Maren Tuesday wanted one thing: a stretch of forest deep enough to hide every hunted beast in Elefville. That night she learned she did not have it. A pounding fist shook her riverside cottage door. Dried herbs swung on their hooks. On her workbench a fawn slept with a splinted leg, and a fox pressed against the wall, eyes wide. "Open up, Maren." A hunter's voice. "We tracked a stag's blood to your porch." She cracked the door. Three men stood in the dark with lanterns and a hound. The hound strained at its rope, nose down, pointed straight at her steps. Maren was massive, and she filled the doorway, but her hands stayed soft and still. "There's no stag here," she said. It was true. But the blood trail was hers to answer for, and the hound would not lie. The lead hunter spat. "Your woods aren't secret. Nothing you hide stays hidden. We'll be back with more dogs come morning." They left. Maren watched their lanterns shrink along the river. She understood the problem now, plain as the mud on her boots. Any beast she sheltered could be tracked here. Her cottage was a trap, not a haven. If she wanted a true sanctuary, she needed land no hunter could read. She knelt by the river with a lantern. The water ran fast and split around a rock into two channels. And there, in the shallows, something moved. A sleek shape surfaced. Two heads rose on one long neck, scales rippling, four mirrored eyes fixed on her. A river serpent, big as a fallen log. Maren did not run. She had faced frightened creatures her whole life. She held out an open hand and stayed low. The serpent studied her, then slid closer and nudged her palm with one blunt snout. A gash ran along its flank. Someone had cut it and let it flee. "You know these currents," she whispered. "You know where they hide you." The serpent turned and swam upstream against the fast channel. It paused, both heads looking back at her. An invitation. Maren waded in to her waist, gripped a low branch, and followed the creature into the dark. Cold water dragged at her coat. The serpent led her past the split rock, up a narrow throat of river she had never known was there. The channel opened into a hidden basin ringed by cliffs. Water covered every approach. No dog could hold a scent across running water, and no path led in by land. Pale flowers climbed the rock walls, their petals shaped like small moons, glowing faint in the dark. Maren stood in the shallows and breathed. Here was her sanctuary. But the only road in ran through the serpent's fast, split current, and she could not carry a wounded fawn through that water alone. She would need the two-headed serpent's help to move every beast she saved.