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to try it when the sound of wet leaves rustling made her head jerk around.
     
    At first she saw nothing through the screen of greenery. When she encountered a pair of yellow eyes staring at her, she gasped.
     
    Unable to turn away, she saw the eyes were centered in a gray, furry face. Taking in the whole picture, she made out a canine muzzle, pointed ears, light facial hair, and a ruff of creamy fur around the creature’s neck. When he opened his mouth she was treated to a view of sharp, pointed teeth.
     
    A guard dog? A wolf? She had never seen a natural wolf, although a werewolf had once come to her class for young psychics. From what Vandar and his adepts had told her about this world, she was sure they didn’t have such beings here. Still, the shape was the same as what she’d seen.
     
    As he approached, she smelled his wet fur and heard his panting breath.
     
    He looked like he could rip out her throat in one savage lunge, and she would have run if she could, but the branch held her captive. Unable to escape, she raised her chin and stared at the animal as he took a careful step into the tangle of branches around her, then another. When he reached her, his eyes sought her face, and she had the strange feeling that he was going to speak to her. The moment stretched. Of course he didn’t say anything because animals didn’t talk. Instead, he brushed past her arm, and she felt the rain on his fur.
     
    Shifting his body, he pawed at the place where her leg disappeared under a stretch of wet bark.
     
    The tree limb didn’t move for him any more than it had for her.
     
    She lay on her sopping bed of branches and leaves, breathing hard, watching the wolf. If he’d wanted to hurt her, he could easily have done it already, she reasoned as he sniffed around the natural trap that held her fast.
     
    When he took a step back, she made a small sound of distress. “Can you bring help?” she asked, knowing that he didn’t understand her and that he couldn’t answer.
     
    To her surprise, he raised and lowered his head, like a man nodding, and his expression seemed to say, Wait right there.
     
    In the next moment he disappeared, leaving her alone and shivering in the rain and wondering if she had made up her unlikely visitor. Maybe she had gotten hit on the head, and her brain was serving up strange visions.
     
    Like the light flickering off to her left.
     
    She turned in that direction, wondering if she’d gotten turned around and misplaced the direction of the house.
     
    Then the smell of smoke drifted toward her, and she realized that the lightning had started a fire in the forest.
     
    Could it keep burning in this damp environment? She didn’t know, but she saw that the flames were coming closer to where she lay trapped.
     
    When panic constricted her chest, she ordered herself to steadiness. Fear wasn’t going to help anything.
     
    She could get out of this. She had to, because there was no alternative, and there was one thing in her favor. The rain was still falling, although more gently. Maybe it would put out the fire before it reached her.
     
    Drifting smoke made her cough. Trying to ignore the distraction, she flexed her fingers and leaned forward, putting her hands on the heavy branch holding her fast. Eyes closed, she pressed her fingers against the bark and used her mind to extend the reach of her hand, sending her thoughts through the surface and into the living tissue beneath. She needed to learn the mass and weight. Learn how the branch was connected to the central tree trunk.
     
    As the answers fell into place, she formed a plan of action. Pulling the branch up wasn’t enough. She had to rotate it as she lifted; otherwise the trunk would hold the limb down.
     
    Opening her eyes, she saw the fire creeping closer, heard the hissing of the wet wood.
     
    Terrible images leaped into her mind—of herself, surrounded by flames. In Breezewood, teams of adepts would have come to pull water from