The baby had screamed for two hours, incessantly. Almost at breaking point, I’d paced the saloon, and even went as far as flinging the front door wide to breathe in the evening air and find the peace I sought.

John pushed the door shut again, and placed a warm hand on my shoulder. “Steady, Sowilo. They’ll be creeping around outside, just waiting for us to make a mistake.”

He was right. I’d set charms around the perimeter of the property to hold the demon shades at bay, but the magic wouldn’t last forever. Trader’s acid darkness already explored the outer edges of my spells. I retained a connection with each charm, carrying a drop of its energy with me, monitoring it like a litmus test. At this moment, the paper screamed scarlet. The charms were not far from losing their hold.

As John pulled his hand away, his left shirt sleeve fell back revealing the inked name of the baby. It ran as ornate script down the underside of his forearm with just the last few letters visible at the open cuff, “anxo.”

He smiled when he saw me looking and rearranged the sleeve, “God has willed it, Wilo. We answered, and he’s safe for now. But he has to stay that way.” He pecked a kiss on my cheek before pulling on his coat and hat, saying “I will do a circuit,” as he picked up the Winchester and slipped out of the side door.

Calmer, I strode back to the baby and looked down at him, determined to find some semblance of pity. Years separated from my own child, and my endless quest for her freedom, had left me with a weary heart. Dropping to my haunches, I cooed and chattered to him.

After our flight from the homestead, we’d stayed on the far side of the river until the sun rose, and the cub turned back into this squawking damp mass of fists and spit. Hunger drove him to cry and whinge and moan. The injured arm he’d received as a side effect of the change seemed almost incidental; he still waved the limb around without pause.

For his own protection, my magic had forced his transformation forward with crippling speed. The child had been weak and unprepared.

Twisting the wolf into being with my charms had created a connection, and now I felt his every anguish in my heart. Whether I liked it or not, he was mine, this wolf—a Skye wolf. For this next while, we would have to endure each other.

We’d returned to the saloon, and while the other girls continued to coddle him, doing their best to soothe his pain, I crept away and settled by the wall, as far as I could get from him.

The building served as both bar and brothel. It was nothing more than a shack. A slapped together hovel with holes in the roof for sand to sweep in, crumbling adobe brick walls, and a broken-down wooden porch out front which announced every entrance and exit with a guilty creak.

Inside, the wooden bar was supported by more bricks. A few bar stools stood in front of it, and shelves behind displayed the bottles of two-bit whiskey. With no chairs up front, men stood at the bar drinking, or lined up at the back wall until one of us was free, often with their hats held over their “expectations” as we call them.

Due to hunger pains and tiredness, the baby still squirmed, but was at least quiet. The newest girl, Viola, cradled him, and held a rag soaked in warm water and a little whiskey for him to suck on.

With the early morning light, the wind had risen further. It blew in from the mountains, and each time the door opened with the arrival of a customer, a haze of red dust followed them in. Each new arrival prompted one of the whores to leave the cluster of women around the child to attend to him in the tiny bedrooms out back.

We were a ragtag collection of immigrants, not a true American among us. Even Old Pete, the bar keeper and brothel owner, had gotten off the boat from England. He kept an eye from the bar. John had already paid for his silence after he’d jumped off the wagon that continued on to the coast along the Old Spanish Trail a few weeks back.

I’d watched him disembark, and was struck by how much he reminded me of my husband. Tall and broad, almost jet-black hair with just a touch of red about it to distinguish him from the many other Iberians in these parts.

Like my husband, there was more pride to his appearance than perfection: a rare crooked smile and a scar across his eyebrow where hair would no longer grow. He carried himself to his full height, shoulders pulled back, and a challenge in his dark eyes to anyone who looked his way.

Within moments of seeing him, his heart had called to me. That’s how it always happened, a song floating on the air that only I could hear. Some knowledge I needed to reach my daughter was wrapped up in his heart. It just needed me to release—

“Sowilo? You are staring.”

To my surprise, John had returned from his inspection outside, and now stood in front of me, memories making me blind.

“Are you seeing?” he asked.

“No. Nothing. I was just… thinking.” He’d flustered me, asking about my thoughts like that. I’d not explained about my husband. Well, not everything. It would make no difference. Just another dead man. “Your plan? Is it still as we thought?”

Just then the baby howled, a banshee scream mixed with the leftover cry of a wolf in transition. The sound pierced the stillness of the saloon, and the women who’d cradled him moved back, unsure for the first time.

John pushed his way through them to snatch the child up. “No milk? Not even a goat or sheep?” He raised his voice to the bar keeper who still wiped glasses without a flicker of acknowledgment for the scream.

Old Pete shook his head. “We got cattle. Or I heard the bitch that lives under the porch got young’uns. Maybe you’ll have better luck with her than the ones that lives in here.” He smiled at his own joke briefly before his sour face returned and he turned his back to rearrange the whiskey bottles.

John’s face darkened. He raised his chin in that proud way men do when receiving a challenge that was too minor to be returned with the bite of a bullet. He dropped his gaze to the baby who still wailed pitiful sobs in his arms, and his expression softened to concern. He whispered something under his breath.

“A spell?” I asked.

“A prayer…”

And he looked at me with those faith-filled eyes of his.

I almost burst out laughing. “Not much in a prayer that drives away hunger, John. The dog may be the best option.” I put my hand on the child’s tummy. “He must eat, or he won’t survive. He’s so weak, he’ll never make it through the change tonight, and our time would have been wasted.”

“A dog, Sowilo?” His lip curled, but more with humiliation at the suggestion, than anger. Ironic given the circumstances of his breed.

“She’s a kindly mutt. Lost two of her own to coyotes. Just one left, and she won’t leave its side. We take food to her most days when there’s some to spare.” I moved my hand to his cheek and stroked the two-day beard that popped through his face like corn stubble. “It’s worth a try, yes?”

* * *

Watching a baby suckling from the teat of a dog, curled beside her one surviving puppy, was undoubtedly the strangest thing I’d ever witnessed in all my long days.

I hunkered under the back porch of the saloon beside the mutt. As she fed the “pups,” I stroked her head and tickled behind her ears, the fur there soft and white, a stark contrast to the coarse dark grey of the rest of her. If I stopped the caresses, she gave a little whine to encourage me to begin again. The baby was silent apart from the tune of his vigorous slurps and sucks. His eyes were closed in blissful satisfaction.

“You asked about the plan.” John sat next to me, leaning against the wall, in the shadow of the porch roof that protected us from the intense sun. He’d removed his hat and jacket, and sat in just a white shirt and pants supported by the suspenders stretched over his shoulders. There’d been no sign of the army of shades or Trader, but we both knew it was only a matter of time before they caught up with us.

“Yes. Are you still leaving with him?”

He nodded. “You can come with us, Sowilo. I’d make a wife of you if you’d have me.” He stroked his fingertips over my shoulder. “I feel we would be stronger together. A new start back home…”

Sometimes I wished his words to me were fired with the same passion as in the prayers I’d heard him recite. But that was unlikely. Like me, he saved his passion for his quest. He followed the names that magically appeared on his arm; I followed the singing of my stones.

As he reached forward, the pendant he wore around his neck broke free of his shirt, and swung toward me on its thin leather cord. It was made of light-colored rock that had been scratched with the symbol of the Moorish wolf, a rudimentary crescent moon, a match to the one on his shoulder. He pushed the pendant back under his shirt, a flash of white against the tan of his skin.

To leave was tempting. To go back home, to the mountains, meadows, and fresh sea breezes of my beloved Galicia.

I shook my head. “No. Once I have this stone, I’ll need to follow the path to the next, and the next. And on I go. You could stay, though, John. Join my search.”

He sighed. “I have my own mission. A holy mission.”

“You bring God into everything!” I pushed his hand away, but he lifted it again to stroke my hair this time. My annoyance was as much from him raising his task above my own as knowing that I would not get my way. I shook him off.

“Of course. It was God set me on this path. He offered me my Shifter form in exchange for service to Him, and I will do the best I can with that blessing.” His hand flopped into his lap. “I’ll take the child back to Spain. My pack is there. They will raise and protect him. Trader will not let an ocean stand between him and his prize, but at least when he finds the boy again, he’ll have grown into his strength, and have brothers and sisters to protect him.”

Anger gone as suddenly as it had arisen, I twisted to face him. “And will you then return?”

It had been a long time since I’d felt affection for a man. My role in life had always been as a companion—in service. Whether as a wife, harem girl, courtesan, actress, and now “soiled dove,” as they called us here when stretching for politeness. The words changed, the countries, too. But even as the years rolled by, my need was the same—to find my girl. And in this work it was easy to get close to those who had the knowledge I needed.

“I hope so. I hope we’ll find each other again.” He leaned forward and kissed me, and thankfully there was no trace of God present in that moment.

As our lips broke, I whispered, “Tell me what you know about the stone. Please.”

He paused for the longest while, regarding me, his face close to mine. The darkness of his own long life skated across the surface of his eyes, his warm breath on my face, and the fire from his lips still heating mine. “Once the coach is here, and I’m safe on it with the boy, your side of the bargain will be over, and I will fulfil mine. I will surrender all I know. Let’s keep to the rules, Wilo. Magic is as much a trickster as the Devil himself.”

He was right, of course.

Magic has a consciousness. A living energy created the moment the spell is cast, or the bargain struck. If the agreement is broken that same energy collapses. If you’re lucky it will peter out, returning to the elemental world it has been conjured from. If not, it will transform, latch on to whatever evil intention it can find, and fling itself angrily back into your life, as the sting of a bee, the stray bullet of a gun, or the loss of a soul that means more to you than your own life…

Magic understands the notion of revenge almost as completely as it knows the act of redemption.

“You’re right, I know that. This will be the ninth stone, but I still have four more to find. It’s just…” I faltered. “I am… impatient to be with her again. It’s been so long.”

“Your daughter is safe. The loss of the Mourama had consequences for all of us on this side. On their side, why would the enchantment not go on? I’ve heard it is beautiful there, in the fairyland of the old tales.” He smiled.

“It is. There’s warmth and light. There’s happiness there.” I looked past him for a moment, remembering my adopted home. My house on the mountainside, looking over the sea. My husband in the field, my daughter in my arms. Perfection. Magic floating in the air, providing all that was needed. Beauty, kindness, charity.

When the gateway to the Mourama was torn down, the enchanted world was sealed, myself on one side, my daughter on the other. And so my lonely quest began, a thousand years travelling from place to place, following the singing of the scattered gateway stones. When I had them all, I could reconstruct the gate and free my daughter.

“But we need to be clear, Sowilo. If the plan fails, if Trader catches up with us, if it looks like all other options will fail… then there is only one left—”

“The penance?” We both knew it would be the last resort.

“Yes.”

“Take any opportunity to win. I will protect you both as long as I can. You have my promise.”

He bowed his head to me. “And you have mine. I will be in your debt—”

“And will I be in your heart?”

“Always.”

As we locked eyes one more time, the baby gurgled as the mother dog began to lick him vigorously, his loose skin gathering under the rough action of her tongue. The act would clean him as well as encourage digestion. As if reading my thoughts, the child released loud gas, followed by an eruption that left us both laughing and removing ourselves from the close quarters of the porch to let the dog finish the clean-up.

As we stood, John turned to the horizon. “Dust!”

“Is it the coach already?”

“No, not the coach.” The sound of stamping feet and hooves rose just as the wooden slats of the porch roof above us began to vibrate, and release little clouds of the sand blown into place by the wind. It dusted our heads and shoulders, changing our dark hair to red.

He turned to look at me. “They’re here!”