From the village, it was another two days travel, according to Meleager. All the people had gathered to see them go, to wish them off with gifts of bread and meat and more wine, and great hopes for their journey. The woman said goodbye to each and every one of them, straight to their faces, with thanks, and a promise to return someday with stories of the world beyond. With the shadow hunter’s head in a bag, she promised to return, to gift it to the children of the village to use as a catching toy for their games. And then, she turned, and she went.

  The buildings gave way again to fields, and the fields gave way to forest, wilderness. The whole while, walking through the morning, the woman kept her gaze upon that distant hill. Her memories of last night were foggy, submerged under blurry headaches, just muffled snippets, mostly, but she remembered that hill, what she had learned. The great golden ram that had lived there, peacefully. Until. Until, until, until. It was a cursed word, she was realizing, “until”. She had been born to two human parents, and they had loved her and wanted to keep her, until they had looked between her legs and been disappointed by what they saw. She had lived peacefully on the mountainside with two loving mothers who hadn’t cared at all about what was between her legs, until two horrible shadows came to take one of them away. She had loved her other mother, her first mother, until She had betrayed her, blocking her path to righteous revenge— until she had seen the true shape of her first mother’s loveless light, always above, always better than, always gazing down upon her, and not with pride but with power. Until, until. She decided for herself that a good life should never have the word “until” in it.

  As they travelled for those two days, the woman began to notice Meleager becoming more and more anxious. More and more, he was staring at his feet as he walked. When she asked him, he simply said that he was doing his best not to stumble. When she asked him why he was picking at his fingernails, he told her that he was doing his best to keep them clean. When she asked him why he was clenching his jaw, grinding his teeth, he told her that he was hungry— but even after she paused to catch him a rabbit, he carried on clenching and grinding. The more anxious he became, though, the kinder as well. Over and over, he offered to carry Leto, never mind that she was walking better and better with each passing hour. He offered to do all the hunting, to gather water— anything to be helping, almost to the point of urgent insistence, almost to the point of annoyance. And when at last, after the two days of traveling were past and the forest was beginning once more to give way to fields, he began to talk about turning back.

  “Perhaps it would be better to head Northwards instead. I’ve heard many stories during all my wandering about a great expedition beginning to come together, an expedition across the sea in a mighty ship. I’ve heard that heroes are gathering from all across the land, the merest and the greatest alike, to take part. They say that even the incomparable Heracles has paused his legendary Labors to join.”

  But the woman would not be turned aside. She had set her mind to the hunt already, to seeing and marveling at the fabled boar, as well as to helping put an end to its terror upon the land.

  More than that, Leto’s sharpest nose continued to point Eastwards in pursuit of the shadows, and so it was Eastward that the woman was going to go.

  “South may be a better option as well,” said Meleager, slowing his pace, stopping in the middle of a field with a sigh. “I know of an oracle a ways Southwards that can tell many prophecies and reveal many secrets to those who ask and properly pay. One of the three great oracles, in fact, the three greatest. I am not certain what it is that you and your wolf are seeking, Starchild, and I will not force you to tell me, but surely the journey would be made easier by the knowledge and foresight that such an oracle could provide.”

  The woman had been wavering a great deal on whether or not to reveal to Meleager the particulars of her quest to chase down and obliterate the shadows that had taken her mother. It was only in the fit of drink that she had told the people of the village last night, and she did not regret it, but it felt mostly like a thing to keep to herself. It felt as though if she were to tell him, he would try and bend her from her course, dissuade her— just as he was trying to bend their course now, if not more so. With the same mistaken intentions as the arrogant Half Moon. It was enough for her that the two of them were traveling together. He was pleasant enough company already, knowing nothing.

  “We must not abandon the hunt,” the woman told him. I have committed myself to it, and I will not break my word. If my word of that is not promise enough, then I shall swear to you on my blood, just as I have told you.”— with that, she drew her silver knife, and before Meleager could stop her, she had cut a small gash across her forearm, and out came her shining blood, in tiny welling droplets. The woman turned her forearm and let the blood fall upon the Earth— one, two, three, four droplets, all in a row, like the pearls of her belt, like the blood from her fingertip so long ago. Poetry, she thought.

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  “…very well,” supposed Meleager. “You have spilled your starlight for me, Starchild, and I will not dishonor that.”

  He gave another sigh.

  “But… before we reach Caledonia proper, there is something you should know…”

  “What should I know?”

  “You should know that I… I am no one out here in the country side…”

  “You are not no one to me,” said the woman.

  “And you are not no one to me,” replied the man. “You are a dear companion, now, a familiar friend— you are the farthest thing from no one to me. But in Caledonia… in Caledonia I am someone.”

  The woman did not understand at all what he was saying.

  “What I’m saying… what I’m trying to say is… my parents…” he murmured.

  “Come, then,” scolded the woman. “Or is this yet another ploy to stop us continuing Eastwards? To have us lingering for the rest of our lives in this field, saying nothing?”— like the Half Moon, she thought, was he already standing in her way as well? Even without knowing why she was making the journey? The people of the village, at least, they had shown their support for her mission.

  Perhaps that was simply because they had lost something dear to that shadow, as she had lost something dear to that shadow. Perhaps they understood in a way that Meleager simply could not understand. They had been so different from the Moon, those people, she had been thinking about it and thinking about it, how well they had understood her— but the death of the old she-bear— the death of “Callisto”… no, that wasn’t her name, the woman’s mother, anymore than the woman’s own name belonged to her anymore. She refused to accept it. And she refused to accept that the Moon would allow such a loss to go unpunished. Had She not lost the old she-bear as well? It was pitiful. It was pathetic.

  “If you will not speak what you wish to say, then stop wishing to say it,” she told Meleager, a little more bitterly, perhaps, than she meant. “And if not saying it means that you will not come with me, then stay here mumbling to yourself.”

  “I’m a prince,” he told her. “My father and mother… the king and queen of Caledonia.”

  “…and?”

  Meleager had explained kings and queens to the woman already, or at least he had tried to. But he could see, looking at her now, that he hadn’t entirely made it clear what that meant. "I suppose… I suppose you’ll see for yourself.”

  “I suppose I will,” said the woman, and she carried on walking. Meleager sighed himself one last sigh, and then he followed after. It was only a few minutes before they met the first citizen of Caledonia, and immediately the woman saw that things were different than what she had thought.

  It was a man that they met, tilling the field, and the instant he saw Meleager, he let out a yelp and ran over to through himself at the feet of the Prince. “My lord!” he cried. “Our great Prince Meleager has returned to us!”

  He began to shout all manner of things— how someone must go running at once to inform the king and the queen, and the rest of the city for that matter, so that they might have time to prepare, give the prodigal Prince a proper welcome. Surely, there would be great banquets and celebratory games. He apologized to the Prince for failing to stay and shower him with the praise and respect he so naturally deserved, but the whole of the kingdom simply must hear the good news!— and up he came from the dirt, and off he ran, before Meleager had even gotten the chance to just start to say anything.

  “What… was that?”

  The woman was dumbfounded. She had not at all expected anything like this. She had never before seen any sort of creature reacting this way to anything. It was true that all the animals of her mountainside had held the Moon above in high esteem, but that had never taken the form of anything more than a quiet humbleness and an automatic obedience. None of this frenzy.

  And the frenzy just continued. The woman and the wolf and Meleager continued onwards into the city of Caledonia, and every bit closer they got, the more and more buildings they saw, the more people came running up and just as quickly away again at a fever pitch to throw themselves at the feet of the Prince and then fetch the things they’d frantically offered him— meat and bread and wine, just like the village, but so much more than that, too. Jewelry of copper and silver, beautiful carpets and clothes and tapestries. They offered him goats and cattle and horses. They offered him their daughters to wed. And the whole while, Prince Meleager just smiled a dead-eyed smile and carried on. And the whole while, no one seemed to notice the woman at all. Despite the uncovered shine of her hair and her eyes, despite the great fearsome wolf walking proudly beside her, constantly glancing this way and that way, constantly sniffing the air for any danger that might approach her friend, despite all of it, she might as well have been invisible. This was what it meant, then, to be a Prince. And this, too, was what it meant not to be one.

  It didn’t bother her so much. Why should it have bothered her? She had already gotten her warm reception back at the village, and that had been quite enough. If anything, she was happy to go unnoticed for a while. In fact, she decided, she was going to pull that fawn-pelt up over her head again, make herself that much less interesting to all these people.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” Meleager whispered to her. “It won’t be much more, I hope. We’re nearly at my parents’ grand palace, and once we are there it will be only the two of them drowning us.”

  “Drowning you,” the woman grinned. “I could slip away at any time, leave you to this, and not a single one of your citizens would make a fuss or follow.”

  “Please don’t.”

  And so she didn’t.