The cave dripped with dampness. Shadows shifted in the mist along the walls: Alba saw a wolf form and slink in the dark earth of the cave. She looked again and saw only grubs and worms, constellations of soft white bodies twisting up the darkness. She shook her head to clear her vision. The two men swayed before her.

“They cannot be alive.” The vast brow was wrinkling in anger. “It is not possible.”

“Find them!” howled the king. “They must be found now!”

“The twins are alive,” the oracle continued, unhearing. “Unloved and abhorred, you’ll be brought down by your own blood. And no one will weep. And no one will mourn.”

XXIV

THE ROUND GOODNESS OF EGG

Rae returned to the wolf as often as she dared. In the mornings, before Mop and Ness rose from their beds; in the afternoons, when the sheep were grazing on a distant hill; in the evenings, while the heat was still softening the parsnips set to boil over the fire—whenever she was not needed, she’d steal away. She carried eggs in her pockets; she fetched water from the stream. Each time she arrived, she found the water drained and the food all eaten. Clambering into the branches of an overhanging oak, she’d sit as long as the light and her chores allowed, watching for the wolf.

In the beginning, she rarely saw him, and when she did, he appeared ailing. Desperate. Injured leg dragging, he’d emerge only briefly, then return to his vine-cave. If he sensed her presence, he did not look up. Rae fretted: The bandage she had wrapped was long gone; the wound and infection were deep, still angry and red. But as the weeks wore on, he spent more and more time outside, lying in the sun, rolling in the leaf litter, and though he was thinner, weaker, fur ridged with bones, Rae saw with relief the crisis was passing: He would survive his injury.

Sitting, waiting quietly for him, she came to know the forest in a way she had not before. In her stillness, creatures that had tucked themselves away returned to their chatter—mistle thrushes to their bright, liquid chirrup-ings; squirrels to the quiet pips of their kits; hares to satisfied tuk-ings as they nibbled away. Rae wondered whether any of these creatures—tuk-ing, chirrup-ing, pip-ing—ever said anything beyond the sounds of the wood; she wondered whether the wolf, lying in his vine-cave, had found some sound to name her, the girl who brought him food and water—or if she was just the round goodness of egg, the coldness of stream.

One day, when she’d passed a stretch of afternoon listening to the woodpeckers took-ing as they flitted from tree to tree, she glanced down to see the wolf had come out of his vine-cave. Lying on his belly, he had braced a stick between his paws. He worked his teeth over the wood, gnawing zealously, then, leaping up, tossed it, and tossed it again. He jumped limpingly after it, pouncing on it, bouncing away from it, pouncing and tossing again. Even injured, he was as playful as the lambs in the first days of spring. Rae, lying over the branch, pressed her hand to her lips, trying to smother her giggles.