He thought of how he had found her that morning—what now seemed a lifetime ago—on the cliff. The little bundle left in the cold mountain air, the little bundle bright in the sunlight.

“Rae, I think,” he said softly.

“What’s that?” Nessa looked at her husband.

“I think we should call her Rae.”

XI

TENDER MANDIBLES

The she-wolf carried the whimpering creature into her den. It made a sound like one of her pups, but did not smell or taste like one of her pups. It was not fur-covered like one of her pups. Still. The sound—it asked to be carried. To be brought out of the wind. To be placed among the other pups in the warmth of the den.

The den was dark. Full of the smell of fur and earth and milk. Full of the sound of sightless wriggling pups searching for their mother’s warmth. Little mewlings.

The she-wolf lay on her side, the pups clambering toward her, all paws and mouths and bellies. She was tired. And hungry.

She nosed at two not moving toward her: the strange one she had carried in, and the little runt, the one that had struggled since birth. Furred and furless, the two lay quietly together, no noise, no movement, no mewlings. No paws and mouths pushing at her. The she-wolf nuzzled them. How still and quiet they were. How shallow their breaths.

She nosed them again, then turned to clean the ones gathering at her underbelly in greedy hunger. They were full of life.

The pups with warm, full bellies slept, curled against their mother’s drowsing side. The runt and the furless one lay in the corner against the dark of the earth, lay against the soil that stirred with roots and pale creeping things.

The roots and creeping things, beetles and worms and grubs, traced the little bodies, furred and furless.

Too small.

Too cold.

Too weak.

Death was near. The roots and creeping things felt it. They felt their work of decay and decomposition near at hand. Roots dangling into the darkness of the den felt the fur and skin rising and falling slowly, felt the shallowness of the breaths beneath.

How used to the work of disintegration they were, these roots and creeping things. They could begin to unpick the bodies now. Unstitching. Undoing. Unlacing the cold of fur and skin. Uncovering the warm souls below. In darkness, the pale roots and paler creeping things ran their delicate tendrils, their fragile insect legs, their soft grub-mouths and tender mandibles over the forms. They traced wolf and babe, wolf and boy—not yet ready to be unpicked. But neither with the strength to stay. Not much left of either babe or wolf that said alive.

But the two together… if they were joined together… they had enough.

Enough for life.

The roots and creeping things, so used to the work of decay, delighted now in a new unlacing and relacing, a new unpicking and restitching. Here was babe. Here was wolf. Here skin, here fur. Here maw, here mouth; here tooth, here fang. Here paw, claw, tail—here hand, toe, thumb.