The years, they came and they came. Every night, a few more stars in the sky. Every night, the girl grew a little taller. Her shining hair grew a little longer. Her shining eyes grew a little sharper. Every night, that little sprig of death in her grew a little greener and sterner. She taught herself how to pounce with her knife from the treetops as she’d once been so afraid to do. Her hands never shook. She taught herself to throw her knife from a distance, land it in deep between two ribs. She taught herself to weave ropes from the grass and make nets with them, or trip-lines, or traps. Her mothers watched her change. She watched herself change, in the reflections of the river and the puddles. She was growing beautiful, as people do.

  But there was no match among all the people in all the cities and towns across all of the world for the grace with which the girl moved. There was no match for the beauty of her eyes, shining, and her hair, shining, long and curling, curling, curling, a hundred times its own true length curling back onto itself and tumbling, tumbling down past her slender waist and widening hips. She was beautiful in the way that a doe or a she-wolf was beautiful, beautiful in hungry, fearful elegance. One could look upon her and marvel, but it would corrupt the eyes for a person to lust after her— just the same as it corrupts the eyes for a person to lust after a doe or a she-wolf. The girl’s beauty was a purer thing than that, a thing apart. The girl was a perfectly-formed life by the milk of her blood, and she moved like the life of the Earth and the rivers and the skies, of the mountainside and her mothers. She moved as all the people in those cities and towns had forgotten how to move, or never learned, bound in sandals and tunics and jewelry. The girl moved as a free life, and nothing on the mountainside or anywhere else could look upon her for more than a moment or so before she trickled away like liquid moonlight, and the eye would never be quick enough to follow her, catch her again. That was what she had become by the time she was a little less than thirteen years old. That was the shape that death had asked for from her, that was the shape she was coming to take.

  The night of her first mensis, she was terrified, and both the Half Moon and the she-bear did all they could to calm her and guide her, but even with the Moon for a mother, there was nothing the girl knew how to be right away but frightened, and so she was frightened, and in pain, and on and on and finally, she decided to take her knife and drill the point of it into her fingertip— drill and drill, twist the knife until just the tiniest droplets of pale light came shining out, dripping down to the dirt, one, two, three, four in a line, like a string of pearls. Just like that the cramps were forced back beneath pain’s surface and she could carry on. It was not a thing that the she-bear had taught her, and it was not a thing that the Half Moon had taught her. It was just another thing to learn about the shape that death was asking her to become. The next night, immediately after the sunset, the Half Moon woke Her daughter with the clear call of Her own voice and presented to her three new gifts in honor of her courage and steps into maturity.

  “It is a bow worthy of the greatest young maiden,” said the Moon. “I will teach you how to draw it and aim it and shoot it. I will teach you how to string and unstring it. I will teach you to make arrows with your knife. I will teach you how to hunt, the best places to fire from, the best places on your target to hit, and in what order.”

  The bow was a plainly lovely thing of pale rowan wood, swelling here, tapering there, curving across and across, lacquer glistening with the moonlight. The string was twisted ox-tail, and sturdier than anything, never to snap.

  The second gift was a belt of black-tanned leather with a polished bronze buckle and three bright stones, shining droplets, pearls, one-two-three-four in a row, for the girl to wear around her waist. The Moon told her daughter that this belt would give her an amazing speed and sure-footedness, unparalleled. There would be no one in all the world who could run faster than her, or more confidently. She would never slip or trip or snag, her every movement across the ground or through the treetops would be perfect with that belt around her waist, such was the Moon’s promise. It made her feel more held-together, wearing it; that was just as much what it was for. The old she-bear watched the girl take it, and nodded to herself. This was good, this was right. She was glad to see her daughter have it.

  “And what is my third gift?” asked the girl.

  “Your third gift is yourself,” answered the Moon. “You are a gift, for me. It is a gift, being able to gaze down upon you. And in return for that, I give you a special blessing. A special power, that is yours, that will never leave you. A power that will always make you strong and wonderful.”

  “And what is my power?” asked the girl.

  “I give to you the power to always be different,” answered the Moon, and it was the proudest thing that She had ever said.

  The Moon kept Her promise, and taught the girl the best ways of hunting with a bow, making arrows and a quiver to hold them, all manner of aimings and tricks. The girl practiced and practiced and practiced, every night, from sunset to sunrise. until she was able to skip an arrow off the rushing surface of the river and skewer a single flower-petal on the opposite bank. And then she kept practicing, twice as hard. The Moon’s promise of the belt held true as well. From the moment the girl first put it around her waist, she could run faster than any other thing upon the mountainside, and not even once in any of the moments since did she trip or stumble or falter, every footfall she made was perfect and sturdy so long as she wore her mother’s belt.

  There was nearly nothing on the mountainside that she couldn’t kill, now, if she took the careful time to sit and work out the best way. But it was only once in three days that she would kill something breathing the thick night air, and she would make the meat of the thing last her a full three days along with nuts and berries and wild mushrooms and fish before she allowed herself to hunt again. She would arrange the bones of every kill where they had fallen into shapes to honor them, into the letters her mother, the Moon, had taught her, or into little piles to bring them just a little closer to the sky. She would make clothing or shoes from the pelts, or find birds up in the trees and offer them furs to help improve their nests. That sprig of death was growing always, sterner and greener, but it was death, not cruelty. There was no cruelty among the living things of the mountainside. There was no cruelty from her mothers. She would have had nowhere to learn it. Perhaps, there was a version of her life where she never would have learned it at all. Perhaps there is a version of every life that is like that, until the scissors of Fate snip it away.

  One midnight, when she was a little more than fifteen years old, the girl was sitting high in the tree branches, practicing and practicing with her bow— always, she was practicing. She had come to love it, so deeply and intimately, the object of the bow, the feeling of nocking and arrow, drawing it back. So deeply and intimately, she had come to love the the way the limbs resisted her pull, the way the wood struggled against her muscles, like hesitation trembling across the taut cords of the words— it was hesitation, the drawing of the bow, and more than that, the holding of it, it was a threshold, a contradiction. She loved, like a partner, the feeling of release. An arrow huffing like a long-held breath finally out into the night air, very nearly straight upwards. That was her practice tonight, firing an arrow very nearly straight upwards into the sky, and then, as quickly as she could, nocking a second arrow and, without looking, shooting it and striking the first arrow as it fell. The girl fired, nocked and fired, strained her ears to catch the tiny “clack” of the two arrowheads against each other if she made the hit. “Clack”— that was the third in a row, the best she’d managed so far, and still not nearly good enough. There was no such thing as good enough. Or maybe there was no such thing as enough to make her want to loosen her tender grip on her bow, spend the rest of the night on something else. She nocked an arrow, fired upwards, nocked a second arrow, aimed blindly, released it. She listened for the “clack”. But she heard something else.

  Movement. Voices— two voices.

  Three times, during the girl’s life, strangers would come to this mountainside. It was Fated as such, it had been decided from the start.

  That was the first time, when she was a little more than fifteen years old. Two strangers, coming to the mountainside at midnight. It was the night of the New Moon, and so the girl’s mother was not watching from above— what was above was the abyss, the chthonic void of what would have been the Moon, a dark circle of secrets and cackles, and nothing but silence, so far as the girl was concerned. She had tried talking to the New Moon. Over and over and over, she had tried, all throughout her life, every month, and always she had been met with nothing. Tonight, too, was a night that her second mother, the old she-bear, had gone wandering off to wherever it was that she wandered to. She had been going off more and more, now that the girl was getting old enough and strong enough and smart enough that she didn’t always need so much looking-after. The girl was alone tonight, the night that the first strangers had come to the mountainside, rustling clumsily through the brush, downwind of everything. It was easy to look for them from up in the high tree branches. It was easy to find them, below. There they were.

  They had no clue she was watching them, not with her own silence and careful positioning, not with the shine of her hair concealed beneath the fawn’s pelt. The strangers came with light of their own, a harsh fire on the end of a stick to guide their way through a moonless night, painting everything they passed with shifting tones of orange. The girl considered dropping down to meet them, learn why they had come here, but her instincts in the end were not that shape. For years and years and years, for her whole life, she had been a quiet watcher, a keeper of her presence, in hunting, in hiding, in moving from place to place. It was the first lesson the old she-bear had taught her, to never exist any more than she had to, just the same as everything else on the mountainside. And so the girl simply followed the strangers up the side of the mountain. She stayed in the tree branches, leaping silently from tree to tree as the pair went along. One a little smaller. One a little taller, the one carrying the torch. Their skin was dark, as the girl’s skin was dark, though their hair and eyes were dark as well where her hair and eyes would shine, and the girl was not sure what this meant. She had never seen any people before aside from herself. She had never thought that there might be people aside from herself; she had never thought of herself as a person at all, or that a person was anything different from anything else on the mountainside. All the girl had been to herself was a bear that had not yet managed to become a bear or a wolf that had not yet managed to become a wolf, or another Moon who had not yet learned how to jump quite high enough to end up where she ought to be. All the rest of the mountaintop was just the same as she was except that it had all figured itself out already. But no, no, now there were creatures like her, people like her down there, rushing along, with arms like hers and legs like hers and skin like hers and only their hair and eyes were different, and were they the strange ones, or was she the strange one? The girl was transfixed. She had no Moon to ask, and no old she-bear tonight to ask her hundreds and hundreds of questions. She had nothing but her own eyes and ears to teach her, tonight.

  The strangers wore linen, the taller one in a tunic, the smaller one in a long dress. The both of them wore leather sandals. The smaller stranger was carrying something, something bundled in their arms. What were they carrying? The girl was certain that if she followed long enough, she would come to know. And she was correct. It was a bit closer to the new sunrise than it was from the sunset when the strangers finally stopped their frenzied climb and dropped to their knees amongst the roots of a great tree. The smaller stranger, they were sobbing, the girl could hear the heaving of their chest and the aching of their eyes and the vessels of their heart being torn off one by one, pouring out into the night. The taller stranger was not calmer, but they were not sobbing the same way. They rose first from their knees, placing a firm hand upon their partner’s shoulder, and with a shaking voice, they spoke.

  “You know that you must.”

  Their voice was deeper than the girl’s own, it was of a completely different sort, from low in the chest. They did not speak as the Moon spoke, as the girl spoke, but the way that the Moon spoke contained with in it all other speech and so the girl was able to easily understand what the taller stranger said, and she was able to easily understand how the smaller stranger answered. “I can’t.”

  The smaller stranger’s voice, that voice was so much more like the girl’s voice, higher and softer, but still so clear, even through the sobbing. The smaller stranger’s words, too— just the same as the girl’s own, years ago, kneeling in front of that fawn. She mouthed to herself the Moon’s response, as she was sure the taller stranger would say it, “You can.”— but that was not what the taller stranger said.

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  “You must,” they said. There was no choice in the matter. They had come all this way knowing what they were coming to do, and they had come all this way, now, to get here, and they were here, now, and so it had to be done. But the smaller stranger shook their head, they sobbed and they sobbed, and they clutched the bundle closer to their chest.

  The taller stranger tore away the bundle and tossed it like a bit of firewood down onto the ground— their partner shrieked and wailed and went crawling, desperately, towards it, but the taller stranger took hold of their shoulder again, more stiffly this time, and yanked them up unto their feet. There, this was another difference between the strangers— the taller of them was more than just taller, they were more thickly built, with broader shoulders and stronger arms. Thinner hips and thighs, and without the beasts that the smaller stranger had, that the girl was just starting to get. Hair on their face, too, scraggly around the mouth, the same sort of hair that the girl was starting to grow on the pits of her arms, and on her calves, and between her legs. Was the girl going to get hair like that on her face, too? Was this the thing she was going to grow into? The smaller stranger howled no, please, they wanted to stay, “You can go if you wish, but I must stay here, I must! Please!”— they struggled, they twisted this way and that like a trapped fawn, trying to pull away, trying to reach that bundle on the ground.

  But the taller stranger would not allow it. With a sharp jerk of their arms, they yanked the smaller stranger away, back down the mountain, dragging, dragging, kicking and screaming and pleading, begging, but on and on, away and away they went, quieter and quieter, darker and darker, until all that was left in the air of them was their scent and a few coils of smoke from their torch, and the forest was death-black again.

  Finally, the girl let herself drop from the trees and tiptoe over to the bundle. What was it that these people had brought with them? What was it that these people had left here? Even before she saw it directly, she was sure of one thing about it. It was alive. She could not see that it was alive, or hear or smell it, but she knew, she could feel its life trembling along the taut cords of the Earth’s soul, connecting it to her. And when she touched the bundle of cloth, she could feel the warmth and the movement. She placed her bow carefully upon the ground. She lifted the bundle, gazed at it in the light of her eyes. Unwrapped the blanket from around it.

  The girl had never seen an infant before, or not a human one. But what else could this have been? It was so much like those strangers had been, those people— it was so much like the girl was, but so small, so fragile. Tiny hands grasping, tiny feet kicking, tiny dark-brown eyes open wide, reflecting the moonlight of the girls own stare. Just the slightest start of death-black hair upon its head. The girl knew that this was a human just like she was a human, just like she knew that she was a human, it was a thing that she just knew. Just like that, inside herself, she knew the correct way to hold it, to cradle it in her elbow and support its neck with her palm. And just like that, too, she knew that the infant was sick. She knew there was something wrong— the tiny hands were grasping, the tiny feet were kicking, those brown eyes were open wide, but the hands were grasping too weakly, the feet were kicking too limply, the eyes were glossy, glazed over, and the baby had just been tossed onto the ground— it should have been crying, or even just burbling, it should have been making some sort of noise, but instead it was just staring at her, like a fawn waiting, wondering about the knife. This infant cradled in the girl’s arms was sick. This infant needed help.

  Already, the girl was starting to panic. She had no first idea of what to do to help a sick child, or her first idea was foolish— to go chasing after those people— its parents? They must have been its parents, and they must have been male and female people, that must have the difference between the two of them, they must have been a male and a female person, because it was always male and female animals together that became parents, the girl had already figured that out long ago, just from paying attention. That had been a female person, the smaller stranger, the one with a voice the same as the girl’s that was what she had been, and the taller stranger— he, he had been a male person. And the girl thought like a fool that maybe if she went chasing after them with the baby, handed it back to them, that they would take it and care for it and everything would be alright. It was foolish, so foolish, and she knew it was foolish— as though they had simply forgotten it and gone off again by accident. That wasn’t what this was. The man and the woman would not take back this child— or the man wouldn’t, at least, and he wouldn’t let the woman take it back, either. They would be no help.

  The Half Moon was gone tonight. It was the New Moon above, now, and the New Moon would give no help to the girl, the New Moon would not even so much as acknowledge her, speak to her, much less guide her. Where was the Half Moon? Where had the Half Moon gone?— where was it that the Half Moon always went on these nights, twice a month? The girl had asked, once, and been told nothing more than that She went “someplace else, for things not to be known of down upon that Earth” and so the girl couldn’t have even guessed where to start looking for her.

  The she-bear was gone tonight, too. But her, the girl knew how to search for. The girl had woken up early or gone to bed late enough a few dozen times to spy the direction the old she-bear left in or came back from. And she knew the she-bear’s scent better than anything, and her paw prints, too.

  The Half Moon had told the girl, over and over, not to follow the she-bear to wherever she went. The Half Moon had told the girl, over and over, that she wasn’t old enough, that it wasn’t time yet, that the she-bear would take her along to where she was going when she was ready to let the girl come with her, that it was her time to decide upon and no one else’s not even the Moon’s. But the Half Moon was gone away tonight, and the she-bear had gone off tonight, and the girl was desperate for help, for someone, anyone, who knew more about things in the world than she did— and so what else was there for her to do? Who else was there for her to turn to? She had to find her second mother.

  The girl took the baby and held it close to her chest as she started off in the direction that the old she-bear always left in, always came back from, around to the other side of the mountain. There was no light now but the stars to guide her, no Moon, so it was only the stars and the light of her own eyes, and that was enough, that had always been enough, but it didn’t feel enough, now. There was something about the slight warmth of the body pressed against her, something about the slight pulsing of it that was so urgent, so terrifying. The girl loosened the fawn-pelt from atop her head, let it tumble around her neck as a scarf, let the pale glow of her hair free to light the path as well, give herself every chance. The girl was racing, rushing, running as fast as she possibly could, she would have been tripping and stumbling and toppling down onto her face if it weren’t for the enchanted belt she wore, with the three pearls, steadying her footfalls, and without the magic of the belt, she wouldn’t have been going nearly so fast— she was moving like these strangers, those people, the parents had moved. Clumsy, with no sense at all of presence or silence or care, just moving to move, to get where she was going. She had to keep going. Maybe, just maybe, if she was just fast enough… maybe, just maybe.

  And it didn’t take long for her to catch her mother’s scent in the air. It didn’t take long to spy one of her paw prints in the soft Earth after the past day’s rainfall. It was easy, from that. The girl had been a good student. She carried on following the scent, and the paw prints, and the snapped twigs or out-of-place leaves along the ground, and the whole while, she was listening for the old she-bear’s certain sort of breathing which she knew so well, which she’d heard for years tight against her own head every morning as she’d fallen asleep— and the whole while, she was hoping that what she would hear was the infant crying, or coughing, or anything, anything to tell her that no, it was all alright, she was worrying for nothing— but nothing, nothing from the child to tell her not to worry. So she kept on tracking, running. She was nearly all the way to the opposite side of the mountain when she finally spotted the open clearing between the trees— the countless white flowers across the ground, and the outline, the dark shape of what could have only been her second mother. The girl had found her! All those nights, all these years, and that wondering, and this was where she’d been, and the girl had finally found her!— and she hardly even cared about that. It didn’t matter what the old she-bear was doing here, why the old she-bear had always been coming here. What mattered was that the old she-bear was here now, and now the girl was here, too, with the infant, and now the old she-bear would be able to help, she would be able to—

  “Don’t.”

  This was not a voice that the girl had ever heard before, but there was something in it that was familiar, or next to familiar. The girl came to a stop. She looked this way, and that way. Ahead of her and behind her. It was not the infant’s voice. And it was not the she-bear’s voice, the she-bear’s voice was a deep, tired growl, and the she-bear could not make words with it. There was no one else around, though, who could have said anything. Perhaps the girl had not heard it at all. Perhaps it was the mad beating of her own heart in her ears that had stopped her. She began to step forwards again, into the clearing— but again—

  “Don’t.”

  Again, the girl stopped. Was it possible? She glanced upwards.

  “Don’t bring the child to her, daughter of My other part.”

  It was the Moon, speaking to her. It was the New Moon, speaking to her. The Non-Moon, the Nothing Where the Moon Should Have Been, the Moon of the Dead, speaking to the girl for the first time in all her life. Her voice was the worms and the beetles, her voice was damp dirt under the fingernails, her voice was too much cold water, pouring and pouring and pouring down the throat and up the nostrils.

  “She has suffered enough, that one… the one sitting in the grass, there… and the one cradled in your arms, they have both suffered enough.”

  The girl wavered at the edge of the trees. “…I don’t understand.”

  The she-bear was just sitting there, in the clearing— and it was definitely the she-bear, now, the girl was close enough to see for certain, even if the scent and the trail had somehow not been enough to really know, the girl could see the faint patches of silver around the back of her second mother’s neck, craned back, face turned up into the night, just gazing… gazing where?

  At the Moon? The New Moon?

  No. The girl traced her mother’s upward stare with her own eyes, and it wasn’t the murmuring corpse of the Moon at which she was gazing, it was… stars? A patch of stars, a patch with a shape, like so many of the stars which came into the sky had shapes to them. This shape had four legs. A tail.

  A bear?

  “It is strange, sometimes, how you grow to treasure the things that are forced upon you,” whispered the New Moon, to Herself more than to the girl— and then to the girl: “This child is going to die. There is nothing that can change that, except to prolong it, and make it uglier in how it lasts. Let it be simple, and clean, and quick. An end to things.”

  The darkness all around began to creep inwards. Like creeping vines or reaching fingertips, the reared up from the Earth, like frightened hair on a forearm, all around, up and up, towards the girl’s clutching arms, and the infant, clutched.

  “Let Me take the child, daughter of My other part.”

  “No,” breathed the girl. “No.”— she held the infant tighter to herself, shielded it with her elbows, her chin, she would have buried it into her ribs if she could have, if that might have kept it safer. “My mother can help… my mothers, they can help me— the Moon, and—“

  “I am the Moon, just as your mother is the Moon, My other part. And I am helping you. As for the she-bear…”

  The darkness came in closer, closer— the girl could not keep it away, but she did not struggle any more to stop it. She did not squirm or scream or try to writhe free. She simply loosened her hold on the infant, and watched it disappear into the black.

  “…perhaps I am helping her, too,” the New Moon said, and after that She did not say anything else, and the girl did not expect Her to. Whatever moment it was that had put the two of them together tonight, it was over now, it was gone, the cord between them had broken. The child was gone. The child had been gone the moment the girl had first lifted it from the dirt. That’s what this was, and the rest had all just been pretend.

  The whole of the mountainside was silent, in that certain way that things are silent, that certain sort of silence after something horrible has happened in a forest. The girl stood, head hung, eyes averted from the world, staring down at her feet, at the darkness of wherever it was that the infant had been taken— or no, it was just the dirt, now, below her. The New Moon’s shadows were as gone as the child, as gone as Her voice. There would be nothing, now, to stop the girl, to warn her again from stepping into the clearing and joining her second mother among the white flowers— and for a moment, she wanted to do it, she thought about doing it. For a moment, she nearly did it. She didn’t want to be alone. For a moment, she started to step.

  And then she turned around and started walking back the way she’d come. She walked all the way back to the other side of the mountain, to the place where she’d started, where the parents had first left their child. Where the girl had left its blanket. Where the girl had left her bow.

  She lifted it with something close to shame, shame for leaving it there, shame for forgetting it until just now. Shame for something else, for nothing, for being able to do nothing in the middle of all of this. She took up the empty blanket, next, soft and white, and she held it to her face, and breathed in deep. Her nose wrinkled at the stench of the child’s illness, the infection, but she breathed in again, and again, until she was sure that she would never forget the smell. And then she tied the blanket around the grip of the bow, one knot, two knots, so that she would never forget any of the rest of it. She kept the other end free, to tie around her wrist or for now her belt, so that her bow, too, would never again be forgotten, left behind.

  She sat and she thought. She thought about the parents, and she thought about the infant. She thought about the New Moon, and all She had said. She thought about her second mother, the old she-bear, staring up at that other bear in the stars. She sat there at that exact spot for the whole rest of the night, into the sunrise, even as the old she-bear came back and fell asleep beside her, and she did not say a word, she just sat, through the whole day, into the sunset, until finally the very first sliver of the Half-Moon, slender as a bent splinter, faded into sight above her, and before she could even stop herself, she was shouting. And then she was crying. And then, and then, her words were rotting away like slops of fruit from her mouth, just empty sounds pouring, useless, from the torn-off vessels of her heart. Her mothers, both her mothers, they listened. They loved. They told her the things that they knew she needed to learn from this. They told her that yes, she had been left on this mountainside, just as that infant had been. They told her that yes, she had been sick, just like that infant had been sick, that was why she had been left here. They told her that no, she had not been as sick as that infant had been, and so the Moon had been able to save her. They told her that yes, the old she-bear’s family had come to this place to gaze down proudly upon her, just as all the other stars were the girl’s own family, proudly gazing down. They told her that yes, she would die someday, too, as all people did, and they told her that yes, the worms and the dirt would take her. They told her that yes, there were other creatures like her out there in the world, of course, other people, and there always had been, and yes, she could leave this place and go to live among them instead if she wished to, she was old enough now, and she told them that no, no, she would never do that, she never wanted to do that, she never wanted to leave here, she wanted to stay with her true family forever, with the Moon, the she-bear, with the stars. They told her yes, she could stay here forever. They told her no, she never had to leave, never, not if she didn’t want to. They told her this place was her home, and that would never be anything but absolutely true.

  For night after night, for year after year, they listened and loved. Night after night, year after year, the girl grew, until at last the girl was fully grown. And so too was the sprig of death planted inside her— now a fully grown tree, with sturdy roots and branches and countless leaves and knots, a tree with room for birds and insects and burrows in the hollow beneath its trunk, a tree of death chittering with life, that was the shape the girl had taken; the woman. She was strong and fierce and kind and careful. She was the rightful owner of the night in this place.

  She was a woman, and nothing less than that, the second time that strangers came to the mountainside.