But—oh, oh!

The hair was bristly! And the paws—not paws at all. Hooves! Pointed, oddly petite. And tusks! White. Curling. Vicious. A snout, flattened and gray. Legs, small, stubby, too short for the vast oval body… Oh!

The details came in a flood of relief: boar, it was a boar. A great oval bristly boar who’d come to feast on the sheep. Not a wolf. Not her wolf.

Mop’s spear was broken in its shoulder. Seeing it there, seeing the wound that pierced to its heart, Rae burst into tears.

After she’d cried herself out, after she’d returned home and hugged Mop, after she’d examined the line of stitches Ness had sewn in his thigh, after Mop had, with relief, repeated the boar was a lone male, surely too old for a herd, after Ness had patted her shoulder and said the fields were all safe again, after she had helped Ness with the sheep and the cheese and the garden and kissed the sleeping Mop on his brow, Rae tucked some boiled eggs into her pocket and climbed into the hills.

She climbed away from the overturned tree with its tunnel of vines. She climbed away from the fields.

She climbed where she’d been told not to climb. She climbed where hill turned to mountain, where field gave way to stone and lichen, where forest changed to stunted pines.

She was small, the boulders large: Her knees and palms grew raw and scraped as she clambered. Still, she pushed on.

When she reached an overlook, she stood, staring down. Her home from here was a tiny square in an expanse of green. The flock, a cloud on the meadow, drifted by the shimmering ribbon of stream. She knew her decision was right.… Still. She did not want to do it.

She took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Wolf!” she called. “Wolf!”

She shouted a few more times into the wide air, then sat down to wait.

He came, as she knew he would, soft-footed up the rocks. He came silently, all padding paws and hushed shadowed fur; she did not hear him, only, sensing she was not alone, she looked and saw a form beneath the stand of twisted pines.

For a moment, she blinked, confused: In the tree-mottled light, she thought she saw the silhouette of a person, but before she could react, even to exclaim Ah!, the shadows shifted, clouds moving off the sun, and she saw it was only the light at play on the wolf’s fur. He had arrived silently and now sat, ears upright, watching her.

She took an egg from her pocket and lobbed it to a higher ledge. The wolf leapt after it—eager to chase. Gobbling it in one quick mouthful, he looked back at Rae. She threw another, higher, farther up the mountain. Once more, the wolf lunged after it, devouring it whole. But when he turned again, Rae did not throw more.