Nadav and his family, or what came closest to being his family, were sitting by the stove when they heard the alarm. Aunt Sarah had told him stories before about the hungry pack of wolves that sometimes came out of the nearby forests, ripping through the town with their yawning jaws drooling, howling as they searched for people to tear apart. It hadn’t happened for about fifteen years. The town had expanded a bit, driving the wolves far away into the forests. But not far enough.

“Wolves in the town!”

The family stared at each other, their eyes darting around the room as each of them began a private inventory of parents, spouses, siblings, children. Suddenly they all looked up in horror.

Isaac!

“Maybe he’ll have the brains to stay where he is,” Nadav’s mother’s voice wavered. “He’ll stay in the study house. He’ll be safe there. As long as he doesn’t try to leave.”

There was a small pause before Malka choked. “But what if he’s on his way home?” she asked, almost whispering. “It’s late already. He’d probably be walking home by now. What if he hasn’t heard? You know how he takes his time.”

Everyone stared at each other, afraid to vote one way or the other. At last, Aunt Sarah spoke, swallowing until her voice was firm. She turned to face Nadav and clenched her fists.

“Nadav, you can run the fastest,” she said without the slightest tremble. “Go, run to the study house and get Isaac.”

Nadav stood rooted to his spot by the stove, unable to breathe. The horrible alarm cry ran like cracking icy water through his veins. She was casting him out to the wolves!

Aunt Sarah glared at him, her clenched jaw jutting out in a rage. When he still didn’t move, she screamed: “Go! Now! What are you waiting for, the Messiah? GO!”

Nadav’s feet took him to the peg on the wall where he kept his coat, thoughtlessly, brainlessly. He felt the entire family gawking at him, and as he passed his mother’s seat, he registered her pleading eyes but decided to ignore them. He wriggled his body, lean and gangly from last summer’s growth spurt, into his too-small coat and pulled open the front door. “Be careful, Nadav! Be careful! And hurry!” he heard his mother shout after him. But as Nadav leapt through the doorway, he heard how Sarah slammed the door behind him in case, God forbid, a lone wolf, unsatisfied with her adoptive nephew’s flesh, should slip past him into the house to maul her own children. He heard that slamming door as he bounded off into the snow, but he had no time for hurt feelings. Just sheer animal terror. He had been abandoned to the wolves.