Wolf head with a red rose

The ovens were lit at three and the first tray is cooling on the sill, so you can have the window open again. I know you hate the smell of yeast in your coat. The wolf came back last night, the grey one with the notch in its left ear, and it stood in the lane beyond the yard gate as though it had an appointment with me. I had flour to my elbows and no sense in me, so I went out with the peel in one hand.

It did not come forward. It had a rose in its jaws, a dark-stemmed red one, the sort that grows against the chapel wall and that nobody in the parish has ever been allowed to pick. It set the stem down on the cobbles between us, very neatly, the way Father Aldous used to set down the communion cloth, and then it looked at me with those pale eyes until I understood I was meant to take it.

I did not take it. I put a loaf on the step instead, still warm, and the wolf took that instead and walked off up towards the hill with the bread held carefully, like a man carrying a child home from a fair. The rose is in the jar on the sill now. The petals have started to bruise at the edges, the way they do when they have been held too long.

Tell Tomas the sourdough is ready for Saturday. I am not going to the chapel this year. Come before the bells, if you come at all, and bring your own knife for the crust.

Yours before the dawn, Hanne