Hannah and the Wild Woods

by Carol Anne Shaw

I rush to the window and the minute I turn on my phone light, I see Jack swoosh past with something brown and furry in his talons. Jack is hunting at night? Shouldn’t he be roosting?

  This is too weird. I pull on my sweats and head down the stairs.

  Norman gets up quickly as I step past him on the landing. When he sees our bedroom door is closed, he lies back down again.

  I sneak out of the lodge and make my way to the compost shed, mud squelching under my boots. I scan the ground for tracks, but there are none this time, just the recognizable treads of Peter’s hiking boots—it was his turn to empty the buckets tonight.

  I stop by the Sitka spruce, where I listen and wait. And then there is a noise—a faint “yip,” followed by a soft whimper, definitely canine. A raven cries out, and the sound rises up and over the gusting wind and the rushing ocean behind me. It’s Jack, all right, and he sounds stressed. He’s flown over my head and into the woods.

  I need to find him. I have a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach; something is up and I’m pretty sure it has to do with Sitka. But I’m not going out there alone. I’m going to need backup, and I know just the person to help.

  Seconds later I’m in my room again, where thankfully, Sabrina is snoring like an old man. I nudge Kimiko, and she sits up with a start.

  “What?” she whispers.

  “I need your help outside.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. Please, I think the wolf may be in trouble.”

  “The Okami? The one you call Sitka?” Kimiko is out of bed and into her clothes in record time, and several moments later we are both outside by the Sitka spruce tree.

  “What’s going on?” she asks.

  “I heard something,” I say. “I think Sitka is in trouble.”

  Once we’re in the woods, and I remember what Yisella taught me about being in the forest the summer I was twelve. Be aware. Be quiet. Listen. And the quieter I am, the more I hear—things like the faint snapping of twigs off to one side, the moan of the trees overhead, and the chilling call of a nearby barred owl.

  Although dawn isn’t far off, a heavy fog is rolling in off the sea, and a damp chill settles over us. The fog finds its way through the spaces between the trees, making it hard to see, but I am sure-footed, and let’s face it, Kimiko is nocturnal. Nothing wrong with her eyes!

  But the deeper into the woods we go, the more I stress about Jack and Sitka. When I lose focus completely, I slip on a cedar root, and slam against the trunk of a big cedar. A protruding knot in the wood jabs me in hard my ribs. I curse under my breath. This was a really bad idea. After all, there isn’t a law against ravens flying around before dawn, or hunting baby rabbits for that matter. Maybe Jack does this sort of thing all the time. How would I know? And the yip and whimper I heard could have been from Duke, that old malamute Peter mentioned, that lives nearby. Maybe what I heard wasn’t a distress call after all. Maybe it was just Duke, “wanting in.”

  Get a grip, Hannah.

  We keep walking.

  Chapter Twenty

  I take hold of kimiko’s arm, close my eyes and listen. Creaking trees: check. Snapping twigs: check. Freaky sounding owl: check. Frantic raven: check. My eyes snap open. A little “yip.” There it is again.

  Kimiko sniffs the air. “The Okami.”

  Then I hear them—howling—from somewhere high over the trees. As soon as it starts, the yipping stops. But there’s no question in my mind, those wolves are calling to Sitka. But it stops as quickly as it started, and afterwards, there is only the sound of the wind in the swaying branches overhead.

  I stop walking and turn around several times, trying to see my way through the fog. Trying to see anything! Where are you, Jack?

  “This fog is crazy!” I say.

  “Just stick close,” Kimiko says. “My eyes are okay in this stuff.”

  But sticking close still doesn’t keep me from tripping like an idiot, and the more I trip, the more frustrated I become. Hah, so much for my superior forest skills!

  Out of nowhere, a small circle of light, no bigger than a quarter, appears just off the ground near my knees. Within seconds, it’s joined by two more, and soon there are ten of them! They give off so much light that I can see a moss-covered log a few feet away from me, beside some maple saplings. I whirl around to face Kimiko.

  “Are you doing this?”

  She nods, her eyes glowing. “For once my Firefox power is working the way I want it to.”

  “These are awesome!”

  The luminescent circles float weightlessly around us. There has to be at least thirty of them now.

  When I hear the heavy swish, swish of familiar sounding wings coming through the trees, I breathe a sigh of relief and hold out my arm.

  “Took you long enough,” I say, as Jack lights on my forearm. He hops up to my shoulder and settles his wings beside him. There is a little fur of some kind in one of his talons—rabbit fur, baby soft and fine. I shudder. It isn’t a nice thing to think about, but Jack would have had his reasons for the kill. He is a wild creature, after all.

  He clucks at me, bobbing his head up and down, and while most of the time we usually understand each other, this is not one of those times.

  He looks sideways at one of the floating orbs as it floats past him. When it is mere inches away from his beak, he makes a little snap at it as though it were a bubble he could burst, but misses. Another one grazes my arm and floats down to the ground where it sizzles and burns out, and Jack jumps off my arm and cuts low through the trees.

  “Come on, Kimiko.” I grab hold of her arm. “He wants us to follow him.”

  We clamber over slippery roots, pushing away tangles of ground cover, while the silent, bright trail of lights leads us through the fog.

  When we push through a thick stand of young alders, we stop walking. Sitka! She whimpers and presses her body back against a log. There are some tiny remnants of the baby rabbit on the ground in front of her, and the fur around her mouth is tinged with red.

  The floating lights circle slowly above us, throwing eerie shadows across the ground, and both Kimiko and Sitka sniff the air.

  Then I see that Sitka’s leg is caught in an old leg hold trap, one that’s attached by a thick chain to a now-fallen tree. The rusty device looks ancient, forgotten, like part of an old trap-line from days gone by.

  And Sitka, trapped and vulnerable, looks thinner than ever. Even so, there is a steadiness in her eyes that tells me even though she’s injured, she is not afraid.

  “We have to spring that trap,” I say. “That’s why Jack wanted us to follow him.”

  “How?” Kimiko says.

  “We’ll work together.”

  “I told you. My powers are unpredictable,” Kimiko says. “Especially for something as big as this, especially for the Okami. If I fail—”

  “Who said anything about magic or powers. We’re going to do this the old-school way. Between the two of us, we can spring that old trap.”

  Kimiko quickly composes herself, and nods.

  “Jack!” I hiss. “The chain.”

  Jack hops behind Sitka and picks up part of the chain attached to the trap. He tugs at it a little farther down, trying to pull it out from underneath a branch. The chain finally gives, and I hold my breath while Sitka scuttles up to the log, the rusted trap dragging behind her.

  “Okay, Jack? Can you distract her?”

  Jack snatches at a tiny piece of the rabbit meat and hops in front of Sitka, but the wolf isn’t stupid—she’s watching Kimiko’s and my every move.

  “Shhhhhh,” I whisper. “We can help you.” I take another step forward, and Sitka’s ears twitch back and forth. Jack drops the meat in front of her and she cocks her head to one side as he begins to talk his crazy raven talk. She is totally mesmerized by him—it’s as if they are sharing some kind of secret, wild conversation.

  When the interchange between them is over, I move forward cautiously and squat beside the old
leg hold trap. I resist the urge to stroke Sitka’s flank. I can’t believe she’s allowing me to be this close to her. Whatever Jack “said” to her worked. Still, I don’t want to push my luck, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that wild animals—Okami or not—should remain wary of humans. Once they lose their fear of us, they put themselves in danger.

  “Can you stand on the chain?” I ask Kimiko. “Keep it steady for me?”

  Kimiko places both her feet firmly on the slippery chain while resting a hand against a nearby cedar trunk. “Okay,” she says. “Ready.”

  I place my palms flat against the rusted levers that protrude on either side of the trap. Thankfully, the steel jaws aren’t snapped all the way shut, but even so, Sitka’s leg is trapped—a nasty-looking gash visible on the side of it. One of her toes looks mangled, too—she must have been chewing at it out of frustration—and on closer inspection I’m horrified to see that there isn’t much left of it.

  Kimiko inches along the chain until the side of her boot presses hard against the trap. I push on the levers but they don’t budge. “Come on!” I hiss under my breath. I summon all my strength and push down hard, so hard that my arms start to tremble. The trap creaks, and there is a loud snap as the levers let go. I rock backwards, my elbow smacking against the ground, but the pain hardly registers as I see Sitka dart away on three legs. She takes cover in the deeper shadows and licks at her injured leg.

  “You did it!” Kimiko says, jumping off the chain.

  “We did it,” I say while scouring the ground for a smooth thick stick. I spy one at the edge of the clearing, pick it up and hold it vertically over the trap. In a rush of adrenaline, I raise it high then smash the end of it down on the pan of the trap. The rusted jaws shudder and snap shut, biting against the wood with a force that jars my hands loose. I pick up the chain and try to break it, but it’s no use. It’s too thick. So instead, I drag the trap into the bushes and bury it with dirt, wet leaves and whatever else I can find. Good riddance evil trap.

  “I hope she’ll be okay,” Kimiko says.

  “She’s probably going to lose that toe,” I say. “But hopefully neither it, nor that cut on her leg will get infected.

  “But what if it does?”

  “Try and think positive,” I say.

  “But—”

  “It doesn’t do any good to think like that, Kimiko. Come on. We’ve got to get back. The others will be up soon.”

  “Jack is very clever,” Kimiko says. “He led us straight to her.”

  “He knew we’d be able to help,” I say.

  We walk out of the clearing, and thanks to Kimiko’s special lights, it isn’t long before we find ourselves back on the trail. When we break through the trees to the beach, I see the Artful Elephant through the fog on the point and feel a big surge of relief.

  Jack hops along on the sand beside us, confused and fascinated by the hovering lights. He has, after all, had a thing for bright and shiny objects. But when he closes in on one, the bright sphere bounces up and over his head like a child’s ball, only to fizzle out altogether. It’s an action that leaves him perplexed and hopping around like a maniac.

  Kimiko stifles a giggle.

  “Hmmmm,” I say, smiling. “A trickster messing with another trickster.”

  One by one, the strange lights flicker and die, and by the time we reach the steps to the lodge, it has begun to spit with rain.

  Jack hops around the side of the house, no doubt headed for the cat flap in the pantry door—I’m sure a little shut-eye is in his immediate future.

  “Hannah?” Kimiko asks when we have both slipped back into our beds without waking Sabrina.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry I’ve been so awful. You’ve only been trying to help me.”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “The Okami,” Kimiko says. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”

  “I think so,” I say. “She seems determined.”

  “I wish I knew what her message for me was.”

  The air hangs between us, dark, heavy and silent. I don’t say anything, but I wonder if that little wolf might have a message, not just for Kimiko, but for me as well.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “We were talking to the water taxi guy in town this morning,” Jade says at breakfast. “He said he spotted three wolves this week on Meares Island, and another time on one of the nearby Deadman Islets. Big ones, too.”

  “Must the source of the howling we heard the night we arrived,” Peter says.

  “Meares Island?” I look out the window. “That’s the big island northwest of Tofino harbour, right? It’s kind of behind where we are?”

  “That’s the one,” Jade says. “The old-growth forest there was saved from logging back in 1984; big, big trees on that island. Anyway, Warren—that’s the water taxi guy—he said those wolves have been pretty vocal—they’ve been singing every night.”

  “Maybe you heard them in your sleep, Hannah,” Peter says. “Maybe that’s what got you so fired up about wolves the other day.”

  I look over at Kimiko, who is hanging on Peter’s every word. She sprinkles a little brown sugar on her oatmeal, but mostly misses the bowl because she’s watching him so intently.

  “I think I’ve seen the Okam … a wolf,” she says. “I think I saw one in the woods last night.”

  I shoot her a look at the same time that Sabrina drops her spoon in horror. “Seriously? Bears and wolves? All we need now is a cougar to start sniffing around here.”

  Peter looks at Kimiko and raises an eyebrow. “Hmmmmm. Maybe you and Hannah aren’t imagining things. Maybe you saw the same wolf.”

  “Well, keep it on the down low,” Jade says. “The last thing we need are trigger-happy locals heading out into the woods with guns.”

  “What? Are you kidding?” I push my bowl away, my appetite suddenly gone. “They would shoot it?”

  “Well, some people have the wrong perception about wolves. They think culling them is a good thing. They call it ‘predator control.’”

  “That’s horrible!” I say.

  “I agree,” Jade says.

  “You know,” Peter says thoughtfully, staring off into space. “Wolf medicine is pretty powerful stuff.”

  Kimiko puts her spoon down. “Wolf medicine?”

  “Yeah. If a wolf appears for you, it might be your spirit animal, and spirit animals carry powerful medicine. It might be trying to tell you something about family. Remember what we talked about, Hannah?”

  I go back to stirring my already-stirred oatmeal. Sure, okay. Maybe the Okami’s message for Kimiko has something to do with her home. That would make sense. But maybe Sitka is including me, too, because my home is sure on my mind a lot these days.

  When everyone has left the table, Kimiko leans over and whispers, “Do you think the Okami—Sitka—is okay?”

  “I’m sure Jack is watching over her.”

  “I have decided I must leave her something.” Kimiko says this very matter-of-factly. “Tonight I will leave her an offering by the Sitka spruce tree. To honour her.”

  “What kind of an offering?”

  “Rice, to honour the rice god, Inari. Inari rules over all Okami and kitsune.”

  “Will leave who some rice?” Sabrina plunks herself back down in her chair to pull on a pair of heavy socks.

  Kimiko looks like a deer in the headlights, but I quickly jump in. “Oh, rice for the cat—for Pearl. She has an upset stomach. Kimiko thinks some cooked white rice will settle it.”

  Sabrina totally buys it. “Yeah, that’s what our Rosa, our housekeeper, used to give me when I was sick: the B.R.A.T. diet. Works every time.”

  “Brat?” Kimiko says, confused.

  “Yeah. Bananas, rice, applesauce and toast. It’s good for you after you’ve been puking your guts out.”

  “Puking?”

  “Throwing up! Barfing. Vomiting. God!”

  I shrug and wipe some toast crumbs off the table
into my hand. Kimiko gets up from the table and picks up her oatmeal bowl and mug.

  Sabrina gasps. “What,” she shrieks at the top of her voice, “… is that?”

  Halfway to the kitchen, Kimiko freezes.

  “Oh my God! Is that a … a tail?” Sabrina drops her bowl back on the table and points at Kimiko in disbelief. Sure enough, a bushy red tail is sticking out from the top of her jeans, its white tip reaching midway up her back.

  Sabrina makes a grab for it, but Kimiko shrieks, ducking sideways.

  “What the—” Peter laughs as he tries to get a look at the back of Kimiko. “What is that? A fox tail?”

  Kimiko’s face is ashen, her pleading amber eyes filled with terror. She looks absolutely terrified. This is clearly no laughing matter.

  I have to think fast! I hop off my chair and rush toward her, pushing her playfully on her shoulder. The push was harder than I meant it to be, and Kimiko stumbles. “Hah! Good one, Kimiko!” I laugh heartily, nudging her again. “But I thought you said that one was mine!”

  She looks puzzled, and I quickly turn to the others. “Duh!

  Haven’t you guys ever seen these things before? They’re, like, the hottest thing in Japan right now.”

  “Hey, wait a second,” Sabrina says. “Is that a Shippo tail? Yeah, I’ve heard about those things! I read an article in one of my dad’s magazines about them.”

  “Oh, me too!” Jade says. “They’re a fashion accessory that can read your brainwaves or something, right? I thought they were still in the prototype phase!”

  “Exactly! Right!” I say emphatically. “Everybody is wearing them in Japan. It’s totally an anime thing!”

  Ruth appears, shaking her head. “Well,” she says. “I have never heard of such a thing. Mind you, that’s not surprising!”

  “Come on, let me try it on,” Sabrina says, making a lunge for Kimiko. She tries to grab the tail, but Kimiko leaps away like … like a fox. She looks at me helplessly, a look of desperation on her face.

  Thankfully, Jade saves the day. “Don’t, Sabrina. You’ll break it!” she says. “It’s attached to a heart monitor on your ear or something, right Kimiko?”