Werewolf found the third snare before breakfast, and the rabbit inside it was still alive. He pried the wire loose with hands that shook from anger, not cold. Blood matted the fur at its hind leg. He wrapped the rabbit in his coat and started back toward the rescue center at a run. The two-story building sat behind a curtain of vines, its outdoor pens patched together over years of salvage. He had built it board by board to shelter every wounded animal in these wilds. That was the whole point of his life here. But someone had strung a trap line straight through his stretch of forest, and the woods were faster at maiming than he was at healing. Inside, two fox cubs tumbled in the straw of the nursery pen, biting each other's ears. He had pulled them from a collapsed den last week. Their mother had not been so lucky. He set the rabbit on the exam table, splinted the leg, and counted his cages. Nine occupied. Four new since the snares appeared. He was losing. He needed the trapper. He needed the trap line pulled up by nightfall, and he could not walk every mile of wood alone before more animals bled out. He went to the old cartographer's shack at the edge of the village. Owen Fitch answered the door with ink on his thumbs and a leather map case buckled shut across his chest. Werewolf had spoken to him twice, both times about bird routes. "I need to know where a trap line runs," Werewolf said. "North wood. Since last week." Owen chewed his beard. "I know the line. I sold the map that laid it." He said it flat, like a man admitting a debt. "Fellow paid in coin. Didn't say what for. I should've asked." "Walk it with me." Owen took his stick from the door. "I can walk it blindfolded." They worked until dusk. Owen named each turn before they reached it. Werewolf sprung every snare with the butt of a hatchet and coiled the wire into a sack. They found twenty-two traps. Two held foxes, dead. One held nothing but a chewed-off paw. By the last trap, the sack was heavy enough to bruise Werewolf's shoulder. At the edge of the wood, Owen unbuckled his map case for the first time Werewolf had ever seen. He pulled out a folded sheet, tore it in half, and handed the torn half to Werewolf. "The buyer's name is on the back. He'll come looking for his line tomorrow. He paid for a season." Werewolf took the paper. The trap line was gone. The trapper was not. And now the trapper had a name, an address, and a reason to come to the rescue center himself.

Werewolf slept four hours and woke before dawn with the torn map on his chest. The trapper's name was written in Owen's careful hand. The address was a farm two valleys east. Werewolf did not go there. The trapper would come to him first, walking the line to check his catch, and Werewolf wanted to meet him in the woods, not at the rescue center where the cages were full and the fox cubs could be heard through the wall. He took the sack of coiled wire and walked back into the north wood. He picked a willow at the bend where the trap line had started, a tall tree with branches that hung to the ground like a curtain. He stepped through the leaves and waited inside. From there he could see the path in both directions. He set the sack at his feet so the wire would be the first thing the trapper saw. Owen came up the path an hour after sunrise, breathing hard, stick in one hand. Werewolf had not asked him to come. The old cartographer pushed through the willow branches and sat on a root without speaking. He unbuckled his map case and laid it across his knees like a shield. "You shouldn't be here," Werewolf said. "I sold the map," Owen said. "I stand where the map goes." They heard the trapper before they saw him. Boots, and a low whistle counting turns. He was a lean man in a canvas coat, and he stopped when he saw the first sprung stake. He crouched. He touched the empty ground. He stood and drew a skinning knife. Werewolf stepped out of the willow with the sack. He dropped it. Wire spilled at the trapper's feet, twenty-two nooses tangled together. "Your line is done," Werewolf said. "Walk back to your farm." The trapper looked at the wire, then at Werewolf, then past him at Owen. His face changed when he saw the cartographer. "You sold me the map," he said. "I did," Owen said. "I'm unselling it." The trapper laughed once, short. He sheathed the knife. "I paid for a season. I've got two more lines coming in from the south road next week. Your sack won't hold those." He kicked the wire aside and walked back the way he came. Werewolf did not chase him. His hands were shaking again. Owen stood up slowly and buckled his case. "He wasn't lying," Owen said. "He orders his wire in bulk. I've seen the ledger at the post." Werewolf picked up the sack. The confrontation was over. He had not been hurt. The rescue center behind the vines was still his secret from the trapper's eyes. But two more trap lines were coming, and he had six days to be ready for wounds he could not yet count.