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I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
--- Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”
The sun beats bright against the wide, flat brim of Nile’s straw sailor hat and the wind whips the two sage-green ribbons that should have been tied under her chin off behind her shoulders as she crosses the street. She still goes to church on Sundays in town, just as her mama taught her, but her heart isn’t in it, just as her grandmother predicted. She shakes off those thoughts as she mounts the stairs to the Copley Family General Store. She pulls the small folded list out of her pocket, sets her shoulders, reaches for the magic humming at her fingertips for reassurance – still there, her constant companion – and approaches the counter. She has business to attend to and a good impression to make.
Just as Mr. Copley is wrapping up the last of her purchases – the glass vials and canning jars – the bells on the door clatter and Nile turns over her shoulder to see a man with broad shoulders duck his head as he takes off his hat. Nile extends her hand towards him, and introduces herself.
“You’re fixing up the old Isaac place?” he asks and Nile nods in confirmation. “I’m Nicky. Nice to meet you.”
“Nile. And likewise.”
He pauses for a moment, appraising her with his big green eyes. Nile feels almost like even the small dark spot beside his mouth is assessing her. And then he says, carefully, “We are canning in two days time, and we could use your help.”
Nile grins. Her first invitation! “I would be delighted.”
Nicky gives her directions to his place, and she accepts the package from Copley and returns to her old gray cart horse with a spring in her step and a smile she can’t shake.
Two days later, as the forest starts to crop up on either side of the narrow road, Nile slows her dark bay gelding to a canter. She pats at his neck as they both catch their breath from an exhilarating run. Nile might be nervous, but a good hard ride and the feel of her magic in her fingers always settles her.
As they continue down the road, the forest gets thicker and the trees get taller, older. Her gelding shys and slows and Nile catches a glimpse of something dashing through the trees at the side of the road. “Alright,” she mutters to her horse, “we can walk the rest of the way.” They proceed without further issue but something in her wants to name the flash wolf though she knows it was probably just a deer.
Nile pulls her horse up in front of a single story house with a sharply pitched roof and a porch running across the width of the front. As she dismounts, Nicky appears at her side. “Joe will take care of your horse when he gets back in a few minutes,” he says. Nile doesn’t know who Joe is but she agrees and grabs her satchel from her saddle and pets her horse on the nose and wraps her reins around the porch railing.
The moment Nicky steps aside and Nile can step through the doorway, a wave of aromas sweep around her — moth wing and sage and garlic and copper – and her fingers spark with the magic potent in all of it. It’s different than her Nana’s discreetly simmering brews, powerful but easily disguised. The magic here is joyous, boisterous, almost, and powerful in its unabashed glory. Nile clutches at the doorway, with one hand to steady herself.
She looks searchingly at Nicky, for confirmation, reassurance, something that might indicate that this is going to be okay.
He returns her look with his piercing green eyes, the sides crinkling in a way that Nile associates with kindness. “I am sorry for the deception,” he says “but you know how it is.”
Nile does know. The reason her Nana ran the apothecary shop selling standard tinctures and medications along with her own magical creams and salves and potions. Hide in plain sight. Humans don’t like witches, but they need us. Stay away from anything else that seems magical: only witches can be trusted. Sitting at her Nana’s workbench as a young girl, she learned how to be a witch, and how to be a witch in a sometimes hostile world.
“We won’t be canning, will we?” she asks, and at the shake of his head Nile can’t help but grin. Nicky beckons her inside and Nile follows. “How did you know?”
“About you?”
“I work very hard to conceal it in public.”
“No, no,” Nicky assures her as they hurry past a well appointed, but clearly lived-in drawing room, down a long corridor, “no errant magic, or anything like that.” He stops at a door and before he pushes it open, he continues, he adds softly, “It’s my gift, to identify others.”
Nile comes from a line of healers – that’s her gift, that she can knit flesh back together with her fingertips – she assumed, wrongly, it now seems, that healing was every witch’s gift.
“Fascinating,” Nile says. “And I’m glad of it.”
“Me too. We are excited to brew with you.”
Nile’s mind stumbles over the “we” – there are more? – just as Nicky pushes open the door and Nile feels almost pulled in by the warm strength of the magic emanating from the room.
She spies two women with their backs to them. The shorter one standing at a cauldron stirring methodically. The taller draped over the brewer, arms wrapped around her waist and face nuzzled into the crook between neck and shoulder. They murmur softly to each other.
“Andy, stop distracting your wife,” Nicky calls.
The taller woman releases the shorter one and wheels around. “I’m helping.”
“She is,” the other adds, not looking away from the cauldron.
Nicky snorts. “Sure. Well, Andy, Quynh, this is Nile.”
Nile sees a jet of magic leave the brewer’s – Quynh’s – fingertips and settle over the cauldron. A preservation charm. Nile can’t help but grin. “Hi,” she says with a small wave.
Quynh turns and sweeps across the room and pulls Nile into her embrace. “I’m so delighted to meet you, Nile.” She places a kiss on her cheek, and takes Nile by the hand, leading her across the room. “I am brewing a fever reducer.”
“Have you added the asphodel yet?”
“I have not.”
“If you’re open to the suggestion, I find my fever reducers are more effective when I add several dried purple coneflower petals, stir six times and then add the asphodel.”
Nile sees Quynh considering what she says, doubtlessly pulling through her own catalog of plants and ingredients and their magical properties. And then a smile spreads across her face, wide and infectious. “Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that before? Let’s do it.”
“I think I’ve got some with me,” Nile adds, ducking her head to look in her satchel. She notes out of her periphery that Andy reaches for Quynh in the lull of the conversation. Nile thinks she hears a murmured goodbye, and senses a glance in her direction, tentative and wary. But by the time that Nile pulls the packet of dried petals out of her bag, Quynh is back to grinning at her, Andy has slipped out, and Nicky has moved over to the stout cast iron cookstove and is pulling loaves of bread out of the oven.
The three of them spend hours like that, cheeks flushed from the heat of the brewing fires and the cookstove, the steam of their potions and Nicky’s chilli simmering, weaving around each other, conversing and cooking and brewing. Nicky and Quynh talk about their partners, about their friend Booker, who lives with them. Nile even shares about her grandmother, about the wonder of that apothecary shop, about how much she misses her family, but had to leave to protect them from the harsh looks and blatant whispers that housing a witch would force upon them.
At mid-day, Nicky makes them stop, and they stand around snacking on crusty sourdough bread and jams they canned from Quynh’s summer foraging, huckleberry and fireweed.
“How did you all meet?” Nile asks, between bites.
“Andy literally fell into Quynh’s trap,” replies Nicky. Nile quirks an eyebrow in surprise.
Quynh bats a hand in Nicky’s direction. “You always make it sound much more dramatic than it was. My gift is with knots and locks, especially undoing them. I was out foraging when I found that Andromache – Andy – had stepped in an old steel trap left by some irresponsible woodsman. I got her out and got her to sit still long enough to nurse the leg back to health–”
“And she fell in love,” Nicky butts in, just as Quynh finishes, “and she never left.”
“What about the two of you?” Nile asks.
“Joe and I stumbled upon this anti-witch mob about to execute a woman, and stepped in to try to extricate her. We didn’t know that Quynh was more than capable of freeing herself.”
“I didn’t even need my magic to get out of those ropes they were so loosely tied.”
“We didn’t know that!” Nicky cries.
“No and you were so very chivalrous about the whole thing that I decided we should keep you.”
“Just because?” questions Nile.
“Andy and Joe,” replies Nicky, slowly, “they get antsy if they’re inside too much. Booker too, when he joined us.” Nile catches the glance that passes between Quynh and Nicky, telling, uneasy. “It’s nice having someone to spend time with around home, in the garden, brewing, relaxing.”
“It is.” Quynh stands up and gathers the dishes. She ruffles Nicky’s hair on her way over to the wash bucket.
Nile grew up listening to her grandmother’s stories of times before long before even her memory, of covens of witches, of whole societies where magic, their kind of magic, wasn’t kept in the shadows.
A small spark of hope jumps into Nile’s heart. Maybe Quynh and Nicky and their companionable brewing, could become friends, maybe, or even a coven of their own. The rational part of her brain deems it impossible. That’s not how the world works anymore, not even out in their remote part of it, where hardscrabble people cling onto life against wild nature and cruel humanity. And as much as Nile wants to keep that hope, there is something going on here. Andy’s hasty departure upon her arrival. The uneasy look between Nicky and Quynh when discussing Andy and this Joe that Nile had yet to meet.
Still, they could be friends. As they go back to their brewing, Nile thinks maybe she will ask one of them to go with her to gather aster and forage chanterelles when cold starts to nip in the air.
The afternoon envelopes the three of them. Sunlight slants through the windows. Steam rises from their cauldrons. Nicky bundles some herbs to be dried and hums lightly as he works. Quynh keeps three different tinctures brewing at once in a feat of memory and occasional cursing. Nile feels the magic swirl and dance between them, imbuing their plants and their actions with their joint power, their budding friendship, their witchiness. Nile feels content with herself and her place in it, a feeling she hasn’t felt since she last set foot in her grandmother’s apothecary shop.
Hours later, they pivot their attention to making supper. Quynh runs out to their garden to pull ripe summer squash from their vines, and slash off a head of lettuce. Nicky pulls a new round of cheese from the cellar and ladles the chilli into soup bowls. Nile whisks together oil and vinegar and herbs. Just as they are laying this feast out on the table, the house explodes with laughter and talk, as Andy and two men stride into the dining room. The one with dark, curly hair strides towards Nicky, puts his hands on Nicky’s waist and reels him into a kiss with practiced confidence. That one, then, must be Joe. The other, then, the one with sandy blond hair sliding onto the bench across from her, must be Booker.
Supper with all of them is a boisterous affair. Nile sees what Nicky and Quynh mean about the others getting antsy. After about five minutes, Andy stands and kicks a foot up onto the bench. When Nile admits to Booker that no, she has not read The Pilgrim’s Progress, nor Mark Twain’s newest piece satirizing it, Joe jumps up at once and returns with both volumes. Magic pulses around the table, the joyfulness of carnations and protection of moss and pine. Nile feels buoyant with it.
When Nile announces that she needs to leave, she notices a glance between Andy and Quynh. When Joe offers to get her horse, Andy goes with him. Yet when Joe returns with her gelding, Andy isn’t with him, and Booker isn’t there on the porch to see her off. It’s odd, sure, but the very existence of these people here, just an hour’s ride away, is a revelation. Nile can forgive some idiosyncrasies.
As she rides home by the full moon at a lazy canter, she’s sure she spies a flash of black fur keeping pace at the side of the road. But then her mare doesn’t shy, and she returns home to her chickens and her sheep without incident and she puts it out of her mind.
Summer turns to fall and soon the rush of harvesting and breeding season and preparing for cold weather fades into the daily routine of caring for her sheep and chickens. Winter means getting to spend time with her animals, feeding them, nurturing them, laying hands on them when she can. Keeping her sheep healthy isn’t magic: it’s good nutrition, diligent care, and a little bit of luck.
The wolves she’s seen lurking around the edges of forestland, though, make her uneasy. Stomping indignantly is about the greatest defense against predators her sheep have, bless them. In their winter pens with nowhere to run, they are sitting ducks for a determined wolf.
Several weeks after the wolf sightings become a regular occurrence, Nicky comes over to help Nile reset her wards. He’s taking his turn brushing the garlic and cedar oil mixture along the ground with a goose feather – the concoction won’t keep unwanted beings out, just alert Nile’s magic that there are intruders – when she mentions it. Nicky shoots upright and looks at her, his brow furrowed.
“We’ve never had a problem with wolves,” he says slowly. “I doubt you will either.”
“Your sows are big enough and scary enough to chase them off, though.”
Nicky lays a hand on her upper arm. “It’s your first winter here, and winter is when all that still clings to life becomes all the more precious and precarious.” Nile is not sure that that is supposed to comfort her, but she lets him continue. “You are strong and capable, and if you need assistance, you know where to find us.”
Nile can’t help but smile at that. “I appreciate your kindness. And your friendship.”
“As do I.”
Almost as if the wolves had overheard their conversation, Nile sees no sign of them, no tracks, no midnight howls, for weeks after.
Then one night, with the wind rattling the window panes in her cabin and snow pelting down in thick curtains, Nile thinks she hears a gunshot over the crackle of the fire in her hearth. Nobody, nobody should be shooting a gun in this visibility.
It’s just unnerving enough that Nile decides she should check on the sheep.
She pulls on two wool sweaters over her workshirt, and the bib pants lined with sheep fleece. She buckles the shoulder holster and slides her father’s pistol under her arm. Then pulls the waxed canvas jacket over the whole ensemble.
The ice bites into her face the moment she steps outside. Nile hunches against the wind, keeps her knees bent, creeps slowly forward. But she knows the path from her cabin to the sheep barn better than anything and soon enough she finds them all bedded down in the warm straw together, peacefully chewing their cud and dozing. Nile sits down next to her favorite ewe, just for a moment and scratches under her chin just where she likes it best. The simple pleasures of sheep. Food, water, warmth and chin scratches.
Just before she gets up to leave, she does her regular count of the flock. It’s easy like this, when they’re so still. 24… 25… There should be 26. Nile’s heart drops into her boots. There’s no way she’ll be able to find her lost ewe in the blizzard howling outside.
Then, Nile hears the unmistakable crack of another gunshot and the snarling and barking of dogs.
Sheep and dogs go together like oil and water. A beautiful partnership, in the right quantities, but always separate, sometimes aggressively so. Nile doesn’t dare hope that the dog is barking at a sheep, at her sheep, but it kindles enough of something within her that she decides, storm, or not, she owes it to herself and the possibility that it’s her ewe, to go investigate.
So Nile wraps her scarf across her nose and mouth and ventures back out into the blizzard. She takes about three steps away from the barn and two dogs – no, two wolves – are loping towards her. In the slanting white of the snow and the dimmed moonlight, she can see their eyes glow against dark bodies, one solid black, the other a lighter brown. Nile pulls her pistol slowly from it’s holster.
If dogs and sheep are oil and water, wolves and sheep are a recipe for disaster. She wants these wolves gone.
And yet then, she hears a sheep’s bleat, small and terrified against the raging storm. Nile’s certain she’s hallucinating. Just because she wants it to be her erstwhile ewe, doesn’t mean that’s how these things work. And yet, the more Nile squints in the direction of the wolves, the more she’s certain that there’s some off-white fluff moving towards her, roughly sheep-shaped. The wolves slink, heads low, shoulders jutting up, yet stay behind the ewe. They look like they’re stalking, but they’re not? Nile’s brain supplies the word herding and she wants to laugh. Wolves don’t herd; they kill. Everyone knows that.
And yet, either her eyes betray her or… this group of wolves has herded her lost sheep back to her. In a snowstorm.
Nile rushes towards the animal. It’s bleats get louder, as she gets nearer, no longer whipped away on the wind. Nile knows her sheep have a smaller flight range than most – they’re used to her and they recognize her – but this poor girl is terrified out of her mind. So Nile slows as she nears, and then lets the wolves herd her right into Nile’s space. With her crook, she hooks a leg, and then begins dragging the ewe back towards the barn.
When Nile opens the door to the barn, the ewe shoots inside. Nile lets her magic reach out, just in case, but there’s nothing that seems to be wrong with the erstwhile lady. The ewe trots over to the feeder and immediately begins snacking. Good, Nile thinks, ruminating will keep her body temperature up.
Nile steps out of the barn once more, steadying herself to walk back to the house. The two wolves are still there. Nile doesn’t love that, so she calls out thank you and waves and hopes that they’ll understand her: your work here is done. Instead the black one snarls and barks at her. Nile whirls around. “Really,” she shouts against the wind, “I would very much like you to leave now.” Nile thinks about pulling the pistol out and shooting at them, what her neighbor had done, but she also knows it didn’t work on these wolves the first time. She’s not going to waste the ammunition. She decides then that it’s too damn cold outside for any more indecision: if the wolves are still around when she comes back out for morning chores, she’ll deal with it then.
Just as Nile turns around, though, she hears a much quieter sound, a whine or a whimper almost, from the direction the first two wolves came from. Nile turns and discovers another wolf, dark gray, limping badly, leaving a trail of blood behind it in the snow.
Her magic can sense the two wounds, one to the belly that’s bleeding copiously and mangled intestines and liver and kidneys, one to the rear left leg that’s shattered bone. Nile feels the pain, feels it burn and throb in her fingertips. They are almost of their own accord reaching for this animal, seeking to fix the injuries, to soothe the hurt.
What she’s about to do is probably really, really stupid.
With her crook, she snags the wolf’s good back leg and starts dragging.
Nile’s grandmother always said that animals know when you’re trying to help them. Nile thinks it must be true because the wolf lets itself be dragged, and the other two keep their distance and let her.
When she gets to the porch, she pulls the wolf into her arms and heaves it inside by the fire. The wolf whines and curls around itself, and Nile kneels down next to it, placing her hand on its side. She slowly slides her hand down lower on its abdomen, closer to where the gunshot wound is oozing. Nile half expects the wolf to snap at her, to struggle away as her hand, as this stranger’s hand, brushes over its soft underbelly. To her surprise, the opposite happens, the wolf rolls backwards, gives her access. Nile can’t help her jaw from dropping. She has not done anything to deserve this animal’s trust, but here it is being given to her freely.
“Hey,” she murmurs to him, and sees his ears prick towards her. “This is gonna hurt a little, but then it won’t anymore, I promise.” Nile places her fingers next to the wound and sends her magic sensing for the bullet still embedded in the wolf’s gut. Slowly she pulls it out, closing and knitting flesh to flesh behind it. The small metal bullet plunks onto the boards of her floor and she sighs in relief. One down; one to go. Nile pulls a small vial from her bib pocket and rubs the iodine and honey mixture over the healed wound. Nile feels the wolf’s pain begin to dissipate and in the next moment, she feels the rough of his tongue scraping against her hand.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she says, but drags her fingers behind the wolf’s ear experimentally. It rumbles in delight. Nile tries to move her hand away to tend to the leg wound, but the wolf butts his head into her thigh, pokes his cold nose against her wrists.
“Oh you like scratches?” she says to him, giving into the wolf’s demands. “More after I finish fixing you up, okay?”
The wolf, as if he understands her, relents with a small huff and stretches out on his side so Nile can access his leg. As Nile’s grip pulls the bone into traction, the magic surges from her fingers pulling fragments back into place, healing the tissues around the bone, making the wolf as good as new.
When she’s done, the wolf hops up onto all four legs, takes a couple of ginger steps. He looks back to Nile and jumps and barks and heads straight over to the cabin door.
“Absolutely not,” Nile calls after him, leaping to her feet. “You’ll stay the night where I can keep an eye on you.”
Nile shoos him back over toward the hearth and like everything about this encounter, the wolf goes without fight or hesitation, like he seems to understand her.
He settles back down and Nile settles down next to him. She wants to lay her hands on him, see if she can feel anything else amiss. And she promised scritches and Nile isn’t one to break her promises.
The wolf settles down on his side once again, and then as Nile strokes her hands down his glossy gray and brown coat, he rolls over onto his back, fully belly exposed, his tail flopping back and forth against the floorboards in anticipation.
It turns out this wolf freaking loves getting petted and scratched. Nile finds the spot just behind his ears that makes him hum happily. Nile strokes up and down his belly and his tail whaps even harder against the floor in happiness. As the wolf scoots and squirms into her lap, Nile thinks that he is behaving much more like a lap dog he could eat for breakfast than a wolf, apex predator. And yet, it is kind of nice having a friendly, excited companion on this cold and stormy night.
Eventually, Nile decides she can leave the wolf unattended by her banked hearth. She senses nothing else wrong with him, physically, though perhaps he might appreciate a night of relaxation and luxury next to her fire as part of his recovery.
Stop anthropomorphizing him, Freeman, she scolds herself. That’s a wolf. Not a dog. Not a person. You’ll let him out first thing in the morning and never see him again.
Nile wakes before the sun as she always does in the winter. She stumbles out of her bedroom in a flannel nightgown and wool dressing gown before fully remembering the guest by her hearth.
Barely two steps towards her cookstove, though, Nile is met with a bounding, energetic wolf whose tail is flapping back and forth faster than Nile’s ever seen.
“Hello,” she says. “Someone’s feeling better.”
The wolf barks as if in response. Then it trots over to the door and scratches a paw against the solid wood.
Nile lets her magic spool out from her fingertips once more, just to be sure she’d done a good enough job the night before. But she finds no shrapnel, no lingering tears in the tissue. The wolf is all healed up.
Nile walks over and opens the latch. The gray and brown wolf races across the porch and down the steps and across the yard. By the barn it joins up with two other wolves. As the three of them pelt across her pastures back to the forest proper, Nile can’t help but notice that one of her wolf’s companions is solid black and the other a light sandy brown.
Months pass. The snow begins to melt, the creeks rise, the barnyard turns into a muddy mess. And then suddenly, in beds of straw, just as the first tendrils of green are pushing their vulnerable heads above the ground, lambing season begins.
As her ewes have their lambs one by one, Nile rides alternating waves of emotion and exhaustion. One night she barely sleeps because she has to pull a set of triplets from a momma that’s been laboring fruitlessly for hours. Two days later she wakes up to six new lambs and three new mothers nursing them like nothing remarkable at all had happened in the middle of the night. A ewe rejects her lamb and Nile begins bottle feeding it with milk from her ornery little Jersey cow. In the weeks that follow, Nile develops a lamb shaped shadow: the little ewe is never far from her side.
Through all of this, heading to the barn at midday or midnight, Nile almost always notices a pair of wolves slinking around, near enough to the forest line for plausible deniability. The sandy blonde one she notices most often.
After a while it doesn’t make her nervous anymore, though it probably should, with all the little lambs running around as prime predator food.
On the afternoon that one of Nile’s particularly stupid ewes jumps her fences in search of literal greener pastures and gets herself entangled in her neighbor’s barbed wire, Nile sends for Quynh.
“Oh you poor baby,” Quynh cries as she approaches the trapped sheep. And then with a flourish of her hands, the bent and twisted wire is straight and taught between fence posts and the ewe makes a break for it, back towards the rest of the flock.
Quynh grins at Nile. “That one’s learned her lesson?”
Nile snorts. “Hardly. Sheep have many endearing qualities, but intelligence is not usually among them.”
“Consider me on call, then?”
“They’ll calm down when there’s enough actual grass for them to eat. But thank you, I appreciate it.”
“Of course,” adds Quynh. And then after a moment, “You’re not going to heal that one?”
Nile ducks her head and then looks back over at her flock. “Animals are funny. Sometimes they’re more self-sufficient than we give them credit for. I’ll watch her for a couple of days to make sure she’s not limping, but she scooted right off, which is a good sign. I think she’ll be fine.”
As Nile and Quynh walk back to Nile’s cabin, the little bottle lambs – two of them now – scamper up to them.
“No, it’s not time yet, you thirsty fiends,” Nile mutters and keeps walking. She realizes after a few steps that Quynh is no longer following. When she turns around, Nile finds Quynh squatted in the dirt with two lambs head butting her hands and sucking on her fingers.
“I think I’m in love,” Quynh says.
And that is how, two days later Nile finds herself back over to their homestead with two lambs, some fencing, and some bottles in tow.
“It’s not like we don’t have enough to do already,” mumbles Andy as Nile and Quynh set up the new sheepfold.
“Anything to make Nile’s life a little better, though, is well worth it, don’t you think?” Booker asks the question to Andy, but Nile feels his eyes on her as he says it. Heat rushes into her cheeks when she meets his gaze. If his hair flops a little into his face as he says it, and that maybe makes her cheeks heat all the more, well, it’s just that she’s got too many layers on for the rising spring temperatures.
With the two lambs all settled, Nile joins all of them for lunch. Joe and Nicky are off on errands in town, but Andy and Quynh and Booker are plenty entertaining company all on their own. Nile finds herself laughing harder than she has in a long, long time at their playful teasing and dark humor.
“Stay and brew a little with me?” Quynh asks, as they tidy up from the meal.
“I’ve got to get back to the sheep,” Nile says, but feels every ounce in her body morn with regret. Something about this place and these people makes her feel so– so– like this is where she belongs. It must be the magic, Nile thinks, that permeates everything here, homey like a wool blanket, cozy like steam from a cauldron, sagebrush and wheat and fresh grass and recent rain.
Quynh walks her out and Booker brings round her gelding. She hugs them both goodbye and as Booker hands her the reins, he hands her a book as well. Little Women, the cover reads. “I think you’ll like Miss Jo March best,” he says and then he ducks his head and his sandy hair flops a bit into his face and he’s turned away and striding across the barnyard. Nile looks at the book in her hands and then glances up at Quynh, who winks. Nile rolls her eyes. There’s no way.
She definitely doesn’t think about the deep bark of a laugh or the bright blue eyes or the big calloused hands as she and her gelding canter back to the farm.
It always catches her by surprise, the way that the world erupts into green just as she and her flock emerge from the heartbreaks and jubilations of lambing.
She gets Nicky to walk her fencelines with her and re-set her wards, and then she turns her sheep out to pasture. They jump and run and nothing fills her with more joy than her animals in their element. Even her cantankerous Jersey cow jumps for joy and moos with contentment with her first mouthfuls of grass for the summer.
Still, Nile can’t help but worry. She’s thought about spending every moment of the day in her old straw sunhat and every evening sleeping under the stars with her animals. But she would miss brewing, the slow curl of magic in the steam as potions and tinctures take on their powers. She would miss her rocking chair and reading a good book by the light of her oil lamp.
Nicky and Quynh come over to brew with her shortly after moving her flock to pasture and she confides in them that she always feels guilty that she’s not there when bad things happen. Nicky lays a hand on her shoulder and says, “You do what you can, Nile. That is more than enough. And sometimes help can come from the most unexpected places.”
“If you say so,” Nile says, quietly.
“We do,” adds Quynh.
Nile can’t help but smile at that.
Hours later, hours after her friends have left, she still feels enveloped in their confidence and the remnants of their magic. She’s going to be okay.
That evening she moves her rocking chair out to the porch. Nile settles in, kicks her feet up on the railing and digs back into Little Women. Booker was right: she does love Jo, her tenacity and creativity.
Nile has her hand pressed against her mouth, her jaw hanging open at Jo’s “but I can’t change the feeling, and it would be a lie to say I do when I don’t.” Her mind is already reaching for the next words ready to gobble them up, when a gong goes off in her head.
Fuck.
Her wards.
In an instant, pistol in one hand, crook in the other, Nile is sprinting across the fields. No time to saddle her horse – the flock are in a pasture just over the rise in the valley –
As she gets closer, she spots two men in dark shirts and hats pulled down over their ears despite the heat, standing just beyond her herd. “Hey,” she shouts, trying to grab their attention. They don’t notice her and Nile’s anger starts to build. Nobody messes with her sheep and certainly nobody ignores her while doing it.
And that’s when she notices the sandy blonde wolf snarling and lunging – at the would-be thieves. One of the men tries to bat at the wolf with a staff. The wolf snarls and lunges and Nile watches as its teeth sink into human flesh. She can almost hear the cracking of bone between its jaws.
“Hey,” Nile shouts again, and fires her pistol at the one the wolf had not bitten into.
She thinks he hears “Jesus. Fuck,” as she approaches them, and sees the one she fired at is high tailing it back towards the woods, nearly dragging the one with the bite wound behind him.
Nile pulls to a stop, lets the pistol fall to her side, takes a couple of great heaving breaths. She reaches her magic out to her sheep, but none of them are obviously hurt. She feels relief wash over her. And then the sandy-colored wolf jogs over to her and barks at her.
Nile stares bewildered at the wolf. “Thank you?” she says, because it seems like the wolf protected her sheep from the rustlers, like the wolf saved the day. Just like the time wolves herded her lost sheep back through a blizzard. Bizarre.
Then the wolf comes and lays next to her, alert and ears flicking back and forth but totally still. Slowly, her sheep start returning to normal, tearing off blades of grass, chewing their cud, bedding down.
Nile thinks about getting her bedroom and returning to the pasture. But then she glances up and sees the sunset illuminating a giant thunderhead. Rain is coming.
Satisfied that everyone is okay and that the thieves won’t return this night, Nile turns and begins walking back to her cabin.
So does the wolf.
When she reaches the barnyard, Nile pulls to a stop.
So does the wolf.
“Thank you,” she says, because maybe the wolves around here really do understand English. “But I’m good now. You can go.”
The wolf seems almost to sigh, then butts his head into her thigh.
“What?” Nile says to it. He takes a step back and looks at her and then butts his head into her thigh again.
Her mind flashes back to the last friendly wolf she’d had around the place. “Do you like scritches too?” she asks, as her fingers rub behind his ears. The wolf makes a rumbly growl, and given how fast it’s tail is flapping back and forth, Nile interprets this as an expression of contentment.
After a moment or two, Nile pulls her hand away. The wolf whines at the loss of contact. “Time for you to go,” she says. She looks down at the wolf. The wolf looks up at her. It doesn’t move.
She takes two steps forward. The wolf takes two steps forward. She takes two steps backwards. The wolf takes two steps backwards.
“Stubborn beast,” Nile mumbles, and mounts the stairs to her cabin, the wolf still at her side.
Once they enter the cabin’s main room, the wolf darts immediately over to the hearth.
“There’s no fire there, silly,” Nile says. And goddamnit she’s actually talking to a wolf. Again.
Yet, since it’s going to storm tonight, Nile decides to build a small fire in anticipation of a temperature drop and a chilly morning. The wolf sits quietly as she works, watching her closely. When the fire’s made, though, he curls himself into a ball and promptly falls asleep.
Nile watches him for a few moments, the peaceful up and down of his sandy tan flanks. There’s something kind of nice about it, she decides, having someone take pleasure in her hearth, having someone to share it with.
And then, It’s a wolf, Freeman. You’re anthropomorphizing again.
So Nile turns on her heel and heads to her bedroom.
When Nile wakes to the first light of the morning, the quilt is pulled up to her chin, and that tell-tale aroma of thunderstorm just past is in the air. It’d be the perfect time to harvest Willow bark, she thinks, and decides that slippers and coffee and checking on her sheep will be her priorities this morning.
Nile opens her bedroom door and, even in her morning grogginess, is arrested by the sight.
A person – a man – sprawled out on the floor in front of her hearth. Naked as the day he was born.
“What the everliving–”
The man jerks awake at her exclamation, turns his face toward the source of the noise. And she realizes–
“Booker?”
“I can explain.”
And he does.
Two Years Later
Nile wakes up to the buzz of an enchanted carved wooden bumble bee on her night stand and can’t help but smile as she realizes that she’s gained an arm slung over her middle and a solid mass at her back while she was sleeping.
Nile lifts his arm and turns so that she’s lying facing him. She brushes the sandy blonde hair away from his forehead and presses a kiss there.
He stirs a little, eyes blinking awake.
“Hey,” she says, softly.
He grunts in response.
“I know you were up most of the night guarding the sheep, but Quynh and I are picking huckleberries at sunrise.”
He harrumphs a little, but allows her to slip out of his embrace. As he buries his face into her pillow, she whispers “Sleep well, Book,” and she knows his hyper-sensitive ears will hear her.
Hours later, with their buckets chock full of huckleberries, enough for them to can for food and dry for brewing, Quynh and Nile set off down the trail back towards the house. Nile feels Quynh’s silly stories, their joined laughter buoy the magic around them and lighten their steps as they walk. Soon enough two wolves slink out of the trees and begin walking along next to them.
The black one darts to Quynh’s side. “Hello, my love,” she says, as the wolf presses her nose into Quynh’s hand. Quynh begins to scratch the wolf’s head. The wolf yips once and then presses her nose towards Quynh’s crotch. Quynh cackles. “Soon, love. We can do that as soon as we get back, I promise.” The wolf yips again and seems satisfied.
They continue on. The black one at Quynh’s side, the grey one running ahead, and occasionally glancing over his shoulder, urging them to quicken their pace each time.
When they return to the house, the wolves peel off for the barn, and Nile and Quynh mount the steps that lead directly into the kitchen and brewing room. There they find Nicky at the cookstove and bacon fat filling the air most delightfully. Booker’s sitting nearby, leaning back in his chair, a book in his lap, unopened.
He seems to be teasing Nicky about his spices. Again.
“Just for that,” Nicky says, “I’ll put a diuretic in your coffee.”
“Please don’t,” calls Nile as she sets down her buckets of Huckleberries and crosses the room towards Booker.
She places a quick kiss on his mouth and the way he grins up at her is everything.
“Just for you,” rejoinds Nicky, “I’ll turn his ears purple instead.”
“As a wolf, too?” Nile asks, a grin on her face.
“Of course.”
“Deal.”
Nile grabs the cornbread from the stove, and begins carrying it to the big dining table. She hears Booker and Nicky follow with other dishes. She sits down across from Joe, back in human form, and Andy and Quynh, who can barely keep their hands off each other. Booker slides in next to her and the magic swirls and wraps around all six of them, safe, whole, and home.