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when less than a year had passed?
    Suddenly shy, she pulled away from him and got up, brushing off her clothes.
    But as they stood up, a wave of joy flowed through her again and she caught his hands in hers. “Oh, Billy, you can’t imagine how glad I am to be able to talk with you again!”
    “I have tried to come to you in this form, but you would never let me come except as a dog.”
    Rage gaped at him. “What do you mean I wouldn’t let you come? Isn’t this a dream?” she asked.
    “Oh yes,” Billy said easily. “Dreams are dreams, and you can’t mistake them for anything else.”
    “But then what do you mean by saying I wouldn’t let you come?”
    Billy didn’t answer. He was looking around at the frozen hills under their snowy pelt and at the dam. He lifted his chin and gave the air a serious sniff. “The cold smells wrong,” he murmured.
    “Wrong?” Rage echoed stupidly.
    “ You couldn’t smell it. Humans can’t smell wrongness,” Billy said.
    Rage woke.
     
    As soon as Rage stepped out the front door, it began snowing heavily, as if it had been waiting for her. The snow fell more and more thickly as she walked, so that by the time she reached the front gate of Winnoway, she could see nothing in front of her. The flashlight she carried almost made it worse, but she couldn’t bring herself to stumble along in the darkness and snow. She trudged down to the main road, telling herself that snow was a lot better than ice. It was deathly quiet except for the loud sound of her breathing and her boots crunching into the snow crust. If there were wolves howling now, she would not have heard them, but no animal would be out hunting in such a snowfall. Only humans tried to go against nature.
    Rage was relieved to see the Marrens’ Range Rover loom out of the whiteness just as she reached the road. She could hear the twins screaming at one another even before she opened the door. She climbed into the noisy warmth with gratitude, barely hearing Mrs. Marren complaining bitterly about the unreliability of weather forecasters.
    It turned out to be a strange sort of day at school. A lot of kids from outlying farms had not come in, and many other children were absent as well. A lot of teachers were away, too, so year-levels were combined under the watchful eye of substitute teachers, or of teachers of other classes. Most students were instructed to read texts for the next term in whatever subject they would normally be in, or do homework based on old test questions for that subject.
    At the end of fourth period, Rage made her way to her homeroom. There was a note on the board saying that afternoon classes were suspended. All students except those with specific permission to be elsewhere were directed to the central hall after lunch, where a movie would be shown. Since this could be anything from one she would like to see to a movie on dental hygiene, Rage didn’t know whether to be glad or not. She wouldn’t mind seeing a real movie. She noticed a smaller note on the board announcing that pink and green forms for the new program were to be left in a tray on the reception desk in the main office. Her hand crept to the pocket where she still had the form. She was trying to decide whether to sign it in her uncle’s name and turn it in, when lunchtime was announced. The bell sounded eerily loud in the white and silent day. Relieved, Rage decided to decide after lunch.
    Snow had ceased to fall at some point in the morning, and teachers shooed students outside for what they called “a gasp of fresh air.” Rage noted that none of the teachers felt the need of fresh air. The strangeness was even more pronounced outside because everyone was so subdued and well-behaved. Instead of the rowdy school ground full of laughter and shrieks, there was silence as unnatural as the winter. Rage sat on a seat under a little stand of pine trees that offered a view from the rooftops of the school buildings to the hills clumped at the