I went to the river, but the river was dry
I fell to my knees, and I looked to the sky. 
Looked to the sky and the spring rain fell. 
I saw the water from a deeper well. 
-David Olney  

It rolls out before you, all oaks and elms, blackthorns, alders and beeches. Briars and bushes curl like fingers to beckon you in, and a cool autumn breeze rolls out of the west. You can smell wildflowers on it. Lilac, yarrow and foxglove. A wolf's place is in these forests, skulking about the roots of these grand old trees in the rich darkness of their shade, treading on the sweet soil. But the ancestral comfort of the memory has abandoned you now, in your hour of greatest need. 

You are standing at the edge of the world. Far behind you are the high-vaulted castles and bustling marketplaces you have spent your life defending. There are fields of bodies back there, too. You have stricken blows. You have coveted and slain. You have grown anxious with the killing, and your dreams are clouded with the sounds and the smells and the heat of the press, the desperation. But the world is peaceful here, laying open for you, and you have all the great expanse of the forest for yourself. You are truly alone. 

It is your wish that you could stay here forever. Perhaps you might make a lonely grave of the oak tree you lean upon in rest, so far from the civilized lands that none but wild creatures might here disturb you. It is a romantic idea, for you are weary, but it is foolish too. There will be no grave for you, not when all the stars burn away and the world lays barren, save only for you and all the other immortals. Bitterly, you think of them, and the way a sword in the neck of a dragon might slay him, or an arrow in the breast of a unicorn may lay her down, and the way you are deprived of this luxury-- but the thought is profane, and you push it away, and pray for absolution. 

The dark comfort of the forest frightens you in many ways. Within that holy dark is, however, your salvation, and knowing this you are determined to go on. Until your quest triumphs or is proved vain, you must go. It is yours to march until the earth's ending, until the forest gives way to the Nothing Dark that lays beyond, where you might speak with the wicked things that dwell there in all their vast and terrible wisdom. You have walked many long years and now you stand before the Last Wood, the final threshold before the world runs out, and there is no more. The end of space, yes, and as the wizards have speculated, the end of time. 

You tread in, and spend the rest of the day following the forest paths, knowing that there is no navigation now- no maps have been made of this place, and none ever shall be. The sound of birdsong goes steadily silent, until there is no more sound at all but the quiet breathing of wind in the trees. Above the canopy, clouds blow and the earth turns under the sun, until you come to a grove of willows that have bent their weeping forms over a clear, still pond, which reflects the days last rays in a shimmer of blood and gold. Soon, it will be night. You peer in at yourself. 

Your image holds no more horror for you, though when first you rode to war, you were handsome. A little lupine lordling, drinking and howling and thinking of only of pleasure and triumph. Never did you examine the dark corners of your life, until you were made to dwell in them. Forever apart from the hateful light. Now you are as grey as an ancestor wolf, your fangs chipped and your whiskers cut irregularly. 

Your boots are worn and tattered, the claws of your feet press out through the ruined leather, and the sole is torn, so that the rocks and nettles of this place scratch your pads to stinging and bleeding. The coat of mail you wear is nearly rusted away, and the emblem of your long-dead king is soiled and ripped, its heraldry now illegible. You carry a pack and a waterskin, and there is a knife at your belt, and you walk with a single crooked spear for a walking stick. Your bright green eyes throw back no light. One ear is chipped, and there are white marks on your neck and snout where daggers and fangs have passed over you. You have suffered many pains, but some hateful grace has kept you from death, and preserved you that you might go into the Last Wood in the never-ending twilight of your life. 

You pull the grimy rag of your blanket around you, and sleep for what you hope is the last time. 




Midnight. You wake to see her standing there, atop a mirror of starlight, the heavens arrayed under and above her, ordered to her will. Instantly, you know it is her- if your memory and your curse did not tell you, your heart would, for it fears the bent wreckage of her body and her visage, which is gruesome to behold. You hide your eyes like a child, but still she stands in your mind's eye, her long lips pulling up. 

She is every living thing that speaks the tongue of the sentient people. You see wolves in her face, at war with rabbits, at war with lynxes and deer and serpents. You see the suggestion of a crow's beak and a bear's broad muzzle, you see flat elk teeth nestled crookedly against tiger fangs. Her paws are half talon, or all talon or none, for though they are still they are also in perpetual flux, like fluid trapped in crystal. She is hideous, and some ancient instinct of yours bears fangs at the challenge of her gaze, hateful and wrathful despite itself. She senses this, and grins. 

"Bitter," she crows in a voice like the iron whine of a rusty knife being pulled to cut onions. "Bitter is thy draught, wanderer, for thy travels to take thee here. Cover not thy face, pup, for I am blind. Do an old woman this indulgence and commend thyself to my paws and my nose. Come. Stand." 

You do, though it is only half of your will that moves you. With cautious steps, you tread the slender measure between yourself and her, and she walks with a shadow's grace across the mirror surface of the pond, never disturbing a single star. The crone reaches out a gnarled claw, touches along your face. Revulsion crawls within you. She lifts the cold pad of her nose to your face, and you feel her hot breath on your throat, and imagine her briefly, biting it out, performing her killing miracle then and there, with no price asked. You shudder. 

"Bitter, bitter... Thou wishest to die, eh? Thou art seeking thy grave, wolfling, and thou comest to an old woman to dig it for thee? Shameless man, to have an old bag of bones perform thy dirty work. Surely thou knowest, this is what children are for." 

A long tongue curls itself over her muzzle as she tastes the word 'children', and you find your voice at last. It has been too long since you have used it, and words are withdrawn from your throat like a flight of barbed arrows. "Please, old mother." You say, halting and brittle. "Please, I come only seeking death, not burial. The birds..." you cough. "The birds may have me. Only, grant me death, I beg of you." 

"Death, eh?" She caws, bemusedly. "Death! Hast thou not had thy fill? The stink of many corpses lies upon thee, wolfling, and among them I sense the sweetest blood of all. Thou art a witch-hunter, art thou not? Thou art a witch-killer, sure, for on thy stink I smell news of my sister, and the wounding thou dealt her." 

Your heart freezes, and she gives you a smile with a mouth full of mismatched teeth. You have the sudden wild fantasy that they are not even hers, that they have been stolen, and as the thought passes over your mind she smiles, and steps back upon the dark mirror of water. "Ohhh, yes indeed, for thy fear is in there too, and there is no man who so feared a witch as one who has fallen victim to her hex. Wanderer, thou art, and thy blood is immortal. Thou wilt live until the sun is but a cinder, and the veil of timelessness thou art marching toward covers all this world. Thou wilt live, sufferer, on and on, for the crime of thy violence!" 

She lays her head back, cackling. Her ears shift, the expression impossible to tell, feline canine or otherwise. A seed of anger takes root in the fear-bed of your spirit, and you feel your paw gripping your knife. "Ah-ah--" She speaks, holding up a claw and pointing one twisted talon at you. "Wouldst thou be twice cursed, eh? I could make thee into a speechless toad. I could weave thy body in with a willow, that thou might spend eternity weeping o'er thy error. I could snatch the last little bits of hope within thee and make of them spurs to send thee on a journey that's REALLY never-ending, ser *pup*, so play not the witch-killer with me!" 

Chastised, you leave the knife where it is. "Please." You repeat. "I came seeking atonement. You are my last and only hope, I beg of you." 

She lifts her nose into the air, haughty and proud in her ugliness. "Beg, wouldst thou? Is it thy custom to beg upon thy feet, wolfling? Kneel! Submit before the Eldest Sister and see what mercy kissing the earth affords thee." 

Your pelt crawls at the idea of showing her back of your neck, or taking your eyes off the woman at all, but you do. Slowly, deliberately, you kneel upon the ground. You prostrate yourself before her, press your lips to the grassy earth. A long period of silence stretches itself out between you and at last she speaks again, her voice bored, cruelty dissolved into indifference. 

"Obedience ought to be thy mother's first lesson, cur. Never should there have been born a wolf who did not fear his mother's jaws first. But the old ways are dying. Thine own ways are the old ways now, and even they shall pass away from this world before thee. Before thee, in especial. But as thy stench is of suffering untold, and because it pleases me to smell you thus, I will afford thee a minor mercy. Speak, if thou wouldst, and tell me what meager wisdom has thy penitence bought." 

You think back over the great measure of years, the golden spring and summer of your youth and natural adulthood. Your mother and your wife and your child, all who lay interred within the earth, and their children, and their children. You dream in passing of the ancient crone who caught you as you rode home, begged you for a horse. A mere horse. Even with a knight's chivalry, it was too much, and you took your sword and hewed her. And as she lay rasping on the ground, her ancient claws knitted a piece of the Night into your spirit, and ever after you have watched the turning of the world, a separate thing. You remember hot wet of her blood, you remember joking with the men, the cold dread of the night that followed. The long talks with wise men afterwards, alchemists and conjurers and wizards and priests. The funeral of your wife. The funeral of your child. The pitchfork your subjects rammed through your chest when they sensed at last your accursed spirit and drove you from the town. The feeling of the torch-fire catching on your tail. The long years of waiting for your coat to grow back. The ache of your legs in travel. The way no living thing would look at you again, masked as you were by your horrid immortality-- for it is natural for that which dies to fear that which lives forever, or else be in awe of it. 

"That which dies..." You rasp against the ground. "... is beautiful." 

The laughter of the crone rings throughout her dead wood like warped bells. She holds herself in total ecstasy, her claws roaming over her body, squeezing and stroking, taking a sexual pleasure in the agony of your punishment. You lay in the dust and listen to it, and feel the tears streaking down the length of your nose, dripping into the grass. A shattering sorrow sweeps over you. 

"Ohh!" she cries. "Ohhh, very good indeed, yes! Such wisdom is only rarely cultivated in a mortal bed, hah! That which dies is lovely indeed! Oooh, oh stars, oh stones, thou truly ART half nightmare, wolfling!" She holds herself, heaving and panting, the stars arrayed around her like dancing lights in the heaven and earth. The water doesn't even ripple as she strides over to you, wrenches up your face and drags her long tongue up under your eye. "Mmmm, and the salt of thy tears. No mortal man anywhere ever cried these. What a splendid gift my sister brings me! And kingly it might be, for she bought it with her life, eh? Hah! Aha!" 

You can only tremble as the hag holds you. It is as if a grim gale were suddenly blowing through the forest, and you shelter in her. It is a cruel hold she clutches you with, and loving. In the twinkling starlight in the pond, you see that there is a vast magic in this world, white magic and black magic both, and it is all one and the same. You choke down a sob, and regain your composure. 

"Please." You whisper. 

"Please. Please. What a delicious word. The spirit of 'please' dies so fast, it hardly exists at all." The woman spits, suddenly bitter. She withdraws herself from you, standing before you, ancient and horrid, but also maternal, and... in the fleeting hope of your spirit, you imagine benevolence. She frowns, scrutinizing you. 

"Mmm. I spoke too soon of my sister's generosity. Thou art a broken toy already. Very good then- death is thy wish? Then death thou shalt have. Let me hear thy penitent's cry." 

And without warning, she snaps her claws and rips the light of the stars from the sky and the pond and presses it hard to your breast. You scream so hard that blood trickles down your throat as the agony of starfire burns away the shred of Night, that accursed expansive imprinting tangled in your soul, and it lasts hours. Centuries. When it is done you stare up into the infinite void. You see each glimmering light flicker and fade, and for a moment catch a glimpse of the true vastness of the world that bore you. You see it begin with a great fire, and you see it end in the snuffing of a thousand candles, and the flame of your own sun is extinguished long before many of the others. You see each lovely fountain of your earth go dusty, each mountain crumbles away. The sea dries, and the second world under is flourishes and then is dead. You behold, before the end of your trials, the magnitude of eternity. And you lay pressed under it like a serpent crushed under a wagon wheel. 

And then at last, your breathing slows. You stand, shaking, and look about for the old woman. She sits under the willow, a young fawn resting its head in her lap. 

"Thou art a mortal again, wolfling. Never come again to this place." 

She strokes the little fawn. "But as thou art mortal, so must thy body eat. I give this to thee, for pleasing an old woman with few delights left to her in her dotage." 

With a smooth motion, she breaks the neck of the fawn, and leaves it lifeless on the ground. 

"I am... I'm free to leave?" You say, grasping your throat, the world still spinning. 

"Aye, thou art, and no hag's tricks to follow you. Lucky upstart thou. Go, and do no evil with the time afforded thee. For soon enough, thou wilt pass away from this world." 

You can feel it already. The flesh of your body begins to die at last, and the aches of old wounds burn with new savor. 

"Thank you." 

"Gratitude?" she says, looking up to smile. The eyeshine is the last thing you see of her as her shadow fades into the gloom of the forest. "For death? Chivalry yet lives, hoho. Hohoho, and dies with thee, I don't doubt..." 


You cook and eat the fawn. The meat is succulent for the first time in millennia. 

In the morning, you walk to the edge of the forest, and hear the rustle of the wind, and smell the flowers anew. You are dying with them now, and excellent is the birdsong overhead as the finches and meadowlarks cry in their holy joy:

"I am alive, I am alive."