She stepped closer. Hardly breathing, heart pulsing through her skin, she leaned over the beast. She could see its wounds, its torn flesh. The creature needed bandaging. Needed salve to stem the festering that had already begun. Needed water and shade and care.

The wolf’s eyes were open. It stared at her, its gaze dull and dry.

Ah, there you are. The words came unbidden to her again. She felt them through her whole body, felt the certainty of recognition even in the soft flesh of her palms. Yes, there you are.

There YOU are? You?

Why did she think this? Why did she feel this?

Why did the dullness of the eyes and the shuddering of the breaths and the festering of the wound grieve her so?

The wolf whimpered, the softest sound. No more than the rustling of seed heads in the field.

Oh. Oh.

Throwing down the staff, Rae ran. She ran down the hillside, across the stream, over the field, all the way back to her home, bursting in to startle Nessa, sitting with a mass of dirty fleece spread across her lap—“Child, what on earth?”—as she filled a bowl with ointments and salves and rags she grabbed off the shelves—“Going right back, Nessa; just a wound that needs tending”—and then bursting back out, leaving Nessa calling—“A lamb? Ewe? Do you need my help?”—and Rae shouting, “No, Ness, I’m fine, I’m all right,” over her shoulder, running again across the field and stream and up the hill, gasping as she climbed.

She found the wolf just as she had left it, panting raggedly in the sun.

What was she doing? Was she mad?

She crept to it. At her approach, the wolf half lifted its head. A growl, so light it might have been nothing but the wind running over stone, came from its throat.

Rae hesitated, then knelt beside it.

She could feel the heat rising from its body. She smelled dog and salt and wound. Hand trembling, she placed her fingers on his coat.

He turned, snapping, his teeth catching only air. Body shuddering, he laid his head in the grass again.

She returned her fingers to his side. His fur was thick, hot. His eyes rolled back at her.

“Sh,” she whispered. “Sh.”

She considered how best to help. A lamb she would take in her lap as she tended its wound. But a lamb, even a lamb that kicked or nipped, would not hurt her in the way this creature—with its strength, its size, its teeth—easily could. Taking a pot of salve and a bundle of rags, she smeared the balm all over a square of cloth. Then timidly, hands trembling, she laid the cloth over the worst wound.

This will at least stem the infection, she thought.

When the wolf didn’t move, she took a few more rags and draped them carefully around his leg. As she lifted his limb to secure the bandage, knotting it firm enough to stay, he turned again, snapping.