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There was no need to hurry. The horse would not escape them now.
    The horse’s shape wavered like a disturbed reflection, and suddenly it was no longer there. Instead, there was a girl; brown haired, blue eyed.
    The wolves paused for a few seconds.
    Then they sprang.

CHAPTER TWO
    He should have done it when he had the chance, but she’d sensed he was there, and then… and then he had had to fight the wolf that had somehow followed him through the gateway. She had fled by then, terrified, and she hadn’t been back to the pool since. He would have to find another way.
    His feelings for her were as strong as ever. She belonged with him, she just didn’t know it.
    As for his family… once he had taken her, there was nothing they could do.
     
    Summer wore away. The hay was safely in, the barley harvested and the apples ripening. The blaeberry season was over and the brambles were almost ready for picking.
    No one outside Donald’s own family spoke of him any more.
    Jess turned fifteen. Her parents gave her a jacket lined with fur for the winter and her grandmother knitted her some gloves. Freya gave her a string of blue beads and Ashe gave her a frog, hoping she would scream, but yelped himself later when he found she’d tucked it up in his bed.
     
    The day of the harvest ceilidh came: a major social occasion in Kirriemuir and the surrounding farms.
    Jess grumbled her way through the preparations.
    “I should have made you a new dress,” said her mother, frowning at her.
    “There’s nothing wrong with this one.” Jess looked down at it. “It still fits.”
Unfortunately
, she thought, but she wasn’t about to say it.
    “I know, but you wore it last year.”
    “Well, you and I are probably the only people at the ceilidh who’re going to remember that,” Jess said, a bit more sharply than she’d intended.
    It was true. Jess would spend the evening with Freya, which meant no one would really notice her,
whatever
she was wearing.
    Not that she minded. At least, that was what she told herself. Lately she seemed to have trouble knowing how she felt about lots of things.
    Boys, for instance.
    It used to be easy. They tried to pull your hair and you either ignored them or tripped them up so that they fell into a cowpat.
    Lately though, it had got much more complicated. They went about in packs, like dogs. They stood and stared, and whispered to each other and sniggered. Occasionally one would sidle up and mumble something incomprehensible. Jess knew she ought to smile and encourage them to try human speech, but she was usually so disconcerted when it happened that her tongue would say something that sent them off with a scarlet face before her brain could stop it.
    Freya didn’t seem to have any such difficulties. She smiled and tossed her hair and turned her blue eyes on them until they blushed and stammered. Some of them were allowed to put an arm around her waist, but the one who once dared to try and kiss her got a slap that left her handprint clear on his cheek. After that, no one else tried.
    No one had tried even once to put an arm around Jess’s waist. She didn’t know whether she was relieved or aggrieved.
    Back in her room, she brushed her hair, tried it up, tried it down, and gave up altogether.
    “Ready,” she called as she came back into the main room to find Ashe complaining about being left at home with his grandmother.
    “Next year,” Ian was saying to him. “Maybe. If you stopmoaning now.”
    Ashe thought about it and quietened.
    “You look lovely, lass,” said Ellen.
    “I just look the same as always, really, except that the dress is clean,” said Jess prosaically.
    “I know.” Her grandmother smiled. “Here. Put this on.” She held out a flat wooden box and opened it. Inside lay a fine gold chain, set with small garnets.
    “Oh no, Gran. I’d better not…”
    Jess recognised it as the necklace her grandfather had given her grandmother as a wedding gift.
    “Nonsense. I meant to