The Wolf and Death from The Lion and the Aardvark

Wolf, old and alone, spent the better part of a week tracking a herd of bison, waiting for the youngest one to succumb to the heat of the unusually long summer. He followed them into a valley, where the scent of the flowers and fruit and trees–verily the very scent of Life– weighed down the breeze with a chorus of musks, spices, and amber. Birds and insects zipped about. His prey stopped at a watering hole and joined a menagerie of beasts and drank. Safe in their numbers, they no longer fretted that the wolf would claim a single member of their herd.

An extract from ‘The Wolf and Death’ by Julia Bond Ellingboe from The Lion and the Aardvark, now in all good bookshops. This illustration is one of ten in the book by Rachel Kahn.