“Morels!” Rae exclaimed. These were Mop’s favorite. These might even be her favorite. “Do you think they’ll be out so early?”

“The weather’s been right.”

“If I gather enough… can we cook them in oil?”

Nessa laughed. “As many as you pick.”

Leaving Ness in the field, Rae ran toward the trees.

Nessa was right—the morels were plentiful. Rae moved through the half-light of the oaks coming into leaf, bending and picking the honeycombed fungi. She dropped them into her apron, thinking how happy Mop would be to see them on the table.

Nearby a woodpecker was tokk-ing out its grub-hunting rhythm, boring into decaying wood, and Rae followed its sound, knowing the mushrooms often clustered at the roots of rot-softened trees. Where was it? She listened, scanning the trunks. There! A flash of black and red. She hurried toward the tree where the needle-beaked bird was clinging, but she halted, stunned, before she reached it.

In the shadows, half-dappled, in the gray leaf litter and green mounding moss…

It could not be.

But it was.

Curled and long-bodied and skinny, pale tawny limbs tucked up beneath the chin—

A boy.

He was sleeping, bare-skinned and gangly, body nestled in moss and dry leaves.

Rae stared at his shape nearly obscured by shadows. His breath was long and steady; his fingertips twitched as though in a dream.

She could not make sense of his presence. His naked slumbering.

Had he no clothes? No bags? No food? No horse? Where had he come from? Was he not cold? Was he not hungry?

Nessa, she thought. She had to get Nessa.

She turned, and at the sudden sound of sticks and leaves beneath her feet, the dappled shape stirred. The tawny figure, now unwinding and stretching, became all at once not a boy, not a boy who had been sleeping at the base of the trunk, but a wolf—wolf, wolf, wolf, the word exploded through her consciousness—a wolf now rising with hackles crested all along the length of its spine. Breath shallow, sight dimming, Rae felt the world shift beneath her: How had she made such an error? How had she seen a wolf as a boy?

A pair of eyes—gray as the forest shadows—met hers. She knew him.

“Wolf,” Rae breathed, the word filled more with wonder than fear.

Ah, there you are.

Unmoving, they stood in the leaf-filtered light of the forest—the wolf watching her, she watching the wolf. She knew—she could not say how, only that she felt as certain of it as she was of her own body—this was the wolf of the meadow. The wolf she had bandaged. Her wolf.

She did not know if she was supposed to be scared of this creature now, if she should wish him away, but she was not. Did not. Instead, she was overcome with relief and a strange, desperate gratitude.

“You’re all right,” she said finally. She was surprised to find her cheeks wet. She rubbed her palm over her eyes. “You’re all right,” she repeated. The relief she felt washing over her was as full and deep as the sadness she carried for Mop. “Mop is”—she found herself saying, inexplicably, to the wolf—“he’s all right, too. He’s not the same, not entirely, but he’s still Mop. He’s all right.” It was a relief to say this as well.