When I fall, I know there is no chance of getting up. I have walked as far as I could, leg brace aching; that tingle that meant pain, if I could only feel it. No chance of pushing myself upright against the bounteous snow. That was fine; I’d come out here to die. Perhaps this was far enough outside the village that whoever found me would just bury me, without investigation, without history. A mystery. A woman, without provisos. 

I watched the snow fall. I was cold, shivering, but I already felt in my heart that traitorous warmth. I welcomed it.

I thought of sitting in the warmth of my grandma’s cottage, watching her perform her rituals. I pictured a temple, all red and gold pillars, and animal sigils. Warm amber light spilled down from lanterns hung in the darkness. I heard the mumbling of ritual, but saw no people. Had I dreamed of this place when I was young? Before the old ways died with my grandmother? It felt familiar.

There was a throne here, I realised, and the Goddess upon it. She wore a crown of foliage and carried a staff. A white dog rested its long muzzle contentedly on the Goddesses’ knee. She looked calm and wise and commanding. The land is the teacher; I recalled the ritual words. 

A flurry of snow across my face brought me back to the cold and dark reality. Perhaps the land was trying to teach me: don’t go wandering at night in a snowstorm when you’re a fucking cripple. No, I knew that, of course. I closed my eyes and focused on that ember of heat within me.

It was darker in the temple, and warmer. The throne was empty now; I looked around. The Goddess leant against a pillar, watching me from hooded eyes. Crown and staff gone, she was dressed as a simple priestess, though I didn’t imagine many would be fooled. As I approached, she slipped around the pillar, and then flitted into the darkness beside me, fingertips brushing my sleeve. The land as playmate, she said, like they were words of some ritual that I have never heard before.

I blundered through the dark, trying to find her. Suddenly, she was right before me, luminous in the amber darkness. The land, she said, hand reaching out and playing with my collar, as mistress.

I could see snow falling around her. I blinked. A farm girl atop a white ox looked down at me; black-haired and a reserved expression. I had been dreaming. Or, no, there were afterimages, ghosts amongst the snow, overlaying her face. A few wisps of crown, the cunning eyes of the priestess.

“Goddess,” I said.

“Yep, you’ll meet her soon enough if you go sleeping in snowfields,” she said. She spat over her shoulder, sighed, and slid off the ox.

She bent and gripped my arm, heaving me upright with surprising strength. I wanted to say, no, leave me, I am resigned to my death. But I was too ashamed. It took a few anxious moments until I got my legs under me; one numb with cold, the other always numb.

“This way,” she said, and struck off towards the pine forest. The ox followed her. I didn’t see any alternative, so I did as well. The snow crunched underfoot.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked, voice crackly and breathless.

“One of my beautiful but dumb animals got lost,” she said. The ox was beautiful, I supposed. White as snow but far warmer; I occasionally placed my hand on its flank to keep my balance, or stepped in its tracks.

I trudged on, cold and tired. I would have been fine dying, asking to be left to die, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself. I chuckled to myself; dying was fine, but I didn’t want to make a fuss about it.

The edge of the pine forest was sparse; thin saplings jutting through the snow, like arrows in a stag’s hide.

Eventually, the woman stopped. She sucked through her teeth. “I’ll build a fire here. Fetch some wood.”

I wanted to rest. “My fingers are too cold,” I said. She motioned me over with a tip of her chin, and put her hands around mine.

Her hands were warm; not feverish, but a fireside warmth, a cosy blanket warmth. The hands were a little smaller than mine, but stronger. She rubbed, interleaved them. They had the hard-soft feel of working hands; calluses and skin worn smooth and supple. She pulled my hands towards her and bent to kiss them softly. For a moment, she glanced with the priestesses’ hooded eyes. Then she drew back.

“We’ll need nine sticks of decent burnable wood,” she said, and turned, crouching to prepare the fire.

Finding wood in a forest should not be so difficult, but I knew there was no point in bringing her rubbish. The saplings were thin but strong; without a knife or hatchet, it would take forever to break one. And the green wood would sputter and smoke. There was plenty of dead wood on the ground, but it was snow-soaked and rotten. This was pointless. I glanced over at the woman; she had swept a patch of land free of snow, and was arranging pinecones. I felt stupid. Carry on, I thought, carry on. The worst thing you can do is lie down in the snow. Carry on.

The fierce wind or passing animals sometimes broke branches of the saplings; most of these fell to the floor, but sometimes they caught in the tree. Hidden from the worst of the snow, dried by the wind, these branches were often burnable. It was annoying work, finding and retrieving these branches, but I did, forming a small bundle of sticks.

The woman was crouching over the fire. The pinecones were lit; she was blowing on them. I dropped the sticks nearby. She had spread blankets from the ox’s pack on the ground. The ox had wandered off; every time I thought I’d found it, it was just a snowbank. 

“Sit,” she said, not looking up from the fire. I collapsed down.

She snapped a stick apart and threw it on the fire. The flames leaped up, higher than I was expecting; golden sparks curling off into the night sky, mixing with the falling snow. The light leant her face an authoritative aspect.

“Goddess?” I said. 

“What do you want?” she said. “What desire drove you to winter’s bed?”

“I want to be healthy; I want to be young,” I said. She nodded, throwing sticks onto the fire. “What else?”

“I… I want to be a proper woman,” I said. 

The Goddess snorted, “Is that your eyes, or other people’s, that you’re complaining about? Because I don’t think you have more doubts than any woman does. If some stupid farmer cannot tell his geese from chickens, doesn’t mean you have to teach your chickens to honk.”

“It’s difficult, though,” I say.

“Yes.” She nods, a glimmer of sympathy warming her voice.

I wanted nothing more than to feel her fingers on mine once more. “My hands are cold again,” I said, artlessly.

She broke another stick and threw the fragments onto the fire. “The land provides,” she said. “And the land punishes.”

She flexed the last stick, testing it. “Do you accept that?”

I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant, but, “Yes, I suppose so.”

“Hold out your hands,” she said. “Palms up.”

I held them out. The fire was blazing, making the wood seem darker. The saplings were like black lines now, inky, sketching out wide pillars.

She brought the stick down against my palms, a rapid, stinging strike. I flinched, pulling my hands back. Points of searing heat. The pain spread out, radiated. Hadn’t I had enough pain in my life? And yet, even as I thought this, I was extending my hands again, held out like a beggar.

She nodded and struck again, paying me in the same harsh coin. Heat on top of heat. A strange sensation buzzing through my body. I thought about all the pain I’d felt before; the pain of my body failing, urgent but innocent; beatings and punishments, cruel or neglectful. This was different. I did not flinch this time.

The third time the stick came down, the red welts filling with fire, spreading up my arms, through my body. I was crying; I’m not sure why, it was not that painful. But this was nothing like the other pain; this was born of love.

“Thank you, Goddess,” I said.

“Do you know why I punished you?” she asked, throwing the stick in the fire.

I tried to think, though the pain had set off a drowsy buzzing in me. For surrendering to the snow? For complaining? For being inadequate at finding sticks? None of those seemed likely. “No,” I said.

She smiled then, the priestesses’ mischievous smile. She gathered up my hands again, and kissed them, turning them upwards, and kissing the marks. Sweetly stinging. The snow had stopped, I realised, and a full moon stood over us.

She bit my hand, hard. Then she licked it. I tried to form words, but she leapt at me, bowling me over backwards. Her mouth was at my throat, kissing and biting. I put my hands against her body; she pressed into me, rubbing against my welts. Rough farmer’s clothes, fine priestesses’ vestments, luxurious royal robes, satiny and electric skin. She undressed me as well; I tried to shield, protect my loin, but she moved my hands away with easy strength. 

“It’s not your job to judge yourself, to fear yourself, anymore,” she growled. She stretched, putting her hand flat against my cock, feeling me harden.

She kissed at my breasts, and bit at them. I couldn’t find my balance. Half my body was hot, the other cold. The fire, the snow. But which? She kissed my lips, lingering, and then slapped my face. She pressed the centre of my palm until I cried out, then licked the tears off my face. She bit my shoulder, drawing blood, but when I went to pull her off, she grabbed my hand and dragged it down her body, to between her legs.

“People think there’s a lot of difference between a dog and a wolf,” she whispered breathlessly, riding my fingers. “Or between an ox and an elk. There isn’t.”

Her nails scratched my stomach; dark lines on pale skin like furrows in the meadow. 

“Just who they obey,” she said. “Who they belong to.”

She slips off my fingers and onto my cock. Leans forward, smiling cruelly, riding me mercilessly; a horse galloping against a blizzard. One hand around my throat, slight pressure.

And suddenly it is too much; a fear of strangulation rises in me. I buck her off, kick her away. She gives a yelp, not like a goddess. Like a wolf. The fire sparks. I scramble to my feet, awkwardly, hobbling, and run limping into the night. 

The lying snow is heavy here, difficult to run through even for those with two fully working legs. I am soon trudging. Naked, but I don’t feel the cold anymore. I keep thinking about that yelp. I’m outside the forest now; some sort of scrubland, under the snow, I think. Reedy plants, breaking the snow’s surface, leaves flat like daggers. Was she hurt? I wonder. Upset? Angry? What did I care? Icy leaves cut my skin; a row of thorns, nature’s claws. She was a witch, a vampire, a demon. Fucking me, hurting me. Pain and service and something I couldn’t name.

It was dark, but dawn hovered below the horizon, I could tell. There was a jitteriness to the darkness. I was not far from the village; I must have got turned around. A last burst through some spiny plant and I was on a road, smooth under the snow. If I arrived back before dawn, I might escape people’s eyes. I must look like a wild beast, a madwoman, a half-woman. Naked, bloody and scratched, insane. I would hide. I was good at that.

She was behind me, I realised. The Goddess. White ox beside her. She was dressed in grand raiments, a sword at her belt. Her face is set, reserved, but I see – I think I see – some concern in her dark eyes.

“Is that really what you want?” she asks. “What do they have to offer you?”

At best, I was a freak, a source of cruel humour. At worst, a predator, a monster, an abomination. I shrugged. “I’m used to it,” I said. That sounded weak even to me. “What do you have to offer? A docile beast of burden? A thankful dog? What?”

“Mine,” she said. “My beast of burden. My dog. My wolf. My ox and elk. Mine.”

I looked back towards the village. Where did I belong?

“Who do you belong to?” the Goddess asked, stepping towards me. Witch! Vampire! Demon! 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, hand on my shoulder, thumb caressing my neck. As if I wasn’t the one who betrayed her. I am crying again, ice-melt.

She steps closer and kisses me, firmly, then softly, on the mouth. Red berries, sweet blossom; soft fruit, ground-laying, drunken; quiet leaves, the smell of rain; the stillness of snow falling, the redness of blood.

I drop to my knees. The Goddess has a cloak of white fur for me, warm and heavy. She draws her sword, the edge glitters. She places it flat against the side of my neck; a knighthood, an execution. I can feel the edges, razor sharp above my arteries, but I am not afraid anymore. She could, but she will not. My whole life has been spent amongst those who could not, but would, easily.

She removes the sword, the slightest smear of redness on its edge, and puts it back in its scabbard. Takes off the sword-belt, and hands it to me. I strap it on, and kiss her outstretched hand.

The Goddess helps me stand. She leads me into the temple. It was all red and gold pillars, and animal sigils, with warm amber light spilling down from the darkness.

She walks with me toward the throne. She seats herself upon it, gesturing towards a pillow by her feet. I sat, and rested my chin on her knee, and smiled. She ran her fingers through my hair.

Eventually, she spreads her knees, holding my hair firmly. 

“The land as mystery. The land as bounty,” she whispered, guiding me into the dark warmth.