Ilsa woke to a pain that folded her in half.

She rolled onto her side and drew her knees toward her chest, pressing her forehead into the rough wool of the blanket. The cramp came in a wave, starting somewhere deep in her pelvis and spreading outward through her hips, her lower back, her thighs. She gritted her teeth and waited for it to pass.

The light through the cottage window had that pale quality of very early morning, the world still gray and soft before the sun climbed over the trees. Birds had started their noise outside, and she could hear the distant lowing of cattle from the village pens.

She pushed herself upright and sat on the edge of the bed, one hand braced against the frame. The cramp had faded to a dull ache, but something else remained. She pressed her palm flat against her belly and found the skin warm to the touch and slightly swollen, a firmness there that had not existed before. She would not have noticed it if she had not been looking. Barely there, a small roundness, like the beginning of a full stomach after a heavy meal.

Ilsa sat with her hand on her stomach for a long moment. The reality of it pressed against her more than her hand did. A creature grew inside her. The seed of something that had worn the shape of a bull and then a serpent. A being that had spoken to her with a voice that slid directly into her mind and had called her flesh sweet enough to birth a god.

She removed her hand from her belly and stood up. Chores waited. They always waited.

She pulled on her dress, the same brown wool one from the night before, and slipped her feet into worn leather shoes. She tied her hair back with a strip of cloth and moved to the small hearth to build up the fire. The embers from last night still glowed beneath the ash. She blew on them until they caught, added kindling, then a few pieces of the dry wood she kept stacked by the door.

The cottage had one room, and she had kept it sparse. A bed. A table with a single chair. A shelf with a few pots and bowls. She did not need much. She had never owned much.

She poured water from the bucket into a pot and set it over the fire to heat. While it warmed, she sat at the table and worked on the basket she had been weaving, her fingers moving through the reeds with practiced rhythm. The work kept her hands busy, but her mind wandered back to the grove.

The serpent's words came to her with unsettling clarity. The seed takes hold where it is accepted. And you accept with all your body.

She had accepted. She had opened herself. She had not hesitated.

The water boiled. She poured it into a clay cup and added a handful of dried herbs from the bundle on her shelf, stirring the mixture with a wooden spoon. It tasted bitter and earthy. She drank it slowly, letting the warmth settle in her stomach.

A cramp tightened in her abdomen again. Milder this time, but still sharp enough to make her pause with the cup halfway to her lips. She breathed through it and set the cup down.

She needed to go to work.

The village of Thornwell had a rhythm that did not care about the strange things a woman felt in her body. The cows needed milking. The sheep needed moving to pasture. The water in the well did not fill itself. Ilsa had lived in this rhythm her entire life, and she had learned that no amount of personal disturbance stopped it.

She left the cottage and crossed the yard. The morning air carried the smell of damp earth and woodsmoke from chimneys already lit across the village. She passed the well, drew a bucket of water, and carried it to the small pen where her two cows waited.

The older one, a brown cow with a white patch on her flank, turned her head as Ilsa approached. The younger one, still a heifer, pressed against the fence and watched with curious eyes. Ilsa set down the bucket, lowered herself onto the stool, and began the work of milking.

Warm milk filled the pail in thin streams. The sound of it hitting the metal rang through the quiet yard. Ilsa worked with steady hands, her forehead resting against the cow's warm flank. The tale of the grove felt far away in this moment, replaced by the simple comfort of an animal's body heat and the repetitive motion of her hands.

The first cramp hit her when she was halfway through the second cow.

It came without warning, a sharp twist of pain that made her hands clench on the udder. The cow shifted and lowed in protest. Ilsa pulled her hands away and gripped the edge of the stool, doubling over as the cramp rolled through her. The pain spread across her whole abdomen this time, and something else followed it.

Hunger.

Not the ordinary need for food. She had experienced that many times in her life, the dull emptiness of not eating enough. This hunger had teeth. It clawed up from her pelvis, spreading through her body like heat from a fire, and settled in her throat. She felt the need for something, pressed against her from the inside, desperate and demanding.

She gripped the fence post and held on while the wave passed. Her knuckles went white on the rough wood. The hunger did not fade completely. It receded, like water pulling back from a shore, but the presence of it remained at the edges, a waiting tide.

Ilsa straightened up and looked at her hands. She had chipped the dirt with her nails, digging into the wood. She wiped her palms on her dress and returned to the milking, her movements quicker now. The sooner she finished, the sooner she could rest.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur of familiar work. She carried the milk to the small shed where she stored it in cool ceramic pots. She scattered grain for the chickens and collected the few eggs they had laid. She walked to the woodpile at the edge of her property and gathered an armful of split logs for the hearth.

Each movement pressed against the warmth in her belly. Each step reminded her that something had changed inside her body.

She was halfway back to the cottage with the wood when the hunger spiked again.

This time, the force of it made her stumble. She dropped the logs. They scattered across the dirt at her feet, one rolling away into the grass. She grabbed hold of the fence post at the edge of her yard, leaning against it as her whole body trembled. The hunger was not in her stomach. It was in her thighs, her hips, the soft skin between her legs. She had to press her legs together to keep from shaking.

She closed her eyes and breathed through her mouth, slow and deliberate. She counted her breaths the way she used to count sheep. One, two, three. The hunger bit into her, demanding, insistent.

She remembered the weight of the bull on her back. His massive body pressing her down onto the stone altar. The fullness of him inside her.

Her legs buckled.

She caught herself on the fence and pushed her body upright, forcing the memories from her mind. She would not think about it. She could not think about it. Not here, in the middle of her yard, where a child could run past and see her falling apart.

The hunger receded again, but slower this time, and she knew with a certainty that it would keep returning. Every few hours, maybe more. Every time it came, it would take more effort to push it down.

She picked up the scattered wood and carried it into the cottage. She did not look toward the treeline that bordered her property. She did not want to wonder what might be watching from those trees.

She rebuilt the fire and set a pot of beans to simmer for her midday meal. She sat at the table and drank more of the bitter herb tea, hoping the warmth would settle the cravings. The herbs did nothing for the hunger. She finished her meal without tasting it and forced herself to eat the bread she had set aside yesterday, dry and hard.

Her body had changed. She could feel the difference when she moved, a heaviness in her pelvis that had not been there before. She sat down on the edge of her bed and pressed both hands to her belly. The warmth had spread. Her whole abdomen radiated heat, and the slight swell had grown. She guessed she would start showing within a week. Maybe less.

The hunger pulsed beneath her skin every time she stood or sat or moved. She felt it in the way her thighs pressed together when she walked. She felt it in the restless hunger of her hips. She felt it in the dampness between her legs that had persisted since she woke.

She tried to focus on the mending she had planned for the afternoon. A tear in her work dress. A patch for her apron. She threaded her needle and settled into the simple rhythm of stitching, forcing her hands to be steady.

The afternoon light slanted through the window and grew long. She sewed until the light failed in the shadows and then stitched by the fire, close enough to see by the flames.

The hunger came again when she was nearly done. The needle slipped from her fingers and clattered on the floor. She gripped the edge of the table with both hands and rode it out, her breath coming in short gasps. The craving had gotten worse. It clawed at her now, sharp and insistent, and she bit her lip so hard she tasted copper.

When it passed, she sat motionless for a long while. She picked up the needle and finished her last few stitches with trembling hands. Her body ached, tired in a way that had nothing to do with the physical labor of the day.

She carried the mended dress to the bed and set it aside. She needed air. The cottage walls felt too close, the ceiling too low. She stepped outside and breathed in the cool evening air.

The stranger stood by her door.

Ilsa stopped so quickly she nearly stumbled. The woman had not been there a moment ago. No sound of footsteps had preceded her, she had not heard the crunch of gravel or the rustle of skirts. She simply stood at the corner of Ilsa's cottage, as still as a tree trunk, watching her with pale eyes.

The woman was gaunt. That was the word that came to Ilsa first. Bone thin under her gray robes, with sharp cheekbones and a narrow face that looked as though it had been carved from old wood. Her hair lay flat against her skull, the color of ash, and her hands hung at her sides with long fingers that did not seem to move.

The smell reached Ilsa next. Old incense, the kind she remembered from the chapel, the heavy cloying smell of burned herbs and wax. But older, too. Like the stones of the chapel had absorbed years of smoke and sweat and had risen off of the woman in waves.

A third thing struck her. She felt the hunger in her belly shift at the stranger's presence, a coiling sensation that made her press a hand to her stomach.

"Mistress Ilsa," the woman said. Her voice sounded dry, like wind through dead leaves. "I have walked a long road to find you."

Ilsa kept her voice steady. "You have me at an advantage. I do not know your name."

The woman's thin lips curved into a smile that did not reach her eyes. "Names are for those who need introductions. You and I do not require such formalities."

"I would still hear it."

The stranger inclined her head. "You may call me Sister Alcmene. I serve a house of seekers, those who study the old texts, the ones the Church would burn if they knew they existed."

Ilsa crossed her arms over her chest. The gesture felt protective, and she knew the woman noticed. "I am a shepherd girl. I have no time for old texts."

"No," Sister Alcmene agreed. "You have no time for them. But you have found time for other things."

She stepped closer, and Ilsa forced herself not to step back. The woman's eyes moved over her, lingering on her face, her throat, the line of her shoulders, the place where her hands rested over her belly. The assessment felt like being peeled open for inspection.

The woman tilted her head. "You have felt something these past days. A stirring. A quickening in the depths of you. A hunger that has no name and yet demands to be fed."

Ilsa shook her head. "I do not know what you speak of."

"Have you felt the stirring of wings beneath your skin?"

The question hung in the air between them. Ilsa could hear the faint hum of insects starting their evening songs. The sky had turned a deep blue, and the first stars pricked through the darkness above the treeline.

She kept her face still. "No."

Sister Alcmene looked at her for a long moment. Her pale eyes did not blink. The silence stretched between them, uncomfortable and heavy.

The woman's smile returned. "Of course not. You are a simple girl. You tend your cows and your chickens. You sew your dresses and you sleep alone in your bed. You would not understand the things I speak of."

She said the words with a knowing tone that made Ilsa's skin prickle. The hunger in her belly twisted again, sharp enough that she had to breathe slowly to keep her expression neutral.

Sister Alcmene reached into the folds of her robe. When she pulled out her hand, a small object lay in her palm. An iron charm shaped like a six-pointed star, the points wrapped in wire and hung from a leather cord.

"Keep this by your door," she said, offering it to Ilsa. "A small token of safe passage. You never know what might wander in from the woods at night."

Ilsa looked at the charm. "I did not ask for a gift."

"The universe gives what is needed, not what is requested." Sister Alcmene stepped back, her robes whispering over the grass. "When you remember what you have already forgotten, you will know where to find me."

She turned and walked toward the treeline. Ilsa watched her go, the strange woman slipping between the trees with an ease that spoke of familiarity with the forest. In a few moments, the shadow swallowed her completely.

Only then did Ilsa let out the breath she had been holding. She looked down at her hands. The charm lay in her palm, the wire digging slightly into her skin.

It was hot.

She jerked her fingers open and the charm fell to the ground at her feet. She bent to look at it, not touching it. The iron glowed with a faint warmth that she could see rising off the metal in the evening air.

She reached out a single finger and touched the edge of the charm. The heat stung her. She pulled her hand back, shaking it out.

The hunger rose in her the instant her skin made contact. It came at her body like a flood, rising from her thighs and her hips and her belly, surging through her as fast as a wave. She tried to fight it, but her knees buckled. She dropped to the ground in her own yard, both hands pressed to her stomach.

The craving clawed at her from the inside, desperate and burning. She knelt in the dirt, trembling, her breath coming in shallow gasps. She needed something. She did not know what. She needed to be filled, pressed, held down, taken.

The heat of the charm pulsed on the ground beside her.

Ilsa stared at the iron star as the hunger tore through her, her whole body shaking and driven to the ground, and she could not hold back a low sound that rose from her throat. She dropped further.