My mother shook her head. “You foolish girl. You want a wild dog coming around here, begging for more food?” She looked hard at my face. “What in the world is happening to you, Ellie?”

I wanted to tell her the truth: that I was not a good town girl trying hard to tame the mountain like she was. Like Esther was. That I had work to do. Honey to harvest. A hag to save. A father to save. And more besides.

But all I said was “He was hungry, too. And if he’s wild, then so am I.”

My mother sighed. “Which is exactly what I’m afraid of.”

—

After searching everywhere, including the spot by the river where we’d fished just that morning—a spot I approached this time with a belly full of dread—I finally found Samuel in the cowshed, huddled in a corner behind the manger.

Quiet was in his arms.

“I waited until you went in the cabin, and then I took Quiet,” he said. It was clear that he’d been crying.

“You were crying.”

“I’ve been hiding here forever, and I fell asleep and got a crick in my neck, and I’m hungry, and Mother means to give your pup away. But I’m not crying,” he said fiercely. “Not anymore.”

I had no intention of teasing him. Certainly not for doing something so good and brave.

And in that instant I found myself thinking of how that terrible January day might have ended differently. Not with my father hurt, but with Samuel the one to be struck like a hammer on a nail, like a hammer on a nail of bone and blood, the air bursting from him as he hit the ground, his small, soft body lost to a jumble of wood and hard dirt.

“How in the world did you get Quiet out of there without Maisie noticing?” I said, my voice shaking a little.

“Oh, she noticed. And she didn’t like it one bit. But she didn’t bite me. I thought she might, but she didn’t.” He put Quiet into my hands. “Am I in trouble?”

“No,” I said, tucking Quiet under my chin. Closing my eyes. “But I am. For giving one of the fish to that dog we saw on the trail. And for putting a black racer into Daddy’s bed.”

It was clear that Samuel didn’t know which question to ask, so he asked three at once.

“Did you give him my fish? Did the snake bite Daddy?” He scrambled to his feet. “Why did you put a snake in his bed?”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it.

“No. And no. And because I wanted Esther to scream so loud that she’d wake Daddy.”

Samuel rolled his eyes. “Mother said loud noises won’t wake him up.”