Looking back down at that beast, and the other members of the pack who soon joined him, they had the impression that the animals were slipping down and away from them. They understood that the hill was still reshaping itself, stretching upward to form a vertical cliff all the way around, just a little too high for the wolves to jump to its top. Branches crackled, and a bramble wove at the cliff’s edge, forming a living parapet. Then all became still, and the hill was as it had been before, except in a different place, and with a different shape.

Daybreak found them camped on the summit of the hill at the base of the great tree. Looking west they could see the paths that they had trampled into the grass during their headlong retreat. Intertwined with this were the arcs made by the wolves as they had pursued, curving inward from time to time to attack, then veering away as Mab had swooped down to dazzle them. To the east, they could see the trail that the hill-giant had made as it had strode toward them, scattering wet black earth and stray boulders and leaving craters where it had planted its legs.

The feet of Adam and Eve were bleeding from many small cuts. Their legs had been nipped by fangs and scratched by branches. But the largest and bloodiest wound was that on Adam’s hand. They had never seen blood before and so watched it leak from him in fascination.

From time to time Eve would stand and make a circuit of the hilltop, looking down the slope in all directions to the grass sea below. A few wolves lingered around the base of the hill, looking up at her in a way that she now understood was indicative of hunger, and a tendency to see her as food. But none of them could breach the defenses with which the hill had surrounded itself.

Adam for his part was content to lie in the shade of the tree watching the blood run out of his hand. The flow lessened as the morning wore on, but he had become pale and listless. “So many new fluids escaping my body,” he remarked, which was a puzzlement to Eve since she knew only of the blood. “If bodies are like other things, then what has been lost must needs be replaced if I am not to be diminished.”

“In the Garden we saw bugs eating the stuff of plants, and birds eating bugs,” Eve said. “The worm ate an apple, and recommended it. And the wolves seem to have eating us in mind.”

“O Spring!” Adam moaned. “Why would you make your creatures thus? Having such appetites?” And his gaze strayed to the thighs and buttocks of Eve as she squatted on her haunches next to him.

Eve shrugged. “It is apparently the way of things. If we survive long enough to find Spring, perhaps we can put the question to her.”