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forced to let me leave the valley, but I knew she thought that doing so was a mistake. And I knew, as certainly as I knew the moon would rise, that she would do anything she could to make me fail.

4
    I stood atop the mountain pass that would lead us from the Wide Valley and looked back at what had been my home. I could see the long, snaking path of the Swift River and the outline of Wolf Killer Hill, but everything else looked small and unfamiliar in the afternoon light, as if the Wide Valley were already a strange place to me. Ázzuen looked back, too, but Marra and Pell gazed only forward. Tlitoo spiraled overhead, dipping and soaring on the updrafts. Another raven flew beside him. I recognized Jlela, a female raven who often flew with him.
    Next to us, TaLi and MikLan gasped for breath. Humans, even young ones, moved more slowly than we did. Though I had not caught Milsindra’s scent again, I kept imagining that I could feel her hot breath on my back, and Even Night was not much more than three-quarters of a moon away. We’d kept the humans moving quickly, tugging on their preyskin clothing when they slowed and nudging them with cold noses when they rested too long. Still, it had taken us a fullday and half of another to reach the high pass that would lead us to the lands beyond the valley.
    I’d thought the Wide Valley was vast. Now I could see how small it really was. The land before us, grasslands mixed with forest, stretched so far that I couldn’t see the end of it. Large hills covered with dry, scrubby grass rose to our right, and to our left stood a forest of pines, cypress, and spruce. My stomach rumbled. That much land would hold enough prey for ten packs. It had been a long time since I’d eaten my fill.
    Just beyond a copse of cypress stood a rock the size of a hill. It had to be the place where I was to meet my mother, but the vastness of the land disoriented me, and I couldn’t judge how far away the rock was. I didn’t even know if she’d be there yet. It was still over a moon until I was supposed to meet her and she was hiding from Greatwolves. Yet my breath caught. For the first time since I was a smallpup, it seemed possible that I might really see my mother again. I remembered the scent of her milk, and the warmth of her belly, and most of all the sense of feeling safe and protected.
    When you are grown and accepted into the pack, you must come find me, she had told me before Ruuqo chased her away, and I had never forgotten it. I couldn’t believe that in as little as a day I could be with her.
    TaLi’s hoarse voice shook me from my thoughts. “We have to find a place where two fallen pines cross over one another at a stream,” she said to MikLan. Both she and the boy were swaying on their feet as they gazed across the grasslands. Dark clouds drifted over the plains, promising more rain.
    TaLi clutched a piece of deerskin. She looked at it andthen toward the lake. “We go as far as that rock, then follow the map to the Crossed Pines.”
    Humans were limited to using their eyes to find places they’d never been. Their map , I guessed, was another clever way they’d found to compensate for their weak senses.
    We made our way down the mountain and to a small hill below. The rain found us then. It had taken the humans hours to walk down the mountain, and it was nearing dark. It was time for them to rest.
    They set up their shelter beside a large boulder. I had hunted many times in the rain and run across Swift River lands in a thunderstorm, but I preferred being dry. Ázzuen, Marra, and I crowded into the shelter. Pell, still suspicious of the humans, waited outside in the rain. TaLi and MikLan took firemeat out of one of their sacks. I knew I should let them save their food, but I was so hungry that I couldn’t help whining a little. Firemeat was even better than ordinary food. It was rich and chewy, tasting of the smoke of the