The wolf awoke. He lifted his head from his paws. Above, the moon was full, but only a drifting ghost through the mixed pine and cedar on the mountainside. The rest of the pack slept.

He alone felt the touch of . . . he knew not what. Wolves don’t grieve. Not even for themselves.

He rose and went through the rite of fur straightening, then drifted down silently to a stream formed by overflow from a lake above. It was just wide enough to mirror the sky in its water.

Since she died . . . no, since she was killed, he had awakened every night at this hour, an hour when all else sleeps . . . remembering.

The night has rhythms of its own. Rhythms that resonate in the flesh, blood, and bones of all earth’s creatures. Man, alone, has forgotten them, forgotten they ever mattered.

But to the wolf, they came as memories, memories not his own, fragments of a dream. He touched an immortal consciousness as old as life, the experience of a creature not yet self-aware and so immortal. The first of our kind, swimming in the water column of the Cambrian sea. At this time in the night, it ceased the flexions of its muscular body and drowsed in a shimmer of moonlight.

He, the wolf, understood that a catastrophic disruption of his consciousness had taken place, depriving him of the birthright handed down to him by that first dreamer of the ocean sea.

His muzzle shattered the image of the moon in the water in the way sorrow shattered his sleep.

Above, the drifting clouds drowned the moon. Near their kill, the wolves of his pack slept soundlessly and without dreams.

The air around him was cold. It was late autumn, nearly winter again, but he felt a fire within himself—a fire that the wind from the glaciers towering over the mountain passes couldn’t quench. A fire that heated his skin under his heavy winter coat.

Fire! They were creatures of fire. And fire followed them everywhere. The smell of burning always tainted the air around their dwellings. Earth, air, fire, and water. All living beings on earth partook of those elements, but of them all, only man was the master of fire.

Why? How did they seize such power? Nothing in his memories could tell him.

When his kind first met them in the darkness and struggle of the world’s winter, they controlled flames, extinguishing and kindling them at will, their only advantage in a ruthless battle for simple survival against the omnipresent night and cold. Otherwise, they were pitiable, naked things.

Pitiable, naked things like he himself was, at this moment, because as the last rays of moonlight were caught by the drifting clouds, he became a man.

He remembered that she said—she told him—fire was a gift of the gods.

He had laughed at the word
gift.
He had already seen enough of the humans to know they stole and despoiled without conscience or compunction and read in the minds of the gods the things they most wanted for themselves. Worship and submission to the feckless, arbitrary commands of those who maneuvered themselves into a position to rule their own kind.

“A gift,” he had asked, “stolen perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” she answered with a shrug. “The thieves were mocked by their theft, because, as always, power is a two-edged sword.”

But power,
the man by the stream thought,
whatever it costs, power is life.
Without the theft, they and all their kind could never have survived that long-ago endless winter and they would have been winnowed out, as were so many others.

The man stretched his arms upward as if to embrace the moon, just as the cloud in its passage was silvered at the edges by the returning glow.

Then the silver light shone full in his face. He wondered what the gods really did want.

She, whose touch gave him the power to change from wolf to man and back again, seemed careless of worship and had never asked for thanks.

And, indeed, he didn’t even know if he should thank her because, like fire, this gift brought suffering and sorrow in its wake. A gift garnished with cruel knowledge and an awareness of absolute loss.

Then he was wolf again, satisfied to extinguish a comprehension of life that he didn’t, at the moment, want.

He remembered fire, and only fire—that spirit, that everlasting ambiguity that could protect, create, and destroy.

And the wolf set out, the only wakeful creature in a sleeping world.

Being aware and knowing awareness was a gnawing curse . . . a curse to be extinguished in blood, fire, and vengeance.

How did he know who the man was? He had seen. Why was he sure of his guilt? To the wolf this would have seemed a ridiculous question. He had smelled it, with a certainty that could not be denied—the scent of guilt that is beyond resolve, or anger, or fear.

Even his most ancient ancestor swimming in that first sea had seen, had known. And somewhere its rudimentary consciousness had been able to store the information presented by its deployed senses.

Humans, in their blindness, think intelligence has one path—theirs! But his brain—older and wiser, though not as acute—knew knowledge has many facets and routes.

None of us is any one thing. No more than a bush, a tree, or even an unloved weed is. We are all a combination of many factors, shapes, sizes, odors, movements, habits. Each impinging on the consciousness of others—others we never notice.

So the wolf knew this man. He had marked him, along with those others, in the hour between day and night, in the place that was neither water nor land, never guessing the man’s fell purpose until it was too late. Too late to stop him and the others from the completion of their task. A task his mind, as a wolf or human, could never comprehend, understand, or, for that matter, forgive—not in the year since, not ever.

Now the man in question had seen his tracks near the watercourse that ran past his farm and so was on guard.

This one was not the only man whose guilt the wolf had felt, had seen and smelled. But the first had had no suspicion he was hunted and so had fallen easily into his trap. This one gratified the wolf by suffering more than the first.

So he had deliberately prolonged the stalk for several months. Now it was time to see who would emerge the winner in the contest of wills.

The wolf moved silently onto a deer trail, through a dark second-growth forest toward more settled lands below. As he traveled, the night wore on. The earth gave up its heat. Air movement ceased. Dew began settling on the grass and bushes. The hunters of midnight and dawn slept, with either full bellies or empty, as did their prey.

Nothing stirred at this hour. The wolf looked down at the farmstead. The house was round with a conical thatch roof. A bare, tramped, corduroy yard led to a round barn very similar to the house, differing only in being smaller and open at the sides. Near the barn stood the wolf’s target—a wicker sheepfold.

The house and barn were set at the edge of a wheat field that led to a graveled stream, its channel forming another tiny tributary to the river in the gorge. The farmer had begun taking the sheep in for the night.

The wolf moved from his perch to the wheat field. It didn’t offer much concealment. The stalks were only tall enough to brush his shoulders and belly. Curlicues of ground mist hung over the laden heads of grain and they wet the wolf’s fur as he pushed his way through. The bare earth between the rows was cold under his feet.

As he neared the farm buildings, he dropped lower, slinking along the ground, looking for all the world like a bit of dust driven by a breeze moving across the furrows. However, an alert observer would have noted, in this darkest hour before dawn, there was no wind.

A mastiff the size of a calf was sleeping chained to a post in front of the sheepfold.

So confident,
the wolf thought,
you are asleep. How silly. I would not sleep if I were nearby. Well . . . you will not awaken.
The dog didn’t.

The wolf dropped into the sheepfold.

The sheep, awakened from sleep by a roaring predator among them, tried to flee in all directions at once. Two went into, not over, the sides. The sheepfold disintegrated. The terrified animals bolted into the yard and then the ripe wheat. One old ram tried to make a stand. The wolf flanked the lowered horns and slammed into his shoulder, sending him rolling. Nerve broken, the ram fled with the rest.

The wolf paused. He stood in the yard, panting. One of the sheep impaled on the broken wickerwork of the ruined fold was making the night hideous with hoarse cries of anguish. The other hung dead beside it.

There was a light in the circular farmhouse. Inside, a woman screamed curses and imprecations. The wolf sat down, tongue lolling. It should take them a little time to get up their courage.

A few seconds later, a man charged out of the house, spear in one hand, torch in the other. Two others, armed only with cudgels, followed more cautiously. The first gave a horrified glance at the dead mastiff, then at the ruined sheepfold and the two—by now the one who’d been crying out was dead also—dead ewes. And the wolf sitting, taking his ease before them all.

He charged the wolf, spear high.

The wolf turned, then vanished into the darkness, the way a puff of dust does when taken by the wind.

The farmer, incensed almost beyond reason, chased him into the wheat field—followed, very much more slowly, by the two others.

The wolf heard one of them whisper, “Let’s go back to the rath. It’s gone, fled. We can search in the morning.”

The wolf flattened himself expertly against the ground amidst the thick growth of wheat and slunk forward.

The farmer shivered. He raised the torch higher and shifted his grip on the spear shaft. His perspiration made the rough wood slippery. He could feel sweat on his brow and more running from his armpits. He couldn’t see his two companions, only a circle of darkness beyond the torchlight.

He waded through a sea of ripe, red wheat. It stirred, softly rustling in the dawn wind. Dear God! Dear God! No! There was no wind. The air was utterly still.

The wolf hit him high between the shoulder blades. A pair of unbelievably powerful jaws crushed his shoulder and left arm as he fell—the arm that held the torch.

He saw it flip out of his hand, fly free, and land about ten feet away. He had a few seconds to realize the ripe wheat was tinder dry . . .

The wolf paused on the mountainside and glanced back at the dreadful tableau behind him. The man he’d felled no longer struggled. He was a blackened shape lying in a sea of flame. Another one of the cowardly followers was on fire, running madly through the fields, spreading the flames even faster. The third escaped. He and the other women from the rath were holding the farmer’s wife back, keeping her from dashing frantically and uselessly to her death.

Closer to the tree line, the wolf looked back again. The wheat fields were a lake of flame. The house was now involved, wood and thatch throwing a column of fire at the sky. Even the apple and quince orchards burned, as wheat had been planted in rows between the trees. The surviving humans fled down the watercourse toward the river and safety.

The man who greeted Blaze was feeble, white haired, and nearly blind.
Oh, ye gods,
Blaze thought.
How many years has it been?
He remembered a healthy, vigorous man in his sixties. This man was eighty if he was a day.

He tottered ahead of Blaze into a one-room house, really a ramshackle thatched hut. The fields, once intended to feed the old Druid, were neglected and empty of livestock, filled with tall weeds. Someone had been tending the small kitchen garden and fishpond. Onions, leeks, and turnips flourished near the door.

With a sigh, Blaze followed the old man into the house. Mir should have been replaced years ago, allowed to live out his life in peace. Sent home to Ireland where he could be cared for by his family. But in these troubled times, not one of his fellows had cared enough to bother. Or had been able to take the time.

The interior of the house was dark, the only light a small hearth fire. A woman bent over an earthenware pot sunk in charcoal near the flames.

Mir pointed to her. “My wife,” he said. “I can’t remember her name.” The girl lifted her head and Blaze saw she was very young, no more than sixteen. He looked more closely and realized she was horribly scarred. Her face was crosshatched with swollen stripes. She looked as if someone had taken a very sharp blade, then slashed and slashed.

When she saw Blaze, she tried to smile. A twisted grimace was all she could manage.

“Go away,” Mir said. “We men need to talk?”

She nodded and pulled the pot out of the coals.

“The stew is done?” Mir asked.

She nodded again and slipped out.

Blaze and Mir sat down at a table. Blaze looked out at the green and gold sunlight beyond the door. He shivered. Being in this house was like sitting in a cave and staring out on the bright world beyond. He watched the girl cross the overgrown meadow and vanish into the pines.

A very strange odor hung in the room. It was rising from the bubbling pot.

“What sort of stew is that?” Blaze asked.

“I can’t say,” Mir replied. “I never eat it. I make do with a little bread and cheese. My people give me leftovers from their own tables. And my garden fills in from time to time.”

“She’s a bad cook?” Blaze asked.

“I don’t know. I just don’t care to eat the things she cooks. I once saw her put a snake, a handful of grasshoppers, and a dove into the kettle. The snake was alive. It got away. So were the grasshoppers; some of them got away. The dove was dead, its neck wrung, but it was not cleaned and still had all its feathers. Then she tossed in three live mice. I was able to rescue the cat before she added it to the brew. It ran away, though, anyway.”

Blaze shook his head as though trying to clear it. “The cat . . . ran away?”

“Yes,” Mir said. “She picked it up by the tail. The cat didn’t like it.”

“Why does she do such things? Have you asked her?” Blaze queried him.

“She doesn’t talk,” Mir answered.

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