"He took me from my mother!" I said. "He took me away from her. I was much too young to be gone from her."

"I know," he said, "I know. But it was a long time ago. You're here now, and safe." He looked almost frightened.

"He smoked the den," I told him. "He made my mother and brothers into hides."

His face changed and his voice was no longer kind. "No, Fitz. That was not your mother. That was a wolf's dream. Nighteyes. It might have happened to Nighteyes. But not you."

"Oh, yes, it did," I told him, and I was suddenly angry. "Oh, yes it did, and it felt just the same. Just the same." I got up from my bed and walked around the room. I walked for a very long time, until I could stop feeling that feeling again. He sat and watched me. He drank a lot of brandy while I walked.

One day in spring I stood looking out of the window. The world smelled good, alive and new. I stretched and rolled my shoulders. I heard my bones crackle together. "It would be a good morning to go out riding," I said. I turned to look at Burrich. He was stirring porridge in a kettle over the fire. He came and stood beside me.

"It's still winter up in the Mountains," he said softly. "I wonder if Kettricken got home safely."

"If she didn't, it wasn't Sooty's fault," I said. Then something turned over and hurt inside me, so that for a moment I couldn't catch my breath. I tried to think of what it was, but it ran away from me. I didn't want to catch up with it, but I knew it was a thing I should hunt. It would be like hunting a bear. When I got up close to it, it would turn on me and try to hurt me. But something about it made me want to follow anyway. I took a deep breath and shuddered it out. I drew in another, with a sound that caught in my throat.

Beside me, Burrich was very still and silent. Waiting for me.