“That’s my little one,” I said, the rumble in my throat a new music to his tiny ears. “That’s my Quiet.”

After a while Maisie crooned at me until I gave back her bed and her babies, and then I hid the jar I’d brought to collect skunk stink and went out into the twilight to start again from scratch to gather the makings of a cure.

There was still light enough in the sky to coax me across the yard again toward the path that led to the balsam tree.

But the woods were darker, and I’d forgotten about the trail of blood that Samuel and I had left on the path not long before.

Chapter Twelve

It wasn’t a coyote that found me. Or a bear. Or even a fox.

I didn’t hear anything as I stood under the tree, collecting balsam on a paddle of wood I found in the litter around its trunk. Nothing but the whisper of its long roots reaching deep into earth still cold from the long winter.

And I didn’t see anything, either, as I tapped the patient old tree again and took what I needed.

I didn’t know I was being watched until I turned back to the path and found myself face-to-face with that big dog again.

This time, in the poor light, he looked even more like a wolf. Even more like something wild.

I hoped that he hadn’t followed the blood trail, expecting something wounded. Something he could eat.

When he lowered his head and took a step toward me, I knew a moment of fear, but the sound he made was not quite a growl—it was more question than threat—as if he needed something but couldn’t quite make up his mind about me.

Then “Ellie!” came the thread of my mother’s call from down the path.

And I turned instinctively toward her voice.

Turned back to find the path empty, the dog gone.

Just as before.

This time, I didn’t look for him in the trees or follow up the path.

This time, as darkness came, home felt like a better choice.

—

My mother was waiting for me in the yard.

“What were you doing up there?” she said, her hands on her hips.

I might have told her then about the dog, but she seemed a little too much like him in that moment. The way she looked at me. As if she wanted an explanation. An answer to a question she could not quite put into words.

So I said, “Just walking.” Something I did often. Something I had once done with my father, who also liked an after-supper ramble and the softness of dark air.

“Well, walk back out and get some kindling for the soap fire.” She turned toward the stone pit where we cooked things better made outside.