Keer breathes out. Long. Quiet.
The clearing is quiet. The wolves who stayed are lookingat the ground, at the fire, at their own hands. Not at each other. Not at Keer.
I walk over to where he hasn't moved.
"That was the right thing."
Nothing.
"Keer."
"I know what it was, Melori."
"Then why do you look like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like you just lost something you can't get back."
His eye finds mine. Raw.
Then it's gone.
"Because I did."
He turns and walks toward the defense positions.
I watch him go. My hand finds my own collarbone, the wrap, the cut underneath.
Nugget is still at my ankle. Hasn't moved.
I look down at her.
"Yeah," I tell her. "I know."
I stand there for a beat after Keer's gone. The wolves are rearranging—drifting back toward their stations, the woodpile, the fire pit. Nobody talking.
I should go back to the goat. The bucket is half full. The female will need the second side stripped or she'll be uncomfortable later.
Instead I look at the chicken pen.
The eggs.
That's the next thing I know how to do. The pack ate through what I gathered yesterday and there'll be more this morning if I go now. The hens lay early.
It's a reason.
"Come on."
Nugget hops off my boot. Falls in behind me at her usual two-step lag—technically following, reserving the right to pretend she wasn't. I head for the pen.
The hens are out already, scratching in the dirt at theedge of the run. There's a depression in the dust where Keer Jr. has been rolling.
He does that. I have no theories about why.
He's not in it now.
I duck under the rail. The hens flutter and resettle. Routine. The brown one closest to the perch lifts her tail at me without looking up—she's the meanest of them, but she lays the biggest eggs, so we have an arrangement. I reach under her.
