Spring, three months after.

--20--

	A week after Sebastian turned nineteen, a letter came to him.  It was left on the front step of his mother’s house, in the middle of the night.  By the time he found it, the rain had soaked the gum off the flap and washed the stamp away.  There was nothing readable on the outside of the envelope to show where it had come from, only his name on the front in faded blue ink.  The writing was spikey, and it was scribbled out in a way that suggested the writer had been in a hurry.  It was strange, because nobody outside of Shelby's Ford knew who he was.  The few friends he had wouldn’t waste what few scraps of paper they might be able to afford on writing him, when they could just speak to him in the market.
	He picked the envelope and eased his fingers inside so he could retrieve the letter without tearing it.  The paper inside was folded in a neat little square and waxed on the outside to protect it.
	'Sebastian,
	It is a strange thing to find that, suddenly, after twenty-seven years I have a brother.  Or, really, a half-brother, but never mind.  It is even stranger to think that you are half  rabbit.  There are nearly none where we live, so I don’t really know what to think of you.  The ones I've met are skittish and shy, but can be quite bold when they need to be.  I know they don't care much for wolves, but I trust you will be able to look past this.
	It is a pity that I am only able to write to you now.  Dad always kept you a secret from me, and I only found your name when I was going through his papers.  I can't imagine why.  Half-breeds are not well thought of in this city, but my family has always held itself above such prejudices.  Or so I always thought.  I even had a sort of friend, once, who was a half-breed, half mouse and half something else, I couldn't quite tell.  She's gone away now, I hope to a better life than she had here.  But she showed me that decency can shine in the unlikeliest of places.
	It's even more a shame that I have to tell you that our father died recently.  He was the  captain of a ship called the Scylla, and it was sunk not long after leaving harbor a couple of months ago.  I don't know what happened.  The rumor is he was attacked by pirates.  I imagine that was probably the case.
	All of that can wait, I suppose.  I didn't write to lay all my troubles on your shoulders, but you are all the family I have left.  I expect nothing from you, not even an answer to this letter.  I am not the kind of girl who asks for charity from others.  But if you ever come to Jaspertree for any reason, I would like to meet you.  Just ask anyone in the city for the Coburn Warehouse.
Your Sister,
Catherine.
	There was a coach ticket in the envelope, and a locket-sized picture of a pretty red wolf in a low-cut blouse.  She was smiling, a little shyly, and looked quite friendly.
	He startled when the door opened behind him, and he crammed the letter and the picture into his pocket.  His mother was expecting him to gather mushrooms for breakfast and she wouldn’t be happy that he was wasting time.  Except, instead of scolding him as he expected, she stayed in the doorway and looked out over his shoulder at the rain.
	“Are you going to go?” she said.
	“As soon as the rain eases up.  It will be easier to find the mushrooms when I can see what I’m doing,” he said.
	Jennifer huffed and came across the porch to grab his wrist.  She pulled his hand out of his pocket, the letter still gripped tight in his fingers, and she shook it at him.  Little droplets of water splashed his face, making him blink.
	“I meant this.  I almost threw it away when I found it this morning.  I wish I had,” she said.
	“You never told me I had a sister.  Why?” he said.
	“Because I knew as soon as you found it, you’d want to go find her.  She's nothing like you,” Jennifer said.
	“How do you know?  Have you ever met her?  Did you even care?”
	“Robert asked me not to.  We had our time together and that was enough.  Then I had you, and we both agreed that Jaspertree is no place for children,” she said.
	She pried his hand open and took the picture of his sister.  His fingers twitched, wanting to snatch it back from her, but the locket was delicate.
	“She's a pretty girl, for a wolf.  She looks like her father,” Jennifer said.
	“He just died.  Two months ago,” Sebastian said.
	“I know.  I read the letter before you got up,” she said.
	“You told me he died years ago.  That was the only thing you would ever say about him and you were lying,” he said.
	She dropped the picture back into his hand and closed his fingers over it.
	“I thought it would be easier.  We couldn’t have him, so he might as well have been dead to us,” she said.
	“You can’t tell me not to go.  I’m all she has left,” he said.
	“That isn’t your problem.  I’m sure she has friends, and Robert had plenty of money when I knew him.  I need you, too,” Jennifer said.
	“You don’t care what happens to her, do you? She’s just another wolf, another predator in a world that’s full of them.  Isn’t that right?” he said.
	“No.  If I thought that way, Robert and I would never have been together.  But there's nothing we can do for her,” Jennifer said.
	The rain slackened to a drizzle and the sky began to lighten, now that the sun was up over the horizon.  There was a smell of wet earth and of the early basil they had planted in the garden beside the porch.  It was possible, if the clouds cleared off, that it would get warm enough to be pleasant by noon.  Jennifer wiped at her eyes with her hands and her fingers came away wet.
	“I watched her grow up, in a way,” she said.
	“They wrote to you?” Sebastian said.
	“Every time Robert went out on a trip, he sent me a letter.  I told him he was getting too old to act like a puppy anymore, that he was better off staying home and looking after his girl.  But he never was the sort to listen to good sense,” she said.
	“Did he know you never told me about him?” Sebastian said.
	“He asked me not to tell you.  You have to understand, Robert and I grew up in a time when it was shameful to be a mixed-breed.  He thought you'd be happier growing up as a rabbit,” Jennifer said.
	Sebastian was tempted to go on to Shelby's Ford right now.  If he stayed any longer he was afraid that his mother would talk him out of it.  He hunched his shoulders and bent over to keep the water off his glasses, but it was still a cold, sneaky winter rain and it slipped down the back of his collar.
	“I’ll go and get the things for breakfast.  You go inside and get warmed up.  And stay put,” Jennifer said.
	She shoved him towards the front door and stomped out into the rain herself.
	He opened the locket to look at Catherine again.  Hybrids were rare even in Jaspertree, and he was pretty sure there weren’t any in Shelby's Ford.  Except that his best friend as a kitten had been a very small, grey rabbit whose great-grandmother was supposed to have been part mouse.  She always had been jumpy and her muzzle had been narrower and sharper than usual, but he’d never thought about it at the time.
	Now that he knew, it was certainly possible for him to see the wolf in himself.  His ears were shorter and broader than his mother’s, and there were streaks of rusty red in his beige fur that Jennifer didn't have.  His teeth were more pointed, too, and his tail was longer, more like a lynx’s stub than a nice, elegant rabbit’s tail.
	There was a slight scent on the picture, and on the letter, where Catherine had handled them.  He put them both under his nose and sniffed.  It was difficult, because he had to get past his own smell, and his mothers, but he could still make Catherine’s out.  There was a hint of chocolate and expensive perfume, but there was something else as well.  The smell was fainly like his own, though his was mixed with the comforting cut-grass scent of rabbit while Catherine's was sharper and made the fur pricle on the back of his neck.  He took another breath, to lock the smell in his memory, and went inside to pack.
	The house he shared with his mother had been built around an acient design that was borrowed from rabbits who lived in a different country a thousand years ago.  It had a large, round kitchen at the front and, at the back, hidden by a curtain, a tunnel that led underground to the private rooms.  It was heated all year by the large, black iron oven that his mother used for her baking.  The stove stood in the middle of the room and took up most of the space.  The only other piece of furniture in the kitchen was a round wooden table that was always covered with knives and pans, and the loaves of bread left to cool.
	His room was the smallest and the furthest underground.  It had just enough space for a bed and a bookshelf, and the ceiling was so low that it brushed the top of his head when he stood up straight.  He had tried to put a carpet down once, because there was a tiny flaw in the floor that let in the damp, and the smell of mildew came back to him every time it rained.
	He was almost finished packing when his mother came back.  He heard the door shut and he heard her moving around the kitchen, just like his whole life hadn’t been turned on its head.  He stuffed another shirt in on top of everything else and closed it with a jerk of the drawstring.  He slung the pack over his shoulder and went upstairs.  He imagined walking right past her and out the door without stopping.  That was no more than she deserved, for hiding everything from him for so long.
	When he got to the top, though, he was stopped by the smell of frying mushrooms.  She had used the last of the good butter he had given her for her birthday  two weeks ago, and she'd made toast to go with it.  He made it as far as his seat at the table before his stomach betrayed him.
	“I wanted to tell you who you are.  Robert and I argued about it for years.  Finally, he said it would be okay once you were an adult.  That way, at least you could decide whether you wanted to stay here with me or go off to be a wolf.  I was planning to tell you on your birthday,” Jennifer said.
	Sebastian pulled his chair out and sat on the edge of it, just to save his strength for his walk to Jaspertee.  Jennifer opened her cupboard and took out the sugar bowl for their tea.
	“What if I did ask you to stay?” she said.
	“Catherine’s alone.  And I think she needs help,” he said.
	“So do I.  Every single day,” she said.
	“But you have Ms. Miller, and Terrie Brookshaw, and they both come by almost every day.  I won’t be gone that long,” he said.
	She stirred the mushrooms savagely around in the pan, careless of the butter that splashed and burned on the stovetop.
	“Well, I suppose that settles that.  He wanted you to decide what you are and I guess you have,” she said.
	While Sebastian helped himself to some of the mushrooms, Jennifer put a small canvas sack on the table and opened it.  It held part of a wheel of cheese and a loaf of bread.  There was also a little bag of dried fruit, and five tarnished silver dollar coins.  That much money added up to more than a year’s worth of savings.
	“Are you really going to let me go?” he said.
	“You’re going to, anyway.  So there’s no point in talking about it, is there?” she said.
	“You said we ought to help people whenever we could.  But I don’t need all of this.  It isn’t that far to the city,” he said.
	“And how will you live when you get there?  On your sister’s charity, if she’s kind enough to give it?  No.  I never asked Robert for a thing in my life, except for him to love me.  You're not going to beg, even if she is your kin,” Jennifer said.
	She closed the bag up again and slipped it inside his backpack, tucking it deep down under his clothes.  Then she gave him a kiss on the top of his muzzle and sat down to eat her breakfast.