There is a pack of wolves, swimming across the river toward us. They see that we have spotted them and begin to swim faster, their eyes shining. The snakes are leaving them alone: in fact I can’t see the snakes at all.
Wolves serve the Crone, I think. And snakes serve the Crone.
The elks turn, panicked breath misting the air, looking for somewhere to run, but there is nowhere, only a narrow path, all curves and switchbacks, that runs up the other side of the canyon, and will only fit them single file.
Mark looks to the river, at the onrushing forms of the wolf heads. They are getting close now; I can see the sharpness of their teeth. The mineral hardness of their eyes, glinting in the starlight. I can hear them snarling madly as they swim, their mouths foaming, mingling with the foam of the river.
Very well, says Mark, as if to himself.
Then he closes his arms around his chest and—
and collapses into himself, his body folding like paper, his skin shifting, blurring into fur, bristling, his jeans and T-shirt melting away, his jaw extending, his fingernails pushing out into claws until …
… until there is a coyote standing there, beside the river, a huge coyote the size of a man—a coyote that a second ago was a man.
Behind me, the lead elk lets out a kind of bellow, but I can’t tell if it’s one of rage or surprise or triumph, because at that moment the wolves hesitate, I see them slow in the water, and they sniff at the air in confusion.
But then the biggest of them snarls and their eyes flash again, and they come forward, reaching the shallows now, scrabbling for purchase with their paws on the riverbed. They rush up onto the sand then, bursting out of the river, spraying droplets of water as they charge at us, mouth open wide and slathering, eyes full of murder.
The coyote twists and, in Mark’s voice, says, Stay back. Stay behind me.
Then it catches the first wolf with a blow of its red paw, just as the wolf leaps, smashing it down in a cloud of sand. Immediately the coyote—Mark—whirs around and jumps into the air, closes its jaw on the throat of the biggest wolf, and in less time than it takes to tell it, tears out a great hunk of flesh in an explosion of red, and the wolf falls twitching to the ground, missing half of its neck.
There are three more wolves, and they hang back now, whimpering, their snouts downturned. They glance at one another, seem to draw some strength from each other, some resolve, and then all three of them hurl themselves at the giant coyote together.
But the coyote is ready.
It dives under one wolf, twisting its body as it does so, and its claws rake up, eviscerate the wolf as it moves through the air, its guts falling steaming to the sand. Another wolf jumps over it, and it snaps at the air and misses, the wolf hitting the ground hard and careering toward me, toward the elk, jaws wide open—
But the coyote has spun around, too fast to be possible, and sunk its teeth into the wolf’s back leg—the wolf stops as if anchored by a steel cable, its head crashing into a rock that is lying in the sand, and it is instantly still.
The last wolf doesn’t even make for me, it turns its tail and flees—or it would, if the coyote didn’t chase it to the water’s edge, and end it in a swirl of water and blood.
The elks behind me are whickering and wheezing, distressed by the smell of blood, which is ringingly metallic in the air around us, the whole atmosphere turned to iron. I half turn to them and their eyes are rolling and staring. Some of them have tried to escape up the narrow path but have got stuck, feet drumming at the ground, antlers locked with hooves.
The coyote leaves the water’s edge and begins to walk toward me.
But no.
That wasn’t the last wolf. The last wolf surges out of the water upstream of me, a gray wave, and it is huge. It bounds, snarling, past the coyote and toward the elks that are jumbled together at the foot of the path up the canyon wall. It is fast, this wolf, and it is snarling, eyes gleaming, getting closer and closer.
The coyote reacts, but maybe not fast enough, turning from me and throwing itself in the wolf’s direction—
Shelby Cooper, come back in here, says the elk closest to me, its eyes bulging.
What? I say.
Another elk takes my shoulder with its hand; I feel the fingers digging into my flesh.
What the—?
Then the rocky ravine drops away like a curtain falling, and there is forest behind it, dark forest, and my mom swings me around to face her. I stumble, but she catches me.
It’s two a.m., she says. Come inside.
I stare at her. I’m thinking about the trapped elks, the wolf closing in on them, wanting to lock its teeth on their flesh, and I want to go back and see if they’re all right, I want to know why Mark is SUDDENLY A COYOTE. But I can’t very well try to step back over there into the Dreaming, not with Mom right here beside me.
Okay, Mom, I say.