Pain—sharp, searing—flashed across her. “Ah!” Startled, she fell backward, gripping her arm: A constellation of ruby spots bloomed over her wrist.

She wiped the blood away.

The wolf, panting heavily, head lolling in the grass, stared at her. He could have bitten harder, Rae knew. Injured as he was, he still could have taken her whole arm. He’d only grazed her.

Moving out of reach of his mouth, Rae treated her own wound, smearing salve over the broken skin, then tying a rag over the injury. She could feel the heaviness of a bruise pooling under her skin. She held up her bandaged wrist to the wolf.

“You see?” she said quietly. “The same.”

The wolf’s eyes were wide, his breaths shallow and quick.

Rae frowned. “You need water. And shade,” she said. “But I can give you only one of those.” Emptying the ointments and rags onto the ground, she hurried down the slope with the bowl to fill it at the stream, then climbed back twice as slowly, balancing the sloshing container in front of her.

“Here you are.” She set the bowl as close to the wolf’s snout as she dared. He did not raise his head.

“Come now.” Kneeling, she splashed the water. “You need to drink.”

The wolf’s ribs heaved. He ignored the bowl.

She wiggled her fingers in the water. Tremblingly, she held her hand in front of the wolf’s nose. She felt his hot breath, his quivering whiskers. “Here,” she whispered. She let the water drip on his muzzle. Half shutting her eyes, she braced to feel the wolf’s teeth tear her arm again.

But the wolf did not bite. He licked the droplets on his snout. When she returned to the bowl to fill her hand, he followed. Nose hovering over the water, he drank, tongue lapping languidly, then, with a long shudder, laid his head again in the grass. His breath steadied.

“See?” she murmured. “You needed water.”

For a moment, the wolf fixed his dark gaze on her. Rae shivered—there you are, there you are, she wanted to cry—then his eyes closed again. Rae wrapped her arms about herself. The creature felt like an answer to a question. But what question? She did not know.

Feeling the deep heat of her bruise, she scooted a little away. Below her, the soft woolly bodies of the sheep meandered back and forth on their grazing paths. Above, clouds mirrored the woolly meandering, and the sun grew bright and dark and bright again as they crossed haphazardly over its face.

Gradually, the wolf drifted to sleep. Rae watched his breath slow. Even from where she was sitting, she could see all the different shades that made up his tawny coloring: tufts of gray and tan and cream and almost, even, silver and gold. In the cloud-changing light, the pelt shifted, growing first paler, then duskier, as if he were replacing his coat—or even transforming into one of the creatures he may have devoured and now held in his belly.