I must have drifted into sleep sometime after midnight, because the night was old when the scratching started. It roused me from a dream of warm rain and melting snow, a horrible, wrenching sound of shrieking wood and deep animal breathing.

Something was clawing at the door.

I sat bolt upright and met two more pairs of terrified eyes.

“What the hell is that?” asked Aspen.

“I don’t know,” I said, because I didn’t know, not really. A bear scratching at the door was just as likely as a bull moose, or a madman, or a dragon. Well, maybe not a dragon. These things didn’t happen, not in town, and not even in quiet upland villages.

“What do we do?” asked Juniper.

“Stay here,” I told them, slipping my feet once again into the soft down of my slippers and padding into the kitchen to take the sword down from the mantel. Out here, I could hear the snuffling of some wintry creature working its nose along the cracks of the door. I ran back into our bedroom with the sword held tightly in both hands and bolted the door, then shoved the dresser we shared in front of it.

“What about father?”

“He will be fine, and he would want us to protect ourselves,” I said, ashamed of my fear. I should have led us all to his room and barred that door. I should not have given in to the suspicion that the bear was after him, a dark, cold, slimy thought that was not quite as brave as the blade I laid again across my knees, preparing for another vigil.

I could not prevent my sisters from peering out the door the next morning. We stood, three dark heads against the white of the fresh snow, staring at the long, pale gouges something had scratched into the red wood of our front door. Something, and not someone. No tool could make those marks, and no man had left those tracks.

In the smallest of blessings, my father’s fever broke that morning, sparing us the need to go for the herbalist. We moved him back to the kitchen onto a pallet by the fire, and Juniper sang to him while I cooked and Aspen stoked the flames. Every now and then I would go to the door, expecting to see pale golden eyes watching me from the forest. All I saw was the occasional flash of wings as the birds searched for food amid the drifts.

Mercy.

She remembered so many things now.

To spare a life was to ensure suffering.

Death was surer.

He would learn that.

She knelt by his tracks, resting her hand against the deep print of his boots.

Mercy.

He should never have touched the roses.

She stared at the briars. His tracks led past them, winding down the mountain to the soft green lands beyond, death somewhere on his person.

One step, and she was past the thorns.