Seagulls wheeled in the clear sky, their quick yellow beaks ready to snatch any fish they might spy in the flat water below. Maria dashed toward the ferry as it docked, elbowing past an unruly throng of people waiting for the boat to be unloaded so they could then have their turn to board and be taken across the water. She pushed back her veil, so she might see what was before her more clearly. And then she felt it; the heartbeat she had once carried. Her daughter, born in a circle cast for protection on the luckiest day of the month of March. The time had come. It was happening right now. Maria felt weightless, as though she were rising, as the first of the arriving passengers pushed and shoved to make their way onto the dock, alongside carriages pulled forward by teams of horses, some calm, others in a panicked state, desperate to get to solid land. There were wagons piled high with vegetables grown in the sandy flatlands, barrels of potatoes and cabbages, and men carrying bags of live chickens and ducks, and women who had never before left Queens or Kings county and now blinked in the mad whirl of Manhattan. The crowd disembarked, all headed in the same direction in a crush of flesh and blood, some ready for the chaos that awaited them, others cringing at the sight of the mass of humanity before them. None of it mattered to Maria. They might as well have all vanished. She saw not a single one.

The wolf bolted on board before the boat was completely unloaded, leaping onto the seat of a wagon before anyone dared try to stop him.

“Keep it moving or I’ll charge you double,” the ferryman called to the petrified wagon driver who now found a wolf beside him.

It was Jack Finney who sat motionless, a block of sheer terror in his chest, even though his young passenger laughed when the beast leapt up. She threw her arms around the wolf, insisting the huge, devilish creature in the wagon was a dog and nothing to worry over.

“He’s mine,” she assured Jack Finney. “And I am his.”

Though it seemed madness to Finney, this girl could convince him of nearly anything, so the peddler clucked his tongue to urge his horse on, even though poor, gentle Arnold was shaking from the nearness of a predator.