“That Nicholas Scratch and the HFL humans are trouble. You don’t need to cut to tell us what we already know.” Henry gestured to the decks of cards. “And those?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing with these cards. I don’t know how to combine images from these decks to make one that will be useful to cassandra sangue. What if I leave out something that another girl needs but isn’t significant to me?”

Henry pursed his lips. The scar on the right side of his face still looked raw and painful, a daily reminder of the HFL’s agenda where the Others were concerned.

“Why do you need to know right away?” he finally asked.

“So that other girls can use the cards instead of cutting.” Other girls. Was she that addicted to cutting that she didn’t want an alternative? No. Cutting would kill her in the end. She could—would—learn how to use the cards for her own sake as well as that of other blood prophets.

“First you learn the nature of a thing,” Henry said. “We have a teaching story among the Beargard. A young bear is hungry. He goes to the river looking for fish. He waits by the river for days and days until he is weak with hunger, but there are no fish. Why?” Henry looked at her expectantly.

“I don’t know this story. I don’t know why there are no fish.”

“He arrived too soon. If he had learned the nature of the fish that spawned in that river, he would have looked for other things to eat and come to the river at the proper time.” Henry gave her a careful smile. “Look. Learn. Then you will find what you need.”

Meg sighed.

“Arroo?” Nathan queried from the front room.

“She is fine, Wolf,” Henry said. Then he gave her a long look. “Are you fine, Meg?”

She touched one of the decks. “The cards might reveal an answer to a question, but using them doesn’t produce the euphoria. Using them doesn’t feel as good as cutting.”

“Until you learn their nature, how do you really know that is true?”

She didn’t have an answer, but she did have a question. “Henry? Are the bison going to roam around the Courtyard?”

“The two males have been taken to the Chambers. The fences should keep them from roaming beyond the Sanguinati’s part of the Courtyard. The females are grazing where they will. Why?”

“They’re going to get bigger.”

“Much bigger.”

“Do they chase things?”

At first she thought he was amused. Then he said, “Ah. The BOW.”