A long time ago, but not so very far from here, in a little cabin in the midst of a boundless forest, lived a young couple, who made their living cutting wood, though in their dreams and ambitions they were king and queen. In time they became pregnant, and when their daughter was born and laid on the mother’s breast, she said, “Oh! She is more beautiful than the sun and the moon and the stars!,” and the midwife noted a thousand marks of perfection in the baby. But when the father presented the child to the family and friends who came to congratulate the parents, a great wolf came out of the forest. The woodcutter, afraid that the wolf would harm the child, seized an axe and hurled it at the animal. It struck the wolf’s foot, and with a howl of pain the beast ran back to the woods and did not return.

As the girl grew, so did the fame of her beauty and compassion, her wisdom and wit beyond her years. So much did she lighten the hearts of all around her that soon her parent’s cottage was surrounded by a small village of continual visitors, her friends and relatives; she delighted in their company and always knew what to say and do to heal their various sorrows. But her greatest joy was to escape at evening into the woods and wander among the trees, speaking and playing with the plants and the stones and the animals, knowing no difference between her self and theirs.

As the girl grew older, so did her parents’ fortunes, as every family in the land wished their sons to marry her, and every suitor brought gifts as rich as he could afford. Each year, the ardor of her suitors only grew along with her fame, but none was a suitable match, her parents said–this one was too poor, that one too weak, this one too young, another too old. One suitor had a poorly shaped nose (“virtually a beak,” her mother complained), another was from the wrong family. The girl’s parents built a mansion in which to keep her and receive her suitors, and about it a garden in which she would stroll each day, though in her heart she found it not so beautiful as the forest of her childhood. The mansion became too small, and a palace was built; the garden was swallowed up by the servants’ quarters, and the girl made her daily appearances in a vast parlor. Then even this became too small, and a splendid tower of glass and steel was built (“high enough to touch the moon,” said her father to the architects). About it a city sprawled, built on the wealth of her noble suitors and blessed by the girl’s wise counsel, which her parents happily followed insofar as it increased their fortunes and fame. Every day at noon she would appear at the balcony of the tower, and it seemed the whole world would fall to its knees in rapture.

On the girl’s seventeenth birthday, there appeared among the suitors an old woman, dressed in tatters and covered in grime. The guards at the outer gates laughed at her when she told them she was coming to request an audience for her son, so he could court the maiden. In jest, they asked what gift she had brought, but when she opened her purse it was empty except for a moth that flew from the lining. As she was cast out into the street, the old woman was heard to say that before the day was out the maiden would meet her son; and if they were not to be married the girl would never be wed–but no-one paid the old lady any mind.

That night, just at midnight, the maiden awakened suddenly, feeling a draft. Uneasy in her mind, she crept from her bed, silently, to avoid waking the attendants who slept in her chamber. The door to her balcony was open, but instead of closing it she went out into the silent new-moon night. On the railing of the balcony sat the moth; she held out her hand, and it flew up and alighted on her little finger. “Good evening, little one,” she said, “you must be cold, flying up this high. I shall take you inside, and you will be my pet.” But at these words, it flew away, up toward the sliver-thin crescent of the moon. For a second the girl stood, suddenly sorrowful: for all her riches she had nothing to offer this moth, who had all the world and sky for a birthright. Then she stepped to the balcony and leapt into the night, following the moth. She fell, she tumbled, and her fluttering nightgown seemed to catch the wind like gossamer wings, and she knew no more.

She woke in a deep forest, naked but unharmed. As she stood and looked about her, she saw in the distance a great stag with a silver hide; their eyes met for a heartbeating moment; then it turned silently and disappeared into the trees. Not knowing what else to do, she began to follow it. As she walked, she would pause to watch and listen and smell the countless scents of the forest; each step was carefully placed, and she moved gracefully and silently, becoming so much a creature of the woods that when she came to a pond and bent down to drink, she was not surprised to see the big eyes and long nose of a doe reflected back to her. She browsed on herbs and berries, and at dusk she lay down in a pile of leaves to sleep.

No sooner had her eyes closed than the distant howl of a wolf startled them open again. A second howl, closer than the first, brought her to her feet; barely had she sprung from her green bed before a third howl sounded, close behind her, and she smelled the wolf about her, and she ran.

They ran all night, hunter and prey, but however the wolf ran she was always one step ahead, reveling in her speed and grace, terrified and exhilarated. Just before dawn, exhausted, they came to a clearing where there stood a small cottage, its roof open to the sky, the fallen beams thick with moss. Into the ruins she ran, her heart pounding, her breath thick in her ears. But when she tried to leap the walls, her tired legs failed her and she fell. But her heart did not fail, and as she turned at bay to face the wolf, in her desperate resolve she became a wolf herself, and her voice growled in her throat. But her persuer had not followed her into the cottage; it stood at the edge of the wood, and she saw that its foot was lamed. Where it had stopped a rusted axe head split the ground, and she knew she was in the place she was born.

The wolf stood panting and hungry as she approached; but as she stepped over the iron axe head it turned and ran, and the pursuer became pursued. They came to a steep mountain, and the wolf became a mountain goat and clambered up its rocky heights: but the girl became a raven, and landed beside it. The goat became a poisonous snake and struck at her, but she flew away and returned as an eagle, seizing the snake behind its head so it could not turn and bite, and they soared together down the mountain heights. But as she sailed over a stream the snake became an enormous salmon and fell from her grasp; but she became a bear and fished it out with her gentle paws; the fish changed again into a might buffalo bull, and chased the bear; cornered, she stepped out of the thick fur and into her own human skin, and seized the bull’s horns, and looked in its wild eyes, and whispered love to it. And the bull became a man, the old woman’s son, and embraced her.

Neither one knew how long they stayed in the wild, or how many bodies they inhabited; but they came at last to a place where tumbled walls grew in the forest, trees and houses and people and beasts together. In the center stood a ruined tower of glass and steel, tall as mountains but not so high as the moon by half, and masses of ivy poured from its hollow frame. They walked into the city together, a girl and a wolf: but nobody noticed, because the wedding was over and all the world was new.