Over and over in the shadowy hours, she berated herself: She should not have revealed the heir. The girl would die because of her.

“Rae!”

A mineral silence.

“Rae!”

Was the heir still alive?

She looked for signs. But in this dank little chamber, held away from everything, there were none. Not in the dark, in the dirt, in the stones, in the scattering of straw on the floor—no, none at all.

Once she saw a beetle, shiny and dark, twist itself from the dirt, and she followed its gentle, scraping trail as it made its way around the chamber. She searched her memories—Is it an augury? She didn’t think so. Nevertheless, she found its presence—a tiny herald from the outside—and its path—meandering and purposeful all at once—comforting. She watched it clamber stone over stone. When it disappeared again into the wall, leaving her alone in the dirt and the dark, she nearly cried. The silence pressed on her, flattening her into the shadows.

The hours grew longer still. She tried to pass the time in sleep.

Once, it must have rained. The wet crept down the walls until finally a drip, drip, drip sounded from a rock in the corner.

She listened to it for hours. Drip. A puddle grew on the floor.

Drip.

In the dark, it kept her awake.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

She lay on the straw, listening to the sound that was never quite steady.

Drip.

The damp spread under her limbs.

Drip.

She thought she would never fall asleep, the—drip—came and—drip—went so unevenly.

Drip.

Still, she must have fallen asleep, for finally—drip—she found herself dreaming. She dreamed the water was falling—drip—onto her body, then that she was the water itself—drip—falling and slipping into the earth. She dreamed she was moving—drip—all through the earth, all through the air between the dirt and stones; she dreamed she was slipping past roots twisting their slender fingers, past beetles and grubs and other creeping things staring at her with their deep insect eyes. She dreamed she patted their chubby bodies—their hairy shoulders, their copper wings. She dreamed they whispered to her in their thick insect tongues, and their words were the sun and clouds humming over a field at midday. She dreamed she was in this field, in the bending blades of grass, in the seed-heavy heads, in the soft petals of cowslip, in the humid haze that clung to everything green. She dreamed herself into the pollen, into the pith—into tendrils and shoots and leaves.

Drip.

There was the heir, seeds and burrs and insect wings bright as jewels in her wind-knotted locks. There was the wolf, fur pushed and ruffled in the cloud-shifting breeze. They sat at the far edge of a meadow.

Drip.

The heir was chanting—

“The wind-tossed fields, the pebbled brook,

the ridge of sharpened pines,