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I tensed my muscles and readied myself to run, but when Jeremia emerged from the forest, I relaxed again.
    The wolf padded along behind Jeremia. I had never seen it so close and marveled at the beauty of its silver fur. Eva backed away from it and stood by the fire next to Nathanael and me, the silent macaw on her shoulder watching warily. The wolf’s long tongue hung from its mouth, and its yellow eyes glinted in the fire.
    Jeremia carried another wolf slung over his shoulders and laid it down beside the fire. It was a much older wolf, with tufted black fur that had become tinged with gray. A smell rose from the wolf, a smell so strong that I pushed my hand against my nose, trying to stop the odor from drifting into my mouth. The wolf ’s muzzle was completely white except where sores had formed around its mouth. Always be wary around hurt animals, I had been told, but this creature’s eyes rolled about in its head, and it panted loud foamy breaths flecked with blood. I couldn’t imagine it harming anyone.
    I took a bowl to the creek and filled it with water. I placed the bowl by the hurt wolf’s head. Jeremia’s wolf looked at me, licked its lips once and then panted, its tongue again hanging from its mouth. Nathanael knelt beside the hurt wolf and spoke in a low voice. He hummed, murmured and laid a wrinkled hand on the wolf’s abdomen. The creature whimpered and panted, more froth spilling from its sore-infested mouth.
    â€œSomething it ate or drank,” Nathanael said. He turned his head to the side, away from the stench of the wolf. Jeremia held the bowl up to the wolf ’s mouth, pouring a bit of the water onto the sore lips. The wolf lapped at it eagerly, its tongue searching for more, but its eyes rolled again, and the whimper was so painful to hear, I held Ranita tighter. Eva pushed her hands against her eyes and cried, her voice one continuous wail. Emerald fluttered to the ground on her stunted wings and ran to Eva and Jeremia’s hut, where she slid behind the door flap.
    Now even the healthy creatures in our woods were becoming sick and maimed like us. How were we to escape whatever it was that had caused all this disease?
    Nathanael hummed to the sick wolf and stroked its head and back. The animal’s side heaved up and down with each breath, the panting beginning to slow, to lose its panicked quality. As Nathanael rubbed the wolf’s back, clumps of hair slid from its body and fell in patches. I put my arm around Eva’s shoulders and pressed her against my hip even though I wanted to wail with her and cry through my fingers.
    Instead, the tears dripped from my nose and pooled in the slits above my lip.
    When the wolf ’s breathing stopped, I felt like mine started. I sucked air in deeply, listening to the shuddering of Eva’s breath as she tried to calm herself. I sat down on the log again and looked at the sick wolf. Jeremia’s wolf, its coat silver and tan next to the other wolf’s dark pelt, lay down by the dead one and put its muzzle on its paws.
    We went to our huts then. I curled around Ranita, her light breath a promise of life after the death we had seen. And even though Ranita slept that night, her stomach full, her body warm against mine, I listened to the low barks of the living wolf by the fire as it said goodbye to its friend.
    In the morning Jeremia’s wolf was gone, and the dead wolf was stiff. Jeremia dug a hole in our graveyard, where the babies had been buried, and the two of us wrapped the body in a sheet of plastic and hefted the wolf up, bringing it to the grave. In the daylight we could see the damage to the black wolf, and we marveled that it had lived as long as it had. Great red sores covered its body, not only its mouth, and it smelled as though it had been dying for a very long time. It was best dead—even Eva understood that.

    The night before my birthday, I sat by the fire pit and played the violin. I could