Annisetimara's village is right on the edge of the Cursed Valley.

Everyone knows to take it seriously; every now and then you get a really drunken youth deciding to go bounce off it. Usually they're okay, but sometimes one dies.

No one ever gets in.

No one except Annisetimara.

When she was six and her parents died, leaving her in the questionable care of her mother's much-hated cousin, it didn't take her long to try to run. It was dark, and she didn't realize which direction she was going at first, until she looked up and saw the outlines of the pine trees that marked the valley's border.

She ran straight back when she realized, still more afraid of the Valley than her foster family.

That didn't last forever.

She doesn't understand why the Valley keeps letting her farther and farther in, why there's always a stream when she gets thirsty and some kind of edible plant when she gets hungry, why it always lets her out when she's ready to face people again.

She just knows it doesn't hurt her, and that puts it in a very special class, as far as she's concerned.

And now--now they want her to marry the baker's son. He's nice enough, on the surface, but he's had girlfriends and she's seen the bruises. She's not sure he hits them any lighter than the bread. It was--tolerable, when she thought she could just age out of her guardians' control, but--

You can't age out of a marriage.

She doesn't need people, or any other trappings of civilization, more than she needs not that.

She ties everything she'd be sad to lose (not much) in a bindle, and heads out to the Valley, this time not intending to come back.