Page 29

Buttercup lasted two days. There have been several improvements since then, each one earning me less of his face and more of his ears. Lady Fluff is new this morning. So far he hates it enough to answer every time.

I bend again, but he catches the loose end first. His claws stay angled away as he knots it against my ankle. Then his fingers move beneath the folded leather to ease out a wrinkle.

“There.”

His hand stays around my ankle, and I look down at him.

He’s crouched close enough that I could touch the pale fur across his brow. His thumb strokes just above the wrap. He’s finished, and I still haven’t taken my foot back.

He looks up at me and stops moving his thumb.

I could ask what he’s waiting for. I’d have to explain why I’m still standing here.

He lets go, rising in one easy movement, and turns toward the passage.

“Stay close.”

“Every evening. I remember.”

I follow him past the first bend. The slab stands across the way ahead, with a dark gap at one edge. He slides it back while I wait behind him, watching the fur shift over his shoulders. It scrapes clear faster than it ever has. He wants this over with, then.

I’ve had plenty of time to learn his comings and goings. He leaves after I eat, sometimes returns carrying meat, sometimes comes back with nothing, and always checks the ground outside before he lets me through. When he’s out, I can get from the slab back to the hearth before he finishes opening it. I can’t reach the outer bend before he looks back.

Ask who died, and he goes into the inner passage with whatever he’s holding. I know the sound of his footsteps stopping beyond that bend, too. He’ll argue about anything else—how much food I need, where I can stand. Not the bandage. He kneels down every evening and changes it, and I sit still and let him, and it stopped needing changing days ago. It suits me if he thinks I’m still healing.

That’s not why I sit there.

The dusk outing took a bowl of cooling broth and most of an afternoon to win. I asked for outside, and he told me to eat. I let the spoon lie there until he gave me a time.

Since then, every evening, he’s taken me as far as the mouth of the passage.

Tonight he waits at the outer turn until I catch up. I keep my left hand loose at my side and make myself walk.

The moon was nearly round last night. Tonight it’ll be full, and wolves will be lying down halfway through tasks they’d finish on any other evening. Keer will still be telling everyone else to rest while trying to carry something stupid himself.

This one hasn’t sat down since midday. Same thing. Neither of them can stand knowing it’s coming.

Yesterday he carried half a fallen tree home.

Let him try it tonight. I need him slow for a little while, and the moon has been making large predators miserable longer than he’s been refusing to answer me.

He lifts the hanging growth aside, letting cool air into the passage.

I take my usual place on the flat stone at the mouth and close my right hand over the pebble I tucked against it last night. Below us, the mountainside slopes into pines. I’ve spent every outing looking past his legs at that slope, finding the broken ledge, the shallow dip, the place where I can get down among the first trees.

Water moves somewhere below them. Every evening I’ve listened for it.

He stands on my right, looking along the bare rock.

I lean forward with my elbows on my knees, exactly as I did yesterday. “There’s more sky if you move.”

His eyes stay on the rock. “Look up.”

I give him an innocent smile. “Helpful. That must be exhausting for you.”

I flick the pebble low behind his heels. It rattles down the slope beyond his far shoulder, and his head turns toward it. He shifts out from the passage, lifting his nose into the wind.

He brought me out because I asked him to.