Seventy to eighty kilograms. I’m being conservative.That animal was easily the size of a large man. No wolf-dog hybrid reaches that weight. Not even close. The biggest on record top out at fifty, maybe fifty-five, and those are outliers. What I treated this morning was something else entirely.
Accelerated wound healing noted (mechanism unknown).
This is the part that won’t fit in any box.
I’ve seen fast healers. Young, healthy animals with strong immune systems can surprise you with how quickly tissue repairs. But what I saw this morning wasn’t fast healing. It was impossible healing. Those wounds were deep enough to expose muscle. The blood was still wet. The tissue was already knitting, the edges pulling together as I watched, progressing through hours of recovery in minutes.
There is no mechanism for that. Not in any species I’ve studied. Not in any veterinary literature I’ve read. Not in anything that belongs in the real world.
I close my laptop and pick up my phone.
Willow Cliffe picks up on the third ring. “Phoebe Clarke. You’re alive. I was starting to wonder.”
Willow was my best friend at the Royal Veterinary College. She’s a wildlife vet now, based at Edinburgh Zoo, and she’s the only person I know who might take what I’m about to say seriously. Or at least not laugh.
“Quick question,” I say. “Hypothetically.”
“I love hypotheticals. They always mean something’s happened that you can’t explain and you’re pretending it hasn’t.”
“Hypothetically,” I repeat. “If a vet encountered a canine species she couldn’t identify. Significantly larger than any domestic breed or known hybrid. Displaying wound-healing capabilities that are, for want of a better term, physiologically inexplicable. What would you tell her?”
A pause. I can hear background noise on Willow’s end. The clink of cutlery. She’s probably eating dinner. “How large are we talking?”
“Shoulder height at my waist. Skull breadth inconsistent with any Canis lupus familiaris phenotype. Paws the size of my open hand.”
Another pause. Longer. “That’s not a dog, Phoebe.”
“No.”
“And it’s not a wolf-dog cross. Not at that size.”
“No.”
“Where did you see this animal?”
“Hypothetically.”
“Right. Hypothetically.” Willow’s voice has shifted into the register she uses for professional consultations. Measured. Precise. “If your hypothetical vet encountered this hypothetical animal, I’d tell her to contact DEFRA. An unidentified large caninein the wild is a reportable event. There are protocols.”
I know there are protocols. I thought about the protocols while I was kneeling in wet grass with my hand on an animal that shouldn’t exist. “And if she didn’t want to report it?”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
Because the animal looked at me. Because when it opened its eyes, I felt something I can’t describe and don’t want to examine. Because it dipped its head before it left, and that gesture was not instinct. That was deliberate. That was communication.
“She might feel that the situation was more complicated than a standard report would capture.”
Willow is quiet for a moment. “Phoebe. Are you all right? You sound off.”
“I’m fine. Just settling in. New village, new job. You know how it is.”
“I know how you are when you’re deflecting.” Another pause. “Look, if you’ve genuinely seen something unusual, I can come down and take a look. Edinburgh’s not that far. I could drive down at the weekend.”
“No. No, it’s fine. It was probably a hybrid. Someone’s escaped pet. It’ll turn up on a missing animal report eventually.”
“A hybrid with accelerated wound healing?”
“I might have exaggerated that part.”
