The Name, Tested
You come back down the fox-roads faster than you went up them — the gate waves you through with a grumble (“everyone knows the hole one now”), the Quarrel parts for you like an old friend — and you're half a day from the wood's edge when you hear it: howling, and Bramble's whole body going stiff as wire.
Wolves. In the Silverwood itself — a raiding pack, a dozen strong, tearing along the path ahead where the silver trees stand grey-stained and silent. Vespera's answer to your errand. They have smelled the fox-road, and at its end, everything Bramble ever loved.
The pack-leader sees you and turns, and the whole grey dozen turns with it.
The silver leaf is warm in your pocket. Sing it with kindness, the Willow said. Every unkind use will teach her to stop hearing it. But kindness is a strange tool to hold while a dozen wolves come down a forest path with their mouths open, and there is a much more obvious way to use a weapon someone's afraid of.