“Well, now, I’m not sure that is so.…” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It may be Ness stopped noticing me singing until you came to us.” He smiled at Rae. “And as for bees and honey, it’s you, child, whose infant mouth the birds filled with sap and sweetness before I found you! But how now—let’s hear your voice.”

“What should I sing? One of the songs you sing before I go to sleep?”

“No, no. Sing your own.”

“I don’t have any.”

“Of course you do. Here.” Mop took Rae by the shoulders and guided her to a spot in the meadow. “Stand here. Listen to your voice against the hills. Whatever you sing will be echoed back to you.”

“I don’t know any words.”

“Nor do I! But listen. Listen to the world around you. Let the words come to you. You’ll know what to sing.”

Standing in the center of the meadow, Rae closed her eyes and tilted her chin up, the sun warm on her face. She heard the gentle rush-rush of the wind in the field, the steady sound of the sheep tearing their mouthfuls of grass.

“The wind is… full of… sheep… mouth,” she said slowly. “And hooves. Teeth munching and hoof stepping.” That didn’t sound like song, she thought. That didn’t sound right at all.

“Keep listening.” Mop took a step away. “You’ll hear it. You’ll know the words to describe it.”

Eyes still closed, Rae let the wind carry more sound to her. Beyond the rustling of grass, beyond the chewing of sheep, in the distance was Nessa scraping clean a pot, a silver ringing. Farther beyond, the steady hum of insects, a pale churring washing through the air, and the tsip now and again of a sparrow in the brambles. Sunshine dark against her eyelids, she followed the wind rushing up the hillside; she felt it pushing against pine boughs, sweeping against root and stone. She felt it rising into the mountains, its voice now growing, a roaring that found its way even into crevices in the cliffs. She felt it pushing into all the hidden mountain passes, ruffling the small puddles on rocky summits. She tasted sharp gray stone and mica flecks, smelled earth and root and moss and lichen, sensed the edge of sky.

“Wolf,” she murmured.

“Hmm?” said Mop, leaning on his staff.

“Wolf in the den,” she said quietly, eyes still closed. Then, more loudly, and more loudly still, she called out so her voice echoed off the hillside and resounded through the meadows:

“Wolf in the den

the dark of the earth

the creeping of root

the scruffling of dirt

all-belly beast

and all-toothy fur

empty of all

but wordlessness words.”

She liked this song. Its sounds. Arms spread wide, she shouted them again toward the hills and delighted at hearing her voice spring back to her—all-belly beast, beast, beast, all-toothy fur, fur, fur. The mountains and meadows boomed with her song so even the trees seemed to quiver with each syllable, even the clouds seemed to shudder in their path across the sky.