He was torn from his mother and the warmth of the house and he wandered out into the darkness and did not know where he was going or if going was even the right word for it.

The cold came into his bones the way cold does, quietly and without permission. There was no escaping the faceless one. He had known this for some time.

He lay down beneath the stars because there was nothing else to do and he was hungry and he himself became a kind of food, offered up to the night without ceremony or consent.

The wild dogs found him. They did not tear him apart. They circled and lay down and their breath rose in small clouds and he dreamed of them and they were not terrible in the dreams.

He became small. Small as a mouse in the grass, in the dark, in the indifferent world.

The owls did not take him. They sat above him in the bare branches and watched and spoke to him in the language owls speak and he listened without understanding and was grateful.

From the dark lake came nothing. The water snake moved through the black water and did not come for him and this too was a kind of mercy.

Death passed him in the night. He was running and he did not slow and he said without stopping that the boy was not ready and that he had work yet and was gone before the words had finished.

Then the shooting stars came. One after another they crossed the sky and burned and were gone and the fears that were left in him went with them and he lay there knowing there was work. There had always been work.

His eyes were red when morning came and they opened to the light like something wounded opening to a thing it had not believed in. It had taken an eternity to get here. The morning did not know this and did not care.

Frost lay over him like a burial cloth. From the pond a gentle steam rose in the cold air and the pond was enchanted or it was not but it made no difference.

Then the birds. First one and then many. Wings opening and beating against the stillness and they rose all at once into the pale and enormous sky.

He watched them go.