The girl woke with a frozen shriek. A light dusting of snow coated her, but she wasn’t sure if it was leftover flakes blown from the trees or a forward flurry from the encroaching blizzard, which had gotten worryingly closer since she had lost consciousness. 

Regardless of its source, the snow meant she’d been here for far too long. She didn’t know how many bandits were left. And if they found her, she’d be joining her parents. The scent of their burnt flesh was still soaked into her clothes, but every moment, it felt as though the smell lessened. 

Astrid glanced around the forest floor and found her dagger a few feet away, covered in the same flakes of snow that she had been. There were no wolf prints or boot prints, and the girl wondered if she had only dreamt the wolf. That seemed the only logical explanation for its strange behavior. Beasts like that were not particularly well known for their knowledge of weapons and their tame behavior around humans. 

She gripped the hilt in her hands, letting its familiar weight calm her. That thought alone stopped her. It was…. intimidating that a weapon could grow so familiar in her hands after only a few hours. But in those few hours, she’d become a killer. She hadn’t wanted to kill anyone, but with the fights she’d had, it was either them or her. 

Would the god or gods who judged her when she died accept that for why she had blood on her hands? But…. so many gods revelled in their violence. Thor was known for fighting, that was an honorable thing. Maybe she would be fine. Unless they knew the glee with which she fought. 

Howling came to her through the woods, breaking her out of her mind. She had to escape… whatever escape meant now. With her weapon held firmly, she began to navigate the woods once more. She turned this way and that, sniffing at the wind, letting her ears pick up any slight sounds. She recognized the panicked thumping of a winter hare far in the distance, and the loamy scents of the woods. It was so familiar. So peaceful. Not a hint of the bloodshed and violence that had bled into the hills. 

For a brief moment, she wondered if the bandits had fled the mountain. But her ears caught the faint jangle of their saddles somewhere further up from her. With the wind beginning to pick up as the storm approached, she pulled her cloak further around her, it tugged at her hair, but she didn’t think about it. 

Now, feeling pleasantly warm, her step was lighter. As she knew the men were far away from her, she felt more confident to simply walk through the woods. Astrid still didn’t have a destination or a plan. Just a direction. Forward. It was the only way she could go. There was nothing that she could go back to. 

Before the girl realized, she was at one of the major trails that ran up the mountainside. During the summer months, when the passes were clear, traders and travelers would travel up and down this path to get across the mountains. But in the middle of winter, it was a barren wound slashed through the trees, filled only with packed ice and animal tracks laid in the new snow.

Astrid didn’t notice any of that, however. What she saw was much more worrying. Down the middle of the trail were the clear signs of a person stumbling through the snow. The tracks were far too small to be one of the bandits, and that left her with two possibilities. First, one of her parents had managed to survive and had managed to come all the way over to this area. Or worse, there was someone else near here, who didn’t know there were men with evil intentions. 

Keeping to the trees, the girl followed the tracks. She wove in between the trunks, using a myriad of low hanging branches and the undergrowth to hide herself. It was a tactic she’d picked up while learning to hunt. It let her move quietly, covertly, and maintain sight lines for potential prey. 

Minutes passed as she stalked the stranger’s tracks. She breathed in time with the wind and crouched low to hide any noises she might make. She felt like a predator, and that thought gave her a wry chuckle. But finally, she saw the person who was making those tracks. They looked like an old woman, covered in barely more than a blanket. The woman trudged forward, shuffling one step in front of the other, and looking as though every step she took would send her toppling forward. 

A sudden worry shot through Astrid. This woman was a grandmother; what was she doing out here in the cold? She pressed her ears flat and stepped out of the woods, not caring about her safety.

“Hello, Grandmother,” she called. “Please don’t be afraid of me.” 

The old woman froze, then slowly tottered around to look at the girl. 

“My my, what is a child like you doing out in the woods at such a late hour?” 

“I would ask the same of you, Grandmother. Do you have a place of safety near here? There are evil men about. And I’m afraid for your safety.” 

The grandmother chewed on her lip and stepped closer to Astrid, squinting to look at her. “Is that what that dagger is for?” 

Astrid looked at the knife which she had forgotten she was holding. Her first instinct was to hide it behind her back. Pretend it didn’t exist. But that would get her nowhere. She could not hide something which she had already shown to the world. 

“Yes,” she finally admitted. “I use it to defend myself.”

The woman took another shuffle closer to Astrid, but the girl felt strangely comfortable in her presence. Now that she was closer, it was clear to see that the woman was dressed in barely more than rags. Her grey hair was matted and dirty, and there was a strange glint in the woman’s eyes. Her parents would say that the grandmother had been touched by a demon, but that didn’t seem correct. There was a curiosity in her milky-blue eyes. 

“May I see it, my dear?” the woman asked, still chewing on her lip. “It looks a very respectable weapon. I’ve not seen many like it in my days.” 

Astrid threw her face to the wind, letting her ears stand at attention trying to suss the woman’s intentions, while also trying to detect any of the remaining horsemen. On a faint wisp of air, she caught the horses’ scent. They were still a ways away, she had a moment of safety. And so, she gently placed the dagger in the woman’s waiting hand. 

Her hands were bony, run through with veins and spots that well-showed her age. The woman held the knife up, inspecting it this way and that. “This is a very interesting blade. Do you see here?” She pointed at the runes etched onto the metal. Astrid looked, but still kept one ear listening to the bandits. “This says ‘Mother of wolves’. Interesting, no?”

“How-how can you read those?” 

The old woman gave Astrid a very conspiratorial smile and a laugh that seemed to shake her whole body with spasms as she handed the weapon back to the girl. “They call me a witch. Those who don’t know what I do. I follow the old ways, child. That is how. And I have often encountered marks such as these.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t really sure what she was expecting. That this woman was secretly some spirit, sent to judge her. How could this woman even have been a spirit? Her lips were blue from the cold, and violent shivers seemed to wrack her body with every breath.

“Grandmother, it’s so cold out. Please! Take this.” Astrid quickly slung her cloak off her back and wrapped the old woman in it. She accepted it without complaint, and the girl could see gratitude in her eyes. “I’m… I’m sorry for the foul smell. There was a great tragedy tonight, and the remnants of it remain on the cloth.”

The woman gave Astrid a confused glance and pulled the garment up to her nose. “I’m not sure what you are saying, child. This cloak smells as though a dog has laid in it, and nothing more. But thank you for this, child. How will you stay warm? The night is very cold, and there is a long way until morning.” 

Astrid rubbed her arms for warmth, and was surprised to find she didn’t feel much colder without the cloak. She could still feel the chill wind, but it felt more manageable. Perhaps her clothes were thicker than she’d thought. “I’ll be fine, I think. You need that more than I do. But please, do you have somewhere safe to go? I worry for your safety on this road.”

The woman gave her a long look, before hugging the cloak tighter around her frail body. “I was traveling to my daughter. She is very near. I will go to her.” She paused for a moment and looked at Astrid, then slowly reached up to her head to pluck one of her grey hairs. “This is for you, child, as trade for this lovely cloak.” 

She stretched her hand out, offering the length of hair, and the girl picked it up with no small amount of confusion. 

Up the mountainside, several men began to scream and shout. Astrid’s head snapped in that direction, gauging the distance, analyzing the threat. She instinctively took a step towards the danger. Already adrenaline began to pump through her body. She felt that feral instinct wanting to take over, but she forced it down. She had to worry about the grandmother first. 

When she turned to tell the woman what she’d sensed, she found nothing. The only thing facing her was the dead woods. There was no proof that she had been there. No tracks in the snow. No residual warmth from her smile. She had simply disappeared, leaving the girl clutching a long silver hair in one hand, and a blackened knife in the other. 

Immediately, Astrid quashed the reaction of wanting to shout for her, wondering where the woman could have gone, fearing for her safety. The material presence of the grey hair in her hand proved the crone had not been a hallucination. Had the woman actually been a spirit? She’d heard stories of old spirits giving their hair as payment. But… if that woman was a spirit, wouldn’t that mean…..

The thought crashed into the girl’s mind with such a cataclysmic impact that she worried it would throw her down the mountainside. If that woman had been a spirit, that meant that her parent’s god was… She’d never believed in their god, right? So why did she feel so relieved? 

Was she not as doomed as she’d thought? All those years of her parents shouting at her, threatening her with lakes of burning fire and endless darkness for the sin they perceived in her. How many of their words had infected her thoughts? She had never believed in their god, but clearly she had believed their words. But she didn’t need to.

Astrid looked up to the skies. The sky was beautiful. Every star shone with their fierce determination, and the moon was as bright as it could be, trying to send her light to every being she loved on the earth below. And on the horizon, there was a storm. The cold winds preceding it stung her face and made her wince. But she smiled nonetheless. 

She wasn’t a monster. She was simply herself. All around her, wolves howled at the moon as it was swallowed by the impending blizzard. And Astrid wanted to join in. These woods were the home of these animals just as much as they were hers. Her defending her home was no different than what the wolves were doing. No wonder she felt so much kinship with them. 

With her ears pressed back and her nose to the wind, Astrid officially began her own hunt. No longer a simple flight from her home or a directionless hike. It was a fight, and one she felt she could win. 

Above her on the trail, she heard a stampede of hooves. Her long ears instantly pointed towards the sound, and she found she was able to discern the difference in hoofbeats of only a few horses. Surely there had been more men. What had happened to all of the others? Behind the approaching men, she heard the howl of wolves and knew. 

She understood the howl in some guttural part of her soul. It was a call to arms from the wolf, and a threat to those it was hunting. A battle cry of raw emotion. 

Astrid planted her feet, threw her head to the sky, and wished with all her heart that she could join in the howl.