. . .

“I’m scared,” Edmund says, quietly.

The wolf doesn’t answer him. It just licks his shoulder again and waits.

“I dreamt that I was chained to you,” Edmund says. “And that you grew, and it crushed me. It went tighter and tighter and then I popped.”

The wolf whines.

He hides his face against it. “I want to let you go,” he says. “Why do I want to let you go?”

Softly, the wolf says, “It is natural.”

“You’ll eat everything,” protests Edmund.

“Not everything,” says the wolf.

“No?”

“It is a very big cosmos,” says the wolf. “The odds are against me. And I do not even know if I can breathe in space.”

<< . . .

. . . >>