The girl stops. The mill's amber window and that almost-counting voice press at her back, but she turns anyway, retracing her steps up the slope. The cart track narrows into the lane again, and she slows near the stand of ash trees, listening. For a long moment there is nothing — only peeling silver bark and grey sky and the faint sound of water below. Then: a flicker of rust-orange between two trunks, low to the ground, moving deliberately away from the lane and into the wood. The fox glances back once, amber eyes catching no particular light yet still faintly bright, and then continues threading between the silver-barked trunks without hurrying. The girl hesitates at the tree line. The crow is somewhere behind her at the mill. The fox is ahead, in the wood, taking a path she has not walked.