Isabella stared now, lips parted. Emily shook her head, leaned forward. But whatever the Changer had meant to do in that moment, whatever she had meant to say, the witch would never know, for something twisted in her, and Isabella decided, then and there, that no matter what happened, fate had brought her to this moment, and it was Solstice night, and if she didn’t do it right now, for the rest of her life, she would regret it.
So Isabella reached up, wrapped her arms about Emily’s neck and kissed her.
Her lips were soft, like peach skin warmed in summer sunshine. This is the first thing that Isabella knew. The second was that Emily was kissing her back, the Changer’s hands at her waist, holding her close and tight. She tasted of spice, of cinnamon and clove and coffee, and the tangle of her hair tickled Isabella’s wrist, and the whole world was singing again, or perhaps it was the stars, or maybe it was the blood in their bodies, but Isabella was almost certain that something, somehow, somewhere was making music.
When they stopped, when they began to breathe again, nose to nose, Isabella did not dare to open her eyes. What if it had been all wrong, what if Emily hadn't wanted to kiss her? What if...
She had to open her eyes, to see, and she did. Emily stared at her, insistent, and then came for her, gently pulling her close, tasting her mouth, her neck, her skin as Isabella shivered with delight and an unquenchable, newborn joy.
Alice laughed a little cat laugh and squeezed out of the shack through a large rodent hole, off to hunt her dinner.
---
Isabella lay, curved like a question that Emily answered. Skin to skin, length to length, she was completed by the Changer’s body.
“Bless this night,” whispered the witch, kissing the palm of the Changer’s hand. “Bless it,” she whispered again, and again, closing her eyes to the dying embers, the splintered boards that separated them from the star-spangled canopy of heaven. There was such a contentment in her, such a deep peace, such as she had never felt before. Her body, her blood, thrummed with a litany of gratitude as the Changer drew her closer, arms about her, held and safe.
Isabella slept.
---
It pierced, sharp, jagged, splintering. Isabella cried out, sat up so quickly her breath left her, hands over her ears. The thin cry came again, blade-like, crawling through her head, and the witch’s heart thundered as fear crawled with pricking fingers down her mouth into her stomach, trailing terror with it.
The wolf’s howl ceased, and the absence of it was almost as terrible as the sound had been.
Emily was on her feet, hands balled into fists, and Isabella rose, shakily, drawing close to her. “That... Was that a wolf howling?” the witch whispered in the dim light of the embers, willing Emily to shake her head—of course not, no, no wolf could sound like that. It was just the wind.
Emily shifted her jaw, looked to Isabella, her eyes wide.
“It’s...it's him,” the Changer breathed.
It couldn’t be. Isabella felt herself falling away, gripped Emily’s arm, felt the connection of skin, how real she was. She gulped a great lungful of air, steadied herself against the Changer.
She felt it, that dim awareness, the shadow of something lean and wrong on the edge of the world. As she gripped Emily’s arm, as they both stood perfectly still, they heard a crunching in the snow, and Alice dove through the little hole, fur so puffed that Isabella wouldn’t have recognized her, if the cat had not spoken:
“Wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf,” she wailed, the words high and thin and keening. Isabella scooped up the little cat, feeling the hammer of her heart against her fingers. Emily took up her furs, her coat, shrugged into them like a second skin.
“A wolf, Alice?” she whispered to the little cat, and Alice nodded, her whiskers twitching.
“Enormous. White. So, so big,” the little cat breathed.
Emily's jaw tightened, and she flicked her gaze back up to Isabella.
Enormous. White. So, so big.
The Wolf of Winter.
“It's here,” the Changer moaned, rubbing her hands over her face. “And it's heading into town. I can feel it.”
Isabella could, too, like the vibration of a knife scraping along stone, could feel it moving through the woods, wrong as a wound. Isabella had been afraid of very little in her life, but she felt fear now pulling her muscles and her bones into strange patterns.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, voice shaking as Emily put her hand upon the door.
“It’s headed for the town,” the Changer repeated, tears streaking down her face. Isabella and Emily stared at one another, their hearts shattering the stillness of the air. Before Isabella could say “no,” before she could move forward, Emily bent forward at the waist. She took up the witch's hand in her own, and she pressed warm, soft lips to the back of it, skin to skin. Emily kissed the witch’s hand and then she turned, went out through the door to stand on top of the mountain.
The sky was brightening; thin light spilled across the stars. Emily became the doe, and she began to run, great bounding leaps down the mountain, and Isabella’s wail cut through the air, silenced as the wolf filled the world with his howl again.
Isabella felt sick, didn’t know what to do for a staggering moment in which she stood, shaking, Alice at her feet, tail straight in the air.
Emily was going to town.
Isabella knew that Emily was going to head off the wolf.
Emily...against the Wolf of Winter.
Isabella snatched up her dress, still damp, dove into it, taking up one of the blankets and wrapping that about her, too. She grabbed Alice, who burrowed under the witch's blanket next to her collarbone, and she took up her broom. She gulped the cold air down and sat on the broom and went up into the air like smoke, up and up and up, until she could look down into the woods as if with the eyes of a bird.
She saw it.
It was as tall as the trees, gaunt as bones. It couldn’t be real, but it was: the pines bent before it, bowing as if to a king. Its coat was shaggy and white, snowdrifts of fur that cascaded, stretched and taut, over a frame that was all odd angles and sharp joints. Its muzzle was long, thin, tapered and ugly, and its eyes—even from this height, she could see its eyes—glowed like the sparking thread of a poisonous spell.
It was plague, and it was storm, and its jaw hung, open and distended, drool dripping, sizzling, from the corners of its mouth onto the forest floor, as it lumbered, slinking through the trees.
The village shone, sleeping, at the end of its pointed snout.
Isabella pushed down on her broomstick, angled it to drift closer, drawing the blanket about her, horror dulling the edge of the cold. From her vantage, she could see Emily racing, bounding through the woods, saw that she would meet the wolf before the wolf met the town.
This could not be. Isabella knew it could not be. She pressed against the broom, willed herself to move faster as she dropped like a stone for the wolf.
Emily skidded to a halt, Isabella too late, the wolf too fast. It spied the doe, paused in its hunt and beeline for the village, paused and gazed upon the Changer as its eyes sparked. It was a horrifying, still moment as the monstrous creature stared down at the little white doe, but Isabella knew that it would be a moment that would return to her nightmares again and again for the rest of her life...that is, if she even had a rest of her life.
For the Wolf of Winter turned and it came for the Changer.
It was enormous, the wolf, but that did not mean that it was slow. It took a single step, lunging forward, and within a heartbeat, the Changer was grasped in the wolf's jaws. Emily had seen him coming, but could not move out of his way fast enough. The wolf picked up the Changer, biting down with jaws that crushed and mangled, even as Isabella cried out in the air, too far away to help her.
Isabella's body moved by instinct, and she angled her broom to drop like a stone toward the wolf and Changer. She felt, more than saw, the pricking of the rise of the sun, felt it against eyes that sh
e could not remove from her target, the wolf, who was casually tossing the doe in its mouth, biting down with jaws so powerful that Isabella could hear bones breaking.
The horrific moment was but a heartbeat long. For the sun came up over the edge of the world, and the wolf had not reached the town, which meant—by some strange, arcane rule—that its spell was broken, and just like some strange, arcane rule, the beast dispersed like fog, shimmering out of existence before the witch's eyes.
Emily fell to the earth, a woman, no longer a doe, crumpling into the snow in a heap of furs.
She did not move.
Isabella's broom plummeted, and her landing was utterly terrible—the witch had flown the broom too quickly toward the ground, and she got a twisted ankle for her troubles, but she didn't care one little bit. She ignored the pain blossoming in her foot, ignored everything else, in fact, as she ran sobbing to the unmoving pile of fur and skin and hair.
What was left of Emily.
For that was Emily lying there in the snow, broken, panting—somehow, impossibly, alive—but just barely. Isabella fell to her side, taking in the crushed bones, the splash of red against the snow, her life’s blood leaking out. She put her hands against Emily’s side, her leg, her face, trying to stop it, but the blood only came faster.
“No,” the witch moaned, “no, no, no,” and then she was screaming it, screaming the single word in a litany, a prayer. An order.
She was unaware of the gathering crowd until Mrs. Goose knelt, still somewhat distant, and cried out her name.
Isabella looked up, gripping Emily’s side, trying to stitch the wound together with magic, but she was much too upset to make the magic work. Dully, she registered the assembled villagers, their bed caps and nightgowns and slippers in the snow, their shocked expressions, their open mouths. She stared at them as they stared at her, at Isabella and her Changer, lying dying in the snow.
Isabella wept, great heaving sobs that shook every bone within her, the tears falling onto Emily’s face, her hands.
“He came,” said Isabella, and she said it three times, four times, fast and high. ”He came, and she saved you. She saved you,” she spat to Mr. Ox, who stared down at her with wide eyes, speechless. “She saved you from the Wolf of Winter,” said Isabella, “and now she is going to die because of it.”
For Emily was going to die. Isabella felt this, felt this in her hands, in the layers of magic she was trying—unsuccessfully—to weave together to graft the skin, to recant the blood, to still and settle the Changer’s body to some semblance of healing. Isabella was too upset, too exhausted, too weakened and too mediocre to save her life, and this meant that Emily Deer was going to die.
Because of her.
“No,” the witch whispered, heart breaking. “No, no, no...”
Dully, as if from very far away, Isabella knew that Mrs. Goose was touching her shoulder.
From even farther away, she registered that Mr. Ox touched Mrs. Goose’s shoulder.
Isabella closed her eyes.
From Mr. Ox to Miss Peacock, from Miss Peacock to Mr. Crow, each villager laid one hand upon the other’s shoulder or hand or arm, creating a makeshift spiral, ever widening and expanding. They touched one another, and the thrum of power came, insistent, pulsing like a heart. The magic from each Changer came to flood into Isabella, and through Isabella into Emily.
The witch took the power, and she began to build, unthinking, by feel alone. She built the blood, and she built the bones. She built the muscles and the sinew and the tendon, and she built it all back, back as it had been, not so very long ago. The magic thrummed through her, twisting, spiraling, filling and creating.
And then it ceased.
And Isabella opened her eyes and let out a great sigh, the last bit of breath leaving her in a gasp. For Emily opened her eyes in an unmarred face. She lifted back her head, whole and new and clean, and sat up, breathing. The Changer was healed.
For a long moment, no one moved. They all stood, still joined together, and then Mr. Ox helped Emily stand, put her arm about his great, broad shoulders, and together they walked into town. Mrs. Goose helped Isabella up, and then she snorted, lifting the girl in her arms as if she were a sack of flour, carrying her without protest, following Mr. Ox, because after spinning the copious amounts of healing magic, Isabella was much too weak to move by herself. The villagers went with them all, quiet, silent, as the Changer and the witch were brought to the town hall and carried up the great stone steps.
The children raced ahead and opened the giant double doors, and then Isabella and Emily were ushered in, seated at the head table, leaning against one another. Isabella wrapped her arms about Emily’s neck, buried her face in the Changer’s shoulder and breathed in the clean, good smells of cinnamon and clove and coffee, and then there was the clearing of a throat, and Mr. Ox stood before them.
“Please,” he said, taking his floppy hat in both hands, twisting it this way and that, “accept our apologies,” he said. “If you can.”
Isabella cast about for Miss Cat, the woman who had been the Changer's biggest critic...but Miss Cat was nowhere to be seen. The witch would later learn that she had left the town of her birth in the night, having suffered through the “last straw,” since the villagers hadn’t had enough “backbone” to “run out the outcast” for good.
Emily looked from one earnest face to the other, her own gaze unreadable. When she said nothing, Mrs. Goose cleared her throat, spread her hands.
“It may take some time,” she said, voice heavy. “But can we do our best to right this wrong? Please let us try. May we have...a second chance?”
Emily looked at Isabella, and Isabella smiled weakly, gratefully, back at her, and squeezed her hand.
A great cheer rose up when Emily nodded her head, almost imperceptibly, and another cheer rose up when Emily stood and shook hands with Mr. Ox. The Winter Solstice feast began when Emily and Isabella both raised their mugs of cider and toasted and kissed beneath a sprig of ivy, as green as a gem above them.
When Isabella managed to steal a moment away, she took Emily aside and gave her the gift, feeling a bit silly. What difference did a little glass thing make after this incredible Solstice night?
But Emily wept and kissed her and held her close, and she said it was the first gift she’d ever been given. Isabella swore it would not be the last.
And Alice pronounced it all very well and good, and purred the greatest compliment she’d ever given to her witch: “You didn’t screw it up!”
Isabella smiled.
Love, she had discovered, was the easiest witchcraft.
Part Two: Deep Winter
Isabella was beginning to realize that when you're in love, spring is the most beautiful season of all.
Or…almost spring.
The witch stepped off her cottage's back porch, letting booted feet sink into snow, vibrant and shining as diamonds, instantly numbing each of her toes as she pricked her nose up to the insistent, frozen winds. The sun was just bobbing up and over the edge of the horizon, and the birds sang, lusty and lyrical despite the frozen wasteland they now found themselves in. If Isabella cocked her head just so and listened intently enough, they seemed to say the same thing over and over again: spring. Spring is coming, and the world will soon be waking up, and everything is beautiful.
Isabella shivered in delight, making her way down the new deer path, the imprints of cloven feet marking fresh prints on last night’s new snowfall. It was bitterly cold in the early morning, cold enough for any rational person to stay indoors, but she was being stubborn today. It was almost spring, and she refused to wear her shawls seventeen deep, though her skin rose in gooseflesh for her obstinacy at wearing only one winter cloak against the biting chill.
Everything seemed to be singing—the whisper of water in the brook beneath the crystalline ice, the creaking of the branches with their expectancy of leaves, dancing in the strong wind, the hum of sap rising in those same trees. Isabella f
elt that she might burst from the joy of it all, the glee rushing through her like blood or sap or song.
Isabella walked a good, long way, listening to the music of the wood before she paused—for the music had invariably changed. The bird song, this deep in the forest, was more hushed now—and there, ahead of her on the path, was the reason why.
The creature rose, great and white and silent. It moved through the sheltering trees like a shadow, a sentinel stately and grace-filled. Isabella paused, then, heart beating in her throat, every bit of her skin murmuring with shivers as the shape became clearer, materializing out of the wood and wind as a white doe.
The creature raised her delicate, curved head, eyes wide, nose wrinkling. She had spotted Isabella, and the witch stood very still, unable to swallow the grin.
For she knew the deer's secret…
The great doe bowed her head then, and a swirl of shadow rose up from the ground to spiral about her form. In the blink of an eye, the shadow was gone, and the doe with it, for the deer had changed into a familiar woman covered in white furs and hides, arms outstretched to Isabella. And the witch ran to her lover, swept up in the Changer's arms, twirled around and around until they fell down on the soft snow, laughing, limbs akimbo and entwined.
“Sorry I ruined your communing-with-nature time,” whispered Isabella, lips finding her favorite place on Emily's neck and kissing her there. Emily laughed, low voice soft and rumbling as she squeezed Isabella tightly.
“I'm surprised you're up so early,” she murmured into Isabella's ear, causing the witch to shiver in delight. “When I left, you were so deeply asleep you didn't even stir—”
“I woke up, and I missed you,” said Isabella simply. Pillowing her head on the Changer's breastbone, she was rewarded with the soft insistence of Emily's heartbeat, pulsing, gentle, constant. Married with the other musics of the morning, Isabella felt peace steal over her, by degrees, with the simple splendor of it all.
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