches intertwined with those of their neighbors like a nest of snakes. The closeness of their leaves blocked nearly all glimpses of the sky, and the light that reached the earth was an odd, captivating emerald. She found herself standing and staring at flower rising from the soil or a leaf that was yellow instead of green. Sometimes she was sure she heard voices, children's voices, speaking in a tongue that sounded like pine cones falling and wind brushing stems. And when night fell, the light changed from emerald to sapphire, and the night creatures sang to each other of the hunt and of the moon, and the trees cradled the tiny living things sleeping in their shelter like offspring.
It was all so consuming, so inviting… so horribly raw to the core. Nature was the goddess of this realm, and her ensnaring influence pulled at the fibers of the girls being, and she happily, unwittingly, gave in. She curled into the ground, folding herself over her child, and slept.
XXX
The power of the earth woke her. The air vibrated with the song of the night hunters. She listened for a time, their prowess admirable and intriguing as they sang of the prey they were going to kill. The song grew louder, the moment of the kill was fast approaching, and something stirred inside of her as a pair of yellow eyes appeared from the depths. This was her song. She leapt and ran, the ground world ordering her to protect her presence. The song was beautiful, but in a terrible, horrifying way, as it spoke of her death and the smell of her blood and the feeling of her flesh in their bellies.
The mother dropped to all fours, pausing only to lift her child, blanket and all, with her mouth. The cloak and pack were forgotten. The ground slid beneath her as she fled, her death song giving her strength to run. Her baby screamed in terror. A flood of impulse rushed through her blood. She must, above everything else in the world, above breathing, above thinking, above saving herself, she must save her child. It was the will of nature the goddess. Yellow eyes flashed in the corner of her eye. The sounds of hungry panting filled her ears. One howl soared above the rest, and the kill began.
Fangs tore at her neck. Heavy bodies tried to knock her down with their weight. A few well-aimed nips to her paws made her stumble. Heart pounding, she pumped her legs faster, ducking roots and lunges to her head, until she seemed to burst into a hall of warmth. Her paws met soft bark and her nose smelled sweet sap, and her soul knew that this was a place of small things that felt no fear and suffered no danger. A gentle limb reached down to stroke her cheek. She obediently relaxed her mouth, and her baby slid into the being that promised safety. Happy as she was that she had saved her child, she didn't realize the wolves as they fell upon her and ripped the skin from her bones. She prayed to the gods that her son might know how much his mother and father loved him.
