Part IIStay on the bluestone path. Stay on the Day Road.
Run.
You aren’t ready for the Night Forest. Not yet, not now.
Run.
He tried.
He hurt. He smelled his own blood. He heard his remembered pain. He heard the other’s voice, smelled the other’s anger.
Smells, so many smells. The world was smells, as if he had never smelled before. And sounds, crystalline, sharp—as if he had never heard before.
A smell, a sound, and another smell, and another sound he had forgotten.
Stay on the Day Road.
He followed the forgotten smells and sounds into the Night Forest.
Mother and brother. They would never hurt him. The wolves licked him, touched their noses into his belly, sniffed, nipped, and each time, the human pain was farther away…
He flickered…
The man woke up in the lighter gray of the
