In silence, he walked her down the long palace halls back to the sloping corridor and her dark chamber. There, the still-pacing wolf seemed to have grown even more desperate in her absence. When Rae entered, he ran to her, sniffing frantically. She glanced in the pot that had been left on the floor: empty. Another nearby pot, half-filled with water, had splashes all about its rim, the dirt around it muddy with what had been spilled.

“Are you sure he’s eaten?” she called through the closing door.

But the guard, hearing another pair of boots approaching, bolted the door without answering. “Yes, she’s had her meal,” he said to someone in the hall. “All locked in.” Two sets of footsteps echoed away.

Rae sat on the straw. The wolf, still agitated, pushed his quivering nose at her tunic, her shawl, her pockets. He whuffled at her hands the longest, his long snout running over and over her sausage-greased fingers. Finally realizing she had nothing, he paced and paced and scratched and whined—a desperate digging, a pitiful noise—at the walls. Romm, he half growled. Romm.

“Oh, wolf,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

The animal rommed at the earth he was digging.

“It won’t be long,” she said softly. “I promise—I’ll find a way to convince the king. And when we return, you’ll have your mountains again. You’ll have your woods again. There will be wind and sun and forest shadows. You’ll have rabbit to hunt. Deer to stalk. Mice to fetch out of holes.”

The wolf continued his terror-struck attack on the soil. Rae, watching, miserable at his misery, wrapped her arms about her shins and laid her cheek on her knees. Trying to comfort herself, she murmured Mop’s old lullaby.

“All the water now is still for you

and all the windy murmuring has ceased.…”

At her whispering, the wolf half paused his digging. He flicked his ears and tilted his head.

“You like Mop’s song?” she asked, surprised. “Let’s see if I can remember another… or…” She hesitated, the memory of that last afternoon she’d spent with Mop beneath the beech coming back to her. How disappointed he’d been when she’d only half-heartedly called wolf in the den instead of singing as he wanted. She pinched her eyes shut, ashamed. Why couldn’t she have given him that when he’d asked for so little?

Well, she knew why. Her childish belief that she’d called the wolf from the mountains. That all their misfortunes had begun from her song.

She watched the wolf romm-ing in the earth. Maybe she had called him down. It did not seem a misfortune now. It would be worse to be here alone.

What power there is in naming, Mop had said once. Maybe that was true.

“I’ll sing,” she whispered, as though she were still beside Mop and the beech. “I’ll try,” she said to the pacing wolf. “I cannot sing as well as my father, but I will try.”

If I am “air” to anything, Rae thought, it is my father’s voice. Nothing to do with the king.