There, tearing through the dark like an obsidian knife, was the horned wolf.
Its fleshless jaws hung wide, bone and tooth amid a thicket of sharp black peaks that roiled like a lightless fire.
It leapt, sod spraying skyward in the wake of its speed.
The wolf sailed over him, raining down soil and grass. Green toppled into a roll, feeling the earth shudder at the wolf’s impact.
There was a streak of white fire in Green’s peripheral vision that took a moment to parse. The glowing deer was there, then away, leaving an afterimage of itself on the dark landscape. The glass fawn was across the paddocks and disappearing up the wooded slope. It was impossibly fast, not just faster than an animal should be, but faster than a physical object could move through space. It didn’t speed like an arrow, it transitioned like the swing of a flashlight’s beam across the landscape. Here and then gone. Whatever mechanism it had just used to flee the wolf, it wasn’t muscle or bone or sinew. It was something else.
Green tilted himself up to hands and knees, then rose, the muscles in his legs shuddering. He heaved in the air, watching his breath transform from crystallized vapor back to transparency. Melting ice in his hair sent streams of frigid water trailing down his neck and back.
The wolf had not pursued the fawn.
There was no chasing after speed like that.
Green summoned all the calm that was left to him and turned.
It was there, standing six feet away, the nightmare that shattered his windshield again and again in his memory. It was bigger than he recalled.
He had no weapons. He had no strength left. Yet, somehow, his fear was all spent.
“Well. It got away.”
Green’s voice was hoarse.
The bear-size wolf turned to him, slow and smooth as honey. The pine scent of its breath was sharp and with it came the wolf’s thoughts.
It won’t be caught with speed, but it may be denied prey and rest and territory.
Green knew the wolf wasn’t speaking words. The wolf was transmitting raw meaning, mind to mind. The words were Green’s.
It didn’t matter.
They were communicating. Green was, in every way that counted, standing in the dark talking to a monster.
Bravely done, not-man.
Green met the wolf’s eyes. There was something new there.
Some deep part of his brain was screaming at him to run, to seize a weapon, to protect his soft throat. In a timeless, detached space, Green took those ancient impulses and set them on the table in Valentina’s cabin. He studied them. His teacher was there, standing in his headspace watching him steadily. Clara was there too. No. These artifacts of terror, fear of the dark and unknown world, could not be trusted as guiding principles.
“Thank you,” Green said. “And likewise. What is that creature?”
A soft sigh behind the wolf rose like a phantom from the ground.
Green and the wolf turned.
Valentina was there, wreathed in frosty breath. She held the rotting spore-log in both hands.
The wolf growled low and Green felt the vibrations in his ribs.
“I hate this part,” she said.
“Wait!”
It was too late.
She broke the log over her knee and tossed the halves at the horned wolf’s feet.
