Half a dozen women surrounded the stone lip of the village well, chattering as they took turns drawing water. A raven circled high above them.

“You seen the weddin’ cakes?” Esbeth, the miller’s daughter asked the other two new wives next to her, heads bent together. “A full dozen. ’Nough to feed the whole village.”

“You seen the dowry?” Dorin replied. “Two goose-down pillows, a wool blanket, a cast iron pot, and a skillet, six tin plates. Six!” She rolled her eyes. “And who are they expectin’ to dinner? The queen?”

Einin stood next to them, but they didn’t include her in the conversation. If they looked at her at all, it was to shoot her wary glances. Having returned from the dragon a fortnight before—with a talon!—set her apart.

Virgins went to the dragon to die as sacrifice. They did not return, not one, not ever before. Einin stuck out of order, like a protruding nail from a sitting bench. People’s gazes and thoughts snagged on her every time she passed by. ’Twas as if the dragon had tainted her somehow.

As the matron in front of her finished with the well, picked up her buckets, and hurried away, Einin stepped up to the stone lip. She did not intend to go back to the great beast. In time, people would forget about her unusual adventure, and everything would go back to normal.

The dragon had likely already forgotten her. Einin was but a no-account village maiden, small prey. The beast would have fed by now and gone back to sleep.

His kind could sleep a decade at a time, the old folks said. Who knew, by the time he awakened again and remembered her, if he remembered, Einin could be married and long gone to another village. He’d never find her.

Or would he? Would he come in wrath and destroy Downwood and everyone in it? That was the thought that kept Einin up at night. Her heart clenched. She had given her word.

She bit her lip as she drew water, feeling as wretched as when she’d first volunteered to be the sacrifice. She’d gone to the cave that once, had worked up the nerve. She didn’t think she could do it again. She’d changed her mind at least twice a day in the past two weeks.

She drew another bucket of water, then stepped back.

Agna, who had been a friend to Einin’s mother moved up to the well’s lip next. She was swollen with her twelfth child, a woman considered lucky in the village as all but five of her children were living. As Agna reached for the well’s bucket, the sleeve of her worn brown dress rode up, revealing the imprint of her husband’s fingers. As she leaned forward a little more, she flinched, as if she had other, hidden injuries.

Einin leaped to help. “Let me.”

With a grateful smile and a tired nod, Agna shuffled aside, just as her youngest daughter ran up to her with a bruised knee, crying.

Agna soothed her daughter, but she was pushing the child away at the same time. “Best you go back to your chores before you make your father angry. Go on. Run!”

The child ran off, hiccupping. Agna caught Einin’s gaze on her and smiled. “You’ll have your own wee ones soon, you’ll see. A strong husband to guide you, a man for you to serve, in the natural order. My Wilm will make a good husband, he will. You just accept him and see.”

Einin looked at the woman’s blue wrists where her sleeves rode up again.

Agna covered them up with a shrug. “I deserved it, I did. Too slow with milking the cow, and late with dinner. I’m lucky to have a husband to give me God’s correction. You will soon see how it is.”

Einin filled Agna’s buckets, then, with a quick farewell to the women, she hurried home. The bread dough had probably risen by now on the sideboard.

The scent of baking meat pies wafted from a nearby hut, the clanging of metal sounding from the smithy. A small flock of children chased after a honking goose that was trying to escape its fate as the main course at the cooper’s daughter’s wedding on the morn.

The crooked streets between the small village’s huts and cottages were busy, people going about their business, rushing their work. Spring had come, but darkness still fell early. Everyone was intent on the chores they needed to finish before nightfall, Einin as much as the others. She had already cleaned her hut, laid in wood for the fire, had laundered what few clothes she had, but she still had bread baking left.

She was halfway home, her shoulders straining under the weight of her two full wooden buckets, when the priest stepped into her path.

A raven high above called “Caw!” as if in warning, but too late.

“Beg yer pardon.” Einin ducked her head, dropping her gaze to the priest’s dusty brown habit rather than looking at the harsh planes of his face. She didn’t dare to meet his eyes that filled with disapproval every time he looked at Einin. And he looked a lot. Every time Einin turned around, she found his gaze on her.

He was bald and gap-toothed, with small, mean eyes. She tried to step around him, giving him a wide berth, sloshing some of the well water on her leg. She jumped a little. Ack, ’twas cold. Yet not half as cold as the priest’s tone.

“Einin.” The way he said her name cut like a whip.

She froze. Then, when he said no more and it became apparent that he was in no hurry, she set her heavy buckets by her feet. She was in for it now.

“I hear you chopped wood this morn.” Each word dripped with disapproval. “Wearing man’s clothes. Doing man’s work.”

The three women coming out of the cobbler’s cottage behind him stopped on the steps and ceased their chatter, probably as much out of respect for the priest as the better to hear.

Einin winced. Fool! She should have put on one of her mother’s old dresses to go to the well, even if they were all too loose on her. She’d adjusted them time and time again and never got them right. She was no good with the needle. Her youngest brother’s clothes fit her well and were more comfortable for work. The temptation to slip into them had been too great.

The priest’s eyes flashed with judgment. “Did I see you the day before last, on the roof, repairing the thatching?”

“No man left in the family, Father.” That last word tasted bitter on Einin’s tongue. She had loved her own father and grieved him still, could never understand why she must call the traveling priest by the same title.

“A woman doing man’s work is against God and the laws of nature,” he pronounced, the words cold and sharp like icicles.

She did not dare argue, not with the priest. She feared him more than she feared the dragon. If the dragon chose to harm her, one snap of his powerful maw and she would feel no more. The priest, on the other hand…

One of her earliest memories was of this same traveling priest’s first visit to her village and the women he’d accused of being witches. He’d burned three grandmothers who’d never been anything but kind to Einin, one the very midwife who’d birthed her, another known for her knowledge of herbs, and the third with nothing to call her to the attention of the priest but a mole on her cheek.

The old women had taken a long time to die. To this day, Einin’s stomach heaved at the smell of burned meat. Not that she had much meat in her pot this past year, not since the war had taken the last of her brothers.

“You have not confessed your sins,” the priest said, and if winter suddenly blew back into Downwood, the village square could not have turned colder.

Einin shivered as she bit the inside of her cheek. Who had time to sin? She worked every minute of every day to survive. Although, life was slowly getting better in Downwood.

Somewhere nearby, a babe cried, but not the keening sound of hunger they’d all grown weary of. They had enough milk in the village again.

Four days prior, six stray cows turned up in a clearing just past the edge of the woods. An odd piece of luck as the nearest village—the village of Upwood—was on the other side of the hill, part of the rocky path far too steep for the animals to have walked. The cows were wild-eyed and scared to death, but calmed soon enough once they were tied up in various barns.

They were a boon on top of all the other changes that had happened in the past fortnight.

From the moment the blacksmith’s eldest lad had tied the talon to a twenty-foot pole in the middle of the village, things had begun to turn around. Every time someone began losing heart, he looked up at the top of that pole and thought, If someone from this very village could take on a dragon, nothing is impossible.

People expected a turn of luck, and so it happened. With the backbone of fear broken, they were nicer to each other, more helpful. Tasks were done more easily; more was accomplished before each nightfall. Improvement was visible in every corner of the village of Downwood.

“You have returned from the dragon,” the priest said, arriving at the root of his true dislike for her at last. He tapped the side of his hawkish nose with his forefinger. “God has sharpened my senses so I might root out evil. I sense something unnatural about you, girl.”

Einin tucked in her chin. Why can he not be happy for our change of fortune? He’d given many a sermon that addressed the village’s sufferings, all blaming the great devil in the hills. Why did her victorious return fill him with anger?

Understanding came to her in a sudden flash, and she blinked, nearly raising her gaze to his, catching herself at the last second, snapping her head back down and biting her lip. But even as she hid her reaction, she could not unthink the thought that now shouted in her brain.

The priest hadn’t been able to vanquish the great devil with his many prayers. Einin’s return with the talon implied that she might be more powerful than he, and she a woman! That was why he disapproved of her so much.

“I returned but by God’s grace,” she hurried to say, keeping her voice meek, knowing as soon as she said the words that they wouldn’t help. The priest would hate the idea that some inconsequential maiden had been chosen as God’s instrument and not him.

The priest proved her right the very next second.

“You boast of your unwomanly and ungodly ways,” he accused her. “You refuse young Wilm’s offer of marriage. You think yourself too proud to be subjected to the godly correction men are called to provide women who are weak and unable to resist sin.”

Wilm was the butcher’s son, a beefy young man two years older than Einin. He beat the family dogs, the family livestock, and his sisters, as his father beat Agna, Wilm’s mother. Einin had no wish for Wilm’s godly correction.

She clasped her hands in front of her and dipped her head lower, hoping one of the matrons on the cobbler’s front steps might yet speak up for her. But the women stayed silent. Their silence hurt, even if they had their reasons.

The war had left few able-bodied men. When Einin had gone to the cave as sacrifice, it meant one fewer maiden to compete with these matrons’ daughters for a husband.

Even friends… Einin glanced at Minde, the cobbler’s wife, listening in the half-open door. But Minde looked away from her with regret in her eyes, cradling her youngest daughter to her side.

Einin cast no blame. Her hopes had been foolish. Of course none of the women dared speak up before the priest. They saw the writing on the wall as Einin herself was beginning to see. The priest was working up to an accusation of witchery. Anyone who took Einin’s side might get caught up in the net the man was weaving.

As the priest went on berating her for her unwomanly clothes and other disobediences, a few of the village men ambled over to see the source of the disturbance. Einin knew them all, as they all knew her, had known her from the moment of her birth. Yet none of the men spoke up for her either. None had been brave enough to confront the dragon, and the fact that Einin had done so and lived shamed them. Her very presence in the village was a daily reminder of their own cowardice.

Men were superior by the will of God. By God’s will did they rule their wives; by God’s will did their wives owe them full obedience. Men were, by far, stronger and braver. And yet it’d been Einin who had returned with a talon. Unnatural.

She blinked hard as she understood at last why her victory had been celebrated upon return but the victor had not. She’d volunteered as the sacrificial virgin, and the only thing anyone had expected of her was to die. She hadn’t even been able to get that right. So talon or no, she was not going to be forgiven.

Her instincts prickled—an indistinct premonition of danger—the same feeling as when in the woods she found herself watched by a wolf from the ridge.

The priest narrowed his beady brown eyes at her. “I cannot fathom why the evil beast let you leave.”

“Perhaps it is not entirely evil?” She dared offer an opinion, immediately regretting it.

His eyes narrowed dangerously. “That is precisely what an evil beast would want you to think.”

“Is it evil because it’s a beast?” The question escaped her before she could stop it. Then one more. “We keep beasts in the village and don’t call them evil.”

“Sheep, goats, swine, and cows. God put them under our dominion, for man’s benefit.”

“Only the wild beasts are evil, then?” Stop talking! She bit her lip.

The priest shook his head. “Even a wolf pup can be tamed. Even a bear. You’ve seen them at the traveling carnival.” His voice grew more frigid still, as if to let her know his pronouncement was final. “But that dragon is evil.”

Because it cannot be tamed? Because it is truly wild and free? Because it is not under the priest’s dominion and could not be trained to bend the knee? Einin dared ask no more. She was grateful that the man hadn’t struck her down already for all her impertinence.

Yet with all that she was, she wished for freedom. Did that mean that she too was evil?

“I’m told you are to embark on a journey,” the priest said, every word laden with suspicion.

Einin stole a glance.

He watched her as closely as before, but something in his gaze had changed. He no longer watched her as if examining her. His gaze had hardened, as if he’d come to a decision.

A cold shiver ran up Einin’s spine. In that very moment, she understood that she must leave, that indeed her very life might depend on a speedy departure.

“I am to go to Morganton, Father, leaving on the morrow,” she said in a voice as meek as she was capable of uttering. “My Aunt Rose had her babe, her seventh, and she’s sick with the fever. Her husband came home maimed from the war. I go to help.”

She had resolved to stay in her village as many times as she had resolved to keep her word and return to the dragon’s cave. She’d made up the tale of her aunt at one such point, since she could not tell anyone that she was returning to the dragon of her own free will. Making a pact with the great devil would mark her, in the priest’s eyes, as the servant of the devil. She would be burned on the spot.

Were she to go to the dragon, her ruse would likely hold. She did have family in Morganton, and the place was far enough to the north that nobody here would ever know whether she’d arrived there or not.

The priest watched her as if he intended to see right into her heart. Einin held her breath, silence blanketing the street.

Robet, the miller, broke it, limping around a corner, a wide grin on his wrinkled face as he called out to the small gathering.

“I’m come from the woods. We’ll have timber enough to rebuild the mill! Must have been a mudslide. All the trees on the ridge felled by last night’s storm have been brought down to the valley. The timber is all right here, close enough now.”

When his good news wasn’t received with cheers and pats on the back, he stopped, his jubilant expression turning puzzled. Then he caught the undercurrents, and the smile slid off his face altogether.

Einin glanced up at the priest from under her lashes. The zealous fires that burned in the man’s eyes did naught to reassure her. If she thought her departure would be viewed with relief, she’d been mistaken.

The priest clearly saw her wish to leave as an attempt to escape his judgment. Einin’s throat tightened as she waited for him to order her to stay. He didn’t.

He scowled, then turned without a word and strode away, casting a meaningful glance to this man and that as he went.