Wolf head with tribal blackwork bands

It is a wolf, grey as the slate, and it does not run. It looks at you the way the old tallyman looked at his ledgers, weighing what you are worth. Its fur lifts in the wind in long dark strokes, and for a moment the gusts seem to pour through it, curling up past its ears like smoke off a dying fire. You have heard the stories in the valley inn: sheep taken, a boy lost in the drifts above Llyn Du. You grip the lamp and wait for it to decide.

It decides to turn. It steps off the track onto the scree to the left, stopping every few yards to look back, and each time it stops the wind drops a little. You follow because there is nothing else to do. Dafydd shouts that you have gone mad. Then the ground in front of your boots is simply not there, a black mouth where the path gave way in the thaw, and the lamp throws its light down into nothing.

When you look up, the wolf is sitting on the rock above the gap, tail wrapped neatly over its paws, watching you with the patience of something that has seen a great many fools. You step carefully, one stone at a time, until the path under your feet is whole again. The wolf stands, shakes out its coat, and slips over the ridge into the dark. Behind you Dafydd finally falls silent. You do not tell him what you saw, because he would not believe you, and because the wind is already rising again over the Gap.