– 2 –

The wolf-magnet is a sudden, gutting end to Fenris’ freedom. It is a sucker punch to the wolf’s sense of autonomy in the world.

There is no absolute frame of reference, so to drag someone is to pin them.

It’s all just force. It’s all the same!

The wolf scrabbles. It tries to hold to its location.

Result: failure!

It goes skidding through the house and gardens of Erik Larger, who’d never done anything to the wolf or to the Lethal Magnet School.

He wasn’t even larger than the wolf!

The wolf skips skyward like a stone, falls back down heavily. It pins itself with its claws and its face is strained.

“Saul,” it says. “Saul.”

Saul is doing little better.

The magnet has grabbed him by his hat; it is pulling him; it drags the House of Hunger through Edmund’s wolf-bond towards the school.

“Saul,” pleads the wolf.

It is still slipping.

There are thirty-eight kilometers standing between the wolf and its death. It scrabbles, stretched out, like it’s being pulled by a vacuum.

Over the distant school looms the bootstrap, and Vidar’s Boot.