Lucky stopped digging. “It’s a ritual. We’re going to offer your Mother-Dog to the Earth-Dog. It will help her to refind the earth and the air, to be part of the world again—but in another way, like Mickey said.”

The female pup was silent. The smaller of her littermates stood shyly behind her, licking his chops and gazing at the shallow hole that Lucky and Mickey had dug in the ground. Only the larger male pup looked on with narrowed eyes.

Lucky was about to start digging again when he saw the female pup padding through the long grass and sniffing. He approached, his ears pricked up. He could now see that the pup was licking something that looked like a dark bundle next to a knot of ivy. It had been hidden in the grass.

Mickey followed his gaze and whined. He was standing nearer to the bundle and the female pup, and he watched her, fear crossing his eyes. “I think it’s another pup. . . .” He addressed the female. “Come back, little one! Stay here.”

The female pup looked up. “He’s hurt. . . .” she whimpered.

“There’s nothing you can do for him now,” said Mickey.

Lucky winced. After a moment, the female pup abandoned the bundle and joined her brothers near the base of the big house.

Lucky trod through the grass to the small, limp body. Like the Mother-Dog, he had probably died a day or two before. The metallic scent of blood still clung to his fur. Lucky could make out the imprint of teeth—teeth shaped like his own—at the puppy’s neck below an unusual blast of white fur that resembled the shape of a fang. Lucky gasped. The pup had been attacked and killed; that much was obvious.

If a coyote or a fox had killed him, they would have eaten him. But what sort of dog would do this to a pup?

Mickey’s haunches were low as he pawed at the ground near the lifeless bundle.

“I don’t like this, Lucky. What happened in this place?”

Lucky turned to his friend in acknowledgment. He couldn’t imagine what had led to this pup and the Mother-Dog’s death, and why the other Fierce Dogs had abandoned their camp, leaving the three other pups alone. But they could worry about that later.

“We have a duty to the dead dogs,” Lucky whispered. “Even if they came from such a ferocious Pack, they deserve to be offered to the Earth-Dog.”

The female pup called out to them. “Can you help him?”

The other two pups hung back. The small one kept his head low, his tail drooping; the larger one’s eyes were narrowed, lips twitching as they curled over his vicious teeth, as though he was swallowing his own rage.