“And it is,” he said. “But there’s a price. It’s not a gift, the blood. It’s a curse, the way I hear it. The way I’ve lived it.” He was ready to go now, but I asked it: “The way you hear it?” “We’re all bastards,” he said. “Mutts, mongrels. Here’s how it started—how we all started. A woman who was dying anyway, she decided to make her death count. This is back when, peasants and scythes. So she drank a bellyful of some poison plant, then walked naked out to the wolves who had been snatching the village’s children. To kill them. But, because she offered herself to them, the wolves didn’t want
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