They’d forgotten, or given up trying to remember. You’d think that all the two of them had ever known was fur and paws, claws and teeth, trees and seasons and food. Chiefly food. When I spoke of the old days, not so many months gone, they looked at me as if I chattered nonsense, and rumbled that I must be lost in a dream, not memory. How could so young a she-cub recall any such thing?, Mama and Papa said. How could I, when I’d then been barely born?

But I did recall it. No dream could stalk me day as well as night. It was real, and it had happened. I knew it, and so did the golden-haired girl.

I watched her every chance I could from the forest’s shadows, the black of them hiding the black of me, while her bright curls caught every fragment...

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