-1Dawn just barely tinged the forest ; as they walked, tree shadows enveloped them with the last faint traces of the night. Every movement, ever sound called Ane's eyes into the graying darkness, and with each fruitless search she felt the essence of a pat on the back, of a "Nice try, but you would do best to resign yourself, love" voice in her head, though to or what from Ane could not begin to comprehend.

Every time she stopped to peruse the forest (it remained a letter sealed with lead rather than wax, though she could distinctly remember breaking the seal before), Ane felt the hunter's grip on her hand tighten and pull her along. When they came to the rock outcropping Ane thought she would need a chisel to wrest her hand free. It was like something out of a dream she had had, that she would break away from him to run away to the forest. Ane compulsively looked about her when the thought crossed her mind, as though someone who should have been there was not, and when the form was not found, not resignation but loss chewed a hole inside her. The hunter looked at her quizzically; Ane reminded him that she needed to fetch her cape from its hiding spot, and in a brief act of mercy he granted her poor hand a reprieve. How ever small and insignificant the rebellion might have been, making faces to illustrate her frustration as she walked away cheered Ane. She knelt to retrieve her mantle, flung it about her shoulders and fastened the clasp. In doing so, Ane dropped the rose to which she had clung throughout the journey.

She knelt to pick it up and felt the cut on her hand that the thorn had given her groan in its strain; the sudden pain forced her hand closed around the stem of her rose; she breathed deeply to assuage the little pricks of lightning in her palm.

She felt a shift. What kind of shift Ane could not say, only that the state of the cosmos when she dropped the rose was not the same as that when she brought it to her nose. It reminded her faintly of the excursions through the woods she had had as a child, when she would run on the path as fast as she could, convinced that some monster followed her.

Shapeshifter…

As soon as she saw the wisp of gray in the forest it was gone; her head in its effort to follow the movement collided smartly with the rock, and the hunter was upon her before she managed to collect her thoughts. Ane's memory - or was it imagination? - plagued her with hazy gray shapes, four-legged things that changed into two - legged things, with yellow eyes and dark murmurs. They came closer and closer to coherency, closer to some form of logic, before the hunter whisked Ane into his arms, and sent his sweet nothings into her head to disrupt her already shaky concentration.

Ane felt her muscles tense; she did not like to be carried when she was perfectly capable of walking, and it embarrassed her terribly that the hunter did so. When she said as much to the man that carried her, he did nothing more than make noises about her own good, and how he must protect her, women are weak, he treasured her as his bride, and further such nonsense that made Ane dreadfully apprehensive to become that bride.

Her mother met them at the door to their cottage. "Ane," she said, "come here." Glad for the excuse to walk on her own feet again, Ane obeyed. Her mother nodded the hunter into the house, where to took the basket, and the women circled the house until they came to the garden. Yune rested her hands absently on the fence and stared into the forest; for a moment, Ane was not sure if her mother had forgotten why she had wanted to speak with Ane.

"Ane," she sighed. "Ane, it is too late for me to atone for my errors. I am only sorry that you had to be their consequence." Yune turned back to her daughter, and let one hand stroke Ane's cheek. Tears fell freely from her eyes when she said, "Believe me this, if nothing else: thought I sent you into the lion's den, my dear, I never did it willingly, I- I always loved you."

"I don't understand, Ma."

Yune shook her head. "No- no, those are stories for another time. It is too late; it would take too long for them to be told now. I have sent you into the lion's den, but you are too precious to me; I will not allow her to keep you. Sending you away is the only way to save you from a fate worse than mine. Go now, while you have the time and the chance. Go, child!"

"But Grandmother- the hunter-"

Ane's mother smirked. "She's my mother, and he is only her underling. Who better to handle them than me? Now begone."

It was confusion more than anything else that allowed Ane to obey her mother with the celerity that she did. Her mother had pointed her in the direction of the village, that she might find some refuge there, but without giving a terrible amount of thought to the matter, Ane closed the garden gate behind her and ran into the forest.

Hearing voices behind her, Ane stopped and turned; the hunter had come out into the garden to see what was keeping them, and, finding his bride absent, inquired loudly after her whereabouts. Yune spoke too quietly for Ane to hear, but clearly her answer did not please the hunter. Ane stood transfixed, she could not tear her eyes from the sight of the battle of wits between her mother and (who thought he was) her man. Finally the hunter gave up the struggle against Yune and struck her; Ane cried out when she saw her mother collapse from the force of his blow. The hunter's head snapped in her direction when he heard her voice.

"ANE!"

Ane barely paused a moment; in that moment she saw two choices, to return to the world that had held her captive from birth, or to leave it. Her mother had given her the key, and Ane would use it to unlock whatever door she came too. She ran.

Skirts in hand, she raced around trees, over rocks; she swatted away branches with her elbows when she could, and when she couldn't she ignored the sting they left on her face and neck. Her footsteps and heavy breathing made discerning other sounds as close to impossible as one could come, but she dared not stop to check whether or not he followed her still. Ane ran; though she thought her legs would implode from the strain, she ran.

She ran, that is, until her long red cloak, the red riding hood that her mother insisted she always wear, caught on one of the branches that she could not swat, and in the recoil Ane lost the clasp in the tangle trap of her unbrushed hair. High blood and low sleep did not make for rational thought; Ane clawed at the mess until she found the clasp, but by then her hands were shaking too hard for her to make any headway with the thing. When she heard steps approaching, Ane just closed her eyes and let her head fall onto her shoulder.

Whoever it was that had come to her moved her head to the other shoulder; Ane opened her eyes to see the Wolf, in somewhat more conventional clothing than last night (thought even in a belted tunic and leggings she thought of him as her Wolf), undo the clasp and motion her to follow him.

The wolf. Ane looked down at the rose in her hand, and back at him. This thing, the presence that she had felt, and missed when it had gone, the monster that now saved her- the wolf she had followed the night before. It hadn't been a dream, Ane. Despite the howls of your common sense and fear abiding brain to the contrary, that is your wolf. Shapeshifter. Yes, shapeshifter.

He turned back to her, and took her hands in his. "I can help you, " he said, "but you must follow me." Ane nodded mutely, and he led her through the forest again, though this time it was not to the path he brought her, but to what looked like a cave. He made Ane face him again, and when she looked in his eyes the pain she saw pierced her, she reached out to lay a hand on his arm, but the hand she extended was the hand that held the rose, and for a moment it hovered in her hand between them. The Wolf reached up to close his hand around hers, but as he did so a shot rang through the forest, giving the tree next to them a new hole.

"Unhand my wife!"

The hunter stood, disheveled and enraged, with his shotgun leveled. The Wolf tried to move Ane behind him, but before he could Ane walked forward. As the hunter saw her approach he lowered his weapon. He made a move as though he would embrace her, but she held up a hand to stop him.

"Allow me to remind you," she said, "that upon your question of marriage I had never given an answer. Your attack upon my mother was in vain; I intended to refuse you at some point regardless of the circumstances."

"Yet you ran? Surely you must have known that I would pursue, Ane."

"Had I not cried out, you would not have known where I had gone. As it is, I break whatever bind I have with my grandmother, and thereby I am sure that I break my bind with you," Ane's voice slowly gathered vehemence. "I will live alone in the forest, if I must, but I sever all connection!"

A gale, magic borne on the wings of the wind, rushed around the two men and the woman; it engulfed Ane, and she felt it pick at her, but she was finished, finished with being at the mercy of anyone's will but her own, and she would not be overthrown now, just now when she had realized what little power she had. Still the winds whipped around her, but she fought them; she looked about, and through watery eyes saw that, while the hunter remained largely unharmed, her Wolf was nearly felled by the force of the magic wind. Without thinking she threw her arms around him, pulling him into her, and to the winds that attacked her with double the strength she cried, No! I am finished! It will be my life, and it will be my choice! It will always be my choice!

Ane felt her own power waning; she had given all she had to her escape, first from her marriage then from her grandmother's magic, and she had little left to give. With one final burst of energy she shoved the magic from her, then fainted onto the ground.

She woke only moments later; a hazy shape above her dripped water down into her mouth. When it saw her eyes flutter, it slowly lowered the cup to her mouth, and she drank gratefully. The intake of liquid helped clear her sight; she looked up into the eyes of her Wolf, but pain no longer shone through them; their yellow depths betrayed nothing but innocent concern. She tried to sit, to look around her, but he held her gently down. "It is best that you not move."

Ane agreed; when she tried, her entire body had threatened rebellion. "What…what was that?"

Her Wolf shook his head. "I cannot claim to understand. You disrupted a very powerful binding magic; spells as settled as that one had become do not take destruction…delicately."

She decided not to pursue precisely what he meant by 'spells as settled as that one;' its obliteration satisfied her, and that satisfaction was more precious that curiosity. "And my…that…the hunter?"

"He dissipated."

"He what?"

The Wolf looked at the spot where a man had previously stood. In its place was a small pile of dust and herbs. "Although a deceptively well crafted one, he was only a simulacrum." The Wolf paused. " He was not a part of the binding spell, but he is your grandmother's magic, and he…caught a draft."

Too much was coming at Ane all at once. She had lived all her life believing that magic didn't exist, that the monster that chased her was only in her head. Yet here she lay, the victor against a powerful spell whose fiancée had only ever been the simulacrum of a man, being watered by a shapeshifter. Ane groaned. She closed her eyes and lay back against the moist, cool earth, and reveled in its uncomplicated presence.

"Ane…"

She opened her eyes; the Wolf reached out and picked up her hand that still held the rose in it. He stared resolutely at her hand as he said, "Ane, you saved me from…that spell. Its power would have killed me. I offer my most heartfelt gratitude.

"But Ane, if you want to stay here, an inherent resistance to malevolent magic will not save you. You must learn how to live among my kind and our ilk.

"Of course, if you choose not to, I can take you back to your village, and you can-"

"No," Ane said. She rose and leaned against her Wolf (partially because the world had just taken a sickening spin). "I don't think I could go back, even if I wanted to. I want to stay, and to learn."

The shape shifter wrapped his arms around his human and held her close against him. He leaned down and smiled into her hair, wondering faintly what her reaction would be when she learned that most of her in-laws were werewolves.