“You don’t understand! I have to—.”

“I understand well, my friend,” he replies, putting more of his weight down on her shoulder, sharp claws not quite digging into the tender flesh beneath them. “As you are now,” he repeats, words measured and deliberate, black eyes staring deeply into hers, willing her fevered, panicked mind to understand, “you cannot help her. Remember.”

“Remember what? I can’t —.”

Again she struggles and again he presses more of his weight into her. He can feel his time growing short. The solidness of his body begins to shift and grow insubstantial. “Remember my lessons. Remember where your true strength lies. Goodbye for now, my friend. I will be watching.”

“Wa Uspewicakiyapi! No!! Wait!!! Please!!”

“Remember….”

Her frail strength depleted, Dakota slumps back on the ersatz bed, shivering in pain and distress. “Remember. I need to remember….” Her gaze darts about the empty cabin, searching…searching. “Kirsten!! Kirsten, where are you?!? I have to find you! I have to….” She struggles, but it’s one that’s over before it has truly begun. Her body is weak, wrung out, her mind delirious with fever. Delirium tells her she is simply dreaming, but the more rational part of her mind, buried deep and struggling to maintain its hold, tells her the truth of the matter. She is not dreaming, and Kirsten is in danger.

“Remember,” she mutters to herself, dragging her good hand through her sweat-tangled hair. “Remember….”

Her eyes drift closed and a vision, not of Wa Usepwicakiyapi, but of her grandfather, appears in the darkness. His face is exactly as she remembers it; lines as deep as river-cut canyons running down from the corners of his somber mouth, braids iron gray and tightly wrapped, eyes stern, but always with a tiny twinkle of amusement sparking their pale depths. He holds in one gnarled hand a teaching stick. A feather, tied off with rawhide, dangles from its end.

In this vision, fever induced or otherwise, she sees herself as she was many years ago, a weaning-child, all pudgy arms and legs, a mop of coal-black hair, and pale blue eyes. Giggling with joy, this younger version of herself reaches for the pretty feather and topples forward, into the feather’s bright colors and the paleness of her grandfather’s eyes. Dakota finds herself merging with this younger version, and together they fall into the swirling void.

“Remember….”

*

The blizzard has grown greatly in intensity, but Kirsten, at the bottom of a deep ravine, barely notices. Both sides of the ravine bear signs of her struggle. The back side, scuff and tumble marks from where she had, in her haste, blundered off the path and down the steep embankment, end over end, and the front side is covered in the broken branches and muddied snow that marks her scrambling, frantic attempts to get back out.

For the moment, she lies at the very bottom, bruised, aching, sore, and above all, tired. It does not seem like she is lying on snow at all, but rather a soft, warm bed that appears to promise her a restful sleep if only she’d close her eyes and sink into the gift it offers. The scientist in her knows the dangers of such seduction—hypothermia will kill her far more quickly than any animals who might slither down this cut in the earth looking for an easy meal. The medicine she has somehow managed to keep safe, though the thought of Dakota seems far away—hazy almost, as if she’s dreamed that part of her life. “Sleep,” she murmurs, laying her cheek into the soft, so very soft snow. “Just a little rest. I can try again when I’m stronger. She’ll understand.”

Some part deep within her fights this sudden lassitude, but the pull of seduction, like the Siren Song of old, spins its false promises to avidly listening ears. Her eyes begin to drift closed, by slow degrees until her outside view of the world is cut off completely in the darkness that follows.

A minute later, an hour, she isn’t sure, she is awakened by something that feels suspiciously like a tongue licking her cheek. “Ew! Dog kisses!” she mumbles, pushing the furred snout away. “C’mon, Asi, just a few more minutes, ok?”

A low, deep throated growl that could never have come from Asimov snaps Kirsten’s eyes open, and when she sees an enormous black wolf staring down at her, she forgets her aches, bruises, and tiredness and begins to crab-scrabble backward on hands and heels until her back is slammed into an overturned log, preventing her further retreat. Her heart slams against her ribs, her mouth going dry as cotton. She crab-scrabbles backward on hands and heels until her back slams into an overturned log, preventing her further retreat. Duck and cover. The scream dies in her throat. High, shrill sounds mean distressed prey, and Kirsten wants to do nothing to provoke the four-footed death in front of her. Making herself small against the log at her back, she curls up with her head down and her hands over her neck. “Nice wolf,” she sing-songs softly. “Niiiice wolf. You don’t want me for dinner, Mister…er….Miz Wolf. Really. I’m too tough. Bad for the digestion.” With effort, she clenches and unclenches her hands, stiff and chapped with the snow. “Nothing but gristle.”

Growling again, the wolf takes another step toward her, then sits down on its haunches, looking down at her. Kirsten, risking a glance upward, swears that she can see a look of expectancy in those eyes, even in her fear.

Those blue eyes.

Staring at them in frank wonder, she quite unconsciously echoes Dakota’s earlier words. “Am I dreaming? ….or dead?” She unfolds slightly from her crouch; a firm pinch to the inside of one reddened forearm answers that question quite nicely. “Ok. So you’re a blue eyed wolf. Tacoma said they weren’t as rare as I thought they were, and he should know, right? Right.” So why does it seem that this particular blue-eyed wolf is laughing at her?

Scooching forward a bit, the wolf places a fist-sized paw on Kirsten’s thigh, then cocks its head in a gesture so familiar that it steals her breath. Then the more rational (she believes) part of her mind reasserts itself and she laughs in self deprecation. “Must be hypothermia,” she mutters to herself, staring down at the huge paw still resting on her thigh. “Are you…uh…testing for choice cuts,” she hazards, “because I’m telling you, an old boot would taste better than me right now.”

After staring at her a moment longer, the wolf lowers its massive black head, takes her wrist, very gently, between its long, sharp teeth and tugs lightly. Startled, Kirsten cries out before realizing that she isn’t being hurt and that, in fact, like Wiyo, this animal is trying its best to communicate with her. And like Koda’s wolf, like her own—patron? mascot? familiar?—raccoon, this one must be at least in part a denizen of the spirit world. Gently she reaches out to touch the massive shoulder, knotted with muscle under the thick fur. Not entirely a spirit, then. At least this one doesn’t talk, or dress up in hospital whites. When the gentle tug comes again, she sighs and shakes her head sadly. “I…think I know what you’re trying to tell me,” she comments, feeling vaguely embarrassed to be having a rational discussion with a wild creature who, logically, should be ripping into her guts right now, “and I wish I could, but I’ve tried and I just can’t make it up there.” The tug comes again, and with a sigh, she gets stiffly to her feet, crying out softly as her twisted left ankle is forced to bear weight.

The wolf immediately drops her wrist and stares up at her with what Kirsten swears is concern blazing from those strangely colored eyes. She finds herself blushing. “I twisted my ankle falling into this blasted hellhole and twisted it again trying to get out. It…hasn’t been the best of days for me.”

Cocking its head again, the wolf then trots easily down the mouth of the gully, returning a moment later with a large, forked branch in its mouth.

“A crutch?” Kirsten asks incredulously. “You’ve brought me a crutch?” She stares down into the disconcerting eyes—“Who are you? What are you?”—and swears she feels something pressing at the recesses of her mind. Then, like a fleeting dream upon awakening, it is gone and she finds herself taking the stick from her newfound companion and propping it under her arm. It is slightly too short, and pokes at her uncomfortably, but it helps bear her weight and for that, she is grateful. “I…um…thank you. For this. It helps. Though I’m not sure how much good it’s going to do once we have to start climbing.”

Giving her one more look, the wolf turns and trots toward the incline several feet away. Shaking her head in bemusement, she follows, limping and wincing as the snow continues to fall around her. The truth of her prediction is borne out as, two steps into the hill, her good foot slips and she finds herself falling. The wolf is immediately there, and she instinctively wraps her arms around its well-muscled neck and chest, astonished at the easy strength and supple grace of the animal as it climbs the steep ravine, hauling her along as if she weighs no more than a sack of feathers. As it hits the steepest part of the incline, the wolf’s sharp claws slip and slide over the loose ground cover, but it digs in and continues climbing, scrabbling over the fallen branches and snow-slick leaves until finally, with a final heave of its sleek, muscled body, it brings them both over the lip and onto level ground once again.

When she feels the ground flatten beneath her, Kirsten releases her death-grip on the wolf and leans back, breathing deeply. She finds herself briefly alone as the animal disappears back down the ravine, then reappears, her crude crutch in its mouth. Still muddle-headed from the cold, she scrambles to her feet as best she can and gratefully retrieves the crutch from the she-wolf’s massive jaws. “Maybe you could come home with me and teach that trick to my dog Asimov. Not that…of course…I’m comparing you to my dog. Or any dog, actually. I’m…uh…pretty sure that’s an insult to you, being a wolf, and…I should probably stop babbling now, right? Right.” Once again, the wolf’s eyes seem to sparkle laughingly up at her. A thought comes to her as if from out of the blue, creasing the space between her brows in puzzlement before she rejects it as out of hand. “I’m losing it. I know I am. Gotta get back to Dakota.”