Rae leaned her head against the staff. She felt wrong. Almost ill. Hot and light-headed, her stomach unsettled, she was not used to feeling afraid in the fields. She was not used to keeping anything from Mop and Ness.

But it was more than that.

Around her, the field buzzed with insect churring, a steady bristly hum that felt like the heat rising off the humid grass. Her own skin seemed to buzz with it, a prickling all along her arms and legs.

Under the sky’s cloudless blue, it seemed as though something terrible was about to happen. Was already happening.

Rae, watching a pair of ewes ambling away from the flock, blinked back tears. She could not say why she felt so desperate, only that she was.

“Hey!” Voice breaking, Rae shouted at the ewes now toddling toward the woods. “Get back here!”

But the ewes, propelled by the promise of shade and the sweetness of beech leaves, did not turn.

Rae, calling again, strode after them. “Come!” she cried. She waved the staff and whistled. “Come now!”

The sheep, snatching mouthfuls of green, disappeared into the foliage.

Rae hesitated, glancing over the shadowy line of trees, then climbed after them. “Stubborn sheep!” she called and whistled. “To me!”

Before she could take even a half dozen steps, the ewes burst out of the brush. For the briefest moment, Rae was relieved—she would not have to follow them into the woods—but almost at once she saw that the ewes tumbling toward her ran out of terror. Round bodies panicking, they sent the flock scattering and bleating over the hillside, and Rae, startled, spun to see a wolf staggering from the trees.

Oh! The same terror that had gripped the sheep rushed through her. She tensed as though to join the sheep in their pell-mell flight across the meadow, but something in the way the wolf was moving…

It swayed. Staggered. Lurched.

Its legs—one kept giving way. It stumbled, then stumbled again.

Rae knew she ought to run, but she could not look away. She stared at the creature weaving through the grass.

Its fur was dull. Matted with blood. A pitiful sound came from its throat.

The creature fell again. This time it did not stand.

A long moment passed. Rae held her breath. She watched the swath of grass where the creature had fallen, waiting for movement, her skin bristling with that same desperate sensation.

She glanced around the field. The sheep had stopped their mindless panicking; at the far edge of the meadow, they had settled back into their contented grazing.

Clutching Mop’s staff, Rae crept toward the animal.

The tawny fur was greasy with blood. Mouth open and dry, it lay in the grass, ribs shuddering through each breath.

What was she doing? She ought to get away, leave the creature, tend to the sheep. She ought to tell Mop and Ness a wolf was in their field.

She could not bring herself to leave it.