I crossed the old bridge at black midnight and the south smelled wrong from the first breath. Woodsmoke where no farms stood. Horse and steel on every wind. The Ridgeback was mustering, and a territory getting ready for war smells like a butcher's yard the day before a festival, and I ran through it unheard, unseen, a rumor of frost moving down paths I'd walked barefoot as a girl.
Two days, the plan said. I did it in one night and a day, because the body She loaned me ran the way other bodies rest, and because every mile south the counting behind my ribs grew a shade louder, as if the loan liked being back near the water that started it.
Once, in the grey before dawn, a patrol crossed my line. Six wolves shifted, running a sweep along the drover's road, and I went up an oak and flattened
