Elaina waved from the meadow as all of the men and their eldest sons departed into the forest. The hunt. In a few days they would shamble home, hauling the still-bloody skins of five wolves. Mother said it kept the goats safe, but Elaina always hated it.

Not only did the men anxiously await the opportunity to display their strength and prowess, the boys knew that being allowed to join signified their transition into adulthood. A position in the hunting party gave a boy more power than he had ever had in his life.

Once they arrived home, Elaina and Agnes - the only other thirteen year old girl in the village - would have to wash their families’ clothes before being given free time. The grueling task was lightened by each others’ companionship.

When the last garment was hung to drip from the line and young fingertips were wrinkled and soap-bitten, they skipped to the enormous tree at the meadow’s edge. Its sprawling branches provided gracious shelter in the height of the afternoon.

The day drawled on, the hum of cicadas swelling as the two girls chatted about the hunt, the stars, the forest, the future and the past. In a nook of the tree where the gnarled branches wove into a nest, they adopted a position laying down entwined in each other’s arms, Elaina’s brown hair blending into the bark. They gazed at the light shimmering through the leaves. They gazed at each other.

A greater force in the universe willed Agnes to place a chaste kiss at the corner of Elaina’s mouth. As she pulled away, Elaina sat up in shock.

“No! That wasn’t right. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, this wasn’t meant to happen, I-”

Elaina swallowed Agnes’s guilty words, igniting a thrum deep in their chests matching the rhythm of the cicadas. She could taste the marzipan on Agnes’s tongue.

“Elaina! It’s time to come-“

Mother was cut off by her own shriek. Both girls stumbled of the tree, uncaring of the bark scratching at their limbs. Agnes leaned in to shakily whisper, “Please don’t tell anyone.” She ran back home.

Mother closed the distance between them and dragged Elaina back home by her elbow

When Mother let go in the kitchen, Elaina examined the five angry red marks left behind in her skin, running her hand over the throbbing patches. She looked up to see a bottle snatched from the middle shelf and amber liquid being poured into a glass.

It was apple cider vinegar, forced down her throat so her lips would be sanitized and she would equate a maiden’s kiss with pungent acridity.

***

The weight dripped from Elaina’s form like honey from a spoon. Mother tried every remedy she knew of, yet her appetite did not return. How could Mother have known that the issue was not her stomach, but her spirit?

How could Mother have known the suitor she chose was a predator in disguise? Elaina still felt the bark of the tree at the meadow grinding into her back. The very same bark that scraped two girls’ legs ten years ago, though she couldn’t remember the tree’s significance now. What she remembered was his hot breath ghosting over her chest. Huff, puff. She learned that all he wanted was to blow her down. He relished in exploiting his strength, preferred things he knew he could break.

Break she did. Elaina was reduced to a girl shivering in her skin. At least the man wouldn’t return for a week and a half; the hunt took much longer now. Perhaps the wolves learned to stay away. But with the rade demand for wolf pelts growing, the hunts continued, the expanding village populace bringing in whole packs.

At nightfall, Elaina was restless. There was a different kind of ache deep inside her heart, a void which she didn’t know how to fill.

A soft caw came from outside, bringing Elaina to her senses. She trudged outside, seeing a crow tilting its head back and forth at her. Something rooted in her blood compelled her to follow this bird.

She made her way to the meadow with the crow flying overhead. The grass was shorn to the dirt, the work of the deer that overwhelmed the surrounding forest. As the wolves disappeared, the deer seemed to take their place in staggering numbers, consuming all the plant matter available. Would the river change its course soon without the bank being held down by those plants?

Glimmering from within the forest was the light of a fire. It couldn’t have been the hunters, they’d have traveled much farther into the woods by now. The crow swooped down in front of Elaina and gave one rasped caw. It hopped forward, looking back as if to urge her on.

She watched from the trees at a clearing where a fire roared and three figures whirled around it. They were women, age not too far from her own. She watched in awe as they danced, not to music, but to the sounds of the night itself. Elaina noticed their shadows - they were not human. A wolf, a bear and a fox orbited the flames, their howls, roars and yips cacophonous in the empty night. Elaina sat against a tree as her eyes tracked the wolf-girl. Then, the wolf-girl’s eyes affixed to her, shining silver in the light as her lithe body twisted and turned, performing for a captivated audience of one, whose heart thundered in time with the dancers’ movements.

Elaina decided at once that she would allow the wolf to swallow her whole, because she knew that the dark warmth would feel like home.