Like a black mountain chain come alive stood the shadow of the bear.

Rose saw him, and her heart leapt.

The bear let out a low, menacing growl. The ground shook, and the cave walls shuddered. Fear flashed across the Little Man’s face as he turned from Rose, but she held her knife steady. The bear advanced toward them.

The Little Man lunged and knocked the knife from her hand, then wielded it as his own weapon against the bear.

At this, the bear roared and the Little Man fell back as another rumble began. The golden mountains heaped behind them began to tumble to the ground, all the treasures of a hundred years’ thieving and hoarding, everything taken from those who went walking in the woods and never came home.

The Little Man scrambled back to his gold, frantically stuffing his pockets with jewels and grasping at coins, as if he could escape with a sliver of his fortune. The stone walls of the cave shook all around them.

Rose grabbed the white piglet, heaving its drowsy weight in her arms. She staggered toward the mouth of the cavern as the bear rose to his feet behind her, a fierce tower. His claws tore the air, and his teeth flashed.

Then a final roar came.

Rose hurried to the light at the entrance the bear had forced open. She saw the fox outside, watching from between the trees. She heard the sound of crashing metal behind her, of coins and golden things falling.

The bear thundered out behind her. Safe outside, they turned just in time to see the final collapse, from a distance, like a diorama in a small box. The Little Man clutched at his gold, and it spilled from his hands. He wouldn’t abandon his treasures even as the cave around him shook. The walls themselves were shedding stones now, falling and crashing, so that they soon blocked the way into the cave. Just before they did, Rose saw what became of the Little Man.

He was buried in the avalanche of his own stolen mountains.

The bear made a noise like a great sigh, and then he collapsed a few yards away. But Rose had to take care of Snow.

She laid the piglet down on the soft moss and leaves of the ground, and the creature began to awaken. It blinked its pale blue eyes, and slowly something began to happen.

The piglet became Snow once again. The Little Man’s enchantment was broken.

Rose squeezed her fiercely. From somewhere inside the hug, Snow grumbled, and Rose knew she was really and truly her sister.

The bear’s breath was ragged in the quiet, and they hurried to their feet. The girls ran to the bear’s side, but he was fearfully diminished, worse than they had ever seen him before.

Rose clasped her arms around his neck, and Snow leaned her ear to his chest and listened for his heartbeat. But as they clutched his fur, his body, once so impossibly sturdy, began to sag beneath their embrace. They felt him shrink. They felt him disappear until it seemed they’d wrapped their arms around an old fur coat.

As the fur fell away, they both closed their eyes. They were afraid to open them, afraid to see what was left.

But then they heard a voice. It was a ghost’s voice, and it said, “My only Snow. My only Rose.”

They both opened their eyes, and there, as if no time had passed, stood their own father, back from death.

“You loved me even as a beast,” he said, his eyes kind as the bear’s eyes. “In the lonely spell, your love gave me strength.” He gathered them in his arms.

“It was you.” Rose heard the words without commanding her voice. “But why did you leave the cottage?”

Their father looked down. He tucked Rose’s hair behind her ear. “I couldn’t stay with you any longer, not like that.”

“But how did you find us again?” Snow said, grasping her father’s hands in her own.

“The fox led me,” he said, looking around but not finding what his eyes sought. “He was just here—”

The girls looked behind their father to see not an overgrown fox but Ivo racing through the trees on skinny legs.

“The fox was Ivo!” Rose explained, smiling up at their father.

The girls called out to him, and Ivo paused for a moment to look back, but they knew he couldn’t stay. He smiled and gave a triumphant wave before bounding off in the direction of his house. Rose hoped that his family would be home from the market, that they waited for him underground.

“And you ate Goldie the Second…,” Snow scolded, shaking her head.

Their father shrugged and smiled an apology. Snow laughed and reached up to tousle his hair.

But Rose just stared at him, so grateful to be wrong. She touched his face, feeling it warm and familiar beneath her fingers, holding it in her hands as if it would vanish any minute. They stood there in this moment, the last of the day’s light streaming through the trees, falling warm around them.

“It’s time to go home.” Their father put his arms around them, Snow on one side, Rose on the other. He held them close as they walked, and in his steps, Rose felt the slightest trace of a limp.

The three were so giddy with happiness that they barely noticed the others. All around them, the forest was filled with the others who had been lost, others who were changed, too.

The spell that held them captive was broken, and they turned from birds and beasts back into who they once were. All the people the woods had taken, all the fathers and sons and mothers and daughters—it had given them back.

A feeling of celebration spread through the woods as the changed ones found their long-forgotten voices. Little glowing lights danced in the air above them, weaving their way through the new leaves. Dozens of feet took dozens of different paths, but each heart beat with the same four words: You are going home.

On their own way, Snow and Rose saw their mother. She ran to them, marveling, unable to speak. Then three became four. As they walked between the trees, under victorious branches, their warm arms held each other tight, whole again.

And the ending of that story is the beginning of a different story altogether….