Mary Nova knelt by a flat boulder at the edge of the deeper woods, humming a song she could not finish. The boulder sat thick with moss, its top worn smooth by generations of paws and hooves. Every wary creature in this forest stopped here before crossing deeper. Mary knew that. She also knew the song her grandmother used to hum at this very stone was the only way to keep them from bolting. Two notes in, her memory went blank. She had come into the woods alone, as the elder made her promise. No tools. No guide. Only the extra food packed into her bag and a description of the beast that guards the heart of the forest, told to her and no one else. The elder would not even meet her eyes at the gate. Mary had taken that as a warning and walked in anyway. Past the moss-stone, the trees thickened toward a grove she had only heard about, where a tree hung with glowing fruit marked the true border. The beast lived past that line. To reach it she had to pass the small ones first, and the small ones would not let her near without the song. A field mouse crept onto the boulder and froze when Mary leaned forward. She tried to speak to it the way she always did, mind to mind, soft. The mouse twitched and fled. A jay screamed from a branch and would not answer her either. The silence felt like the crow that had looked at her once and flown off without a word. She had carried that silence for two years. She would not carry another. Mary opened her bag and dug past the bread the elder had packed. At the bottom, wrapped in cloth, was her grandmother's flute. She had brought it as a keepsake, not a tool. The mouthpiece was cool against her lip. She blew one note, then another, fumbling. On the third try her fingers moved on their own, the way they had when she was six and her grandmother had guided them across the holes. The melody came out thin but whole. The flute remembered what she could not. The boulder filled. A pair of rabbits. The jay, quiet now. A fox that should have run. And from the brush behind them stepped a small purple wolf with nine slow tails, watching her with steady eyes. It did not speak, but it did not leave. When Mary lowered the flute, the wolf turned toward the glowing grove and waited. The other animals scattered. The wolf did not. Mary stood, tucked the flute into her belt, and followed. She had her way in. She also had something the elder had never mentioned, walking ahead of her into the dark.

Mary followed the wolf deeper into the trees. The light thinned. The path narrowed until it ran between two leaning trunks and opened into a small clearing she had not expected. A stone arch stood at the far edge, gray and slick with water. Vines wrapped its pillars. Beyond the arch, the trail split in two, and both forks vanished into a wall of white mist that did not move with the wind. The wolf stopped under the arch and sat. Mary stepped beside it and looked for a sign of which way to go. The mist gave her nothing. She knelt and tried to reach the wolf the way she reached other animals, mind to mind. She felt the shape of it listening, but no words came back. It was like the crow again. She pulled her hand away and stood up. She walked to the left fork and put a foot into the mist. The cold cut through her boot at once. She pulled back and tried the right fork. Same cold. She looked for tracks, broken twigs, anything. The ground under both paths was bare and wet. Then she saw the source. Off to one side of the arch sat a round dome of clouded glass, taller than her knee, sealed at the base. White mist churned inside it and bled out through seams she could not see. The mist on the paths came from there. She pressed her palms to the glass. It was warm. She could not lift it. She could not crack it. The dome did not care that she was there. Mary turned back to the wolf. It was already moving. It walked to the right fork, sniffed once, then trotted to the left and lowered its head. Something at the foot of a vine slipped from its mouth into the moss. The wolf stepped back and watched her. She crossed and picked the thing up. A pendant on a braided cord of vine, a clear crystal set in a small metal cap. When she held it toward the right fork, the crystal stayed dull. When she turned it toward the left fork, a faint light moved inside the stone, steady as a held breath. She looped the cord around her neck. The light brightened against her collarbone. She took one step into the left mist. The cold was still there, but the crystal pulled forward like a hand at her wrist. The wolf went ahead and she followed. Behind her, the right fork stayed silent, and she understood she would not have come back from it. The mist closed around her shoulders. The crystal kept its light. Somewhere past this white nothing was the grove the elder had described, and the beast waiting in it. Mary kept her hand on the stone at her throat and walked.

The mist thinned as Mary walked. The crystal at her throat dimmed, then steadied to a low glow. The trees on either side stood farther apart now, and the ground turned to packed dirt under her boots. Ahead, the wolf slowed. Then it stopped. It planted its paws and would not take another step. Mary caught up and saw why it had picked this spot. A ring of standing stones rose from the bare earth, each one taller than her waist. Deep claw marks scored the gray faces, four parallel grooves on every stone, all at the same height. The dirt inside the ring was smooth, as if something had paced there for a long time. The wolf sat at the edge of the circle and pressed its shoulder against a broken slab leaning at the rim. The slab was a grave marker, cracked through the middle, moss filling the seams. Letters had been cut into it once. Most were worn off. Mary knelt by the wolf. Its nine tails lay flat against the ground. It would not look at her. It looked past the stones, down the path, where the trees closed in again. She followed its eyes and saw the shape further on. A cairn stood in the middle of the trail. Stacked rock climbed to a point above her head, and animal skulls ringed the base. Deer, fox, something with long curved teeth she did not know. The skulls all faced outward, toward anyone coming up the path. She tried the wolf the way she had tried before. Mind to mind. This time she felt something back. Not words. A pulled-in feeling, small and tight, the way a rabbit holds still under a hawk. The wolf was afraid. It pressed harder against the grave marker, and she understood the stone was cover. It was hiding. Mary stood and looked at the claw marks again. Four grooves. The same on every stone. Whatever made them was big, and it came back to this ring often enough to wear the dirt smooth. The cairn ahead was a warning, set by someone or something that wanted the path closed. She could keep going and walk into whatever paced this circle. Or she could trust the animal that had led her this far and had never been wrong. She crouched and put her hand on the wolf's back. "Not that way," she said. She lifted the pendant and turned slowly. The crystal stayed dim toward the cairn. When she faced a narrow gap between two of the standing stones, the light woke. A thin trail ran out the other side of the ring, low and half-hidden under fern. The wolf rose at once and slipped through the gap. Mary followed. Behind her, the skulls kept their watch on an empty path, and the thing that paced the ring did not yet know she had passed.

Past the ring of stones, the hidden trail widened into a strip of bare ground between two banks of fern. The wolf moved ahead of Mary, but not the way it had before. Its ears twitched at every snapped twig. Its nine tails hung low. Through the thread between their minds, Mary felt the small, pulled-in fear from the ring had not left. It had only grown quieter, the way a held breath gets thinner the longer you keep it. The trees broke open without warning. Mary stopped at the edge of a long crack in the earth. A ravine cut across the path, deep enough that she could not see the bottom. Tree roots hung from the lip in pale, dangling layers. A narrow log lay across the gap. On the far side, the trees thinned and a soft green light showed through them. The grove. It was close. Closer than she had let herself believe. The wolf would not step onto the log. It backed up. It turned a half-circle and sat, then stood again, then sat. Beside the log stood a small wooden shrine, no taller than her knee, faded ribbons tied to its posts. Someone had built it here on purpose. This was the place where guides turned back. Mary felt the wolf gather itself to bolt. Once it ran, she would not find the rest of the path alone. She knelt slow and pulled the leather pouch from her bag. The elder had packed it the morning she left. Mary loosened the cord and held a strip of smoked venison out flat on her palm. "Stay," she said, soft. "Just sit with me." The wolf's nose worked. It took one step. Then another. It ate the strip from her hand and did not move away. She fed it a second piece, then a third. With each one she let the thread between them open wider. She pushed back what she felt: not safe, but here. Not brave, but together. The wolf's tails settled against the dirt. Its shoulders dropped. When she stood and walked to the log, it rose and followed. They crossed one slow step at a time. The wood held. On the far side, the wolf sat down against her boot and pressed its weight into her leg. It had not run. It had chosen to stay. Mary tied the pouch shut and looked through the thinning trees at the green light beyond. The wolf would go no further than this; she understood that now. The shrine marked the end of its road, not hers. She rested her hand on its head once, then stepped past the last of the trees alone. Ahead, the ground began to glow.