You come awake on cold stone and a bed of pelts that is not yours, under a ceiling enormous and far above you, lit by torches and by veins of crystal glowing pale in the rock. The air smells of pine smoke and wet fur.

Before you can sit up, you feel them: five enormous figures ringing your bed, still as carved stone — taller than men, with the ears and tails of beasts, claws at their sides, eyes that catch the torchlight and burn. The first to speak is a gigantic wolf-man with white fur and grey eyes like winter ice.

He gives his own name low, as if it is the only piece of him he can spare.

Surprise, curiosity, and something hungrier pass over their faces one by one. You do not remember how you got here.

A panther-man sits on a flat rock at the edge of the light, and his smile comes slowly.

The lion-man crosses his arms over a bare, scarred chest, nostrils flaring.

The owl-man tilts his head, pale feathers at his temples, and studies you the way a man studies a falling star.

An enormous bear-man sets a carved wooden bowl of water on the stone beside your bed, moving slowly so as not to frighten you.

His voice is the gentlest of the five.

All five of them look to Einar, and Einar looks only at you, waiting to see what the first woman in generations will do.