Ivy’s favorite game to play in the woods, ever since she first arrived
at Granny’s, was to guess the type of flowers and mushrooms that she
came across. With the dense leaves and branches of the towering trees
all around the cottage, it was too dark for her to make out the exact
color and species of plant she had picked up. Ivy knew that her survival
relied on her keen sense of smell. Although she had read about the most
common blooms and fungus in her illustrated encyclopedia, she had no
idea what many of them smelled like. She always brought them home for
Granny to sort out the poisonous ones. The others were kept in vases
around the house, or in the case of edible mushrooms, they became
ingredients in Granny’s soups.
That might sound like a rather harmless hobby, but for a young clumsy
wolf, the woods were always fraught with danger in the form of
distractions. An errant bird song could draw Ivy’s attention like a moth
to a flame, and the momentary lapse in awareness could send her tumbling
over a large gnarled root. That was how she got the nasty scrape on her
leg that day. She dared not look, feeling the hot
blood running down her leg as she scrambled
home.