A hundred things about the woman’s life changed after that night. She changed them herself. She had to change things, she was certain. Things couldn’t stay as they were.

  She slept now, during the nights, and travelled and did all the other things during the days. It was hard, at first, it was next to impossible to force herself asleep or keep herself awake. It was a painful headache of a task, adjusting her eyes to the daily glare of the Sun. But it was worth it, she was certain. Things couldn’t stay as they were. She could not bare to be awake, to be up and about with the Moon looking down on her. It was a broken cord between them now, her and her mother. There was nothing to say, and there would only be bitterness and bile, gazing back and forth. Best to be apart. So the woman slept during the nights, and she travelled during the days, she hunted and she ate and she bathed and she searched all around the wilderness beyond the mountainside for traces of those shadows. Anything she could find.

  In the distance, the mountain that she had left behind, towering. It was gargantuan, so much bigger than she had ever imagined it to be, living upon it. She felt small, staring at it. She felt like nothing.

  It wasn’t always right at sunset that she slept. Some nights, the woman would sit up awake for a little and star into the sky, at the new stars that had appeared, the second bear, her second mother. Some nights, she would whisper things to the stars, those stars and she would hope that the old she-bear could hear her, somehow, if there was any of her left up there, and she would hope that somehow, at some point, she would be able to hear something back. She missed her mother so terribly, she wanted to rip herself apart like a leaf. But on the nights she sat awake, she always made sure to ignore the Moon. She always made sure that the Moon knew She was being ignored. The cord between them was broken, now, broken forever just like the old she-bear was lost forever, the cord was broken, that’s what this was, and anything else would have all just been pretend.

  Wherever the spittle of the greater shadow had fallen and splashed, it left a patch of death, a hole in the life of the world, where the grasses and the mosses and the trees had suddenly withered. They were far between, and they weren’t all perfectly in a line— there was no way of telling from one of them or two of them or even three of them where the next would be, not one-two-three-four in a row like the pearls of the woman’s belt; more like those stars above, scattered across the sky. More and more of them, every time the woman looked. More and more, like a nightly heartbeat, marking the time, stars after stars after stars. Sometimes she even caught them as they first appeared, empty sky and then light, and she knew that right then, at that very moment, somewhere in the world, the shadow had claimed another victim. Usually, though, she only noticed the new stars when they’d been in the sky for a little bit already, when she glanced away from the old she-bear for a moment after Sunset and noticed that something was different, something had changed, something new. Sometimes, she could recognize the shapes. A rabbit, a ram.

  It made her more bitter than anything, seeing those stars appear. They were lies, that was what they were— they were the lies of the Moon. They were not the woman’s family gazing proudly down. They were not love and care. They were corpses. They were the victims of a heartless monster, a monster she could have killed, she should have killed, she should have been allowed to kill. Every new star in the sky was a reminder of her unexacted vengeance, vengeance, vengeance, and the bile in her chest just rose and rose. But for all her rage and venom, there was only so much she could manage. After the first few days, the fetid circles of death left here and there by that greater shadow had begun to properly grow back— just the grasses and mosses, for now, the trees would take proper years to return— but even so, they quickly became harder and harder for the woman to spot and follow, and soon enough, she stepped away from one and she could no longer be sure that she had found another. The trail was dead-cold.

  The woman did not care. The woman would not give up, never, not on the name of the old she-bear, her second mother, her most beloved mother— the mother who had not lied to her, betrayed her, blocked her path towards revenge; what sort of a mother was that, who would stand so cruelly against her own daughter? The woman did not care. It did not matter anymore, the Moon did not matter; She was just more dead light in the sky, now. The woman swore, every new morning, that she would find the shadow and make him suffer before he died, make his death slow and painful. Not a quick end to things. Not a clean end to things.

  She wandered aimlessly, now that the trail was lost. For days, weeks, she wandered. The mountains were far out of sight behind her. It was all just wilderness. Every three days, she would carry out a hunt, as before. The woman killed only what she needed, and she made it last those full three days, and she always honored her kills the best she could.

  One day, nearly a full month after leaving what had once been her home, the woman was moving silently through the woods, preparing herself for an afternoon hunt. She kept her nose to the wind, sniffing for scents, and her shining eyes to the dirt below, searching for pawprints or snapped twigs to guide her towards some animal that might have come trotting through before. A few rabbits would be enough, three or four, or one medium-sized deer. It didn’t matter much, one way or the other. No preference. It was all just meat to keep her going, keep her heart beating and legs moving long enough to find that shadow again. There was no other purpose for living, so all that matter was to live and to search.

  The woman’s eyes won first, today, spying a fresh paw print between two tree-roots. She considered the shape, and the size. Good claws on it, not a deer or a rabbit or a horse or a boar, not a thing that was accustomed to being hunted. No, this animal was a hunter. Too large to be a fox or a bobcat. Too small to be a bear, and that was a good thing, as well; the woman had made a promise to herself and to the dead stars that she would never hunt a bear, no matter how desperate or hungry she found herself. She made that promise out loud, with those stars and all the other stars as witness— and then, silently, just to herself, she promised also that even if a bear were to hunt her, she would not fight back, she would not so much as flee. There was no point to living but to search and avenge her most beloved mother, and if some echo of that mother down on this Earth saw her better off dead, then there was no reason for her not to die, not even that revenge. Some nights, after whispering her love and apologies to the stars, she thought about taking the silver knife with the moonstone handle and plunging it into her heart, so that maybe she would go up into the sky as well. But no, nothing she had ever killed had found its way into the stars, and surely even her own self would be no different, nothing special. It was only that shadow’s way of murdering that put his trophies above. Who could say how?

  It was not a deer or a rabbit or a horse or a boar or a fox or bobcat or a bear that had left the pawprint between the roots today, that much was clear. And whatever it was, the woman was upwind of it. She couldn’t seem to catch any sort of scent, so the wind would lead her towards it, not away— and so she followed the wind. Quickly, at first, the woman followed the wind, and as she went she stayed up in the branches of the trees, leaping from branch to branch to branch, always landing perfectly, every footfall steady and sure by the magic of her belt. It was always better to start up in the treetops when she could, and to stay up there as long as she could, keep height and concealment as an advantage. It was a different thing, hunting during the day instead of the night; the woman’s shining hair and eyes didn’t stand out nearly so much in the fearsome sunlight all around— but even so, the woman kept the fawn-pelt tied tight around her head. Every advantage was advantage, and every advantage was welcome. She untied her bow from her belt, and fastened it tight to her wrist as she raced, treetop to treetop, incredible speed by the magic of her belt.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  But then she began to slow. She stopped.

  Her nose still had yet to catch anything— she was still upwind to whatever she was on the trail of. But her eyes, her sharpest eyes were beginning to catch more and more clues across the floor of the forest below. Broken twigs and crushed leaves, bent blades of grass— more pawprints— and more than that, too. She was starting to spy great splashes of blood, here and there. Something had happened, nearby, and not long ago— it had barely started to dry. It was a predator she was hunting, and perhaps it had caught up with something just as she was catching up with it, sunk its teeth in; a last meal. Or perhaps something else had happened. The most blood along the edge of a jagged rock— that was where it started, the blood trail, and from there the paw prints came haphazardly alongside the droplets, uneven left and right. A limp. An accident. Something had fallen or jumped badly or come running too fast without looking and torn its leg open upon that rock. Something was wounded, in pain, crippled. Something was already dying, maybe, and it hadn’t made it too far from here.

  Something made the woman drop from the treetops.

  Something inside her. She couldn’t quite say what it was, why she had given up that advantage— every advantage was advantage, and every advantage was welcome, but it had felt wrong, somehow, to stay up there any longer as she made her way towards wherever it was that the injured creature had hobbled off to. She loosened the fawn-pelt from around her head and let it fall limp over her shoulders. She let her long, shining moon hair tumble free down her back. She carried on dead-ahead as she continued to follow the limping paw prints and the blood trail; on any other day, she would have begun to circle around until she caught the scent of her quarry, until she was downwind and it was upwind, so that she could smell it and it could not smell her— every advantage was an advantage. But today, no, she just carried on, and she was certain that the animal could smell her coming. It could hear her coming, too, she wasn’t bothering to silence her footsteps, she openly allowed herself to crack twigs with her feet or crunch dry leaves. She let herself breathe loudly. A moment later, it could even see her coming. She stepped between two trees, and there it was, laid out on the dirt, staring at her.

  A beautiful silver she-wolf, with a death-black tail. An enormous gash along her back-left thigh, where the rock had cut her. A bad wound. She gazed up at the woman without fear in her eyes. Something else. Gratitude?— maybe. Relief? This was a creature doomed to die, with a wound like that, and not cleanly. She could not hunt. She would fester. She was helpless, here. Starvation, or infection, or the saw-beaked birds coming along to tear her to pieces, bit by bit. A slow and painful end to things. But now here was the woman to end things quickly and cleanly. The woman approached the she-wolf, gently, confidently— such a different thing from how she’d approached the fawn around her shoulders so long ago. She needed no words of encouragement and safety, now, no nudges from the Moon. She needed nothing from the Moon, now. The woman was a life all her own. She approached the she-wolf, one foot in front of the other— and the she-wolf did not squirm or snarl or try and threaten her away. That was not what this was. The she-wolf simply waited as the woman knelt before her, untied the bow from her wrist and returned it to her belt. Drew her silver knife with the moonstone handle.

  And hesitated. Hesitated.

  The woman was hesitating— why was she hesitating? There was the knife in her hand. There was the she-wolf before her, defenseless and calm, unafraid, accepting of this. And yet, the woman was hesitating, the cords of the Earth’s soul trembled with her hesitation— all around, in the high treetops, birds sensed the vibrations and took to wing, scattering from the held tension; there was no knowing what might happen. The woman had done this so many times before, ended so many lives so easily, since that first one, without regret or uncertainty. But to kneel there and stare into the eyes of this she-wolf, the woman could not bring herself to end things, any more than she could have cut off her own fingers, any more than she could have killed a bear now since her vow if it had come stalking after her. It didn’t fit within the shape of her life, the shape that death had made her, to kill this creature now. Somehow, it just wasn’t who she was.

  She lowered her knife. It was the right thing to do— just as it had been the right thing to do to come down from the treetops, to loosen her fawn-pelt, to stay upwind, to let her feet make noise. It was what she was meant to be doing. The woman reached out to stroke the she-wolf along the snout, and she did not resist, she did not flinch away or bear her teeth. She accepted the woman’s touch with a gentle closing of her eyes. She pressed against the woman’s hand with a shift of her nose, as close as any wolf could say to “yes”. And that was that. The woman rose up again and immediately went searching about nearby for herbs and other grasses to treat and wrap the wound, keep it from serious infection. Every few minutes or so, she would come rushing back to check on the she-wolf, make sure she was still breathing, make sure no other predator had come wandering this way in pursuit of an easy meal. She scared off a pair of foxes, brandishing her bow. She shooed off the saw-beaked birds with angry cries up into the air. She caught a pair of rabbits for herself and the she-wolf to eat, one raw, one cooked over a fire. She carved a bit of wood into a simple bowl, just as she carved her own arrows, and she brought water from a nearby river for the she-wolf to drink. For three days and three nights, the woman cared for the she-wolf there in those woods, at that very spot. For three days and three nights, she never wandered more than a mile from that spot, and never any less than that either for more than even just an hour. She spent those three days gathering food and herbs for ointment and water for cleaning and drinking, and she spent those nights sat awake, keeping watch, like the old she-bear had once spent all her days. She told herself that she was being as her second mother, her most beloved mother had been. She told herself that this was how a caregiver ought to be. She told herself that she would never betray the she-wolf as she had been betrayed. She let the Moon watch her at work, so She would know how much better Her daughter was than Herself. And all the while she told herself that when the she-wolf was able to travel again, this would pay off for her threefold. As sharp as the woman’s nose was from all her years on the mountainside, the she-wolf’s nose was threefold sharper. The woman had already given up all hope of catching sight of the shadows’ trail again, the splattered bits of death it had left behind as it travelled— those were all but entirely overgrown. And as far as her own sense of smell went, that horrid sour stench had already all but vanished from the air. But for the wolf’s nose…

  After three days and three nights, in the morning, the she-wolf was finally able to, slowly, carefully, a little painfully, a little clumsily, lift herself from the forest floor and hobble forwards. One step. Two steps. A small stumble. The woman rushed in to help catch the she-wolf’s balance, steady her again, and when she was steady again, she took a third step. A fourth. A little easier. A little more confident. By the afternoon, the she-wolf was able to walk alone without fear, though without much speed as well. But that was fine. That was to be expected, the woman had been fully expecting that. It would be another day or so before the she-wolf could properly walk again. Another two days, probably, after that, before the she-wolf could properly run. The woman continued to do the hunting during the day for her companion, and she continued to tend the wound whenever the pair of them stopped to rest. She continued to sit awake keeping watch for the first two nights after the she-wolf began walking again, but after that, exhaustion caught up and she began to sleep through the nights once more— she could not stop herself. It was the she-wolf now, sitting awake, keeping watch. With the love of a grandmother, the she-wolf sat awake beside the sleeping woman. Through the evening, she basked proudly in the moonlight. In the morning, she gazed out with pride at the sunrise. During the day, she began to help the woman with the hunt for food.

  After a week, the woman asked the she-wolf to help her track down the shadows. She sat awake with the creature for a few minutes after Sunset, and she pointed up at the stars, and she mimed out the best she could what had happened to the old she-bear, her second mother, her most beloved mother. And the she-wolf, she understood. News was murmuring all across the Earth, among the creatures, of the shadow-hunter spreading his trophies in the sky. Around this place, especially, there was still chatter of what had happened with the shadow’s last arrival, the death of the she-bear; when the woman pointed up at her second mother, it was perfectly clear what she was asking, and the she-wolf answered just as clearly, with a twitch of her ear, a swish of her death-black tail, a nod of her head. She would take her sharp nose and she would help the woman track down the shadows. And more than that, when they found them, she would help the woman tear them apart. The woman’s hopes were her hopes, now.

  A friend.