The silver pool I had found, as things often were in the Other Forest, was still as glass, and impossibly clear. I saw his reflection first. Unlike the mother wolf, and the puppies, he was a wolf here as well as in the waking world. His coat was coal-black and silver-tipped, as the dark fourth pup would surely be when he was grown. You are not supposed to be here, he said. You are not.

I charged off, blind as the proverbial. With the burlap around my head, at any moment I could’ve tripped on a root or run straight into a tree. I let my instincts take over. The space around me revealed itself to me. I could visualize the forest, each root and fallen tree, all the colors strange and smeared. Weaving through the trunks at full tilt, I believed that I might escape after all.