The Wolf Beneath The Fir Trees

You’re listening to The Wolf Beneath the Fir Trees, a Fabled Audio original. This story is intended for mature listeners. Episode One: The White Wolf of Codrul Negru

In the old days, when Romania was still a place of whispered borders, candlelit windows, and forests that villagers crossed themselves before naming aloud, there stood a wood so dense that even daylight entered it on its knees. The villagers called it Codrul Negru. The Black Wood. It rose beyond the last sheep pastures of the valley, where the land folded into the Carpathian mountains and the clouds hung low enough to snag on the fir trees. In spring, the forest breathed damp earth and violet flowers. In summer, it steamed with mushrooms, pine resin, and the green bitterness of nettles. In autumn, it burned copper and blood-red beneath the moon. And in winter, it became a kingdom of silence, with snow packed deep around the trunks and wolves watching from between the shadows. No one went into Codrul Negru after dusk. No one except Ileana. She lived where the village road ended and the deer paths began, in a crooked little cottage built of river stone, dark timber, and stubbornness. The roof sagged under moss. Smoke curled from the chimney when she had wood to burn, and when she did not, she wrapped herself in her grandmother's wool shawl and slept beside the hearth with a knife beneath her pillow. Ileana was twenty-three, though grief had made her appear older in stillness and younger in surprise. She had black hair long enough to sit on, usually braided with red thread to keep away the evil eye. Her eyes were hazel-green, the colour of wet leaves. The village women said she had her dead mother’s mouth and her grandmother's dangerous hands. Her grandmother, Bunică in the local tongue, had been a descântătoare, a woman who knew the old charms. She had taught Ileana which plants healed fever, which drew poison from a wound, which could send a faithless man dreaming of snakes until he confessed his sins. Basil for blessing. Garlic for protection. Mugwort for sight. Saint John’s wort for the melancholy that sat on the chest like a stone. Henbane only if the need was desperate, and even then, never without prayer. “Plants listen,” her Bunică had told her. “So mind what you ask of them.” Now her dear Bunică was buried beneath the rowan tree behind the cottage, and Ileana lived alone.

The villagers came to her when they had no choice. They came with babies who would not sleep, men with axe wounds, girls with secret bruises, brides who wanted fertility, widows who wanted silence. They left eggs, flour, a strip of smoked pork, a candle, a handful of coins if they had them. They thanked her quickly and crossed themselves before hurrying back down the path. They did not invite her to weddings. They did not sit beside her in church. They did not call her witch, not to her face. Ileana did not mind most days. People were noisy, suspicious creatures. The forest was less complicated. It spoke plainly: the crack of ice, the warning chatter of magpies, the sigh of branches before snow fell. She knew where the wild thyme grew between stones and where the foxes denned. She knew which stream never froze and which hollow filled with bluebells each May. At night, she listened to the wolves sing on the ridges and felt less alone. Until the winter the white wolf came. It began on Saint Andrew’s Eve, when the veil between the living and the restless wore thin and every sensible household rubbed garlic on the doorways. Ileana was tying bundles of dried basil from the rafters when the goats screamed. She froze. The sound cut through the cottage, high and human. The wind pressed at the shutters. The fire snapped. For one foolish heartbeat, she thought of staying inside. Then another scream tore through the yard, and she seized her lantern and knife. Outside, the night was black and rimed with frost. Her breath smoked. The moon hung full over the fir trees, bright as a bone button sewn to the sky. The goat pen gate stood open. Blood steamed on the snow. Ileana lifted the lantern. At the edge of the trees stood a wolf.

It was enormous, larger than any wolf had a right to be, its shoulders nearly as high as her chest. Its fur was white, not the soft white of lambswool, but the dead white of ash. Its eyes shone gold. A goat hung limp in its jaws. Ileana’s fingers tightened around the knife. “Leave it.” The wolf did not move. No animal should have understood her. But this one did. It dropped the goat. Then it smiled. Not with its mouth, not truly, but something in the shape of its gaze bent toward amusement. Toward hunger. Toward her. The lantern flame guttered. From the forest came a whisper like old leaves dragged across stone. Fata singură. Lonely girl. Ileana backed away. The wolf stepped forward. The charm at her throat burned suddenly hot. Her Bunică’s charm: a small pouch of red cloth containing basil, salt, and a thorn from the rowan tree. Ileana clutched it through her dress and began to murmur a protection under her breath. “Garlic at the threshold, salt at the bone, Mother of God, keep what is mine my own…” The wolf’s ears flattened. The shadows between the trees twisted. Something old was looking through that animal’s eyes. Ileana flung the lantern.

It shattered at the wolf’s paws, oil blooming into fire across the snow. The beast leapt back with a snarl, and Ileana ran. She slammed the cottage door and dropped the oak bar into place. Her hands shook as she grabbed three cloves of garlic and crushed them against the threshold. She tossed salt into the fire. The flames roared blue. Outside, claws dragged once down the door. Slowly. Deliberately. Then the wolf began to howl. It was not like the other wolves. Their cries rose wild and lonely, stitched into the rhythm of the mountains. This howl was wrong. It carried words beneath it, buried deep. Mine. Ileana did not sleep. At dawn, she found no tracks beyond the goat pen. No paw prints leaving the yard. Only a circle of melted snow where the white wolf had stood, and in the centre of it, a single black thorn. She picked it up with iron tongs and dropped it into a jar. By midday, the whole village knew. “Pricolici,” old Petru whispered when she came to market two days later, her shawl pulled low over her face. The butcher’s wife crossed herself. “Do not say that word.” “It is a wolf-devil,” Petru insisted. “A cursed soul. A dead man wearing fur.” “Or a living one,” said another man. “There are men who become beasts when the moon fattens.” Ileana kept her eyes on the onions in front of her. “Has it taken sheep?” The women went quiet. At last, the butcher’s wife said, “Only yours.” Only yours. The words followed Ileana home through the snow. That night, she hung iron nails above the windows. She boiled nettle, garlic, and rue into a bitter wash and painted it along the door. She scattered ash from the hearth in a circle around the cottage and whispered the names of every saint her Bunică had trusted and every older thing she had not dared name. Still, when the moon rose, the white wolf came. It did not attack. It watched. Night after night, it stood beneath the fir trees, just beyond the ring of ash, gold eyes fixed on her window. Ileana stopped lighting candles after sunset. She moved through the cottage by touch. She slept in scraps. Her world shrank to the thickness of the door, the strength of the bar, the dwindling pile of firewood. On the seventh night, the storm came. Snow fell hard from dusk, thick and blinding. The forest vanished behind a white wall. Ileana’s woodpile was nearly gone, and the cottage had grown so cold that ice feathered the inside of the windowpanes. She should have waited. She knew she should have waited. But cold killed as surely as teeth. She wrapped herself in wool, took her axe, and stepped into the storm. The world outside had no edges. The path to the shed was buried. Snow stung her cheeks and filled her lashes. She kept one hand on the cottage wall until she reached the lean-to where she stored cut timber. The wood was frozen together. She wedged the axe blade between two logs and struck hard. Once. Twice. Behind her, something breathed. Ileana turned. The white wolf stood between her and the cottage. Snow clung to its fur. Its eyes burned. She lifted the axe. The wolf lunged. Ileana swung wildly. The blade glanced off its shoulder. The beast hit her with the force of a falling tree, knocking her into the snow. Teeth snapped inches from her throat. She screamed and jammed the axe handle between its jaws. The wolf’s weight crushed her. Its breath was hot, rotten with grave-earth and raw meat. Claws tore through her sleeve into skin. Then a shout split the storm. The wolf flew sideways. A man stood over her with a woodsman’s axe in both hands. He was huge in the way mountain men were huge, built by labour rather than softness, his coat dark with snow, his beard rimed white. His eyes were grey. Not cold grey, but storm grey, bright with danger. “Get behind me,” he ordered. Ileana scrambled back. The wolf recovered, snarling. The woodsman raised his axe. “Come then,” he said, voice low. “Try me.” The white wolf stared at him. For the first time, it seemed uncertain. Then it turned and vanished into the storm. Ileana lay gasping in the snow, blood warm beneath her torn sleeve. The woodsman lowered his axe and looked at her. “You live alone?” he asked. She tried to sit. “I do.” His mouth tightened. “Not tonight.” And before she could protest, the stranger lifted her into his arms as if she weighed no more than a bundle of kindling and carried her back through the blizzard toward the cottage door. Behind them, deep in Codrul Negru, the wolf began to laugh.

Episode Two: The Woodsman at the Door The woodsman’s name was Andrei. He told her this while stitching her arm beside the hearth with a needle heated in flame and thread boiled in yarrow water. He had hands large enough to break bone, yet they moved with surprising care. Ileana sat on the table with her torn sleeve pushed above her elbow, jaw clenched as the needle bit through skin. “You stitch like a soldier,” she said. “I was one.” “That explains the manners.” His eyes flicked up. For a moment, she thought he might smile. He did not, but something softened at the edge of his mouth. “And you speak sharply for a woman bleeding on her own table.” “I speak sharply because a strange man is sewing me shut in my own house.” “I saved your life.” “And now you know where I keep the good thread.” This time, he did smile. It changed his face. Without it, Andrei looked carved from the darker parts of the forest: broad brow, strong nose, beard thick and close-cut, hair almost black where the snow had melted from it. With the smile, warmth broke through. Not gentleness exactly. Something more dangerous, because it looked earned. Ileana looked away first. The cottage felt too small with him inside it. Too aware of his shoulders, his damp coat steaming near the fire, the leather belt at his waist, the axe resting within reach. He smelled of snow, smoke, and pine sap. Beneath that, man. It had been a long time since Ileana had been alone with a man. Longer still since she had wanted to notice one. Andrei tied off the thread. “The wound is shallow.” “It did not feel shallow.” “Pain lies.” The firelight caught on the last droplets of melted snow clinging to his beard. She could smell pine sap and woodsmoke on him, and beneath that the warmer, salt-tinged scent of a man who had walked through blizzard and blood to reach her. His knee brushed the outside of her thigh as he leaned closer to tie the knot. The tiny contact sent a ripple of heat straight between her legs. Ileana drew in a tiny gasp. She prayed he hadn’t heard it. “Does it?” His gaze met hers. “Often.” The fire snapped between them. Outside, the storm threw snow against the shutters. The wolf had stopped laughing, or perhaps the walls were thick enough to keep it out. Ileana wanted to believe that. She knew better. Andrei washed his hands in the basin. “That was no ordinary wolf.” “No.” “You knew it would come.” Ileana slid down from the table, careful not to sway. “It has come every night.” “Why?” She reached for a clean cloth. “Ask it.” “I’m asking you.” “And I am telling you I don’t know.” He watched her in silence, and she felt the weight of his disbelief. Her temper sparked. “You think I called it here?” “I think women who live alone in cursed woods usually have reasons.” “And men who wander through blizzards with axes?” His expression shuttered. So. A wound there.

Good, she thought. Let him have secrets too. Andrei moved to the window and peered through a slit in the shutter. “It will come back.” “I have charms.” “It passed your charms.” “It did not pass the ash.” “It did not need to.” He turned. “You went outside.” Shame warmed her cheeks because he was right. “I needed wood.” “You need more than wood.” “I have managed alone for years.” “And nearly died alone tonight.” The words struck harder than they should have. Ileana lifted her chin. “You may sleep by the fire until morning. Then you may leave.” “I’m not leaving.” The cottage seemed to shrink around them. She could feel the heat radiating off his body even from three paces away. The scent of him, snow, smoke, and something darker, more male, wrapped around her like another layer of wool. Her fingers tightened on the knife, but it was no longer fear that made her pulse race. It was the sudden, vivid image of those large hands putting the blade aside and reaching for her instead. The cottage seemed to still. She laughed once, without humour. “You mistake me for someone who takes orders.” “And you mistake me for someone asking permission.” She grabbed the knife from the table. Andrei did not move. The firelight painted one side of him gold, the other shadow. He looked at the blade, then at her.

“I do not harm women,” he said quietly. “I do not take what isn’t given. I do not stay where I am unwanted unless something worse is at the door.” Ileana’s grip faltered. Something in his voice carried an old oath. She lowered the knife a little. “Who are you?” “A woodsman.” “Woodsmen do not speak like nobles and stitch like soldiers.” His jaw tightened. “And witches do not always have warts.” The word should have insulted her. From his mouth, it did not sound like accusation. It sounded like recognition. “I am not a witch.” “No?” “I heal.” “So does fire, when it burns sickness from a wound.” “That is a poor argument.” “It is an honest one.” The storm groaned around the cottage. Above them, dried herbs swayed from the rafters: mint, vervain, basil, wormwood, bundles of thyme tied in twine. Their shadows trembled over Andrei’s face. Ileana set the knife down. “You may stay tonight,” she said. “Only tonight.” He inclined his head. “Only tonight.” But morning did not bring safety. It brought blood. Ileana woke to the smell of it. Andrei was already outside, axe in hand. She pulled on her boots and followed despite his sharp look.

The storm had passed. The world glittered under a pale winter sun. Snow lay smooth over the yard except where something had drawn a circle around the cottage. Not tracks. Words. They had been written in blood. The letters were old, crooked, gouged into the snow by claw or finger. Fata mea. My girl. Ileana’s stomach turned. Andrei crouched beside the writing. “This is not wolf blood.” “How do you know?” He touched two fingers to the red snow and smelled them. “Pig.” She stared. “That comforts me less than you think.” “There are farms lower in the valley.” “The nearest is two hours away.” “Not for something that runs on four legs.” The words in the snow steamed. Ileana whispered a charm beneath her breath, then scattered salt across them. The blood hissed and sank black into the snow. Andrei stood. “Pack what you need.” “No.” “Ileana.” The sound of her name in his voice unsettled her. “No,” she repeated. “This is my home.” “It has marked you.”

“It marked me before you came.” “Then it will kill you after I leave.” “You said you were not leaving.” His gaze sharpened. “I’m not.” Her heart betrayed her with one hard beat. They spent the day fortifying the cottage. Andrei split wood until the pile stood higher than the window. Ileana brewed protection washes so strong the air stung their eyes. Together they hammered iron nails into thresholds, tied red thread around the bedposts, and hung garlic by every door. She showed him how to press rowan twigs above the lintel. He showed her where the shutters were weakest. By dusk, they were exhausted. By moonrise, they were no longer strangers. He told her he came from a village beyond the eastern ridge, a place burned in a border raid years before. He had been conscripted young, fought men whose names he never learned, and returned to find his home gone. “After that,” he said, sharpening his axe by the fire, “the forest seemed kinder than people.” Ileana sat opposite him, grinding dried mugwort with a mortar and pestle. “People can be cruel when they are afraid.” “And you? Are you cruel?” “When needed.” I believe that. Her eyes kept drifting to the open collar of his shirt, to the scar that disappeared beneath the linen. She wondered what it would feel like beneath her fingertips, the raised ridge of it, the heat of the skin around it. The thought made her mouth go dry and her nipples tighten against the fabric of her shift. She looked away quickly, but not before she caught him watching her watch him, something dark and knowing flickering across his face. She should not have liked his approval.

She did. The room had warmed. Snow melted from his boots near the hearth. His shirt clung slightly at the throat where he had loosened it, revealing his scar again. Ileana found her eyes returning to it. Andrei noticed. “Wolf,” he said. She looked up too quickly. “What?” “The scar. From a wolf.” “When?” “Years ago.” “An ordinary wolf?” He paused. “No.” Outside, a branch cracked. Both of them went still. A howl rolled through the trees. Closer than before. The fire dimmed. Ileana rose, but Andrei caught her wrist. Not hard. Enough to stop her. “Stay behind me.” “I am tired of men telling me where to stand.” “I am not telling you because you are weak.” “Then why?” His thumb shifted against her pulse. “Because if it touches you again, I will lose sense.” His thumb stroked once across the frantic flutter of her pulse. The touch was barely there, yet it sent liquid heat pooling low in her belly and made her thighs press together beneath her skirt. She saw the knowledge of it flash in his storm-grey eyes, the way her body answered him even while her mind still warred with caution. Outside, the wolf scratched at the door. Inside, the only danger was the one waking hot and hungry between them. Heat moved through Ileana, slow and startling. She looked at his hand around her wrist. At the strength held carefully in check. At the way his eyes had dropped to her mouth. The wolf continued scratching at the door. Once. Twice. A voice slid through the wood. “Ileana.” Not a growl now. A man’s voice. Andrei’s face went white. Ileana whispered, “You know him.” The thing outside laughed softly. “Yes,” it said. “He knows me.” Andrei released her wrist and lifted his axe. The door shuddered. The latch screamed. And from beyond the threshold, the wolf wearing a dead man’s voice said, “Ask your woodsman what he buried beneath the fir trees.”

Episode Three: The Hunger Under the Moon

Andrei did not answer. That frightened Ileana more than the voice at the door. She had seen men lie. They filled silence with anger, excuses, curses, anything to keep truth from showing its teeth. Andrei only stood there, axe in hand, staring at the shaking door as if the past itself had come knocking. “Andrei,” she said. The wolf outside laughed again. “Tell her,” it crooned. “Tell the pretty witch why I have come.” The iron nails above the door trembled. One fell, striking the floor with a bright, useless sound. Ileana snatched a handful of salt from the table and flung it into the hearth. The flames surged blue. The thing outside snarled. “Not tonight,” she said, voice shaking. “Not in my house.” She began the old words. Not church words. Older. Her Bunică’s words, formed from river sounds and root names, from the rhythm women used when rocking feverish children or washing the dead. “By basil leaf and rowan thorn, By nettle tooth and woollen cord, What comes with hunger, leave unfed, What speaks from grave, return to dead…” The door stopped shaking. Silence pressed in.

Then something heavy moved away through the snow. Ileana held the charm until her throat burned. When at last the forest quieted, she turned on Andrei. “Who is he?” Andrei lowered the axe. His knuckles were bloodless around the handle. “My brother.” The words fell like stones. Ileana stared. “Your brother is dead?” “Yes.” “And a wolf?” “Yes.” “That is not enough.” “No,” he said. “It isn’t.” He sat slowly, as though his body had become old while standing. For a moment, Ileana saw not the woodsman, not the soldier, but a man carrying something that had rotted inside him for years. “His name was Radu,” Andrei said. “He was younger than me. Clever. Handsome. The sort of man people forgave because he smiled while sinning.” Ileana remained standing. “What did he do?” “What didn’t he do?” Andrei’s mouth twisted. “He stole. Lied. Took girls into haylofts and left them weeping. Beat men weaker than him. But he was my brother, and I thought that meant I could save him.” “You couldn’t.” “No.” The fire cracked.

“Our mother knew old charms,” he continued. “Not like you. Smaller things. Weather signs. Milk blessings. Ways to keep wolves from lambs. Radu wanted more. He heard stories of Muma Pădurii, the Mother of the Forest, who lives in a house made of roots and bones. They say she gives power to those willing to pay.” Ileana felt cold move down her spine. “And he found her?” Andrei nodded. “Or she found him.” Outside, the wind dragged snow from the roof. “He wanted strength,” Andrei said. “Wanted women to desire him. Men to fear him. He wanted to be untouchable.” His gaze lifted to hers. “The forest gave him a wolf skin.” “A curse.” “A gift, he called it.” “What was the price?” Andrei’s face tightened. “A heart freely given.” Ileana understood then. Not all at once. In pieces. The white wolf watching her window. My girl written in blood. The way it waited, not merely to kill. “It needs me to love it?” “It needs you to surrender,” Andrei said. “Body, heart, name. The old stories say a wolf-skin curse becomes permanent when someone willingly binds herself to the beast beneath the moon.” Ileana’s laugh was sharp with disbelief. “Then it chose poorly.” “Did it?” She flinched. Andrei stood immediately. “I didn’t mean—” “Yes, you did.” His silence admitted it. Ileana stepped closer, anger hot enough to hide fear. “Say it.”

His jaw worked. “You are alone. Feared. Half-starved some winters, I’d wager. You speak to goats and herbs because people have given you little kindness. Radu was always good at smelling loneliness.” The words struck clean. Ileana slapped him. The sound cracked through the cottage. Andrei did not move to stop her. Did not even turn his face back right away. When he did, his cheek was red, his eyes full of regret. “I deserved that.” You deserved worse. The sting on his cheek faded, but the heat between them did not. Her palm still tingled from the contact with his skin. She hated how much she wanted to touch him again, to soothe the mark she had left or to strike once more, anything to shatter the unbearable coil of want tightening low in her belly every time their eyes met across the fire. She turned away before he could see how her body betrayed her, how loneliness had become something sharp and aching for him. “Yes.” She turned away before he could see how badly he had hurt her. The worst of it was not that he thought her lonely. The worst was that he was right. For years, Ileana had told herself solitude was a choice. Sometimes it was. Often it was not. Often it was what remained after neighbours stopped knocking, after girls she once played with began crossing the road, after men looked at her cottage and wondered aloud what a woman alone might be persuaded to trade. She had made peace with it. Or thought she had. Andrei’s voice came softer. “Ileana.” “No.” “I’m sorry.”

“You should sleep.” “I won’t.” “Then be tired.” She climbed to the loft and lay fully dressed beneath her blankets, listening to him keep watch below. She did not sleep either. Near dawn, she dreamed of a house deep in the forest. Its walls were woven of roots. Its windows glowed green. Herbs hung from the rafters like dead birds. In the doorway stood an old woman tall as a fir tree, her hair moss, her teeth black seeds, her eyes the yellow-white of fungus. Beside her sat the white wolf. The old woman smiled. Daughter of root and thorn, she whispered. Come and bargain. Ileana woke with dirt beneath her fingernails. By morning, she knew what she had to do. Andrei opposed it, of course. “No.” “You use that word often.” “When people suggest foolishness.” “I need answers.” “You need distance.” “I need to know why your brother chose me.” “Because you are vulnerable.” “No.” Ileana tied her boots. “Because I am useful.” Andrei’s expression shifted.

She saw he had not considered it. Men rarely did. They thought hunger always wanted beauty, softness, surrender. But old magic was practical. It chose tools. “My Bunică knew charms,” Ileana said. “My mother did too. If Radu needs a woman to bind herself willingly, perhaps he needs one with power in the blood.” Andrei cursed under his breath. “Exactly,” she said. They left after midday. The forest swallowed them quickly. Codrul Negru was no tame wood of birdsong and pleasant paths. It was ancient, steep, and watchful. Fir trees rose black and close together, their branches knitted so tightly that noon became twilight beneath them. Snow lay deep over roots and stones. Icicles hung like teeth from fallen trunks. Here and there, red berries shone obscenely bright against the white, and ravens clicked from the boughs above. Andrei walked ahead, axe ready. Ileana followed with a satchel of herbs, iron scissors, salt, candle stubs, and her Bunică’s bone-handled knife. They found signs. A strip of white fur caught on bark. A circle of mushrooms growing through snow. A deer carcass arranged too neatly, ribs opened like a book. At dusk, they reached a clearing where steam rose from a spring that should have been frozen. Around it grew plants no winter should permit: mugwort, belladonna, wormwood, wild basil, and a single red flower Ileana did not know. She crouched beside it. “Don’t touch,” Andrei said. The flower turned toward her. Its petals opened. Inside was an eye.

Ileana fell back. The forest laughed in an old woman’s voice. “So,” said Muma Pădurii from between the trees. “The little root-girl comes with the axe-man.” Andrei stepped in front of Ileana. The old woman emerged. She was hideous and magnificent. Bent-backed, bark-skinned, draped in ragged moss and fox pelts. Her hair writhed with beetles. Her long fingers were stained green to the knuckles. Yet the forest leaned toward her like children toward a mother. Muma Pădurii sniffed. “Soldier. Brother-killer. Oath-breaker.” Andrei’s face went hard. Ileana rose. “And what am I?” The hag’s gaze slid to her. “Hungry,” she said. Muma Pădurii smiled. “Hungry girls survive.” “I want the wolf gone.” “No. You want to be wanted without being devoured. Different spell.” Andrei growled, “Enough.” The hag ignored him. “Your wolf comes tonight, root-girl. Full moon. He will offer what lonely hearts crave. Warmth. Worship. A place beside him. He will wear a man’s skin and speak sweetly.” Ileana forced herself not to look at Andrei. “How do I kill him?” “You cannot kill what is already dead.” “Then how do I end him?”

Muma Pădurii reached into her hair and pulled free a thorn as long as a finger, black and shining. “Pierce the wolf-skin where the man’s heart used to be. But only when he is between forms. Too soon, he heals. Too late, he takes you.” “What price?” Ileana asked. The hag’s grin widened. Smart girl. “A kiss,” Muma Pădurii said. Andrei stepped forward. “No.” The hag’s eyes flashed. “Not from you, axe-man.” Ileana went cold. “From me?” “Not on my mouth.” The hag tapped Ileana’s chest with one long claw. “From your fear.” “I don’t understand.” “You will.” The thorn dropped into Ileana’s palm. It burned like ice. The clearing vanished. Suddenly she and Andrei stood alone among the fir trees, night falling fast around them. From somewhere close by came the soft crunch of paws on snow. Then a man’s voice, smooth as honey over rot. “Ileana,” Radu called. “Come see what love looks like when it has teeth.”

Episode Four: The Wolf at the Window

They ran. Branches whipped Ileana’s face. Snow dragged at her skirts. Behind them, the wolf moved through the trees with terrible ease, sometimes on four feet, sometimes two, sometimes laughing in Radu’s voice. Andrei caught her hand and pulled her over a fallen trunk. His fingers were rough and warm around hers. Even through the terror she felt the strength in that grip, the way he could have crushed her bones but held her like something precious. The scent of him cut through the cold pine air and for one reckless heartbeat she wanted to stop running, wanted to press her face into the hollow of his throat and breathe him in until the wolf and the curse and the whole frozen world disappeared. “This way.” “You know where we are?” “No.” “Excellent.” He almost laughed. Even in terror, the sound sparked between them. They reached her cottage just as the moon rose. The charms were still in place. Garlic at the doors. Iron above the windows. Rowan tied with red thread. Ash circle bright around the yard. For a moment, hope flared. Then the white wolf stepped from the trees wearing Andrei’s face. Ileana stumbled. It was close enough to turn her stomach. For one terrible, dizzying second her body didn’t know the difference. The same broad shoulders. The same storm-grey eyes. The same mouth she had imagined against her skin in the dark. Heat flared low in her belly even as fear iced her veins. She hated the wolf for wearing that face, hated it almost as much as she hated how badly, in that single breath, she had wanted it to be real.

Andrei went still beside her. The false Andrei smiled. “She likes this face.” The real Andrei lifted his axe. “Hide inside.” Ileana shook her head. “Between forms, she said.” “He’s baiting you.” “He’s changing.” The false Andrei laughed and split open. Not with blood. With shadow. His skin tore like cloth. White fur pushed through. Bones cracked. His mouth lengthened into a muzzle, then snapped back into a human jaw. Between one breath and the next, he was neither wolf nor man. Ileana seized the black thorn. Radu’s golden eyes locked on hers. And he spoke in her father’s voice. “My little Ileana.” The world stopped. No one had called her that since she was nine years old and fever took her father before harvest. Her father, who had carved her first wooden spoon. Her father, who had smelled of hay and pipe smoke. Her father, who had sung badly and loved loudly. The thorn trembled in her hand. Andrei shouted her name. Radu smiled with her father’s mouth. “Come here, little one. Haven’t you been cold long enough?” The price of the hag’s bargain opened inside her. A kiss from your fear. This was it. Not the wolf. Not death.

The fear that loneliness had hollowed her so deeply she would welcome any voice that remembered how to love her. Tears blurred her vision. “I missed you,” she whispered. Radu stepped closer, changing as he came, father to wolf to beautiful stranger to Andrei again. “I know,” he said. “I know every empty place.” Andrei moved, but shadow burst from the snow and wrapped around his legs. He fell hard, axe skidding away. Radu turned his golden gaze on him. “Stay.” The shadows tightened. Ileana stood alone. The false Andrei reached for her. “Give me your name, your mouth, your heart. I will keep you warm. I will make them fear you. I will never leave.” It was a good lie. Ileana thought of her cottage, cold and quiet. Of market women turning away. Of winters measured in firewood and silence. Of her Bunică’s grave beneath the rowan tree. Then she thought of Andrei sewing her arm with careful hands. Andrei listening. Andrei telling an ugly truth and accepting the slap that followed. Andrei standing between her and death, not because she was helpless, but because he could not bear her hurt. Warmth was not the same as love. Possession was not the same as staying. Ileana lifted her chin. “You cannot have my loneliness.” Radu’s smile faltered. She drove the thorn into his chest.

The scream shook snow from the trees. Radu convulsed. His half-formed body thrashed, wolf and man tearing through each other. Black light burst from the wound. The shadows holding Andrei snapped, and he surged up, grabbing his axe. “Move!” Ileana fell back as Andrei swung. The axe struck the thorn. It drove deep. Radu exploded into white fur, ash, and a sound like a hundred wolves howling underground. Then silence. Snow drifted down. For one heartbeat, two. Then something beneath the ash moved. A hand shot out and closed around Ileana’s ankle. Radu’s face rose from the ruin, no longer beautiful, no longer wolf. Just dead. Dead and furious. “If I starve,” he hissed, “so will you.” Cold slammed into her. Ileana screamed as frost raced up her leg, under her skin, toward her heart. Andrei hacked at Radu’s arm, but the axe passed through smoke. The dead thing smiled. “I will take the warmth from her,” Radu whispered. “And you will hold what is left.” Andrei dropped to his knees and grabbed Ileana’s face between his hands. “No,” he said. His voice was not for Radu.

It was for her. “Ileana, look at me.” She tried. Her vision was greying. Her lips had gone numb. Andrei pulled her against him. “You are not alone.” The words struck like flint. She could barely speak. “That is not a charm.” “Yes, it is.” Then he kissed her. It was not gentle. It was desperate, hot, and alive. His mouth sealed over hers as if he could breathe his own heart into her body. Ileana clutched at his coat, at his shoulders, at anything solid. Heat rushed through her, fighting the frost, dragging her back from the dark inch by inch. Radu screamed. Andrei deepened the kiss. The world narrowed to his mouth, his hands, the rough sound he made when she answered him. There was no room for cold. No room for fear. Only heat, pine smoke, blood, and the fierce insistence of being wanted by someone who asked nothing from her but life. Ileana’s charm burst open at her throat. Basil, salt, and rowan thorn scattered over the snow. The ash circle flared gold. Radu’s hand vanished from her ankle. The dead wolf shrieked once, high and thin, and collapsed into black dust. This time, nothing moved. Andrei broke the kiss only when Ileana gasped. He pressed his forehead to hers, breathing hard. “Stay.”

“I am trying,” she whispered. His laugh broke, almost a sob. He lifted her and carried her inside. The cottage door closed against the night. For hours, Ileana shook beneath every blanket she owned while Andrei fed the hearth and warmed stones to place at her feet. He brewed tea under her direction, nettle, thyme, honey, a shaving of ginger root saved for fever and spilled only half of it. “Terrible witch,” she murmured. “Terrible patient.” “Bossy woodsman.” “Reckless root-girl.” She smiled despite the ache in her bones. Toward dawn, the cold finally left her. And something else arrived. Want. It came softly at first, hidden beneath gratitude and exhaustion. Andrei sat on the floor beside the bed, one arm resting near her hip, his head tipped back against the mattress. He had refused to sleep elsewhere. His hand was close enough that her fingers could brush his. So she brushed them. He opened his eyes. The cottage was dim, the fire low. Dawn had not yet found the windows. “Ileana?” “I am warm now,” she said. His gaze searched her face. “Good.” “No.” She swallowed. “I mean… I am warm.” Understanding moved through his eyes. Then hunger. Then restraint.

He sat up slowly. “You nearly died.” “I know.” “You are tired.” “Yes.” “You may be frightened and mistaking—” “I know my own wanting.” The words silenced him. Ileana pushed the blankets aside and held out her hand. Andrei stared at it as if it were a holy thing. Then he took it. He came to her carefully, giving her time to refuse him. She did not. When he sat on the edge of the bed, she touched his cheek where she had slapped him the night before. “I am still angry,” she whispered. “I know.” “But not only angry.” His breath changed. She leaned up and kissed him. This kiss was different. No curse. No death. No desperate spell. Only choice. Andrei made a low sound against her mouth, and heat unfurled through Ileana, slow and lush. He kissed as if he had been starving quietly for years, as if every taste of her undid some old grief. His hands remained careful until she guided them to her waist, and then his restraint frayed. The cottage became a world of breath and firelight. His mouth moved over her throat, her shoulder, the tender place beneath her ear. Ileana arched into him, startled by the pleasure of being touched with reverence and need at once. He murmured her name against her skin like a prayer he did not trust himself to speak aloud. When she pulled his shirt free and felt the heat of him beneath her palms, he shuddered. “Tell me to stop,” he said roughly, “and I will.” She drew him closer. “Do not stop.” So he didn’t. Andrei came over her like a storm breaking. His mouth crashed onto hers, hot and demanding, tongue stroking deep as though he could drink the last of the frost from her bones. Ileana tasted smoke and salt and man; she moaned into the kiss and arched up, breasts pressing against the hard plane of his chest. The wool blanket rasped against her bare thighs. His beard scraped deliciously along her jaw as he dragged his mouth lower, teeth grazing the tender spot beneath her ear. “Gods, Ileana,” he rasped, voice rough as bark. The sound vibrated straight through her. “You’re shaking.” His big hands, the same hands that had stitched her wound and swung an axe against death, slid down her sides, calluses catching on soft skin. He shoved the blankets aside and stripped her shift away in one impatient tug. Cool night air kissed her nipples into tight, aching peaks. Firelight danced across her body, turning her skin gold and shadow. Andrei stared, eyes black with hunger, chest heaving. “Look at you,” he breathed. “My fierce root-girl. All this time I’ve wanted to see you like this, flushed and wet and mine to touch.” He lowered his head and took one nipple into his hot mouth, sucking hard while his tongue flicked the sensitive tip. Ileana cried out, fingers fisting in his thick dark hair. The wet pull of his mouth sent a bolt of pure need straight to her core; she felt herself grow slicker, the ache between her legs turning sharp and empty. His hand slid lower. Rough fingers parted her folds, finding her drenched. He groaned against her breast at the evidence of her want. One thick digit circled her swollen clit, then pushed inside her with devastating slowness. The stretch made her gasp. He added a second finger, curling them against that hidden spot while his thumb kept relentless, slick circles on the bundle of nerves above. The wet sound of his fingers working her filled the small space between them, obscene, perfect, mixing with the crackle of the fire and her own ragged breathing. Pleasure coiled tight and fast. She could smell her own arousal now, musky and sweet beneath the sharper notes of pine and smoke clinging to his skin. “Andrei… please…” she gasped. He lifted his head, eyes wild. “I’ve got you.” He withdrew his fingers and shoved his trousers down. His cock sprang free, thick, veined, the head flushed dark and already glistening. Ileana reached for him, wrapping her hand around that hot, heavy length. He was burning. She stroked once, thumb swiping over the slick crown, and he hissed, hips jerking into her grip. “Enough,” he growled. “I need to be inside you.” He settled between her spread thighs. The blunt, broad head of him nudged her entrance, parting her slick folds. For one suspended heartbeat he held there, letting her feel every inch he was about to give her. Then he pushed in, slow, relentless, stretching her open around his girth. Ileana’s head fell back. The burn was exquisite. She felt every ridge, every pulse of him as he sank deeper, filling her until she thought she would break from the perfect, overwhelming fullness. When he was seated to the hilt, they both groaned low, guttural sounds that tangled with the wind outside. He began to move. Deep, measured thrusts that dragged against every sensitive nerve inside her. The wet, rhythmic sound of skin meeting skin filled the cottage. The bed creaked beneath them. Firelight painted shifting gold across the flexing muscles of his shoulders and back. She could feel the power in him, the same strength that had carried her through the blizzard, now poured entirely into her. “Harder,” she begged, nails digging into his sweat-slicked skin. “I need—ah—harder.” He gave it to her. His hips snapped faster, the angle shifting so the head of his cock stroked that secret place inside her with every thrust. One of his hands braced beside her head; the other slid beneath her to lift her hips, changing the angle even deeper. The new friction made her see stars. She could smell him everywhere now, pine, smoke, salt, and the darker, heady musk of sex. His breath came hot against her throat. His beard rasped her collarbone. Every sense was full of him. Pleasure built again, slower this time, deeper, coiling tighter with every wet slap of their bodies. She felt the last remnants of the curse’s cold finally melting, replaced by liquid heat that spread outward from where they were joined. When it broke, it broke like a dam. Ileana screamed his name, clamping rhythmically around him, inner walls pulsing as wave after wave of ecstasy crashed through her. Her vision whited out. The fire seemed to roar louder. For one dizzy second she thought she felt the forest itself sigh. Andrei buried his face in her neck and thrust through her climax, chasing his own release. With a raw, broken groan he drove deep one final time and spilled inside her, hot, pulsing jets that seemed to brand her from within. She felt every throb, every spurt, her body still fluttering around him as he emptied himself. They collapsed together, sweat-slicked and shaking. He rolled them carefully so she lay draped over his chest, still joined, his arms banded tight around her back as though he would fight the entire world to keep her there. His heart hammered beneath her ear. She could taste salt on his skin where she pressed her lips to his throat. Outside, the wind had quieted. Inside, only the fire spoke — low, golden, content. By sunrise, the wolf was gone. But the forest had one more debt to collect.

Episode Five: Bread, Salt, and the Mother of the Forest Spring came late to Codrul Negru. For weeks after Radu’s destruction, winter clung to the mountains like an old curse unwilling to loosen its fingers. Snow remained in the hollows. The streams ran black beneath ice. Ravens watched from the fir trees, and sometimes Ileana woke certain she had heard a wolf howl beneath the floorboards. But the white wolf did not return. Neither did Andrei leave. At first, they did not speak of it. He repaired the goat pen without being asked. She brewed salve for the scarred places where shadow had burned his legs. He split wood, trapped rabbits, patched the roof where meltwater dripped through. She taught him the names of herbs, and he pretended not to be pleased when he remembered them. “Vervain,” he said one morning, holding up the wrong bundle. “That is mint.” He frowned. “They both look green.” “All plants look green to fools.” “Then I am surrounded by a forest of mysteries.” She laughed, and his face changed as though the sound had struck him in the chest. They made a life in small increments. A second cup on the shelf. His axe by the door. Her shawl hanging beside his coat.

At night, they shared the narrow bed beneath the loft window, learning each other without hurry now. Andrei was still careful with her, but Ileana discovered she liked undoing his carefulness. She liked the way his control slipped when she kissed the scar at his throat. Liked the roughness of his voice when he whispered things no fairytale maiden would admit she wanted to hear. Liked that afterward he held her as if tenderness was not the opposite of desire but its truest root. Sometimes, though, he watched the forest with guilt in his eyes. One evening, as rain tapped against the shutters and the first nettles pushed green through the thawing earth, Ileana found him standing beneath her Bunică’s rowan tree. “You think it was your fault,” she said. Andrei did not turn. “He was my brother.” “He chose the curse.” “I should have stopped him sooner.” “Perhaps.” He looked at her then. She stepped closer. “And perhaps I should have left this place years ago. Perhaps the village should have been kinder. Perhaps my Bunică should have taught me stronger charms. We can build a house from perhaps and freeze inside it.” His mouth softened sadly. “You make mercy sound practical.” “It is. Hatred wastes firewood.” He laughed, quiet and surprised. Then he took her hand beneath the rowan tree, and for the first time, said what had lived between them for weeks. “I love you.” Ileana’s heart opened so painfully she almost stepped back. Almost. The old fear rose by habit. Love leaves. Love dies. Love becomes a voice used by wolves. But Andrei stood before her in the rain, scarred and living, asking without asking.

She touched his jaw. “I love you too.” The rowan tree shivered though there was no wind. A single white blossom opened above them. By Easter, the villagers began coming again. First for medicine. Then for gossip. Then because news had spread that the witch of Codrul Negru had taken a husband without priest, feast, or permission, and curiosity was stronger than fear. The butcher’s wife arrived with a cough and left with thyme syrup and the knowledge that Andrei chopped wood shirtless when the sun was warm. By the next market day, three women had invented reasons to visit. Ileana found this irritating. Andrei found it hilarious. “You are jealous,” he said. “I am observant.” “You threatened Mara with a spoon.” “She touched your arm for too long.” “She is sixty.” “She has hands.” He laughed until she threw a dishcloth at him. But the village changed. Slowly. A child brought Ileana a posy of violets. Old Petru left a sack of flour without crossing himself. The priest, who had once preached carefully around her existence, came one afternoon with a jar of honey and asked whether she and Andrei wished to be married properly.

Ileana said, “We are married.” The priest blinked. “By whom?” Andrei, mending a stool by the hearth, answered, “The forest.” The priest looked uncertain. Ileana gave him tea. By the end of the cup, he agreed that God had made forests too. So they married in June, when the meadows below the mountains were thick with wildflowers and the sheep bells rang across the valley. Not in the church. At the edge of Codrul Negru. The whole village came, partly because weddings were rare, partly because everyone wanted to see whether the trees would object. Ileana wore a white linen blouse embroidered with red and black thread, a dark wool skirt, and her Bunică’s shawl despite the warmth. Her hair hung in one long braid woven with basil, rowan blossom, and tiny blue flowers from the spring. Andrei wore his best shirt, poorly mended at one cuff, and looked at her as if every fairytale king had been a beggar by comparison. The priest spoke blessings. The old women muttered older ones. Bread and salt were placed in their hands, as tradition demanded: bread so they would never hunger, salt so life would have flavour and protection. When Andrei broke the bread and offered her half, Ileana saw his hand tremble. She leaned close. “Afraid, woodsman?” “Terrified.” “Good.” His smile warmed her to the bone. They drank plum brandy from the same cup. The villagers cheered. Someone played a fiddle. Children ran between the trees with flower crowns slipping over their eyes.

And then the forest went silent. The fiddle stopped mid-note. At the edge of the gathering, beneath the deepest firs, stood Muma Pădurii. No one moved. The old forest mother looked exactly as Ileana remembered: bark-skinned, moss-haired, beetles gleaming in her tangled locks. But in daylight, she seemed less monstrous than immense, as if ugliness and beauty were only village words and she belonged to something older than both. The villagers crossed themselves. Muma Pădurii ignored them. She crooked one long finger at Ileana. Andrei reached for her hand. “No.” Ileana squeezed his fingers. “Yes.” She walked to the tree line alone. The hag sniffed. “Bride.” “Mother.” Muma Pădurii grinned, showing seed-black teeth. “You paid my price.” “I suppose I did.” “You gave me fear.” “What will you do with it?” “Plant it where men like Radu walk.” Ileana looked into the forest shadows. “Will it grow?” “Oh yes.” The hag’s eyes gleamed. “Thorns.” A chill moved through Ileana, but not an unpleasant one. Muma Pădurii reached into a pouch at her waist and withdrew something wrapped in leaves.

“A wedding gift.” Ileana accepted it carefully. Inside lay three seeds, red as drops of blood. “What are they?” “Home,” said the hag. “Plant one beneath your threshold, one beneath the rowan, one where the wolf fell. No hunger will cross uninvited. No dead thing will wear a beloved voice inside your walls. No child of yours will fear the forest unless they earn its anger.” Ileana’s breath caught. Child. She had not told anyone yet. Not even Andrei. Her hand went, unthinking, to her belly. Muma Pădurii’s smile softened into something almost kind. “Root-girl,” she said. “You were never meant to wither alone.” Then she turned and vanished between the trees. Sound returned all at once. Voices. Fiddle. Wind. Sheep bells. Andrei was beside Ileana in an instant. “What did she say?” Ileana looked up at him. She thought of the first night: blood in the snow, the wolf at the trees, the loneliness that had nearly opened the door. Then she thought of the cottage now: bread on the table, herbs drying from the rafters, Andrei’s boots by the hearth, a future no longer shaped like an empty chair. She placed his hand over her belly. For a moment, he did not understand. Then he did. His face broke open.

“Ileana,” he whispered. She smiled through sudden tears. “It seems the forest approves.” Andrei laughed, then kissed her in front of the priest, the village, the sheep, the saints, and whatever old gods still listened from beneath the roots. The villagers cheered louder than before. That night, after the last guest had staggered home and the moon rose full and honey-coloured over Codrul Negru, Ileana and Andrei returned to the cottage. He carried her over the threshold because Mara insisted it was proper and because Ileana allowed it only after threatening to bite him if he looked smug. Inside, the hearth was warm. On the table sat bread, salt, honey, cheese, and a jug of wine. Rowan blossoms perfumed the air. The cottage seemed smaller than ever, but no longer lonely. It held them close as cupped hands. Ileana planted the first red seed beneath the threshold before they went in. The earth swallowed it. A thin green shoot curled up immediately, then sank out of sight. Andrei watched with raised brows. “Should I be worried?” “Only if you plan to become a wolf-devil.” “I had no such plans.” “Then you may come to bed.” His expression darkened and he let out a deep guttural growl. “May I?” She walked backward toward the loft ladder, untying the ribbon from her braid. “If you ask sweetly.” He followed. And because this was an old tale, and old tales know that joy is as sacred as sorrow, no more will be said of what passed beneath the rafters, except that the moon looked away politely and the fire burned low and golden until dawn.

And deep in Codrul Negru, where roots drank secrets and moonlight silvered the fir trees, Muma Pădurii laughed softly to herself. Not cruelly. Not kindly. But like a mother of forests, hearing that one more old tale had ended exactly as it should. With bread. With salt. With love that had teeth enough to guard what it cherished. And with a lonely girl who was lonely no more. The End.

This is the end of The Wolf Beneath the Fir Trees. Produced by Fabled Audio. Written by Unquenchable