She glanced again at what she had copied of Mop’s market song—Forest shadows held us once in green embrace; now outside and alone, we fear what we’ve forgotten. The lines reminded her of the boy-king; how alone he must have felt, how much he must have feared forest shadows, all nature’s wild patterns of bloom and decay, to build that desperate, dry city. But how much more alone he must have felt inside it. No wonder to share with anyone at all.

“Was it lonely?” she asked. “Being a wolf, was it lonely?”

At first, he seemed not to understand, then he shook his head. “No.”

“And now? Is there loneliness now that you’re no longer a wolf?”

“Yes.”

Rae felt a sudden rush of sadness. “Oh.” She had not realized he was unhappy. She looked away so he would not see her trembling chin. She was happier with him by her side: She had not known she felt the absence of brother until he was with her, and now she could not imagine life without him.

But he nudged her, a gentle elbow at her side. “Sister, I did not… know before. Know you before.” He pointed at their home in the distance. “Mop. Ness. Now I understand… loneliness.”

And Rae realized then that his loneliness was like hers: He, too, could not imagine life without his new family—imagining it was a kind of loneliness.

As they sat on the ridge, swinging their feet in the air, the sun and wind pushed at them. Rom raised his face to the sky, watching a flock of sparrows wing overhead. “Will you sing now?” he asked, squinting into the light.

“Which of Mop’s songs do you want to hear?”

He shook his head. “No, not his—yours. I’m sure I’ve heard you sing yours before. I’m…” He hesitated, searching for the right word. “Cer—certain.”

Rae looked at him, surprised. “The meadows now all wait for us…?” she asked. She had been writing and chanting Mop’s songs for so long, she hadn’t thought he would remember her own singing from their time below.

“No, before. I remember another before.”

Rae gazed at her brother, his shining face, earnest and wind-scrubbed. Could he really remember her long-ago song?

“Once,” she said. “There was a song, once.

“Wolf in the den,

the dark of the earth,

the creeping of root

the scruffling of dirt…”

She started softly, scarcely singing. The words did not really feel right anymore. She began shifting them, reshaping them as they came to her in memory and out of the air.

“Form of the mountain, all shadows and trees,

the silence of moss, of murmurous leaves.

All nature, all wind, all riotous green,

all measureless skies in wild-hearted beast.”

Rae fell silent. Next to her, her brother gazed over the land. Far below, they could see Ness digging in the garden, Mop bent over a lamb. The clouds, seemingly close enough to touch, scudded overhead and cast their shadows on the patchwork of green below. “Yes,” Rom finally said. “Like that. All nature. Like dreaming.”