Seven days, and Kiyo still had no name for the ridge she trod on.

That was no trouble to her. A ridge was a ridge. This one broke the wind off the north and gave her sixty bounds of clear ground on the downslope, and that made it worth more than a name.

If only she knew how she ended up here. One starry night, she had bedded down in a copse of birch trees by the creek, and when she woke up she was in a patch of ferns she didn't recognize with the light coming from the wrong side of the sky.

There was no one to ask, so the mystery remained. But it didn't matter—that birch stand had not been home. She'd have left it inside the month anyway. Really, it was probably a blessing in disguise. The further away she got from her family, the better.

She worked her cud, scanning over the ridge in between bites. It was quite far from where she had awoken, and in the miles she traveled to reach this nameless ridge, Kiyo learned a lot about this new land.

Namely, that it was absolutely infested with wolves.

The first scat she found on the second day, grey and packed with hair. The next was on a deadfall a half mile east, a different wolf, bigger and eating better. By the fourth day she had given up counting them one by one and started counting crossings instead—the places their trails cut hers. Nine. Nine in a week.

On the old range, one wolf might come down out of the high country in a hard year and take the slow and the small, and the herd would tighten up and shift its line, and that was that. Here, they were not a hard season but like the weather itself. They were in the wind at dusk and in the mud at the water, their voices went up at night from three directions at once, and every place she put her feet had been walked by them first.

Standing over that scat she had thought: this ground is spoiled.

But she carried on. What else was there to do? It was clear she was very far away from her homeland, and Kiyo wasn't about to roll over and let these wolves eat her.

Seven beds in seven days, no two of them in sight of each other and none used twice, but this one was by far her best; the wind coming up the slope announced anything that might try and sneak up on her and the sightlines extended out to the horizon itself from the top of the ridge.

At least the food was good; the browse was better than anything she'd had all year. Summer green, thick along the creek bottoms, more of it than she could eat. She took it standing in the alders at the edge of the ridge with her head coming up every fourth mouthful, ears swiveling, never out in the meadow and never with her head down long enough to lose track of the treeline. She was eating better than she ever had, enough to fight the thinness in her ribs even as she lost more of it to long sleepless nights.

when at long last the golden stag shuts his eyes, it is with the comfort of being surrounded — by women who call him theirs, by men who look to him for guidance and by children who will play under his watch come morning.

when he opens his eyes again all is dreadfully quiet— no peaceful intake of breath, no warmth of does at his flank. jubilant is perceptibly and undeniably alone.

but it is not the does he misses, nor the fawns. his dreams are haunted— eyes of aquamarine and molten silver. a red stag dances there, just out of reach. jubilant sets his jaw and stands, determined to forget.

a scent both familiar and foreign catches his attention next; a doe not spoken for.

seven days and seven nights he trails her without rest, patient and inevitable. evening of the eighth day he finds her grazing, tail flagged and head peacefully low. examination finds her comely, trot stagnating as golden stag draws nearer.

a peaceful snort, announcing himself. shake of impressive rack, meant especially to catch her eye. breath pluming, green meets sweetened amber. wolves around. spoken in accented common. i will stay. an offer.