“Go away,” Winter said to her older brother. “Just go away.”
Winter released the surviving cub. She knelt down, and with her free arm pulled Thrush against her shoulder, stroking the tangled hair, wiping away the tears. She seemed to have finished hating Thrush. “It’s all right,” she said. “They’re free now. They’re immortal.” But she knew that would be scant comfort to a mother who had seen her sons killed. Thrush was not a wizard. She could not see the dark, wild souls of her bear children as they were: beyond form and beyond essence, ancient and young, eternal and ever-changing in their house at the very threshold of the world, where sky and mountain and bears alike become sheer, burning light.