by Peggy Webb
“I’m going to miss coffee…among other things.”
She held his gaze as long as she could bear. “Did you find your wolf family?”
“Yes.”
“How did they react?”
“They were happy to see me. Wouldn’t your family be happy to see you after a long absence?”
“Yes, of course… I feel awkward about all this, Hunter. Interviewing you in the Wolfe mansion was easy, but I’m out of my element here, and struggling to understand a relationship that is totally beyond my experience. Or the experience of anyone I’ve ever known.”
“I don’t know how to explain it to you. I don’t analyze my connection to the wolves, Hannah. I just accept it.”
A deep truth settled into her bones: if she didn’t accept his loyalties to the wolves she would lose him.
“Let’s have coffee, then I’ll be ready to see the cave.”
They made the long climb to the cave mostly in silence. Although it had been months since she was there, Hannah recognized most of the landmarks. Still, she was glad Hunter was leading.
She didn’t see any signs of the wolves.
“They know I need to do this alone,” Hunter said.
“You read my mind.”
“Yes.”
“Can you always do that?”
“No. Only when you are open to me.”
“I’ll have to be more careful.”
“Why?”
“A woman needs a few secrets.”
This sort of camaraderie was easy in the daytime. It was the nights that brought uncertainty and fear.
They topped the last ridge and the entrance to the cave loomed ahead.
“I’ll go first.” Hunter took a powerful flashlight and turned the beam into the dark interior. “Watch your head.”
Hannah ducked in after him and followed a distance of thirty feet on hands and knees. Suddenly the ceiling opened up, and she was standing in an enormous cavern with a thin beam of light coming through a natural skylight twenty feet up.
As her eyes adjusted to the dim light she saw Hunter’s weapons neatly stacked in one corner of the cave, a pallet of bearskins and three large utensils that looked as if they had been made from the wreckage of the plane. In the center was a fire pit. She could only guess at the effort it had taken him to create a spark in order to build a fire.
But it wasn’t what she saw that touched her heart: it was what she felt. She felt safe and warm and welcome. She felt at home.
“May I take photographs?”
“Yes.”
He waited while she walked around snapping pictures. After she had finished she slung her camera over her shoulder and went to stand by his side.
He reached for her hand. “Hannah.…”
“Yes?”
He was silent a long time, and then he said, “Not yet.…”
What had he been going to say? She waited, hoping he would change his mind.
Finally she said, “Are you ready to show me the drawings on the wall?”
“I’ll start at the beginning.” He turned the beam of light onto the wall nearest the entrance. “This is my calendar.”
“May I photograph these as we go?”
“Yes.”
Her heart hurt as she zoomed in on the marks that covered the walls. Amazing how the passage of twenty years could look when it was visible at a glance. Frightening. Lonely. Hopeless, even.
“All right,” she said, and he shone the beam on the list of names he’d carved—his own name, the names of his parents and his wolf family, the name of his hometown.
“So I wouldn’t forget.” His words were stripped bare of everything except the stark truth.
Next he showed her the carvings. In sequence. His early carvings depicted day-to-day activities—hunting with the wolves, bathing in the river, sitting on a ridge underneath a full moon.
They became more sophisticated as the years went by, more detailed as he began to carve scenes that portrayed the passing of seasons and the social lives of his wolf family.
“Amazing,” she said. “How did you get the colors?”
“Various ways. Some from ground roots and bark, others from powder hammered from the rocks.”
Every inch of space on the walls was covered, from the ground to as high as he could reach. Hannah lost track of time as she snapped pictures of his incredible artwork.
When she was finished she was so emotionally drained she sat on an outcropping of stone. Hunter bent over her and softly caressed her hair. She turned her face up to his, and in that moment they might have come together as naturally as binary stars.
But Hunter stepped back and she reached into her backpack.
“Hungry?” she asked, and he accepted the beef jerky she offered.
They ate in silence, and then she said, “Is that all?”
“For now.”
“You mean there are more cave drawings?”
“There is nothing more to see.”
“Today?”
“For a while.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’d better get back. It will be dark soon.”
Hannah glanced toward the bearskin pallet. Her heart must have been in her eyes, for Hunter gave her one long look then began to gather her supplies.
She followed him back down the mountain to her campsite. Her tent looked forlorn sitting there in the dark all by itself. She shivered.
“I’ll lend you a bearskin,” he said.
“No thanks. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll see you in the morning?”
“Yes. I’ll stay one more day.”
They stood only a few inches apart without touching. The moon slanted across his face, emphasizing the high cheekbones and silvery eyes.
“Sweet dreams, Hunter,” she whispered.
He touched her hair, then vanished into the night.
Hunter kept watch over her throughout the lonely night. When the moon faded silver to make way for the sun, a great white wolf and his mate joined him.
The wolves stationed themselves on either side of Hunter, and he put a hand on each massive head.
“There she is,” Hunter said. “My mate.”
He felt the empathy that rose from the great hearts beating within the lupine breasts, and he stroked their fur.
“I know what you’re thinking. Why is she alone in her tent while I’m alone in the woods?”
They licked his hands and their warm breaths fogged the air.
What had once been so simple was now extraordinarily complex.
“I can’t ask her to be mine until I know who I am.”
When Hannah emerged from her tent the next morning Hunter was waiting for her.
“You’ve been here all night, haven’t you?” she asked.
“How did you know?”
“I felt your presence.”
“Good.” He took her backpack. “What do you want to see today?”
“Can I get close enough to the wolves to get some candid shots of you interacting with them?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t scare them away?”
“No. They trust me.”
They climbed upward once more, and when they neared the top of the ridge, Hunter said, “Let me go ahead and prepare the way.”
He disappeared over the ridge and after a while reappeared and waved to her. Camera ready, she followed at a distance.
The scene she came upon took her breath away. Hunter was sitting in a circle of wolves, his arms around two massive beasts. Two others leaned against his shoulders, two had their heads on his lap and two lay curled at his feet.
If she hadn’t seen the peaks of Mt. McKinley rising in the background and the wild tangle of forest that surrounded them, she might have thought he was in the midst of a petting zoo with tame wolves.
She photographed until late evening, always careful not to get too close, always mindful that she was a guest in an unusual family. When the light began t
o wane, she motioned Hunter.
“Thank you,” she said. “Can you thank the wolves for me?”
“I already did.”
He took her arm and as they headed back to camp she was vividly aware that her time with Hunter had almost run out.
“I will need at least a month here,” he said, as if he had read her mind, and probably he had. “At the end of that time, I’ll know.”
Her connection with him was so strong she didn’t have to ask questions. She understood his quest.
“I’ll come back for you,” she said. “May first.”
“If you haven’t finished your story in South America by then, I’ll wait.”
“Where?”
“In the cave.”
“Yes.”
“You can find it without my help?”
“Of course.”
They reached her camp at sunset, and the lingering glow turned him into a sort of surreal god, part wolf, part man. She cupped his face.
“Hunter, I want you to choose me.”
“I know.”
“And if you don’t, if you choose to stay, I don’t think I can bear to face you. I don’t think I’m strong enough to stand in front of you and hear you say, ‘I’m not coming back.’ Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand, Hannah.”
He wove his fingers through her hair, then cupping her head he drew her close. His mouth descended on hers, and the magic overtook them for a small eternity.
When he finally broke away, she whispered, “If the answer is no, leave me a sign.”
“I will.” He brushed her lips with his fingertips. “Take care, Hannah.”
“You, too.”
She went into her tent so she wouldn’t have to watch him leave. Sitting in the middle with her eyes closed, she wrapped her arms around herself and remembered. Every exquisite detail of every moment she’d spent with him.
And when the galleon of a moon flooded her campsite with silver, Hannah went outside and built a big fire. Then she shed her clothes inside, wrapped a blanket around herself and took up her station beside the flames.
From a distance she felt the watchful silvery eyes. Smiling, she let the blanket slip apart as she began her erotic love play.
She was playing to win.
Chapter Forty-Two
Hunter stood on the ridge watching Hannah’s plane wing south. Shading his eyes, he followed the silver and blue Baron until it merged with the pale sapphire skies.
Denali had never seemed more desolate. Solitude had never been lonelier.
He went back inside his cave and rifled through his duffle bag until he found what he wanted. His books. Perhaps he was a wilderness man, after all, but this time he would have his books. This time he would keep language alive.
He opened a slim volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, but instead of reading he remembered his last picture of Hannah, the blanket sliding open and firelight flickering over her soft skin. The memory took hold and wouldn’t let go.
He set the book aside and took out canvas and paints. Another luxury he’d decided to bring along.
“Some primitive I turned out to be,” he said, as much to hear the sound of his own voice as to chastise himself.
With her memory fresh in his mind, he painted the first stroke on the canvas.
He painted for days, filling canvas after canvas with images of Hannah. He painted with the fervor of a man driven to madness by passion. Finally, he slumped exhausted onto the bearskin and slept.
When he woke up he didn’t know if he’d slept twelve hours or twenty-four. Twenty-four or forty-eight.
He raced to his calendar on the wall and carved off one day. Or had it been two?
One day wouldn’t make that much difference, but from now on he’d have to be vigilant. He had an appointment to keep with Hannah.
After Denali, Hannah sweltered in the jungle. Good, she thought. She needed the distraction. Even an unpleasant one.
She threw all her energies into her work, driving herself so she wouldn’t have time to think. By the end of the first week she was so exhausted she could barely move, let alone think.
“At this rate I’m going to kill myself,” she said.
No matter what she did, May first wouldn’t come any sooner. She decided to pace herself, and when memories of Hunter stole through her mind, she decided to give herself permission to sit down and savor them, to dream about how it had been between them and how it might be again.
Between taking field notes for the story she would do on the disappearing rain forests, she began writing the rest of Hunter’s story. She worked far into the night with only the glow of the moon and the sound of night birds deep in the jungle to keep her company.
His second week in Denali, Hunter left the relative comfort of his cave along with his books and his canvases, and joined the wolf pack two miles away in a high meadow where moose were plentiful. In order for his month in Denali to be a true test, he had to return to the wild completely.
His wolf brothers welcomed him without reservation. He had not stayed away long enough to become a stranger to them. He joined the hunt, and when the wolves separated a large bull from the herd, Hunter brought it down with one well-placed arrow.
They would all eat well for a while. He carved out a section of the flank for himself, and left the rest for them. Hunter stored his meat in a snowbank, and that evening when the pack gathered underneath the moon to celebrate their success, he joined them.
But his heart was not in it. His heart was somewhere in South America where a courageous woman was using her powerful pen to try and reverse another ecological disaster.
The day she wrapped up her story, Hannah was ecstatic. Excitement stole her appetite, and instead of eating she started packing her gear. She would leave for Denali tomorrow. A day early. That would give her an extra day in case bad weather forced her to stay overnight somewhere.
She hardly slept at all that night, and when she got up the next morning she thought her fatigue was due to sleeplessness. She grabbed a couple of bags, started toward the plane and blackness swamped her.
She woke up on the ground, sweat-drenched and dizzy. When she tried to stand up, her legs buckled.
“My God, what’s happening to me?”
She lay there for a moment, willing herself not to pass out. Gnats flew at her eyes and mosquitoes feasted on her arms. The sun was already nearing its zenith.
“I must have been out a couple of hours.” The sound of her own voice was unfamiliar to her, the hoarse croak of a sick woman.
She couldn’t lie there in the sun or she could add sun-stroke to whatever ailed her. With superhuman effort, Hannah crawled to her tent and curled into her sleeping bag.
“Twenty-four-hour virus,” she said before she fell into another sweat-soaked, fever-racked sleep.
It was dark when she woke again, and she fumbled around for her water bottle. Even if it hadn’t been dark she would have had a hard time seeing, for a headache almost blinded her.
By morning she knew she had something more than a simple virus. With the last bit of strength she possessed, she found her cell phone and dialed Belle Rose.
Hunter put the last mark on his calendar two days early in case he’d miscalculated that long sleep he took the first week. Then he stepped outside his cave onto the newly greening grass and searched the skies for Hannah’s plane.
Long into the night he watched, and finally he went to bed. She was too smart to try and fly into the wilderness in the dark. Besides, he was early.
The next day he took up his vigil again…then the day after that…and the day after that.
“Her work delayed her,” he said, then he forced himself to sleep. He wanted to be in top form when Hannah arrived.
By the fifth day Hunter was getting worried. What if she’d hit bad weather? What if she’d crashed?
He berated himself for not bringing any way to communicate with him. Why hadn’t he brought a ce
ll phone? A radio? What had once seemed a simple test to discover who he was now seemed a rash and selfish act, fraught with stupidity.
Why hadn’t he considered the possibility that Hannah might need him, or he might need her?
By the sixth day Hunter had decided that something terrible had happened to Hannah. The only way he would ever know would be to try and walk out.
But what if he left and Hannah had merely been delayed by work? What if she arrived and he was not there?
There was nothing to do except remain near the cave for a while longer.
The wolves, sensing his turmoil, came to stand sentinel beside him as he kept his lonely vigil.
Chapter Forty-Three
May 10, 2002
Hannah nearly scared us to death when she called from South America. She was so sick we could barely hear her. “Hang on, sweetheart,” Michael told her. “I’m going to call a doctor and send him in, then I’ll fly down to bring you home.”
“Hurry, Dad,” she said, and that was all.
Well, I acted a complete fool, blubbering and carrying on. “I can’t lose her,” I kept saying. “I nearly lost you and I can’t lose her.”
“Darling, we’re not going to lose her. Hannah’s one of the strongest people I know. She’s a fighter. Just like her beautiful mom.”
That got to me. It really did. Michael has always had a way of making me feel as if I’m some kind of prize catch, the woman he would choose even if he could pick from anybody in the world. And he could. Oh, he could. He’s that magnificent.
Anyway…he hired a private plane to fly him into the jungle so he could fly Hannah back in hers. Lord, Hannah got all his grit and his talents…a lust for flying and adventuring, a lust for life.
By the time Michael got there, a local doctor had already responded to his call and was with Hannah. Michael said he was a young doctor, just out of medical school.
“Malaria,” he told Michael. “Fortunately for your daughter, a very mild case.”
Since the doctor was doing such a good job, Michael stayed a couple of days until Hannah was strong enough to travel.
Now she’s in a hospital near Belle Rose, getting stronger every day and ornery as all get out.
Yesterday she told me, “I’ve got to get out of here even if I have to walk out without being dismissed.”