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Gently, with all the weight of breath, the dead woers over my paw

That was all—she did not open her eyes or sit up and ask for water Four fingers just lifted and fell again, closing ht envy

The Wolf-Star leaned over us “We always hope—it would be an answer, anyway But they never wake up I suppose after all this tie if they did” Liulfr closed her eyes and began to wash ue, rough asunder her like a plucked harp I could see only her golden fur, shiers on ht like ash in the Manikarnika, carefully collecting every drop

Finally, she closed her long, silky snout overed skin

I could feel it, rushing all through ht and blood that poured out of her jaws, finding its circuit in hter and harsher andout a wave to ride intotides that filled ht from the Wolf’s ht old and unspeakable as the sky I choked, moaned, even screah ht; it is pushing a boulder up a mountain, or a mountain up a ain And howbetween theht I had inI had ever known

When finally I felt the Wolf’s jaw release , open, shaking I was a woers on each hand, teeth flat and thick, long hair grazing my waist like a paintbrush

Liulfr touched iven you is yours, but it does not belong to you We don’twith liives it she is diainst my cheek “I have been here for you and yourtime; I am the source you come to; I am the well from which you drink”

For the first tiht than the cave walls She was just an old wolf, her fur bare in patches, her eyes ray But then she smiled, as much as a wolf can sht and warmth, which as it? I could not tell—only a little less than it had been before

“You changed when you entered the cave We did it for you then It is a great lance at the woreatest of all Metaht corandparents back and back and back, to that poor girl in her tent clutching a baby to her breast, you can be like us, at least a little like us, and it is only a sie the outline of a hole” The Wolf-Star sed hard “After all, a hole is nothing but space” After a silence deeper than a dungeon, she stood back, straight-spined, and stared down at h her silky muzzle

“But you are not one of us For you, this thing is irreversible except by death, and not only the flesh is altered Only the strongest of you can resist the collapse of the soul into the form; the mind is lazy, it naturally imitates the body I have known none of you yet who can re is yours to do, if you should wish to do it”

The cold, clear hand of the jewel-girl releasedacross an eold-pelted Wolf led reat open arena of the first cavern It seeo that I had bent under the Mare’s teeth there, that she had made her hole in me

“Go, Star-daughter There is much work for you to do”

I knew I should not, but I could not keep gy neck, burying my face in the smell of her, of cedar and wet rock, of snow just fallen “You never know,” I whispered, “maybe the new Stars aren’t just markers Maybe they are the Manikarnika Maybe they went home”

Liulfr shook her head againstHer voice was tiny and soft “No one goes ho but space We are accidents, and there is no grace for us”

She pulled back and gave my cheek the briefest of licks The Wolf-Star padded quietly away fro before she found the far wall