It would be a relief, she thought. At least for a while, it would be a relief to be nothing-full. To not be filled with worry or care or fear.

But nothing-full—no, it was impossible.

Though it was time to bring the sheep in, Rae stayed in the field. She watched the starlings rise in larger and larger clouds—a great smoky billowing sheet that spiraled over the fields. Their shimmering flight felt like a song—like one of Mop’s songs—rising over the hills.

Perhaps it even felt like her own silent song.

She stayed watching the spiraling birds until the first stars were shining, until her house, lantern-lit, glowed in the darkening meadow.

Even at a distance, she felt warm in its light.

XXXIX

THE SMELL OF BIRDS IN THE AIR

Night thickened in the fur of the wolf. Standing on the cliff, raising his ears to the darkness, he could smell birds in the air. He could taste them, taste their wide circles in air, the circles of their dry feathers and flesh, the circles of their slender bird-bones. He could taste the rushing of their wings, their turnings in wind; he could feel them shaping the clouds.

The air spun with the scent of birds.

Within the bird clouds was another sound, feather-lifted—he listened, fur prickling, to the sound within the beating of wings. What animal?

The sound was a memory. He knew it as a feeling of pain in his leg, as an endless licking of stickiness. As the sound of grass-shadows and oily-wool bleating. As a memory of thirst and cool water and the round goodness of eggs… a delicate animal—a delicate animal full of the feeling of den.

He knew the sound as absence, something missing from a hand that was itself only the feeling of absence.

Down the mountain he padded, claws ticking on stone. He followed the smell of feathers on wind. He followed the soft remembering of sound. What animal?

Night was thick in his fur. Then dawn. The sun grew rough in his fur. The mountain turned to forest; the forest gave way to open air. He stood on the ridge, letting the wind rush against him. Fields—dew cool and grass wet with the scent of the sun, with the sound of oily bleating—opened below. He searched for the delicate animal.

The wind pushed: His ears rose to the wind. Farther, farther, beyond the fields, deep in the woods, lower, heavier, tree-hidden sounds traveled. Nose quivering, he could sense creatures moving, could feel their pine-muffled cantering, could feel their great muscled shapes sweating in the humid light of the forest.

Rommm. His fur crackled. Growling, he slunk from the ridge, away from the gathering hoofbeats.

These were not the sounds of the delicate animal.

XL

ONETWOTHREEFOURFIVESIX

Alba was alone.

No oracle. No Maurus. No other children… though sometimes, distantly, she heard their cries in the dark.

It was worse than sitting in the chamber listening to the hissing waters. She wished, in fact, for hissing waters—for anyone, for anything—to speak to her.