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needs. And besides, he had already met the strawberry-blond woman at the pool.
    The woman came from the small village of herdsmen and farmers, down the slope and to the pond to refresh herself in the cool water, bathe, and dress her thick, reddish blond hair. She was wide hipped; her breasts were large, upright with only a slight droop. The nipples jutted invitingly. Her skin was very fair, and he noticed she kept to the shade. That skin didn’t tan; it probably burned. She was covered head to toe with freckles.
    He grew accustomed to seeing her each day as he dozed on the flat rock overlooking the waterfall. He thought she looked delectable, but not in the manner of food. Usually she left when the sun was high in the sky. The pool, even at midsummer, could become very cool in the afternoon when the sun’s rays no longer shone on it and the forest shadow crept in.
    He found the change difficult and sometimes impossible by day. By the time he felt the long evening shadows pull at his flesh and he could sense a bridge forming between his world and the human’s, she was gone.
    Just as well,
he thought. A few times he was tempted to slink after her when she returned to the rath where she lived. Once or twice he even entertained the fantasy of entering the circular, thatched dwelling by night. He wasn’t blind in even the deepest darkness. He knew her scents. They were in certain ways more real to him than the way she looked.
    Often, after bathing, she took her ease in one of the few sunny spots not choked by undergrowth or shadowed by ancient trees. The big granite rock was buried, but enough of it thrust into the water to create a platform a few feet above the lake. The top was too bare to sustain growth, but it was thickly carpeted with pine and fir needles. It got sun three or four hours a day. The radiant light would peer down, deep down, into the lake’s clear water, flashing on pike, trout, and the occasional small sturgeon that would come and go like ghosts in the gloom.
    All year, except during the darkest months, wild flowers surrounded the pine-needle carpet. Mother of thyme would rise from beneath the snow and twine with blue-flowered bergamot mint. Violets bloomed in the springtime, white, deepest purple, yellow. Later in summer wild carrots, the yellow composite daisies, sunflowers, and dandelions lit up the thickening grass. Harebells peered from the shelter of tall pines, hiding their drooping beauty in the shade of tile-barked trunks and thick, clustered needles.
    All unknowing she left her mark on the fallen brown needles. For instance, he knew that desire rose in her, answering the moon queen’s magnetism at least three times a week. He didn’t know where she expressed that desire since she came to the lake alone. Her skin had a flowerlike scent. It took him a while to understand the smell wasn’t just satiny flesh, but the oil of roses she anointed herself with after her bath. The smell at her armpits in the heat was mildly oniony—sweet, wild onions wrapped in clay and caramelized by a fire. When she was gone, he drifted down to drink in her complex perfume and sometimes roll on the pine carpet near the trees.
    Of course, one day, perhaps accidentally, perhaps inevitably, she remained too long. She came rather late in the afternoon. The water was in shadow, but the trees on the slopes and the little clearing were suffused with golden light. She took a quick swim. The water was icy, and she retreated quickly to shore to rest in her usual spot, and let the late-afternoon sun warm her chilled body.
    She stretched out on her perch. The wolf could also feel her languor, the relaxation as the deep heat flowed through her and the fiery light shone orange through her eyelids. He was a bit surprised when the fingers of her right hand sought her groin. It took him a few seconds to comprehend what she was doing. Then he understood and watched avidly.
    She had some swelling and moisture that brightened the