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7

"Haah... Heeaargh!"

Ander stopped at the sound of that voice. Or at least, he thought it was a voice. It had an odd, wheezy sort of quality he didn't like, similar to an animal slowly dying of thirst.

He squinted into the darkness. The moon was full, hanging suspended in the jagged rip of sky between the vertical cliffs of the Cora's Pass, but only a very thin sliver of light could actually reach the bottom. The rest only served to cast deep, black shadows across the path like puddles of ink.

"Hello?" Ander called. "Anybody there?"

For a moment all was quiet, and then the soft, dragging sound of flat footfalls could be heard, accompanied by that odd wheezing.

Ander shrugged off his traveling pack and had a moment to wonder if he should fumble out a lantern or just grab the nearest rock when a shadow emerged up ahead. A gangly shadow moving in fits and starts, groaning and gasping.

"Oh, benevolent gods... Why... in all your glorious wisdom... would you put... a stinking... mountain... here... of all places!? Geck!"

Wait a minute...

A Fox came slogging down the path, his arms swinging like a pair of wilted vines. He managed to stagger a few extra steps and then collapsed halfway over a moss-covered rock, his chest rising and falling at a fantastic pace.

"Bartholomew, is that you? Or is that Nicholas?" For a while it had been possible to tell them apart because of Nicholas's missing tooth, and everyone rejoiced (none more so than their father). But then one day Bartholomew showed up at Artello's missing the exact same tooth. Whether this was a self-inflicted act of comradery or a dastardly bit of sabotage by his brother was still a topic of fierce debate amongst the townsfolk. Lonin, however, was of the opinion that it was all just a means to continue messing with their dear old dad, and Ander was inclined to agree.

One half of the Fox twins (whichever one it might be) eventually cobbled a mess of raspy sounds into something that vaguely resembled words. "Andy! 'Izzat you?"

"Yes, it's me.

"Oh thank the gods!" He weakly punched the air in a horizontal victory pose. "I ran all the way... from... the 'Glen..." Bart (if that really was Bart) then proceeded to ooze onto the ground like a deboned chicken.

The first warning bells were already beginning to go off in Ander's head. It certainly looked like Bart had run all the way from home, but why would he do that? Unless there was a drunk, half-naked girl in here he didn't know about, neither of the twins was the type to just drop everything and go wandering willy-nilly into the mountains, especially not in the middle of the night.

Unless...?

For a second he thought it must be about Kiana, but she wasn't due for another two weeks at the very least. This had to be something else. "You need any help over there?"

"Nurg!" Bartholomew shook his head and tried to... well, Ander could only assume he was trying to get up, but the way he was pawing at the ground only made him look like a dying squirrel trying desperately to retrieve one last nut from the ground before breathing its last. It was simply too much to bear, so Ander yanked him up by the collar and set him back on his feet.

"Better?"

Bartholomew made a circle with his thumb and index finger, then promptly collapsed against the rocky wall of the pass, gasping for breath. He slid down into a sitting position, his arms splayed out and his tongue hanging from the corner of his mouth. "No more smoking... ever again... never ever again..."

"Hey." Ander sat down beside him, his hands resting on his knees. "Mind telling me what's so important you damn near killed yourself getting over here?"

"Ander!" Bartholomew exclaimed as if seeing him for the first time, reaching out like a Fox on his death bed. "Andeeeeer..." His chest rose and fell, rose and fell with every gasp for breath. "There is... something... of vital... importance... and urgency... I must... tell you... before... I die... and that... important thing... is..." He took a deep breath. "Could I bother you for some libations? I'm feeling rather parched."

Ander rummaged around in his traveling pack, pulled out his waterskin, and held it out to the wheezing puddle of Fox. "You can have some of this."

"What's in there? Brandy? Wine?"

"Water."

"Ew, disgusting. Out of all the wondrous liquids upon the gods' green earth, why would you choose to carry water?"

"Um, I don't know, maybe because water is what most normal people put in their _water_skins? Now do you want some or not?"

Bartholomew turned his head in a most dramatic fashion, as if he were turning down a vail of poison. "No time... must... deliver... important... message... matter... of... life... and... death... can't... give up... must..." His eye caught a small drawstring bag at the bottom of Ander's pack, half open and all but exploding with the smell of fresh baking. "Are those sugar cookies in there, you giant rascal!?"

Ander rolled his eye, but smiled a little as he did so. "Indeed they are. Sarah baked them for me before I set off."

"Sarah's!? Oooh!" And now Bartholomew was reaching out with both hands, opening and closing his fingers like a toddler.

With the long-suffering sigh of one deferring a great favour, Ander held out the bag and Bartholomew instantly snatched up a fistful and started stuffing them into his mouth, a rather impressive feat of dexterity considering his current position in relation to Death's door. He reached for more, but Ander lifted the bag just beyond the range of his greedy, grasping fingers. "No more until you tell me what this message of 'vital importance and urgency' is all about."

Bartholomew chewed, swallowed, and pumped his fists in the air, exclaiming, "I have been revivified!" and also showering his trousers in crumbs. "Next time you see Sarah, tell her her confectionary is as delicious as she is beautiful."

Ander laughed. "I'll be sure to do that. Now, the message?"

"Oh right! Ander! Very important news! It's -" Bartholomew was seized by a sudden coughing fit and he doubled over, hacking and spluttering and spewing crumbs everywhere. "Oh, sorry about that," he said, thumping his chest. He seized Ander's waterskin and downed the contents in several long gulps.

"Hey! Whatever happened to 'Ew, disgusting'?"

"Ah, that's better. But anyway!" He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and let loose a hearty burp. "Ander! Crucial message! Vital importance! Must deliver! It's -"

Just then, Nicholas came running out of the shadows, even more out of breath than his brother had been before his miraculous sugar-fuelled revivification, spluttering and heaving and clutching at his chest. "Oh my gods!" he gasped. "Barty! Did you find him?"

"He's right here!" Bartholomew pointed with both hands.

"He's -" Nicholas looked from Ander, who was regarding his flaccid waterskin with some annoyance, to Bartholomew, who still had a line of crumbs stuck to his upper lip. "He just got the biggest news of his life and you dolts are just sitting around scarfing cookies!? What!?"

Ander nearly dropped his waterskin. "Wait, biggest news of my life?" For a second time he was sure they must be talking about Kiana and the baby, but that _couldn't_be. It was still too early for that.

Wasn't it?

Bartholomew rolled his eyes. "Well obviously I haven't told him yet, you idiot! Do you really think he'd be so calm if I had?"

Okay, now the warning bells were really starting to go off in his head. "Told me what?"

"Oh my gods, you still haven't told him!?" Nicholas hurried down the path. Well, 'hurried' as in slowly shuffled his way up to them, dragging his feet across the stones and dabbing at his sweaty forehead with a polka-dotted handkerchief. "Damn lazy-ass lollygagger! Bethany is gonna murder us for sure!" He pulled his face into massive frown, planted one hand on his hip and waggled his finger in a startling imitation of Bethany. "'You better fetch Ander right now, or I swear I will slap you so hard you won't know your ass from your crown!'"

"Ass from my crown?" Bart cocked a single nonplussed eyebrow. "I thought she said, 'I'll kick your ass into town'? I will admit it was kinda hard to hear her, though, what with Kiana screaming like that."

"What!?" Ander shot up as if stung by a bee. "What do you mean 'screaming'?"

"Perfectly understandable, of course. I'd be screaming, too, all things considered."

"Why was Kiana screaming!?" Ander was finding it very difficult not to start screaming himself.

"Because," Nicholas said, "your darling little wifey is on the verge of -"

Bartholomew held up the bag of sugar cookies. "Care for a cookie, brother?"

"Ooh, don't mind if I do, brother!"

Ander stood there, watching in awestruck horror as these two Foxes both popped cookies into their mouths and proceeded to chew slower than a cow chewing on cud. He watched their jaws go up and down and listened to the faint crunch of cookies slowly being crushed between their teeth, all while his heart raced at roughly ten thousand beats per minute and his stomach twisted itself somewhere around his throat.

The twins chewed. And chewed. And chewed. Paused. Chewed some more. Swallowed.

Ander sucked in a quick, desperate breath of air, only dimly aware that he had been holding his breath the entire time.

Bartholomew glanced at Nicholas. Nicholas glanced at Bartholomew. They both glanced at Ander.

"Well!?" he screamed, gesturing wildly for them to get on with it.

Bart licked his lips. "What were we talking about again?"

"Aargh!!" Ander seized Bartholomew by the shoulders. "What's the message!? Why was Kiana screaming!?" he shouted, shaking the wide-eyed Fox so hard his head began to whip back and forth like a child's sack doll, much to his brother's amusement, who was laughing so hard he could barely breathe.

"Be- cause- she- is-" Bart's jaws kept coming together with a snap, transforming his sentences into a herky-jerky mess of syllables. "I- think- I'm- gon- na- throw- up-"

"Bart! I swear, if somebody doesn't tell me what's going on right now, I will -"

"Kiana's having the baby!" Nicholas burst out, clutching his stomach. He was laughing so hard he couldn't even stand anymore, and was slowly sliding down against the rock wall.

Ander froze with Bartholomew still in his grasp. The Fox's head, however, hadn't gotten the message and was still slowly dipping back and forth.

Nicholas, all laughed out and now apparently a paragon of calmness and tranquillity, took a flask from his front pocket, unscrewed the top, took a quick nip, and said, "Well then, don't you think you ought to get over there, hmm?"

Ander opened his fingers and Bart fell right on his butt -

"Ow! I bit my tongue!"

• but he wasn't even aware of it. He was just standing there, his knees slightly bent, his arms outstretched, his fingers wide open. It looked like he was playing a game of catch with a group of unseen pups.

"Er..." he said, feeling oddly numb. "Thank you for the message. I... appreciate it..."

The twins snapped him a hearty salute. "No problem, Poppa Wolf."

Ander turned to the east and the ever-darkening throat of the pass, feeling like his body was moving on a slightly different time scale than his mind. "I think... I think I'll have to... um..."

He spotted the bags of salted meats on the ground, and that gave his mind something solid to latch onto. He picked them up and tossed them at Bart, who made a valiant attempt to catch them.

"Hooorf!!"

"Salted meats," Ander said, not looking, just staring straight ahead at the path winding its way through the pass, counting the steps, the minutes, the hours separating him from Kiana and the birth of his child. "Please drop that off at Bileam's house."

"Okay, no problem, just gonna lug these massive bags of meat through the pass, in the dark, with nary a torch or lantern." Bart shot him a thumbs up. "Hope a pack of wild mountain lions don't attack us for some reason."

Ander heard none of it. He was already on the move. By the time he reached the moss-covered rock, his walk had turned into a jog. By the time he reached Nicholas, still drinking from his flask, his jog had turned into a run. By the time he reached the inky black shadows of the pass, his run had turned into a sprint.

"Congratulations, Poppa Wolf!" the twins shouted after him.

Ander ran even faster. His lungs burned, his heart pounded against his ribcage, but he kept running, forcing his legs up and down. Never before had he felt so exhilarated, so worried, so happy, and so deathly afraid all at the same time.

"I'm coming, Kiana!" he whispered underneath his breath, keeping an image of Wolf Hill firmly in his mind, the instantly recognisable shape of his house at the very top, a beacon urging him to go even faster and faster. "I'm coming! I'm -