The sun was setting on the Antewood. The sky had turned salmon-colored at the edges but in the wake of the setting sun the stars were already out as if painted on a ceiling of navy blue. Thrushes and partridges skipped quietly between leaves of oak, birch and holly, while the crows called noisily from the upper canopy. A squirrel stood up on its hind legs by the feet of a knobby old hawthorn tree. Its head was up a second too long. A crossbow bolt punched through its skull just behind they eye, and buried itself in winding roots.
	Alden the woodsman’s son was given a rare nudge on the shoulder in congratulations for a well aimed bolt. He tossed the squirrel carcass into a burlap slung over his shoulder and struggled to pick the bolt from tree.
	“Nice shot lad,” uncle Woden bellowed between belts from the wineskin. “I can’t say I could aim that well when I was fourteen.”
	“You might have if you didn’t spend your entire fourteenth year drunk,” said Braun the woodsman. “That was a fat one. We might get a whole bowl of stew out of him.”
	“If we could just find a deer before the moon rises, we’d have a feast.” Alden sighed. He had spent all day in the woods and even though his sack was full of rabbits and squirrels he had been craving salted venison for weeks. As they three of them trudged through the cooling forest the ravens gave a sullen cry and watched curiously. The blackbirds had nothing to fear, for their meat tasted bitter as they knew from experience. Small sticks cracked between the hunting party’s feet, but there were few if any critters to spook.
	“Don’t go wishing for deer this late in the spring,” grumbled Braun. ”The bucks are as friendly as bears, and each doe is bound to have at least one in tow.”
	“Mort shot two last week.” Alden moaned “He was charging three silver for a strip of jerky.”
	“Mort’s a damned idiot, at business and in life. The Antewood has a thousands beasts in it that can kill you, and bucks are the least of them.” He paused. “Where the hell’s Woden wandered off to?”
	Alden hadn’t even noticed his uncle had gone missing until his father mentioned it. Knowing him he had probably stopped to shit behind a tree and forgotten to mention it, but now that the sun had almost set he wondered if the drunken oaf could find his way back.
	“Woden!” Alden called “Uncle Woden!”
	“Woden you stinking drunk! Get your ass out here!” Braun’s voice carried. He had a voice like a dog barking or a tree falling, harsh and scratchy but loud and clear. “Where the fuck is he?”
	“You don’t think a bear got to him do you?” Alden was joking, but he couldn’t hide the nerves in his voice. After dark, the Antewood had always chilled his bones in a way that had nothing to do with wind, rain or snow. His Granny had told him of all manner of things that hid in the woods. Not just wolves, bears and maddened deer but also the not-men who lived in the deep wood in barrows long abandoned by sensible men and who were said to steal children from their beds to make sausages from them.
	“No, if he’d gotten himself eaten he would have screamed about it. I’ll bet he’s just passed out. Wait here, I’ll go looking for him. Get a fire going if you can, the rabbits will start to turn if we don’t roast them soon.”
	“Gotcha’ pop,” Alden said. As his father wandered off into the darkness, Alden put down his sack and started gathering twigs. After he had gathered a nice bundled he let them with a knife and flint and got to work skinning the rabbits. It was not long until he had fully immersed himself in the task and began to tune out the rest of the wood. He paid no mind the rustling of the brush behind him, dismissing at as wind until something roared in his ear like a bear whose cub had been slaughtered.
	Alden tumbled sideways off his log and fell next to the fire. He stabbed blindly in front of him while trying to scuttling backwards. His heart and wind beat at his breast as if they were trying to leap out, but he found the roar had been displaced by a howling laugh.
	Uncle Woden balanced against a tree to keep from falling over as he laughed over his own tainted joke. “Is that how you fight a bear, boy? You swung that knife like a choking fish. C’mon” he said, offering Alden an unsteady hand, “I’ll help you skin those.”
	The two took a seat by the fire and went back to the small game. Alden began to ask Woden to set up the spit and smoking rack but thought better and attended to it himself. The woods were quiet there in the small clearing. It was a new moon, just a black disk hidden on the umber fabric of the sky. Alden knew this was the safest night of the month, when it was too dark for even the wolves to see, but in spite of that his heart beat had not yet cooled back to the normal rhythm yet.
	The trees in the distance just seemed to go on and on. He wasn’t sure where the forest ended but he knew the direction to walk if he wanted to get home. At least he hoped he did. The path would at least lead him back to the main road.
	“Is your pa still out there?” Woden drawled? The concern in his voice made the hot air and the warm fire seem very cold. Drunk men tend not to worry unless they knew there was a reason to.
	“He went looking for you about an hour ago.” He paused and looked off into the distance where Braun had gone and could not help but worry. “He’ll be okay right?”
	“Of course he will. You know him. He’s probably still looking for me and getting worried.” He stood up and tossed the scraps of his rabbit leg into the flames. “Pack up the meat and put out the fire. We’re going to go find him.”
	After smothering the flames with sand and packing the meat back into the burlap the party of two wandered back in the direction they had come. They stayed silent as they walked. Even on a night too dark for the wolves it would have been ill advised to be noisy.
	They had walked for nearly two miles without a sight of the woodsman before they noticed something peculiar about the crunch of the forest floor beneath their feet. It wasn’t just twigs and dirt, but copper autumn leaves had carpeted the ground. Alden looked up at the canopy and saw the leaves above had also turned the red and yellow of a dying year.
	“Woden, are you seeing this?” Alden whispered.
	“Seeing what?”
	“The leaves, why are they all colored like this? Fall isn’t for another five months.”
	“Oh, getting scared of leaves now are we?” Woden gave a booming laugh “Gran’s stories must be getting to your head. There haven’t been elves in these woods for years now, and if there are a few stragglers we have them surrounded.”
	Surrounded. To Alder that turn of phrase made no sense. Every literality held true but it didn’t quite carry the same weight. Men could not surround an elf any more than lambs could surround a wolf.
	The party of two trudged on for another 20 minutes before Alden spotted his father in the distance. He was leaning against an elder tree in a clearing up ahead. A campfire had been lit in the center and a whole joint of venison had been suspended above it. A salting cloth was drying by the fire, heaped with saltpeter and cuts of meat. “Pa!” he yelled in relief as he rushed ahead.
	“There you are,” Woden shouted. “What the hell were you doing out here?” They ran on ahead, Woden stumbling more than he realized. As the two drew nearer, Alden’s pace slowed to a crawl and then stopped. Despite all their hollering Braun had not so much as looked up. Alden’s eyes were sharper than those of his uncle, and as they drew nearer he noticed that his father wasn’t moving much at all. That tan linen at his collar had turned burgundy with stains that went as far down as his breast. Woden soon noticed too and his pace faltered. As Alden caught up with him he realized that his father was not simply leaning as he had thought, but was pinned to the elder by an arrow protruding from his neck. “Braun,” Woden whispered, the shock slowly drawing on his face. “Oh hell!”
	The arrow to the neck wasn’t the only wound the grizzled old woodsman bore. Alden noticed the left sleeve of his tunic and the right leg of his trousers had been carefully cut at the seam, and hung loosely as if partially empty. As he dared draw closer, more details stung his watering eyes. He could see that just above his father’s wrist was nearly bare bone. The flesh had been peeled off carefully with a knife, leaving only film-thin layers of muscle sticking to them. His father wasn’t the only one. Four more bodies had been pinned in place to form part of a circle about the clearing. Each was in a varying state of disassembly. His father was the only one who still bore limbs.
	The sizzling fat from what Alden now realized was a man’s arm dripped into the fire and gave a whooshing hiss as it met the tinder. Woden retched rabbit and wine and sputtered out a prayer of “Gods shield us!” He went to close his brother’s eyes, which had been left open without concern. “You shouldn’t be looking at this Alden. Hide your eyes behind a tree and don’t come out until I say.”
	Alden nodded and stumbled out of the clearing mute. The earth felt like it was flowing beneath his feet, not like stream but like a carpet woven of serpents. He could feel their fangs in his throat, his lungs and his heart. His heart beat in his ears, pulsing as eldritch drums.
	He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Seconds felt like months, and minutes died and were reborn raw and fleshy ever moment. His father was dead. Not just dead, but butchered carefully and heartlessly like a fatted calf, and whoever or whatever made this camp site was still in these woods, three miles from edge of the forest. His head snapped and rolled back and forth, his eyes darting with the same motion, as he tried to see everything at once, and  to know where to run. He need not have, because as he looked before him two hundred feet off into the darkness, he saw him.
	There was a man in the forest, watching him with a sickening stare. That is to say there was an entity in the woods with a man-like body. Alden wouldn’t have noticed him were it not for his eyes, which shone gold like a cats from holes in a wooden mask. He had the antlers of a stag, but it was too dark and too far to see if they sprouted from his temples or if they were affixed to the mask. Around his neck was a string of teeth. He bore no other clothing above his waist, which would be narrow enough to make him look starved were he not banded with muscles. He had a bundle of arrows clenched in his left hand and a bow in his right of pale white wood. He didn’t speak, nor did he step forward or notch and arrow, instead he cocked his head to the side as if curious.
	“It’’s time to go lad. Woden said beside him. These woods are no safe place, for you or for me.” Alden didn’t turn to face him. He was too terrified to look away from the not-man, who still watched patiently with hunger in his eyes. The woodsman followed his nephews gaze off into the woods and drew his own short bow. “Who goes there! Drop the bow and come out of the brush if you don’t want an arrow through your neck!”
	The man in the woods strode forward with a slow, long pace. He kept his bow at hip while he walked, and twirled three arrows between his fingers the way one might a pencil. “Stay back!” Woden yelled. His voice quavered beneath the surface. The masked man stepped on a twig with an audible snap, and Woden loosed his arrow.
	The man didn’t so much dodge the arrow as he did sway around it like a leaf turning aside to let the wind pass. A second was loosed from the bow of Woden and a second too did miss. With a roll of his neck a third arrow missed the point between his eyes and was lost in the bushes. In the time it took for the woodsman to draw a fourth arrow from his quiver, the not-man aimed, drew and fired two of his own.
	Woden gave a hoarse gasp as one of the arrows pierced his knee. It gave out under his paunch, and the impact of a punctured leg on dirt was followed with a great, sobbing bellow. Woden dropped his short bow. Alden noted that the string had been snapped by the second arrow.
	“Run!” Woden shouted between gasps, but though he tried Alden could not will his legs to move. He trembled impotently as the elf drew a knife of bone-white ceramic and approached his uncle, twirling the thin blade between his fingers as it were a playing card. He’s making a show of it Alden thought hopelessly.
	Woden drew his own hunting knife, a simple tool of dull color and keen edge. “Have at me sidhe!” His voice cracked on the last syllables and the one in the mask was behind him. He blinked. Even sobered by terror, the woodsman was slow of eye and joint. To him the entity had stepped out of frame too quickly to notice. Woden turned to look at Alden as if to ask what had just happened. As he did the paper-thin slit across his neck distorted and opened, spilling a bib of gore across his collarless tunic.
	Alden watched the life leave his uncle’s eyes, and gave an undignified squeak. With every ounce will and fear he could muster he turned his back to the elf in the mask and ran. He dared not look back, and the crunch of unseasonably dry leaves beneath his feet and the pounding of his heart in his ears silenced all else. He may just as well have been blind or deaf.
	As he ran, the boy cranked back the string of his crossbow. He knew it would likely do little to ward off a man who could step aside arrows, but desperation called for any step above uselessness.
	An arrow tipped with the same bone-white clay passed by his ear, close enough to hear. A stinging pain and the wet slap of meat on his shoulder told him that his earlobe had just been sheared off. He ducked behind a stout oak to take cover and finished drawing back his bowstring. On the other side of the tree the masked man had vanished from view, and as warily as he looked Alden could see no sign of him. The world was quiet there, and Alden was again alone.
	He had not lost the assailant, Alden was clever enough to know that. Just as he himself was hiding, the spirit of the hunt pursuing him was lying in wait. The moment he exposed himself, the hunt would begin again and he would have to run for his life.
	Alden’s heart was racing, and once again his sense of time began to warp and twist. How long had he been crouching there? Minutes? It felt much longer than that. Hours? It couldn’t have been many, it was still dark as jet in the woods. Shooting that squirrel felt like it was days ago, but that couldn’t possibly have been the case. His legs were tiring, the adrenaline was running off and he still had no clue where the man had gone. It was maddening waiting to be found. Carefully, Alden stepped out behind the tree and began walking back towards the village. The boy was starving and his whole body shook as if it were crudely constructed from twigs and string. At an old birch tree he turned left and by a rock he turned right. Where am I going he wondered. Which way is south?
	Eventually, Alden located the north star and under its guidance he ran as fast as he could manage back towards the village. It wasn’t long before he started recognizing brooks and stones along the path. The leaves had again summer green. He breathed a sigh of relief. Soon, he would be home again with his mother. Mom… She was all he had left now, her and his sister Maggie. He would be supporting the family alone, or almost so. His mother could bake and sew well enough. They would be horrified when they heard what happened to his father. Would he be allowed back in the Antewood? Would he even want to come back?
	His thoughts were cut short as something ensnared his ankle and bit into it. Alden screamed and cried as everything below the knee burnt white hot as if his calf was a galaxy of million pinprick suns which imploded and winked black and empty.
	His knee under him went slack but his foot was anchored in place by charcoal gray brambles which had dug through the meat between his tibia and fibula. He pitched forward and bone and cartilage parted ways with a pop. Alden landed on his face, vaguely aware that his left leg bent up at the knee like the haunches of a goat.
	From deep in the Antewood there was a whistle half way between the tunes of birds and men. It was ethereal and haunting. It cut as glass and burned as smoke and brimstone.
	Alden sat up, his left leg feeling numb and icy. He was not sure he was capable of feeling pain anymore but even so he moved gingerly. He glanced back behind him, and then in front of him, and then to both sides. The eerie whistle seemed to emanate from every direction, including the cold soil beneath him. On the western border of his line of sight the green lit by starlight turned gold.
	He was no longer alone.
	Alden reached to his belt and drew his hunting knife. It had fine teeth at the base of the blade. He had never seen the use for the serrations before, but now he was glad he had it. Quick as he could, before the advancing autumn reached him, the boy sawed at the seelie snare.
	He had almost sheared his way through when the brambles began to writhe like cephalopod rearing in pain. Several more tendrils burst from the soil and buried themselves in his calf. It turned out he could still feel pain, and he was feeling a more than he ever expected to in his lifetime. Alden dropped the knife in a pile of blood and sawdust and fell to his remaining knee.
	On the far edge of the forest, the masked elf stood with a quiver still full of arrows and whistled. Why hasn’t he killed me yet Alden wondered to himself. His father was dead, his uncle was dead, he had seen things he could never un-see and every muscle and ligament groaned as if ready to snap. He was ready to die, but fair man still hadn’t killed him. It dawned on him as his mind started to unravel that the man was toying with him. He was just a cat on two legs and Alden was his mouse. The boy took up his knife again and gritted his teeth. It’s all a game to him. He drew back on his haunches and brought the knife to the tangled mess of brambles and meat that was his lower leg. He just wants a show… He tensed on the handle and steeled what resolve he had left. …and I’m going to give it to him!  Alden swept the knife and sliced his own leg off just below the knee.
	With his remaining leg, he bounded forward. To the day he died Alden never knew how his brain had known how to run on a single leg. He imagined he must have looked ridiculous hopping away like a terrified fox from a trap. Alden bounded to the edge of the Antewood and lost his balance as he reached the hill that overlooked his village. He tumbled down the dusty slope and the world fell away from under him as he rolled.
	In his dream, The boy relived every hunt his father and uncle had ever taken him on through eyes that were not his. Were they those of an owl? A squirrel? Was he seeing through the knot-hole of a tree? His face was wet but he couldn’t remember why he was crying. His ears and nose felt like they were full of cotton and his was as light as steam.
	He awoke from a poppy-fueled sleep briefly and then blinked out again for another dream many times before he woke up completely in his own bed. His leg had been wrapped in linens that felt crusty and his sister Maggie had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder. Her cheeks were sticky with dried tears. He woke her and realized he was starving. Maggie called her mother and she rushed in with a tray of oat bread and cured sausage. He dug in greedily and told her it was the best thing she had ever made. The widow of the woodsman had only baked the bread, but she was too relieved to correct her boy. She thanked the gods for the charity she had received after her husband had disappeared and her son lost his leg. She especially thanked the yellow-eyed man in the hood who had given her that sausage