I cannot. My body is locked in a cage.
Leave it! he said savagely. Let go!
What?
Leave it, let go of it, come with me.
You mean, die? Eat the poison?
Only if you have to. But do it now, quickly, before they can hurt you more. Leave it and come with me. Let go of it. You did it once before. Remember?
The effort of making sense of his words was making me aware of our bond. The pain of my own racked body broke through to haunt me. Somewhere I was stiff with the cold, and aching with pain. Somewhere, every breath brought an answering twinge from my ribs. I scrabbled away from that, back to the wolf’s strong sound body.
That’s right, that’s right. Just leave it. Now. Let go of it. Just let go.
I knew abruptly what he wanted me to do. I did not know quite how to do it, and I was not sure that I could. Once, yes, I remembered that I had let go of my body and left it in his care. Only to awaken hours later beside Molly. But I was not sure how I had done it. And it had been different. I had left the wolf to guard me, when I had gone wherever I had gone. This time he wanted me to just break my consciousness free from my body. To willingly let go the tie that bound mind to flesh. Even if I could discover how to do it, I did not know if I had the will to do it.
Just lie down and die, Burrich had told me.
Yes. That’s right. Die if you must, but come with me.
I made an abrupt decision. Trust. Trust Burrich, trust the wolf. What did I have to lose?
I drew a deep breath, poised inside myself as for a dive into cold water.