“I let a boy die once before I became the Huntress, simply because he irritated me. Everything is relative.”

I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at the Huntress. The pup licked my nose with an impossibly long tongue, then flopped down on my chest to chew a spot on her leg, apparently content once more with her world.

“How did he die?”

“I took him on a hunt. He was green, and the hounds found a bear.”

I flinched at the thought of the wounds on her back. I did not want to talk about death. “How are you healing?”

She sat, turning so that I could see her shoulder. Her skin had knitted over the gashes, and beneath the translucent flesh the rose still grew, green and black and white, like some sort of queer tattoo. I raised a hand to touch it, but the pup pounced at the movement, wrestling my wrist back down to my chest and growling fiercely.

“Let’s take a look at that hand before she chews it off.” The Huntress peeled off the bandage, and I looked away, not wanting to see the damage or what lay beneath the cuts. “There are advantages to magic, if you can learn to live with it,” she said.

I looked.

A rose bloomed at the center of my palm, but unlike the roses on the walls, this one was blood red, and the skin around it was almost totally healed. I touched it tentatively. Skin, not petals, met my fingertips, but I heard the rustle of leaves.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, because it was, no matter what else it meant, no matter what else it would bring with it. I held it up to the light, transfixed. When the pup lunged again, I batted her away without pain.

“Your pup is growing,” said the Huntress.

“Yes.”

“She’ll be ready for her first hunt soon.”

I looked from the red rose to the gold of the pup’s eyes in her black face, and wondered at the strangeness of it all. “You said she should have died.”

“She would have, without you.”

“You said she would only breed more suffering.”

“She might. Or she might not.”

I smoothed the fur on the pup’s face, thinking of bears and elk and all the dangers of the wild that she would face as she grew. I would be helpless to save her, then. “I am not a green boy,” I said, an idea forming in my mind. “Take me with you, next time you hunt.”

She placed a hand on my cheek, turning my face toward her, and searched my eyes for a long time. I did not know what she saw, or what, indeed, she was looking for, but when she let me go she nodded.

Outside, a wolf lifted its muzzle to howl.