I checked the string of my bow. We had been tracking a herd of deer for the better part of a day, and the Huntress was somewhere over the next rise with the rest of the pack. I had circled back to startle them into flight, driving them down the slope and into the jaws of the waiting wolves. I stepped carefully, avoiding a deep drift, my muscles hard beneath my furs and my breath coming easily even in the frigid air. I heard only the crunch of snow beneath my boots. I followed the low plume of the wolf’s tail as she trotted through the trees after a scent far too faint for my nose to detect. I knew some of the smells of these woods. There was the sweet musk of deer, and the heavier scent of elk. The raw eye-watering stench of bear, and the harsh odor of wildcat urine. At the edges of these scents hovered the clean, clear smell of snow, and the peculiar difference between snow, running water, and ice.

And roses.

I hesitated, raising my face to the wind. The boundary was close; I had not realized we had come so far, but then again, the boundary did not seem to obey the laws of nature as I understood them.

The wolf’s hackles rose. I breathed the air in through my nose, trying to catch wind of the source of her alarm. The smell of roses was heavier here, and sure enough as we padded over a ridge, I saw the hedge rise into view.

We both froze.

There were no deer, over the ridge, but something moved. It took my eyes a long time to remember the shape. The creature looked so awkward, shuffling through the snow with its mottled pelt and its strange burden. Each step was clearly a labor, and it eyed the hedge with grim determination. Something stirred in the back of my mind, crawling out from the place where I had shoved such things, buried under the weight of snow and fur and the Huntress’s body, burned away by cold and moonlight and the warm red glow of the hearth, and drowned by the sound and fury of the storms that shrieked over the peaks.

The old woman crouched over her pack, unloading it into the shelter of the briars. She was careful, excruciatingly careful, her every move slow and steady as she kept her body clear of thorns.