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'And?' she said in that infuriating manner of hers.
'Don't you find that a trifle remarkable?'
'Not particularly,' she said placidly.
'Do wolves normally live so long?'
'Wolves live as long as they choose to live,' she said, somewhat
smugly, I thought.
one day soon after that I found it necessary to change*my form in
order to complete a task my Master had set me to.
'So that's how you do it,' the wolf marveled. 'What a simple
thing.' And she promptly turned herself into a snowy owl.
'Stop that,' I told her.
'Why?' she said, carefully preening her feathers with her beak.
'It's not seemly.'
'What is "seemly" to a wolf - or an owl, I should say?' And with
that she spread her soft, silent wings and soared out the window.
After that I knew little peace. I never knew when I turned around
what might be staring at me - wolf or owl, bear or butterfly. She
seemed to take great delight in startling me, but as time wore on,
more and more she retained the shape of the owl.
'What is this thing about owls?' I growled one day.
'I like owls,' she explained as if it were the simplest thing in the
world. 'During my first winter when I was a young and foolish
thing, I was chasing a rabbit, floundering around in the snow like a
puppy, and a great white owl swooped down and snatched my
rabbit almost out of my jaws. She carried it to a nearby tree and ate
it, dropping the scraps to me. I thought at the time that it would be a
fine thing to be an owl.'
'Foolishness,' I snorted.
'Perhaps,' she replied blandly, preening her tail feathers, But it
amuses me. It may be that one day a different shape will amuse me
even more.'
I grunted and returned to my work.
Some time later - days or years or perhaps even longer - she came
swooping through the window, as was her custom, perched sedately
on a chair and resumed her proper wolf-shape.
'I think I will go away for a while,' she announced.
'oh?' I said cautiously.
She stared at me, her golden eyes unblinking. 'I think I would like
to look at the world again,' she said.
'I see,' I said.
'The world has changed much, I think.'
'It's possible.'
'I might come back some day.'
'As you wish,' I said.
'Goodbye, then,' she said, blurred into the form of an owl again,
and with a single thrust of her great wings she was gone.
Strangely, I missed her. I found myself turning often to show her
something. She had been a part of my life for so long that it
somehow seemed that she would always be there. I was always a bit
saddened not to see her in her usual place.
And then there came a time when, on an errand for my Master, I
went some leagues to the north. On my way back I came across a
small, neatly thatched cottage in a grove of giant trees near a small
river. I had passed that way frequently, and the house had never
been there before. Moreover, to my own certain knowledge, there
was not another human habitation within five hundred leagues. In
the house there lived a woman. She seemed young, and yet perhaps