The scream—an ungodly shriek of pain and panic—brought him running from the kitchen to her bedside. Orleanna lay still, her flesh pallid and clammy, eyes distant—but untroubled. She was not the source of the outcry.

Another screech made him shiver, tearing at his heart, originating outside. He threw open the window shutters on the early night and saw, just steps away, a silver-furred wolf with a mink thrashing in its mouth. Two other oily-furred minks gnashed at the wolf’s legs. An extraordinary portrait of cruelty in nature, one from which Blackwood would normally have hastily retreated. But the fighting went on, the minks’ cries so shrill, the wolf’s manner so savage, the confrontation resounded in his head. Blackwood became crazed.

He left the bedchamber, finding an ornamental spear and charging outside to confront the animals. He went at the wolf with the forged steel tip of the spear, howling at the wretched minks. The wolf bared its bloody teeth at Blackwood, the mink falling from its jaw, dead. The other minks shrank away from the wolf, racing away.

Blackwood faced the bright-eyed wolf. He was enraged at nature, and meant to go at the beast, jabbing the spear at the animal’s head as it pawed at the ground with a low, guttural growl, wanting to pounce. Blackwood felt the confrontation coming to a head, until the growling stopped, and the wolf’s eyes widened, and its gums lowered over its sharp teeth. It almost seemed to be looking past Blackwood, into the air behind him.

The animal was scared. Its tail lowered and it backed off, forsaking the dead mink, turning and bounding away.

Blackwood lowered his weapon. Had the wolf seen Blackwood’s murderous intent, his killer instinct having curdled its blood? Suddenly sense came flooding back into Blackwood. Shaken, he turned away from the dead mink and returned to his domicile.

He splashed water onto his face in the kitchen, cooling his composure, his thoughts. He prepared a bowl of water to take to his Orleanna. Arriving, he realized he had left the window open to the night. When he saw the bedclothes thrown back, the bed empty, he dropped the bowl of water at his feet. She was gone.

He went to the window, seeing only the bloody mink in the mossy ground. To the side, just a glimpse, a white-clothed figure rising in the distant night, out of sight.

He leaned out as far as he could but saw no more of it. He did not trust his eyes but could not think where else his wife could have gone. And then he remembered the wolf’s cowed expression: Perhaps it had been intimidated by the sight not of him, but of her, rising from the open window into the sky.