Mop, kneeling, setting kindling alight, started. “Don’t what, my daughter?” He rose, tossing his small torch in the fire.

“Don’t hurt the wolf!” Her voice cracked in a sob.

Mop wrapped his arm around her. “Rae.”

“You have your bow!” She saw it then, for the first time, leaned against the chair, with a quiver of arrows. “And your spear! He didn’t mean it! It’s not his fault.”

“Of course not.” Mop shifted the wood to encourage the flames to catch. “I don’t wish to hurt a wolf, Rae. Any animal. You know that. The wolves must find their dinner just as we must find ours. We share these hills with all manner of creatures. But I can’t leave our sheep to be eaten. If a pack has come down from the mountains, they’ll finish our flock. It’s not cruelty or cunning—for animals, there’s no such thing. The sheep are just easy, fattened meals. But if we’re lucky, it’s just one wolf, a loner, and if we’re luckier still, he’s only passing through… maybe already moved on. If we’re unlucky… well”—Mop paused and offered Rae a half smile—“then I’ll be out here tending the flocks at night for a while.”

“Let me wait with you,” she said. “I’ll help keep the fire going. I’ll help watch the sheep.”

“No, Rae.” Mop’s voice was unusually firm.

“Please.” Tears sprang to her eyes.

“No,” he repeated. “Absolutely not.” In the fire-cast shadows, he was stern, severe; Rae had never seen him so. “It is not safe.”

“Then it’s not safe for you!” she said desperately. And it was not safe for the wolf. She trembled. The feeling of wholeness that had sent her bounding through the fields was tearing.

“I’ve been shepherding a long time, Rae. You needn’t worry about me,” he said more gently. “Go finish your dinner. Go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Though Rae half obeyed—leaving Mop to his fire, to his spear and his arrows—she neither ate nor slept. While Ness fussed, Rae poked red-eyed at the stew; while Ness dreamed, Rae tossed and turned and tossed again. Through a chink in the wall, she watched the firelight flicker. She watched the white flurry of moths encircling the flames. She listened to the sounds of sheep moving in the dark, to their hooves and Mop’s steps on the earth and grass. She held herself small and tight, waiting.

All night the fire burned, the woodsmoke sharp as her fear.

XXV

JUST A LONE MALE

When sleep finally found her, Rae’s dreams were troubled. She dreamed the wolf came to the fire. She dreamed he wore a coat woven by moths. She dreamed the wolf, two-legged, tall, rested warm by Mop’s side; she dreamed he placed his cocoon-coat over Mop’s shoulders. She dreamed the wolf slept. She dreamed the stream swelled to meet him. She dreamed of herself reflected in the starry dark of the water. She dreamed of her face water-mirrored as the face of the wolf. She dreamed of frogs in the water, long-legged, milk-bellied. She dreamed a frog large enough, she dreamed the wolf small enough, to be flickered away in the sweep of frog tongue. She dreamed of the wolf, swallowed, bones and soft skin, in the milky cave of frog belly. She dreamed of herself lost in the cave.