The grand palace of the king and queen of Caledonia was magnificent. It towered over the rest of the city— it was the first thing to see from a distance, and the closer the woman became to it, the more it impressed upon her. It was easily as tall as the larger shadow that had come to her mountainside. It was easily as wide as the mountain itself. She had never imagined that people could build something at such a scale. How had they managed it? From top to bottom, the walls of the palace were enormous blocks of perfectly polished white marble. How had they gotten here? It must have been the work of one of the Gods of this place, of human places, surely. How else?

  The gates of the palace was even more stupendous. They were tall as trees, made of intricately carved bronze— carved into the shapes of two mighty figures. “The Sea, on the left,” explained Meleager. “The God Poseidon. And on the right is the Thunder. The king of all the Gods, just as my father is the king of all of this city. Zeus.”

  He spoke with reverence, with a bowed head and clasped hands— he had just a moment ago handed off his spear to one of the many attendants who had come rushing towards him from around the palace walls. More of them were beginning to take off his dazzling armor one piece at a time, even as he walked. They were coming to rub perfumes in his hair, lotions and ointments on his arms and legs— they crawled alongside him on hands and knees, going at his feet and calves and lower thighs. And when the two great palace gates swung open, there were a dozen more of them.

  Now, too, finally, the woman was starting to be noticed. There were servants running up to her as well. “A guest of the Prince!” they cried, and they began tending to her arms and legs as well. At first, she tried to swat them away, but they were insistent, these people, they were not to be stopped. She considered making a run for it, letting the speed of her belt put some distance between her and this strange place, strange among the strange. But then, a moment later, the lotions and ointments began to do their work upon her tired muscles. Yet another new sensation, a new feeling for her body— had she really been so sore until now? Had she really been aching so badly? She must have been. If she hadn’t, what was this stiff tension leaving her limbs?

  The perfume, though, that was too much. Even when they were just putting it in Meleager’s hair it made her scowl, wrinkle her nose— why would someone do that? Why would someone even think to do that? Wearing such perfumes, a person’s scent would be catchable for miles and miles and miles— to the nose, the whole of the palace blazed like a beacon, like a golden ram upon a distant hill. Leto snarled and menaced at the first few servants who tried to approach her, dab at her fur, and they quickly decided not to try any further. When one of the others tugged down the woman’s fawn-pelt from her hair, she pushed him away— not violently, but clearly: none of that for her, either. But the man she had pushed, he was well and truly shocked.

  “Such hair!” he exclaimed. “How it shines! Surely, you are a Goddess! Or you are the child of a God and a human, the Princess of some distant foreign land met by our Prince during his travels and brought back with him to wed!”

  And just like that, it was traveling like a murmur through the whole palace, this strange woman with her strange hair and eyes— and her strange wolf, as well, had anyone ever seen a wolf with such a beautiful death-black tail? And just like that, it was the village all over again. From every direction she was being peppered with questions and offers, until Meleager stepped in— “That’s enough upon her,” he declared. “She is my guest in the palace of my mother and father, and she is to be left alone until her or I or they decide otherwise.”

  That was all it took. Immediately, the servants retreated. As simply and surely as a rock falls when dropped, off they went, at just the Prince’s word.

  “They are like the horses and the oxen, the ones who pull,” murmured the woman. “Yes? Good food, warm beds. They must be happy to serve.”

  Meleager did not answer.

  The three of them carried on through the grand courtyard of the palace. And such a courtyard it was! A beautiful garden with strange, wonderful trees— the sorts of trees that the woman had never seen anywhere across her whole mountainside. Trees with plump, colorful fruits, trees with leaves of pink or gold. And flowers upon the ground in every shade and shape. It was another world, this courtyard. Where had all these different plants even come from?

  “From all over the world,” Meleager answered. “My parents have messengers and other delegates of theirs traveling everywhere, bringing tidings of war or peace or friendship, bringing and taking back gifts. That tree there, with the blue flowers, that was gifted as a sapling from the great king Schoeneus of Boeotia.”

  “Boeotia…”— the woman had heard this name before, it floated to the surface of her mind from the depths of the soup of drunken memories she’d been keeping off to the side. “That is the kingdom of Phrixis and Helle, yes?”

  “Yes!”— Meleager gave a surprised nod of approval. “The very same kingdom. And Schoeneus is their half-brother.”

  “What about all these flowers?” the woman asked. “Look at their petals, the same pale white starlight as my hair and eyes and blood. Where have these come from?”

  “These have come from Colchis, a gift from the fearsome king Aeetes. We gave him a hundred cattle in return for just those in the hopes that he and his armies would leave us alone— and it must have worked, I suppose. He hasn’t caused us any sort of trouble, yet.”

  “‘Armies’?”— it was just word after word after word in this new place, all these odd, made-up ideas to keep track of.

  “Not a thing you’ll ever have to worry about,” Meleager answered, and he hoped that he was right.

  By this point, news of his return had reached his parents, and so both of them were waiting at the head of their great hall, past the second set of gates at the end of the courtyard. The first thing the woman thought, seeing them, was how much like their son they looked. It was incredibly striking— and perhaps incredibly obvious. But it was a thing that was at the same time slightly alien to her. Did she look so much like her parents, her birth parents had? Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe she had started out looking like them, but now she looked like the parents who had raised her on the mountainside. Like it or not, her hair and eyes and blood shined as her mother, the Moon. Did she look at all like the old she-bear? Perhaps she had gotten the same soft eyes. Perhaps her long nails were not so different from her mother’s claws. Perhaps her canines were more pointed than they would have been.

  Wishful thinking. She couldn’t quite get the thought out of her head, that there was no one that she had ever met down on this Earth who looked like her the way Meleager looked like his parents.

  The second thing she thought, looking at the king and queen, was that their clothes must have been a terrible inconvenience. The king wore a great robe and cape of heavy fabric and fur. Gold and jewels glittered from nearly every surface of his body— and double so for the queen, whose dress was so little that she may as well not have been wearing anything at all. Her breasts and bare hips were exposed to the air— and yet, still, she was covered in precious gems, as bracelets, as anklets, as rings and necklaces, as pins woven into her long, gorgeous hair. It must have made a terrible noise as she was tracking deer or rabbits. The woman wondered how she managed to keep it all quiet.

  The king was beaming ear to ear. “My son!” came his booming voice, and what a voice! He had a voice to match the weight and splendor of his palace, its gates, its courtyard. His voice went echoing across the hall, like the great cavern behind the mountainside’s crashing waterfall, where the woman had always run away to when she was young and wanting to be alone, out of sight of both her mothers. Thick columns of marble held the ceiling aloft. Every wall was exquisitely decorated with paint and tapestries, telling stories of what could only have been more Gods, or heroes of the past. The woman, in an instant, felt smaller than even the titanic mountain had made her feel, seeing it from a distance. “There are so many stories you must tell us of your travels!” called the king as his son and the strange-haired woman crossed the hall towards him. “You must tell us where you have been, what you have seen, what you have done— and surely, you will tell us as well of this beautiful wolf, and even more this fine maiden traveling with you, what divine enchantments emanate from her.”

  But that would have to wait. The king and queen had declared a grand banquet for tonight, the night before the great hunt for the wicked boar was set to start, in the morning. There would be food and drink and entertainment, and it was there that Meleager would have his sway of the room, tell all his stories, the king decided.

  “And of course tomorrow you will be dressed out in the finest splendor, the greatest of our armor, and you will carry the greatest of our weapons, ride upon the strongest and fastest of all our horses, be accompanied by the most skilled of all our tracking dogs— and you shall lead the party of assembled heroes and hunters in pursuit of the boar and its spoils, and its glory!”

  Already, many of those heroes and hunters had gathered in the hall to see the Prince’s return. There were Kepheus and Ankaion, first of all, “The beloved brothers of my mother,” told Meleager. “And there is wily Eurytion, always quiet, always watching.”

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  Kepheus and Ankaion were leaned against the back wall of the room with a certain comfort— they were the family of the royals, this was their proper place, they seemed to think— or at least the woman thought that they seemed to think so. The third man stood even further back, in the corner. His eyes were like the eyes of the killer birds on the mountainside. His arms and legs were thickly muscled, and the armor he war was not quite so dazzling as Meleager’s had been, but it was covered in pits and scrapes— he had seen his fair share of trouble.

  “And that there is slender Peleus. Husband to a sea-nymph, a new father, but come all the same to win his glory.”

  Glory, glory, over and over, the word. It was what so many of these hunter-playing heroes had gathered here to gather. There was hot-tempered Idas and rain-tempered Telamon, Peleus’ brother. All in different armors, all with exceptionally kept beards and hair, and heavy muscles— even Peleus, who was slighter and shorter than any of the rest, he was built with solid strength.

  From the moment she had come into the hall, all of the heroes’ eyes had been on Meleager— not the woman. Meleager was royalty, the great Prince returning, and perhaps the greatest rival for any of them during the coming hunt— never mind that he was no blood to any except Kepheus and Ankaion, all eyes were upon him. And even now, Kepheus and Ankaion had not even once glanced at the woman— even when the king had drawn attention to her for a moment, the only place besides the Prince their paired eyes had drafted had been Leto. And when they spoke, Mileage’s uncles, when Ankaion spoke, the one on the right, the first thing he said was “That is one of the finest wolves I have ever seen, young Prince.”

  “Indeed, such beautiful silver fur, and look upon its death-black tail,” added Kepheus, and there was something about the two of them speaking together that set off a small tremble in the woman’s thoughts. “Imagine taking for yourself a trophy like that.”

  “Why simply imagine?” answered Ankaion, and he asked Meleager if it was his own wolf who had come striding here into the hall.

  It was like Rhoecus and Hylaios. That was how they were speaking. It was a closed loop that they had formed between the two of them. A knot of words and thoughts that could not be untied, that just circled around and around and around, feeding on itself, leading wherever it was going to lead, with no one to stop it. And that closed loop had set its sights on Leto, now.

  “She is not my wolf, no,” said Meleager.

  “This is no one’s wolf but her own,” the woman cut in, taking a step forward. “She is Leto, and she belongs to Leto.”

  Kepheus smirked a small smirk, and he nodded a small nod, but he did not look at the woman, or even in her direction as he spoke again. “It is no one’s wolf, yes… and so it is anyone’s wolf who has the strength to take it.”— he peeled himself off the wall, took hold the short throwing-spear that had been leaned up just beside him.

  Ankaion roused himself as well— “Its pelt would make a lovely rug, perhaps… its teeth and claws adornments for our armor, or jewelry.”

  “One can hardly decide.”

  Some of the other hunters were moving, now. Telamon and Idas, Eurytion, shifting their positions, readying their weapons— spears, mostly, or swords. Only Peleus remained where he was, just watching, unsure of what to do. Leto herself showed her teeth, rounded her back with a deep snarl. But the ghost of that injury, those two arrows, it had not entirely left her yet. She was not moving as she really should have been able to, and the hunters could see it. Ankaion leveled his spear with a smirk, advanced closer, closer— his brother was already starting to circle around. The woman’s blood tingled like frost.

  “Wait!” cried Meleager. “Stop! This is not a wolf to be killed!”

  But the loop was already closed. Nothing outside of it was getting in.

  The woman didn’t bother with words. And she didn’t hesitate, either, there was no thinking about it, not with that tingle in her blood. Even before she’d even realized she was doing it, her bow was untied from her belt, retied onto her wrist, it was up in her hands with an arrow already nocked and pointed straight at Ankaion’s head. “No,” she said, and she didn’t need to say anything else. Her meaning was clear.

  The man just laughed, though. “Just like a woman to aim her bow at royal blood in a royal hall for the sake of a simple animal.”

  “’Love and sweetness and friendship’, yes?” said his brother. “She aims to preserve it all, by even the stupidest of means."

  “A proper Princess, no doubt.”

  “Take care not to hurt yourself with those arrows, maiden. They are sharper than they look.”

  “Are they? Are you certain?” the woman whispered. She pulled her bowstring a little tighter. “Maybe they aren’t. Perhaps we should test one, just to make sure.”

  Ankaion’s smile faded, but only the slightest bit. “Just like a woman, too, to aim a bow at a man with a spear— to try and defeat him from beyond his reach.”

  “You’d expect it, too, from shy little Peleus,” Kepheus supposed with a sneer towards the one man still hesitating. “Though perhaps he would have enough skill at least to actually hit his mark. That thing isn’t just some toy.”

  The woman scowled. “No, it isn’t.”

  Right that moment, right that instant, more than anything in the world, she wanted to let loose her arrow. Dead between that man’s eyes. A simple “fwip”. An end to things, quick and clean. She wanted to, she wanted to. Her mind was screaming to those two fingers holding back the string to let go, let go, let go. But she wasn’t letting go. Why wasn’t she letting go?

  She couldn’t. She told it to her fingers over and over and over again, to release. She sent the message. But nothing.

  It was the centaurs all over again.

  Or no, it was that badger. Her first failed hunt, so long ago in the forest, from up in the branches gazing down at that badger below with the knife in her hand, and she just couldn’t make herself move, that’s what this was.

  Her hand was trembling. The cords of the world were trembling with her uncertainty.

  But she wasn’t going to let this happen. She wasn’t going to fail Leto again— never again. She was never going to let down her friend, who had taken those two arrows for her— because of her. Because she’d run.

  She nudged her aim very slightly to the left and finally, her fingers allowed themselves to release. With an almost musical twang, her arrow shot out into the air and carved a gash across Ankaion’s smug cheek— “Gah!”— his hand jerked up to touch his face and came back bloody. The arrow clattered against the exact spot on the far wall where he’d been leaning and fell to the floor. His eyes burned with embarrassed rage— “You would DARE?!?”

  Kepheus turned his spear towards the woman. Idas and Telamon followed— a little reluctantly, with the same uncertainty as Peleus, but they did. “Who do you think you are,” demanded Meleager’s uncle, “that you would dare spill royal blood within the very hall of the King?— before the King’s very presence?”

  “And the Queen, my sister!— will she stand for this??”— Ankaion glared up to the head of the hall where the King and Queen had been standing, shocked and silent, during all of this. The Queen’s mouth was twisted into a worried frown; she dearly loved her brothers, that much was clear, but that mouth did not move. She did not know what to say or do.

  “Let the bitch take up a spear and face our brother if she is so bold! It is easy to be brave at a distance, with a bow in your hand!— but someone bring her a spear, now, and see how well she can hold it! Or will she continue to fling arrows like a coward?” demanded Kepheus. “Call for her head, my sister, my Queen, and call as well for a heavy spear for her to hold and see with it if she can keep that head attached to her shoulders!”

  The Queen’s scattered face settled in on a singular expression of determination and authority. Her eyes narrowed at the woman, like a fox catching sight of feathers, and she at last opened her mouth to speak. But the King’s patience had reached its limit.

  “Enough!” he loudly commanded. “Lower your bow, maiden!”

  The woman had already nocked a second arrow— every spear and sword in the room was aimed at her, now, except for the short sword of feeble Peleus and Meleager’s great war-spear, taken off to some treasury somewhere else. She was ready to put another cut across Ankaion’s face, or perhaps the face of his brother— or perhaps she really was ready to kill him this time. If he rushed towards her with that weapon, or if he turned it back towards Leto, still arched and snarling, eyes dancing this way and that way, ready for anything… the woman would kill him.

  “Down!” hissed Meleager, and when she didn’t move, he reached out himself and dragged down her bow towards the floor. “Let go of it!”

  “The rest of you as well!” declared the King. “Weapons down!”— and instantly, all the spears and swords in the room dropped. That was what it meant to be a King.

  “I speak seriously, Daughter of the Dead Stars Above: Let. Go.” said Meleager, and so the woman did. Her hand relaxed, the bow fell— and dangled by the blanket she had used to tie it to her wrist, swinging back and forth like laundry, drying in the breeze. She kept the arrow in her other hand, though, gripped tight like a dagger.

  It was just as she had thought it would be with him, standing out in that field on the edge of this kingdom. It was just the Half Moon again, standing between her and what was right, what was rightfully hers. It was a hundred, a thousand gathered animals blocking her path. It was a hand forcing down her bow.

  “…who is it who would spill the blood of my precious brother?” murmured the Queen. Such a strange way she spoke, so softly— was it anger, fear?— sorrow? In the dead hush of the hall now, it was impossibly loud. Even Leto’s growling had quieted away for a moment.

  “I am Starchild,” answered the woman. “I am the daughter of the dead stars above, it is their light that shines in my eyes and my hair, and I have come to join the hunt for the monstrous boar that has been terrorizing this land.”

  All at once, the glass mood shattered into uproarious laughter. All the heroes— even Peleus, began to hoot and shake, tears down their reddened cheeks. The King was laughing, the Queen was laughing, forget the doom of a moment ago. Only Meleager, by the woman’s side, was silent, stone-faced.

  “Why?” she asked him.

  “A woman, joining us on our hunt?” boomed Idas. “Prince Meleager, you have brought us back a marvelous entertainer! What other jokes does she tell? What other tricks does she do?”

  Telamon chimed in, “It is noble of you, oh Prince, to have gone seeking out every tool you could find to help overcome the sins of your family, but… surely…”

  “Can she even lift a sword?— never mind a spear!”

  “I can wrestle, and I can box,” said the woman, to even more laughter.

  “Yes, yes!” called Idas. “I ask for more jokes and tricks, and how easily they come.

  Ankaion wiped a little more blood from the side of his face, mirth melting back into a scowl. “If she comes along on this hunt, this woman, then it is my place that she will be taking. I will have no part of it.”

  “Nor will I,” added Kepheus. “Let us hope this woman’s worth in the hunt is equal to both of our spots!!”

  “Three spots, you mean,” cut in Idas.

  “Four,” said Telamon. “It will be just the Prince Meleager and two maidens… or will Peleus be dropping out as well?”— another eruption of laughter. Peleus’s cheeks went bright red, he turned his face away.

  “Come to think of it…” murmured Kepheus, “…was it not the Half Moon Goddess of Virginity who sent this accursed boar onto our land in the first place? Was it not She who your father failed to honor so long ago, oh King?”— he turned to head of the hall, and Ankaion turned along with him.

  “She is the spitting image of that Great Divine Huntress Artemis, is she not?”

  Immediately, the woman’s jaw clenched.

  “With her hair and eyes shining as they do… and with that bow of hers… who is to say that she is not Artemis Herself come down onto this Earth to foil and befuddle our hunt! A woman among the party!— what surer way to fail?”

  “I told you already, it is the dead stars above that shine—“

  “And we are to be so easily deceived?”

  The woman popped the bow back up into her open hand with a sharp jerk of her wrist— but Meleager took a quick hold of her arm, kept her from raising her weapon any further. “Not here,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  The King spent a moment longer in contemplation. “…very well, then,” he said, finally. “If the maiden is indeed Artemis, or a pawn of Artemis, it will only deepen the sin of my father to allow her companion wolf to be killed in my halls, or indeed anywhere in my domain. So long as the she-wolf Leto walks the lands of Caledonia, she will go unharmed; this, I declare.”

  And so it was. That was what it meant, to be a King. Already, messengers were running out from the hall to all corners of the kingdom to pass along the new law of their ruler; Leto’s description would be spread, far and wide, beautiful silver fur and death-black tail, and her safety would be guaranteed, simple as that. The woman was deciding that she liked this man.

  “As for the maiden herself…” the King continued, “… she will be granted the finest chambers along with all other trappings and luxuries our grand palace has to offer… but she will not be permitted to join the heroes on their hunt. She may sit with them at the royal feast for tomorrow’s breakfast to kick off the chase, she may watch alongside the other high ladies of the kingdom as my son and the rest go riding into the forest— but when they go riding, they will go riding without her.”

  Then again, perhaps the woman did not like the King at all.