Elara ignored the goats and examined the ground. There. A smear of dark, oily soil where there should have been loam. A single track—not a coyote’s, not a dog’s. Too broad, with blunt claw marks that didn’t retract. And at the base of a fence post, a tuft of coarse, black-tipped hair.

He climbed the rock pile an hour later.

“He won’t eat,” Croft rasped, his eyes watery. “Won’t climb. Just stands there, starin’ at the eastern fence.”

Croft blinked. “You want to see the fence?”

On the fourth morning, Elara found Barnaby at the creek. He was drinking. Then, slowly, as if remembering an old dance, he lowered his head and butted a mossy stone. Once. Twice. He turned to the eastern fence, sniffed the air where the wolverine’s track had been, and let out a rumbling sneeze of indifference.

She closed the chart and stepped outside. The valley was quiet now—not the silence of terror, but the silence of a herd sleeping soundly under a wide, forgiving moon.

The ghost had a voice now. And a voice could be challenged.