OKAY EVERYBODY. LISTEN UP.

Some of you may have heard me mention my 'Canisp' series. Well, this is it. The website that's hosted Canisp for the past four years is down and does not look to be coming back; and, well, it wasn't a great venue for Narnia fanfiction.

I realize that most people, myself included, come on FFN to read about the characters we already know and love, and not someone else's. However, I hope very much that you will give this a chance. However, giving it a chance does not require sacrificing your inbox. I'm uploading the first chapter of the first book tonight; there are currently two complete books and two chapters of the third completed, and I will be uploading them at pretty much the same time tomorrow (Saturday, Jan. 26th) if all goes well. If you are one of the wonderful, beautiful people who have me on Author Alert, NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO REMOVE ME (HOPEFULLY TEMPORARILY). I don't want to drown you in updates and make you stop loving me. Give Canisp a chance-if I don't have you by the fourth chapter, feel free to leave. Is that fair? Can we shake on it?

With that said... welcome, dear heart. I hope you'll come with me as I rediscover this world; and I hope you fall as deeply in love with it as I have.

Chapter 1-Changeling

"Canisp! Wait up!"

Canisp paused at the crest of the snow-covered hill and looked back over her shoulder. "Well, come on, Meya!" she laughed. A light brown Wolf with a chocolate stripe down her back loped up to her, panting for breath.

"By the Lion, Canisp, you're getting faster every day, I swear it!"

Canisp grinned, exposing her sharp canines, and teased the smaller Wolf, "Maybe you're just getting slower. C'mon, keep up, we're going to be late and all the good pieces will be gone!"

"And whose fault will that be?" Meya shot back. Canisp rolled her eyes good-naturedly and pranced, eager to continue their run, but Meya was in no such hurry. "They'll be gone anyway by the time the dominants are done," she said reasonably. "They always are—for me, anyway." It was true; subordinate Wolves rarely had the chance to snare choice pieces of meat from kills. Home-caught prey like the brace of deer the pack had found today was rare enough; normally hunting parties had to take the two-day trip to the Western Wild in order to find any non-Talking Beasts.

"Ah, but you forget something," said Canisp mischievously. "It's nearly mating season now, all the males will be trying to impress us with their chivalry."

"Which would be wonderful, if they had any more chance of getting so much as a sniff at those deer than we do." Meya was not known for being crisp, but that didn't mean she couldn't be, especially when she was hungry. "Though maybe Maugrim might be willing to let us have a bite. I've seen the way he looks at you."

"That's not funny, Meya!"

"Canisp, I was joking…" Her eyes widened. "He hasn't—has he? I thought…" She hesitated. Much more gently, she lowered her voice and asked, "Has he claimed you?"

Canisp shook her head shortly. "Not yet." Meya gave a quiet, fearful whine, and Canisp leaned over instinctively, nuzzling at the smaller Wolf. Meya wasn't the only one who had noticed Maugrim's growing interest; Canisp had been dreading the inevitable for almost a year. It wasn't as if being claimed for a dominant's mate were some sort of death knell, she'd tried to convince herself. At worst it was a few months of staying inside the gathering area and near your male…

…and then the next few years raising pups she didn't want for a mate she hadn't chosen. Lion's Mane…

"Maybe he won't claim you," Meya offered.

A tired, affectionate warmth gave Canisp enough levity to smile. "You're a horrible liar."

Meya flicked her ears defiantly. "I'm serious!" she protested. "Haven't you even considered the chance that he might court you properly?"

"Dominants don't court."

Meya fell silent. Even her indomitable optimism couldn't argue with that. Dominants didn't court; they claimed. Choice had no place in the equation, and while one could argue that they were very rarely cruel to their chosen mates, that assurance lasted only as long as the subordinate's full cooperation.

"Maybe he'll be gone soon," she offered quietly. "Then he'll have to catch you if he wants you."

And there it was, that looming threat; the Vereor. These were the elite; the fiercest, most ruthless wolves in all of Narnia, and they served the White Witch alone, her guard and her police. Every so often—when they were bored, or tense, or one of their officers had had a bad day—they would run a sweep through the woods, searching out traitors; and since one would be hard-pressed to find so much as a rock that hadn't had some moment of rebellion, no matter how small, the sweeps could easily become slaughters. It had even become a sort of proverb; it was commonly said that 'Narnia trembles at the White Queen's bells; she cowers for the howling of the Wolf.'

During these sweeps, the Vereor would invariably swing through pack territory and bring a she-wolf back with them to the Palace. No she-wolf they took ever returned and everyone knew what awaited them there; truthfully, it didn't take much imagination. Not even the dominant she-wolves were safe; in fact, they were prized, even hunted intentionally. A pack of fighting males, after all, could hardly renew itself, and recruits from the home pack weren't nearly a reliable enough resource to leave to chance.

The Wolves had, at first, tried to oppose this practice, but it was a lost cause. No lone Wolf could fight off the Vereor when they'd been run down. The whole pack might not even have a match for them; and when a good portion of the pack were dominants and Vereor sympathizers, more were mothers or soon-to-be such, and still more were simply terrified, there was no chance of rallying them together.

And so they ran.

Narnia, every spirit that was still free, ran with them. The Vereor could hardly keep their movements a secret; the moment they began a sweep, the dryads nearest the Palace would send a warning, swift as the wind, to be picked up by their sisters and fathers and spread along with a speed no living creature could hope to beat. The pack would scatter into Lantern Waste, where the cover was thickest and the trees were friendly, and Birds and little Beasts would create misleading commotions and blur their trails as much as they could.

It was never enough; the Vereor would stay on the hunt for as long as necessary, and the longer the Free Wolves evaded them, the more brutal their eventual capture would be. But it at least gave the she-wolves a fighting chance. There had been close calls for both Meya and Canisp in the past, and the latter was concerned that one day Meya's slower pace might be her undoing. Meya had her intelligence on her side, though, and her ability to keep her head in a crisis had gotten her out of many a tight place.

Still, Canisp worried.

But right now, the trees were silent. No warning was forthcoming, and the two she-wolves who thought of themselves as sisters were trotting easily through the woods, side-by-side: Meya, light-brown with that queer chocolate stripe down her back, slower than most Wolves but surer-footed, gentle and kind and wise; and Canisp, pure white with flashing, clever eyes and the two-toned feather of a Narnian eagle tied into her fur so that it hung beside her face; swift and bold, brave and true and fiercely loyal.

They made a striking pair, Wolf and Changeling; for despite her initial impression, Canisp was far from a pure-blooded Wolf. The snowy-white wings folded neatly along her spine were the first indication that something was different about her; her tendency to transform into a human—or at least a human-shaped form—was the other, though rarely seen. The bounty on true humans being what it was, a human-shaped form in Narnia was more of a hindrance than a help, however useful thumbs could be; after one too many close calls, Canisp had sworn off her human form for the foreseeable future. Besides, humans were hopelessly slow and devoid of natural weapons; staggering about on two legs with useless arms dangling at her sides was an experience that she did not enjoy.

At the end of the day, this was her true form, this was what she was, and she was happy with it. Her early years with the pack had been distrustful, but mostly due to her having been a loner; pack-born Wolves had an innate distrust for lone wanderers, and coupled with the age-old advice to never trust anything "that looks human but isn't," Canisp had not entered the home pack under the best of circumstances.

But those early days of distrust didn't matter now. The home pack was as close to family as was possible for a group of Wolves who were required by edict to live with and tolerate one another; and while Canisp had never experienced a Christmas dinner, anyone who had could have told her that the description was not far off. So far she had even managed to avoid the attentions of dominants, who tended to turn away from her dismissively come mating season; she never seemed to come into heat, and no dominant wanted to risk difficulty in continuing their line. As Meya had mentioned, however, Maugrim didn't seem to be falling into this crowd. While he might have been less coarse than some other dominants, he was no less… wrong, and there were times when the looks he threw her way were less interested than darkly intent.

Canisp wished bitterly that she could have known Narnia before the White Witch, before the rigid new laws that controlled the Free Wolves; back when they had seasons and warmth and Christmas, and the beautiful Narnian dances were played at the proper times, instead of playing the Spring Dance in winter out of sheer longing. Back when she-wolves chose their own mates…

"I wish I could have known it, too," said Meya quietly; somehow she knew what Canisp was thinking without her having to say a word.

"I just..." Canisp wasn't sure what she was going to say, but she didn't need to finish the thought.

"I know." The sounds of the feeding pack could be heard from the clearing ahead, and Meya hurried to take her place with the other subordinate she-wolves. She turned expectantly for Canisp, but the white Wolf shook her head.

"You go ahead. I'm... I lost my appetite." Meya's amber eyes softened sympathetically and she nodded. Canisp waited a moment; a sudden thought seeming to drive her over the edge, and she gave a sudden snarl, whipped around, and leaped into the air, not bothering with a running start. She climbed, higher and higher into a sky ablaze with the setting sun. She wheeled and soared over the darkening forest, trying to leave her problems behind in the trees below her, but not altogether succeeding.

Most of the pack was already asleep by the time Canisp returned. The only wolves still up were the sentries and Meya, dutifully awaiting her friend's return. Canisp made a careful scan of the inner ring of sentries, and eventually found what she was looking for, angling in for a landing near a pair of subordinates.

"Cutting it a bit close," the darker of the two whispered. "Watch changes in a few minutes."

"Watch changed half an hour ago," the second replied grumpily. "Thor just didn't want to wake them up until you got back."

"Thank you," Canisp breathed. This was why she'd wanted to find a subordinate watch; a dominant would have growled and probably cuffed her about for breaking curfew so dramatically. The two sentries merely acknowledged her thanks with a curt nod; Thor returned to his scrutiny of the trees while his partner trotted off toward the sleeping dominants find the next pair. Canisp dipped her muzzle gratefully to Thor one last time and made her way over to Meya's side as quickly as she could before the next watch woke up.

"I saved you some meat," Meya murmured as she lay down next to her, touching her muzzle to Canisp's in greeting.

"Meya, you shouldn't do that!" Canisp was touched by the gesture, but she knew that due to her size and non-confrontational nature Meya rarely got much nourishment; she needed whatever food she could get. "You eat it, I'm fine." Meya apparently realized it was no use arguing, and she snapped down the chunk of venison so quickly that Canisp knew she'd been right to insist on it. She nuzzled the little Wolf gently. "Goodnight, Meya."

"'Night, Canisp."

Meya's eyes drifted closed, but Canisp was too tightly-wound to sleep. She was certain that Maugrim was going to claim her one of these days, and she had no intention of submitting to him or anyone else. She shuddered at the very thought. But then, what choice did she have? She'd never seen a she-wolf resist for long, and she didn't want to know what threat—or worse—had broken their resolve… Her thoughts spiraled in circles for a long time, never getting anywhere, until finally exhaustion came to her aid. She stretched a wing over Meya, curled closer to her side; her eyes finally closed, and she slept.

The pack never heard the Vereor coming.

They had set out in the dead of night when the dryads were all asleep, their energy lowered by the sun's absence. When the pack finally realized the Vereor were hunting, it was because they were being woken up by barked orders to do so.

"She-wolves to the center!" one of the dominants was snapping. "Subordinate males in the back! Runners on the left…"

"Trapped." Meya's low voice was barely audible, but that one word still sent a shiver of fear through the gathering she-wolves. There was no escape, no way out. They were being herded, gathered together for the Vereor to take their pick.

They were done for.

There was a long pause as the huge regiment of Wolves scanned the assembled pack. It seemed an eternity before one of the Vereor stepped forward and said, in a ringing voice, "We are looking for Maugrim. He will come with us."

Maugrim? The whisper spread like a ripple through the wolves. Maugrim, a rebel? If that was true, then the world had turned upside down. Maugrim was sickeningly loyal to the Vereor, and by extent the White Witch...

Maugrim took a single step forward from the line of dominants and answered, "I'm here. What do you want with me? I'm no rebel!"

The Vereor leader said darkly, "We know you are not a traitor. If you were, you would already be dead, of that I can assure you."

"Yes, sir, of course," said Maugrim, dropping tail and muzzle simultaneously.

"We've come to offer you a place among the Queen's Secret Police, if you will accept it."

Maugrim stared. "Join you? Me?"

"Yes. Unless, of course, you have some moral objection?" The words were spoken in a light, casual tone, but there was a threat behind them, as though they were daring him to say that he didn't believe in upholding the White Witch's laws.

Maugrim's eyes lit up. "No, sir, Captain!" There was a fanatical eagerness in his face.

"That's just sickening," Canisp muttered to Meya. "Worthless little lap-dog…"

Meya hushed her furiously, casting a terrified glance at the surrounding wolves. However, the Vereor didn't appear to be listening to them. The large gray who had spoken first—Ferinus—was the leader. The moment Maugrim had given his assent, he gave two sharp barks—one to Maugrim, one to the rest of the Vereor—and bounded into the woods. The rest of the Vereor followed him, snapping at the subordinates as they passed but doing no real harm.

A/N: Seriously though guys take me off Author Alert I will murder your inbox by accident.