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to be there again.
    That was the worst thought of all, so horrible that Jules’s mind scrabbled for a way out of it. Now she snatched the towel back to stanch the flood of tears that wouldn’t stop pouring from her eyes. Dad held her tighter.
    The Maybe game came into her head.
    Maybe you turn into an albatross and fly across the ocean.
    Maybe you turn into a giant sea turtle and crawl up on the sand by the light of the moon.
    Maybe you turn into a mermaid and swim around the world.
    She wiped her face again. The game wasn’t helping. She couldn’t see Sylvie as a bird or a turtle or even a mermaid. She could only see her as Sylvie, running and running and running, her hair swinging back and forth across her shoulders, the blue hair band with buttercups pushed behind her ears. Running so fast. So that  . . . what? Why was Sylvie’s burning wish to run faster?
    How would Jules ever find out now?

10
    T he baby girl fox, Senna, came into the world in darkness, thirty feet below ground in the den dug out of cool brown earth. She was the middle child, born between her older and younger brothers, the three of them separated by minutes.
    The first thing she knew was the feel of her mother’s tongue. Shhh shhh shhh, cleaning her off, licking her into life and warmth and love and safety.
    The second thing she knew was the feel and smell of her brothers’ bodies pressed against hers as their mother nursed them, their front paws kneading her belly.
    The third thing she knew was that there was someone waiting for her, someone she needed to find. After the rough tongue of her mother had given her a second cleaning and smoothed her wet fur, Senna sniffed in the darkness. Back and forth she rolled, pressing her paws into her sleeping brothers’ backs and bellies. Despite her mother’s warm milk, she didn’t go to sleep like her brothers.
    Sleep, said her mother, in the language of fox. Sleep, little Senna.
    Baby Senna lay awake and quiet. She wiggled her way closer into the soft fur of her mother’s belly. She sniffed the air and smelled her sleeping brothers, her sleeping father. Sleep, her mother told her again, sleep, little girl.
    Where was the Someone?
    She cocked her tiny round ears and listened, but there were only the sleeping sounds of her brothers and father, only the rough tongue of her mother. Finally Senna closed her eyes and drifted off. But as she did, a whispery word flowed over her from somewhere far away. Kennen. The word appeared to her as bars of gray and forest green hanging in the air, drifting toward one another, passing through one another, always moving.
    Kennen, the bars whispered. Senna watched in the darkness of the den, and as she did, the gray-green bars passed on through her, leaving behind small bits of worry and wonder, like invisible drops on her newborn fur.

11
    E very day that Elk had been at war, Sam had written a wish on a rock, Elk return . And Elk had come back. But Sam knew that his brother wasn’t completely home. It was as if Afghanistan had kept a part of Elk and sent the rest of him back to his family.
    Elk Porter and Zeke Harless had been best friends their whole lives. They had enlisted in the army together, and they had been deployed to Afghanistan together. The Shermans, the Porters, Mrs. Harless, all of them had gone to the airport to wave good-bye. They had stood under the steel-blue sky as the airplane lifted Elk and Zeke off and carried them thousands of miles away to the other side of the world.
    If Sam had known that it would be the last time he’d see Zeke, would he have said something to him besides “Bye, Zeke”? Would he have done anything differently while Zeke and Elk were gone? Should he have thrown wish rocks for Zeke, too? Would that have made any difference?
    It was impossible to know.
    Before they shipped out, Sam had hardly known a day without his brother or Zeke. Now Elk was home and Zeke was not, and Elk