Copyright 1998, Lyka. This story may be copied for personal use so long as the author's credits are kept, but may not be posted, archived elsewhere, otherwise distributed or sold without the author's permission.

When the others released her into Arin's care, she was still sedated, limbs loose and floppy, the pupils of her green eyes dilated. Arin wondered how much awareness she had of what was going on.

Mander would be going with him to the cabin, to help him get set up. He and Mander loaded her into the pickup's front seats, leaving barely enough room for themselves. Arin's reddened eyes were now hidden behind a pair of shades; he had gotten over his shock.

Lyka's head was half across Arin's shoulder as they settled in, his other arm around her chest. Her flaccid tail and back legs lay on Mander's lap as he sat at the wheel. It would have been easier just to cage her in back like a dog, but Arin refused to do that to her. She might panic if the sedative wore off while they were on the road; or she could be injured by sliding helplessly around. Arin only hoped they didn't meet a knowledgeable game warden while en route.

He started the truck. At the sound, Lyka's head came up a little, but she was too groggy to do more. "It's just the motor," he whispered to her, and her head dropped back down again, her eyes half-closed. She didn't move when they backed out.

They met no one on the road, game warden or highway patrol officer, though a trucker they passed couldn't believe his eyes. It isn't every day you see a full-grown wolf in the cab of a pickup.

On the evening of the third day of travel, they reached their destination: a backpacking trail that led away from the rutted, weed-sprouting dirt road they'd bumped up for the last hour or so. During those three days they had plunged deeper and deeper into Canadian forest, passing the last building an hour back. They were deep into evergreen forest now, close to true wilderness.

Much to Arin's relief, there was no sign of anyone following them.

He'd decided to let Lyka come off the tranquilizer for the last day and a half, and her eyes were at last clear. The bumping and jerking of the vehicle had irritated her, and several times she'd begun growling. Once she'd even snapped at the air. Mander had gone pale, even though he wasn't as close to those jaws as Arin's face was. Each time it had been a nervous several minutes before she'd calmed down. Arin hadn't bothered trying to soothe her verbally, though once he'd put a steadying hand on her shoulder until she relaxed.

It had been an uncomfortable ride, with her either lying across their legs, fidgeting, or half-sitting up with her forelegs braced awkwardly against the angle where the door met the seat cushion. Now, as Arin opened the door, Lyka crawled out. She stumbled on her way to the ground, visibly shaky.

The supplies were in the truck bed. Arin and Mander loaded them into their backpacks. Mander had suggested a dog-pack so Lyka could take some of the load, but Arin had vetoed it. "Right now, if you tried to put a strap or rope on her, she'd attack you," he'd told him.

They began trudging up the narrow trail to Arin's cabin. Lyka trotted along parallel to them, making side trips into the trees to investigate things: an interesting smell, a fallen branch, a rodent's hole. They didn't call to her, just assumed she'd keep up with them, which she did. It worked better than giving her orders.

She'd never been much for taking orders, he recalled.

Wolves live in a world composed mostly of what reaches their nose and ears, not their eyes. Barely remembering the recent past, with no real concept of the future, Lyka was caught up in a complex web of odors and sounds. Dead needles rustled under her broad pads in a thousand different tones, a particularly interesting one sometimes causing her to stop, paw and sniff curiously at it. A grouse called, perhaps a mile off; she might have followed if she were hungry, which she was not.

Every minute or so they passed the holes of mouse burrows; often she could hear the scuttlings of the residents inside. Once one darted across her path directly in front of her; with an eyeblink-swift movement she pounced, crushed it between her incisors -- a starburst of salty blood, bitter-sour internal juices, fur and tiny bones on her tongue -- and swallowed it, savoring the aftertaste. Another time, a whiff of a musky canid odor from some distance away sent her bounding ahead, to stand rigid, baring her upper fangs without thinking, until she was certain the black bear had long since passed.

She tracked the progress of the two men by sound, keeping within easy hearing of them. Arin -- whose smell, voice and footsteps she could pick out from any human in the world more easily than most people can each others' faces -- she thought of at present as pack.

Unconsciously, other memories may have been at work, keeping her tied to him, memories coming from another existence, a long time ago. But if there were, she was unaware of them now.

Her eyes registered the fading light. It was not a matter of great importance to her; the world was a series of different tones of gray, like a dimmed black-and-white movie, and only movement caught her attention. Her other senses more than made up for it, even at night. Thus, her first impression of the cabin was of a sudden odor of long-dead pine logs laced with faint chemicals, and of an even fainter odor of human beings from several months ago.

She ran back to the two men, stopped in front of them and growled in sudden fear, staring ahead at it.

They stopped.

"What's that?" Mander whispered. "She saw something --"

Arin peered ahead. "I think it's the cabin. Either she's scared of it or --"

"Or something's there," Mander finished. His hand went to the .38 under his jacket.

They both stepped off the trail, into the trees, and began sneaking from tree trunk to trunk, eyes sweeping ahead in the gathering dusk, ears straining for any sound.

Lyka's mind was in a turmoil of confusing images and emotions. Images flashed up, clouding her awareness, shifting memories she couldn't correlate with anything in lupine instinct. A bright, closed-in place full of anxious humans and strong, stinging stenches, needles -- Arin there, smelling horrified, then worried and glad at once -- other things she couldn't grasp -- but that wasn't what frightened her. . . .

Under that, another flow of memories -- of other places, mostly darker, of strangers who stank of rage and fear -- and others that looked and sounded like humans but didn't smell like them, more terrifying yet -- pain, hers, rage and fear, also hers --

She crouched, snarling and bristling, pawed at her head and snapped once at the empty air. Then the door in her mind slammed shut, refusing to remember. She was left feeling only uneasy, distrustful of the cabin. She blinked.

Mander stared at her. Arin's expression was unreadable.

No one and nothing more threatening than spiders lurked in the cabin, but Lyka would not enter or even approach it, even after they finally went in, relaxed and began to unpack. Instead, she stood and stared after them, vaguely hoping they would come out soon. When they didn't, she began to lose interest. Finally, she began exploring the woods again, nose to the ground, sniffing and padding erratically about.

Inside, sitting on the newly-made bed (they'd brought a quilt and several blankets), Arin looked up at Mander. His fingers toyed with the pendant of his silver necklace.

"So, I'll be up here with the supplies, whenever I see your signal by the road," Mander was repeating. "I can go by every other Thursday."

"I may not need you after the first month or so," Arin said.

"Sure, *if* she learns to hunt for herself."

"She will."

Later that night, Lyka felt a discomfort she would have called loneliness if she were human; it led her to retrace her steps back to the cabin. She had turned up a grouse, but her jaws had snapped on empty air as the bird zig-zagged off into the darkness. She blundered after it, then gave up.

Now, as she reached the cabin, she paused.

She didn't exactly remember what she had felt earlier. Living in an eternal now as she now did, the past was almost non-existent, the future a concept she didn't have. She did not narrate events to herself like a human. But she had a vague understanding that the structure had done something to her she didn't like. She wouldn't have approached at again at all except for two things: Arin and Mander were there, and she was growing lonely and hungry.

She padded up to within thirty feet of the cabin, stopped and whimpered. She wanted to go in, and she did not want to go in. No one came out. Nothing looked, smelled or sounded threatening. She could hear the heavy breathing sounds humans made as they slept. She whined again. Nothing happened.

Moving with the slinking, half-crouched gait of lupine caution, she came to the doorstep. What noise she made was barely audible even to her.

The door was closed, but a beef shank lay just outside it. Arin had run the grave risk of attack by a bear to leave it for her.

Lyka had no way of knowing that risk; she was not grateful. She picked up the five-pound shank in her jaws and took it out of sight of the cabin before she began eating.

Arin and Mander were not, after all, the only humans in the area. As he walked up the meadow trail the next morning, Lyka by his side, Arin was being observed through a powerful pair of binoculars from a rocky slope half a mile to the south of them.

The glasses belonged to Jim Stratton, a private predator-control agent who had arrived the previous morning at the request of some local outfitters, although the hunting season didn't start for three more months.

"Damn," he muttered, lowering the glasses for a moment.

Bad enough, he thought, that there were still hordes of the beasts running wild, decimating the game and threatening livestock. Bad enough that the government had been intimidated by a bunch of tree-huggers and city people into cutting back its wildlife-control programs. Now this idiot, who looked like a typical hippie trying to "get back to nature," was dragging in tame wolves to add to the problem.

Probably the guy was using that old cabin up the river for his headquarters.

Stratton could just go down there today, knock on his door or wait until the hippie came back, pose as a government wildlife control officer to confiscate the wolf, and shoot it in front of him. That would be satisfying and would teach him a lesson, but then again, it could lead to complications. The bum might complain, and he might have important friends or just find a powerful and sympathetic ear. It was amazing how many officials in government today were wolf-lovers.

No, it would be better to dispose of the wolf without the hippie's ever knowing he was in the area. Stratton considered his options.

Later that morning, back at his camper, he pulled out his carefully de-scented steel leghold traps and prepared them for use.

Copyright 1998, Lyka. This story may be copied for personal use so long as the author's credits are kept, but may not be posted, archived elsewhere, otherwise distributed or sold without the author's permission.

(See Part 1 for author's notes.)

Although it was carefully prepared and cleaned up, the spot where Stratton laid the trap still held a faint odor of human. Lyka would probably not have fallen into it if she had not been in headlong pursuit of the hare.

When she nosed the gooseberry bush where it had been sleeping, it broke away straight through the bush. Lyka had to go the long way around it, which gave it a head start. Nevertheless, she kept up the chase.

By now, a week after their arrival, she had learned she could eventually exhaust any hare. Even heavy underbrush could be crawled under or broken through. And now the hare smelled thickly of the sweet scents of terror and exhaustion and was only a body-length ahead, just out of reach --

When something gave way under Lyka's right forepaw, and there was a sharp *click!* as hard jaws snapped shut around her right foreleg. Thrown off balance, she stumbled, then instinctively leaped to one side. Her paw was yanked out from under her and she fell, snarling in pain and shock as the trap sheared into her leg like two dull butcher knives. The chain sprang free of the forest duff that had covered it, pulling against the tree it was fastened to.

The hare never stopped, bounding through the tree trunks until it was out of sight.

Lyka struggled and bit savagely at the trap, until the fresh pain to her paw and her teeth brought her to her senses. She stood on three legs, panting heavily.

A vague memory rose, and she lifted up the captive paw and looked at it. The jaws had a perfect grip above the wrist. There was no way she could pull free. The chain was wrapped around the tree trunk and locked in place; had it had a drag-hook instead, she might have tried making her way to the cabin on three legs.

In a violent flash of comprehension, it came to her. She knew how to escape -- if she could shift. . . .

For a heartbeat of time, it was possible; afterward she could never remember this, her first change since the escape. For a moment a young woman lay on the forest floor, a woman with long, shaggy blonde hair in disarray, her bloody right hand between the jaws of a Number Four wolf trap, her slanting green eyes wide with shock and fear. She must have freed herself then, by standing on the springs and drawing her hand out, because the trap was lying on the ground and she was clutching her raw, bloody right wrist with her left hand.

Then there were more memories --

*Fear. Human voices, human faces, shouting, stinking of hate and anger. Cages, cells, always dimly lit and musty-smelling. Pain...more pain...*

She rolled on the ground, whimpering, like a wolf in agony. She wasn't aware of shifting back, but the flow of awful memories stopped.

She lay panting a few moments longer, then pulled herself to her paws, the right one nearly buckling under her again. Her memories, and the knowledge of what she had just done, were locked away again --

-- but not as deeply as before.

Confused, whimpering, she sat down, and licked her injured paw until the bleeding stopped. The skin was badly torn, and the muscles were strained. She rose and limped away toward Arin's cabin.

In his sleep, Arin struggled, wrestling with the blankets.

*He was lying on a cold, hard floor (concrete?). Impressions of dim yellow light, of men kicking and shouting at him, their voices oddly distorted, echoing, dim. Then it wasn't a hard floor but soft ground, and it was night. Sharp pain in his right hand and arm, as if the skin was being ripped off by something hard and ice-cold. Rage, fear -- then suddenly a feeling as if every bone in his body were grinding together, every muscle contracting to its limits or stretching like rubber...*

He thrashed awake, cursing, ending up sitting on the edge of the bed and shaking his head to clear it. He sensed something was wrong -- then he knew what it was.

"Lyka," he whispered, as he got up and reached for his clothes, the rifle.

It was dawn already, and bright sunlight streamed in through the window. His right arm and wrist still hurt.

Arin threw open the door and almost ran out. He halted, trying to sense the right direction -- and Lyka stepped out from the bushes, directly in front of him.

She whimpered and hobbled up to him as fast as she could limp. Arin dropped to his knees, laid his gun aside, and threw his arms around her.

He broke the embrace to examine her right paw, finding two bloody patches where the skin had been scraped away for more than two inches down on either side. Both cuts were scabbed and dirty. *Steel trap*, he realized. Even as he thought it, the throbbing in his arm stopped, though he didn't notice it until later.

Most trappers don't bother to check their traplines every day. Often they don't check them until the animals caught in them have already died of thirst, shock and exhaustion. So it was not that morning but two days later that Stratton squatted over the churned-up earth and empty trap, cursing.

The trap *had* held a wolf. The tracks -- some of them -- showed that. There were places where a large body had thrashed on the ground. It was the other tracks that were confusing. They looked like, and must be, bare human feet -- but all human prints ended a few feet away, for no discernable reason. The ground was no better or worse for holding tracks there, but the only ones after that were wolf paws.

Maybe the hippie had freed his pet, but he couldn't have walked there without leaving tracks. And why would he be barefoot? How would he know where to look, anyway?

Well, maybe he just covered his tracks coming there and going away, but missed a few around the trap itself. Not a very satisfying explanation, but the least unsatisfying one.

Stratton straightened up, brushing dirt off his legs. The thing to do, he decided, was to check the traps more often. He would run his trapline every day from now on.

It was more than two weeks before Arin decided the danger of infection was past and he removed the bandage from Lyka's foreleg. She still limped, but it was hardly visible now.

There was a change in her, he noticed. She must be remembering some human speech now; he was sure of it. She actually understood some of what he said. Clearly, something had happened when she was in that trap.

She would lift her head and listen when he spoke to her, instead of ignoring it as irrelevent; he would have sworn her eyes had a fugitive glint of human comprehension as she looked back at him.

When he tested it, asking her to bring him his tattered songbook from the bed while he practiced on the guitar, she actually obeyed, dropping it beside him. Then she sat and watched him play until he finished the piece before nuzzling his face.

Yet she still communicated only with lupine body language. She didn't shapeshift, didn't mind-speak.

She understood the shorter, simpler phrases, he decided, if they concerned her directly. Once or twice, he asked her a question and waited for her to reply in some way, and she responded by staring intently at him and whimpering softly, almost in apology.

But never did she mind-speak.

Arin worried. After the one great leap of conprehending language, he had thought she would continue improving. It hadn't happened.

Now she was lying by the open door, her head resting on her paws, as he read a magazine on the bed. He could tell something bothered her; every now and then she would lift her upper lip, even growl, and open her eyes as she shifted her weight uneasily.

Finally she got up, shook herself and padded outside. Arin looked up but made no attempt to stop her.

Along with her understanding of human speech, Lyka had regained some ability to remember. She remembered why her foreleg hurt, had a recollection of the trap, though not in the connected, self-narrating way of a human but as a waking nightmare. She didn't remember shapeshifting; the key to that memory at present -- real need -- wasn't there now.

She also had a drive a true wolf could not have had -- the desire for revenge.

She didn't ponder the wisdom or unwisdom of acting on that desire. She loped off toward the place where she had fallen into the trap, some five miles away. Despite her faint limp, she covered the distance in half an hour. She ignored all game scents that came to her nose.

The trap was no longer there. Gingerly, she padded around the tree trunks, nosing for more of the metal things she now thought of as enemies. There was no trace of metal. But lingering traces of human scent still lay on the ground -- not Arin's, Mander's or anyone else she recognized. The scent was very old.

Partly by a hidden memory of cause and effect, partly by sheer lupine cunning, she realized suddenly that this human, not the metal thing, was her true enemy. Her hackles bristled.

She realized instinctively there was no use in following such an old trail. No matter how long she followed it, she was unlikely to catch up. But she sniffed once more, long and attentively, before leaving. She would remember that smell when she came across it again.

Back in the cabin, Arin lay on the bunk, Neil Young's nasal voice singing "Four Winds" on the portable CD player beside him. His mind wasn't on it.

He remembered the fierce, proud werewolf as she had been, years before. Would he ever see her like that again? Or would she remain as she was now, at last forgetting her humanity and disappearing into the wilds forever?

Copyright 1998, Lyka. This story may be copied for personal use so long as the author's credits are kept, but may not be posted, archived elsewhere, otherwise distributed or sold without the author's permission.

(See Part 1 for author's notes.)

Since Stratton was now intensively trapping the area for wolves, it was barely a week before Lyka crossed his trail again.

This time, she sensed the trap before falling into it. Trotting along a swift-running stream, she caught a whiff of that particular human's odor, but this time much fresher -- less than a day old. She halted in her tracks, one paw upraised, like a shaggy-furred pointer. Her broad black nostrils flared, scenting the air.

Head lowered, a deep growl rumbling in her throat, she stalked the odor as if it were itself an enemy, padding slowly up the path Stratton had taken. She stepped cat-footed into the scent trail itself, pawing the earth angrily.

Again, she made no conscious decision. She simply began following the trail, seeking to catch or at least learn more about her enemy.

Here, it joined with the smell of a horse. She quickened her pace.

Moving at a swift trot, nose down, she came to the spot where the human had set foot on the ground. A pang of apprehension went through her belly and she broke her stride, slowed. Giving her full attention to the tale her exquisitely sensitive nose was telling her, she advanced step by careful step.

Here the human had walked, following the easiest path through the trees. Here, in a clearing, he had stood for several minutes. Underneath the fresh scent was an older scent he had left -- he had come here more than once.

She examined the area, and found what she expected: the tang of cold metal.

She froze in place for several breaths, fearing to move, fearing steel jaws leaping from the forest earth to seize her paw again.

Nothing moved, and she lowered her head to sniff the ground. It came from a foot in front of her -- she stretched out her neck, sniffing audibly.

There was a strong patch of wolf scent there, the smell from a male wolf's anal glands. There was no body or foot-scent to go with it, but there was some foot-odor from the human. The metal-scent was directly underneath it -- it seemed to be just under the dirt. To Lyka, the whole thing seemed subtly wrong.

It crystallized -- what was wrong here had to do with the human. He was responsible.

A deep, angry growl rumbled in her throat as she turned her head this way and that, seeking more scent. She stepped carefully around the clearing, and detected one -- two -- three more traps, all lying under soil that had been slightly disturbed.

Rage welled in her. It did not occur to her to question how she knew what to do: it seemed natural.

She backed up to one spot and began to furiously kick dirt over it, as she would have to the smell from a member of a rival pack. Pebbles, twigs, leaves and clods of earth showered the spot.

The trap snapped shut with a metallic clang as a rock struck the pan. Lyka jumped, then recovered herself. She turned and examined it. Vaguely she understood that the trap was sprung and no longer dangerous. She seized the metal in her jaws and shook it savagely, snarling, and the chain sprang free of the dirt.

She dropped it and turned her attention to the other three traps, methodically kicking debris over each one until it was safely sprung.

When she was satisfied, she turned back to the human-and-horse trail and began following it once again.

Over the course of the next few miles Lyka found two more trap sets. She knew how to deal with them now; each time, she located the traps, then sprung them in the same way. At the third one, she left the four traps in a pile and defecated on them.

Padding along the curving path down the hillside and into the main valley, Lyka found the source of the human and horse scent. She paused on the edge of the forest, sniffing, smelling an acrid odor -- woodsmoke.

It was late afternoon, and the predator-hunter's tent cast a long shadow through the grassy open meadow. Beside it was a fire circle, unlit but still smelling of smoke. Nearby, the horse grazed.

A cross-wind breeze blew between her and the tent, which limited the scents she could pick up. She couldn't see the human. She realized he was inside the tent when she heard him move inside.

A shift in the wind brought her own scent to the horse, which jerked its head up. It whinnied, trying to free itself from its hobbles, kicking.

The man emerged from the tent, something in his hands. Lyka recognized it as a rifle.

It was not a thing Arin had taught her. In fact, she was not sure how she knew it.

She cowered back into the underbrush, crouching with her belly almost touching the ground, never taking her eyes off the man.

Stratton wasn't especially worried. Horses were high-strung, stupid animals that could get scared over nothing. Probably it had scented a snake or a bear somewhere nearby.

He looked back at the beast, who was only slightly calmer at the sight of him, still fretting at its hobbles. Then he stared out into the forest, upwind.

He didn't see the wolf there. Even an Inuit or a Native American can look directly at a wolf and not see it sometimes, and his eyes weren't nearly so sharp.

Finally he gave up. Probably *was* just a snake, he thought, noticing the horse calming down.

Lyka watched him turn and retreat back into the tent. Her neck fur stood straight up, bristling.

The next day, Stratton noticed something wrong as he approached the fifth trap set along his line. The forest floor looked disturbed, earth overturned. He walked over to get a better look.

His cursing rang out in the morning air. It was the first set Lyka had discovered.

By the time he'd reached the last ruined set, he was furious. He put the desecrated traps on his horse and brooded over it all the way back to the tent. It was time to pay a visit to that hippie.

"The horrible irony of it," Arin was saying to Mander, "is that if she were just a wolf, I could link with her. But being who she is -- with the defenses that kind of mind can set up --"

"Exactly what's making her shut you out?" Mander asked.

"My guess is, it's linked with her memories. She doesn't want to remember the CTA prison. She connects being human with pain. She's rendered herself incapable of doing or thinking anything that could remind her of her humanity -- including communicating with anyone or anything on any basis other than an animal level. She's shut it out of conscious memory."

"Why not try to force her? To remember who she is?"

"*Her?* She's one of the strongest of us, remember? Oh, maybe twenty or so of us together could do it, linked. Probably we'd take out half her brain along with her defenses. Those of us who lived."

"But how much longer can we wait?"

Arin couldn't answer that.

That night, a nightmare visited Arin: Yahweh like Sauron, stretching his arm over dead sea and withered land.

Land like the leavings of a strip mine: blasted, cracked, poisonous crust like a scab, incapable of growing another living thing ever again. The foul beings men call seraphim or angels ride high and triumphant over the ruined wasteland, cackling.

He's beside a beach. The sea, dead oily-looking, heaving black and obscene over a polluted beach, its edge awash with old garbage, pushing back and forth. After dark, sea and beach will glow green-white, radioactive refuse like a negative benediction.

Worse than the despoilation, infinite loneliness, purposelessness. He can't feel the invisible power currents he's always been able to sense, while the earth lived.

No one else left. Arin reaches mentally for the others, but there's nothing there. He is alone, the last one.

Nightmare. Night-mare: the Mare of Night, riding her victims' chests as they sleep. For a few moments that are eternity, Arin knows what it would be like to be cut off from the earth, Her forever dead, himself alone.

He awakened, trembling with a fear too deep for words.

But he had an answer to Mander's question, or *an* answer anyway.

Time was short.

"Arin?" Mander's voice outside, low and anxious.

Arin dropped the book he'd been reading, pulled himself off the bed and opened the door. Mander stood there, not coming in, looking agitated.

"What's up?" Arin asked.

"Arin -- get out of here, fast. Someone's coming up the trail. Guy with a gun, looks like a hunter, and he looks pissed."

"One moment," Arin said. He ran back into the cabin, grabbed his own rifle and a few cartridges that he shoved into his pocket and pulled on his jacket. He ran back out, locked the cabin door.

They wasted no time, diving into the woods by the least conspicuous route -- where the way looked impossible, the underbrush too thick. Arin slipped through easily like an animal, Mander on his heels and cursing as a branch whipped into his face.

Mander would have kept going, but Arin tugged his sleeve. "Get down. I want to see what he does."

They lay down prone, peering out at the cabin through a tiny gap in the clump of bushes.

"When will he reach it?" Arin whispered.

"A few minutes -- he wasn't even a quarter-mile down the trail -- "

Arin looked at him. He was wearing his sheepskin-lined red denim jacket over a green T-shirt, while Arin's jacket had a camouflage pattern. "Do me a favor, Mander. Take off your jacket and put it under your body."

"Oh." Mander obeyed. Arin loaded a couple of cartridges into the gun, praying he wouldn't have to use them.

"Where's Lyka?"

"I don't know," Mander answered.

Great, Arin thought. Hopefully she wouldn't enter the clearing while a stranger was there, but he couldn't count on it.

He hated killing ordinary human beings, it was a defeat, but if the bastard spotted her and raised his gun, there were no doubts at all in Arin's mind what he'd do.

A man walked into the clearing. Arin's eyes narrowed as he saw the stranger's rilfe -- a big-game hunter's rifle, probably a 30-06. The stranger was dressed like a professional outdoorsman -- sheepskin jacket, jeans, boots, Western-style hat.

He halted when he saw the closed door, then went up and kicked at it, none too gently. "Hey, you! Hello in there!" It was anything but friendly. He paused as if listening. Then he kicked the door again. "Open up in there!"

"Any idea what this is about?" Mander whispered to Arin. There was no answer. He looked over, saw the abstracted expression on Arin's face as if he were listening to some faint sound from far away. He shut up.

The man was going around the cabin now, peering in the glass windows.

Arin came out of his trance, whispered in Mander's ear. The man was too far away and too preoccupied to hear.

"I'm picking up something. He's angry, of course...It's about a wolf -- yeah, Lyka. He saw me with her...Christ!" His nose wrinkled in disgust.

At Mander's questioning look, he explained, "He's a trapper, I think. I'm getting an impression . . .ruined traps . . .Yeah, that's what he's upset about." The intruder came around to the front door again and glared at it, hands on hips, rifle hanging from its sling across his back.

Something made Arin look over his shoulder just then -- and there was Lyka, crouching belly-flat a few feet behind him. She hadn't made a sound. Now she was watching, head low. That intense wolf stare was fixed unwaveringly on the trapper.

Arin turned back to Mander.

"Don't talk. I'm going to try to plant a Seed of Forgetfulness in him."

The man whirled, then stalked back down the path, his movements speaking of anger and frustration. "Shit," Arin muttered.

"You get him?" Mander whispered.

"Not enough time." The trapper was now vanishing from sight, though the sounds of his passage would carry for a while. "I did get where he's camped, though. Tonight I'm going down there, try to get close while he's asleep."

Arin got up, followed by Mander, brushing off his jacket and jeans. Lyka didn't follow the two men into the cabin. Instead, she stood and stared down the trail where Stratton had gone, ears perked, tail undulating slowly like a cat's.

She had understood little of the conversation, only the feelings from the others. They felt threatened by the human as well, she realized . . .and he knew where they laired.