Still lost in the cave of these dreams, she woke to Mop’s entering footstep. In the faint light of earliest dawn, she struggled to throw off her confusion, to make sense of Mop cleaning his hands, wiping his brow, sitting heavily beside Ness on the bed. “Ness.” He rested his palm on her shoulder.

In the half dark, blanket tight under her chin, Rae watched Ness sit up, startle, then rush to search through her shelves.

Rae saw at once she was gathering medicines. “What’s happened?” Throwing off her bedclothes, the last of her confusion gone, she hurried to Mop.

“Rae, shh, I’m all right.” Mop’s voice was tired. “It’s all done.”

“All done?” Rae’s voice quavered.

Ness, raising a lantern, gently nudged Rae. “Make room, daughter. Your father needs his wound stitched closed.”

In the yellow light, Rae saw for the first time Mop’s leg, a great gash across his thigh. “Oh no, no!” She put her hand to her mouth. “Mop!”

Her fear for her father churned against her fear for the wolf. What had the wolf done to Mop? What had Mop done to him? Reeling, she grasped at Mop’s arm.

“Shh, Rae. It’s not so much. Shh. Give Ness room. I’ve had worse in my time—Ness will have me whole before the sun rises. And besides, it’s all done—just a lone male, no others with him to worry about now.”

“All done?” Rae repeated. She backed away, eyes still fixed on Mop’s leg. She seemed to feel the gash, angry and red, deep in her own body. “But what happened?” she whispered.

Mop, focused on Ness and the needle, did not look up.

“Did he…,” Rae tried. “Did…” She could not bear it. Turning, she ran out into the dawn.

“Rae!” she heard behind, but no one followed.

Mop’s fire was still smoldering, coals deep orange in the misty light. The sheep, flocked together by the stream, knocked against one another, agitated, unnerved. Rae glanced about, trying to see through the fog veiling the field. Farther into the meadow, a lamb lay apart from the flock, its small body an unnatural curl in the haze.

Even through the fog, she could see the strangeness of its splayed-out limbs, the uncanny angle of its neck. “Oh.” Her chin quivered. The poor thing. Crossing to the lamb, she tried not to look at the gash in the belly. She took its heavy head in her hands. Its eyes—rimmed by pale, downy lashes, unblinking and still—were dark and unseeing. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She stroked the lamb’s nose and laid its head gently down again in the damp grass. Heart sinking, she looked beyond.

Another curl in the mist, another curl in the field—the grass wreathed around a shadowy form. Rae, breath tight, could scarcely will her feet forward.

A mound of dark fur, a wide rib cage, a great hairy mass. The body seemed impossibly large—was the wolf so big?—and impossibly still—no breath stirring in the broad chest. She could not look, she could not. She knew what she would see.