by Maria Vale
I creep away, moving slowly until I’m sure that they are across the pond. Then I move toward the pines. This part of the forest is not good for me. The snow is in the canopy, and the needles underneath are damp and dark. It shows me to worst advantage.
“There it is,” Anderson shouts, pointing his gun in my direction. I bolt for Clear Pond.
Now, there is a reason it’s called Clear Pond. Not just because the water is so clear. It’s also a mnemonic for our pups. From their very first winter, they are told that it’s called Clear Pond, because you stay clear of it in winter. But for anyone who doesn’t know, in the winter it looks like a continuation of Beaver Pond, a broad plain of ice covered by snow.
It isn’t. The water is much deeper, and the ice here is almost always gray, thinned by the relentless churning of the springs underneath. There’s a thick layer of snow that not only disguises it, but insulates the friable ice below from the cold air above.
I splay my legs to distribute my weight as widely as possible until I get across. Then I limp into a stand of pines on the opposite side.
Trey is smarter than his uncle gives him credit for. He looks at the orange rescue sled and hesitates. Not Anderson or the Smoker, though. They see the hunt coming to an end and follow my tracks across snow that crunches under their boots and disguises the sound of ice groaning underneath.
A new smell of evergreen and crushed bone wafts through the air, and the cloud-dimmed moon picks out the enormous dark outline of my bedfellow.
Damn it, Ti. Don’t you go telling them about the ice.
“What are you doing here?” he says tersely. I follow the green glow of his lucidum to the Smoker. There’s a glint from the heavy dull-gray gun held lax in his hand.
“Are we trespassing?” the Smoker asks, though he knows he is. “We’re just out doing a little night hunting and winged a coyote or some such. Wanted to finish it off. Don’t like to see a creature suffer,” the man says. Then he smiles. “Not even a dog.”
Ti raises the gun.
A red dot appears on Ti’s chest. I growl so that Ti will see Anderson has a bead on him. I smell adrenaline and sweat coming not from my bedfellow but from Anderson. Must be pretty strong if I can smell it this far away. And above the stink of gasoline and carrion sticks.
“Relax,” the Smoker says to Anderson. “He won’t shoot. You know what they say,” he continues, still smiling. “A barking dog never bites.”
Maybe that’s true, but Ti has said exactly five words, and when he shoots at their feet, the already stressed ice finishes fragmenting, and a huge shard tips forward. Scrabbling backward, the Smoker falls and grabs for the edge of the ice. It bobs up, sending him tumbling in. He claws frantically, pulling himself up on the ice, but each time, it splinters and he falls again.
Anderson’s shot goes wild as he flails, the water seeping up and turning snow gray and the ice slick. It slips away from him, and he falls into the slush, screaming for his nephew.
Trey hesitates and then tentatively walks onto the fragile ice edge weakened by cattails. It gives way under him almost immediately, first one foot, then the other. He grabs on to the weeds, his teeth chattering, and pulls himself to shore.
I feel a little for Trey, who is a juvenile. The adults should have taken better care of him on the hunt. He is too deep into our territory; he will not be able to find his way out before he becomes sluggish and gives in to the cold sleep.
I watch the adults’ last efforts carefully so we will have a better idea of where their corpses are at spring thaw and can fish them out before they rot.
But then Ti pushes his gun into his waistband and throws the orange rescue sled through the slush to the flailing men. I bark angrily, but he says that he knows what he’s doing.
After he strips them of their guns, he drags the shivering, clattering, hacking load over the rough path to the Boathouse, which is closest to Clear Pond and farthest from where Evie and her pups lie vulnerable.
Chapter 25
At the Boathouse, Ti helps the men out of their frozen clothes. He seems to linger over the Smoker, whispering angrily until I approach. I had things under control, then he came along and screwed everything up. “I would have let you drown,” he says. Though he addresses the chattering men, I know his words are aimed at me. “But I didn’t want the police coming up here. Disturbing things.”
As much as I really think they should have been left to freeze, Ti does have a point, what with our Alpha mate just having delivered and in no shape to make the trek to the High Pines. I chuff a little but then pull myself up with my front paws on the tiny counter and nudge the red switch hidden by the pineapple-themed curtains above the sink.
After a little cough, the generator starts up, and before long, hot air fills the Boathouse, along with the smell of burned dust.
Ti stops pulling at the pants of the frantically shivering Anderson and stares at me.
“There’s heat?”
I cock my head to the side. If he’s still talking to me when I can talk back, I’ll explain what it means to heat a place that isn’t winterized.
“Every morning, there’s ice on the inside of the windows. On the inside.”
When he’s done, Ti leans back in the chair, his gun on his thigh and one hand on my ruff and waits until the men have warmed up. I sneeze, because the Boathouse now stinks of human and Gore-Tex and will have to be fumigated.
Finally, the Smoker stops shaking and shoots a bleary look toward Ti.
“This is posted property,” Ti says. “Don’t come here again.”
“Thaz my land,” Anderson says, waves his hand vaguely toward the junkyard. “And I have an…an…” He looks toward the Smoker.
“Easement of necessity,” says the Smoker to Ti. “Gives the owner of that plot—” He stops and begins hacking; we all wait for him to finish. “Gives ‘im the right to traverse this land so he can get to the public road.”
“There’s an access road. Stick to it.”
“Fuck you, asshole,” chatters Anderson. “I don’t know where you come from, but my family’s been on this land for generations. I know it like the back of my fucking hand, and next time, I’ll be here on my own, and you won’t even know it until you feel my fucking muzzle at your fucking back. You’re just a man with a gun, but I am a fucking hunter.”
The adjectival richness of his speech stuns me. Humans really do talk so much and say so little.
Ti’s nose flares. He opens his mouth just slightly, his tongue held to the roof, creating an echo chamber of scent.
“This evening, you had a steak, iceberg lettuce with blue cheese dressing, an IPA, and a tequila. You sat with your nephew and another man who is not here. Your nephew had a hamburger. The other man had chili. You shared onion rings. Two…no, three days ago, you screwed the wife of the man who had the chili. She has two small children. You are sterile and have irritable bowel syndrome.”
The Junkyard Man’s face slackens, and he slumps back, his mouth slightly open, but for the first time, he has nothing to say.
“You only think you’re a hunter, because you’ve never met a real one.” Ti turns to me. “Silver, I think it’s time for these men to go.”
I stretch out my front legs and then my back and wait near the door.
“Silver?” the Smoker croaks. “Well, Silver.” He lifts his hand, and holding two fingers out like the barrel of a gun, he sights me. “Eat lead.”
Before he’s even finished with his pantomimed recoil, a hollow crack hits his face, and he lands halfway across the room with a dull thud and a muffled scream.
“Gear up,” Ti says, throwing their partly dried clothes and boots in front of each man. “I’m walking you to the road.”
“Uncle Al?” Trey says. “I’m not sure your friend here can walk.”
“He broke his jaw, not his legs,” Ti says, hi
s gun to the Smoker’s ear. “He can walk just fine.”
The man flinches when the safety comes off.
“Uh, mister?” Trey says. “Only the shirt’s mine.”
“Wear it or don’t,” Ti says, pulling up the hood of his anorak and strapping the three rifles across his back. “We’re leaving now.”
The men work quickly to pull on clothes, except for the Smoker, who can’t get the shirt on over his broken jaw and pulls on a coat that must belong to Trey, because it’s too small and exposes a stripe of pale, hollowed-out chest above his pale, distended belly.
When Ti flicks the red switch, the soft wheeze stops. He opens the door, letting in icy air.
“On the inside of the windows,” he mutters again.
We lead the shivering men toward the access road, surrounded by scores of silent, invisible wolves. I smelled them earlier and heard them scenting the air, watching and waiting.
They pass like the shudder of dry sycamore leaves in the quiet left by the cowering of everything else in our land.
I fall into step beside Ti. We have no trouble negotiating the darkness, but the three men stumble under the dark cover of the woods and the unreliable light of the moon. We can tell when the Smoker stumbles because of the strangled scream.
Ti must’ve found keys in one of the men’s pockets, and after placing the three rifles on the ground, he climbs into their vehicle. I hop up, my front paws on the wheel well so I can watch. Twisting to the back, he lifts a camouflage tarp and throws it to the ground near the discarded rifles. He pulls four more rifles from the gun rack and, checking each quickly, tosses them out too. I eye the men, see if they’re going to try anything stupid. Trey is too scared. The Smoker’s in shock, both hands holding his face. Only Anderson makes a halfhearted shivering lurch that I cut short with a quick bark.
Not that I’m worried: there is a wall of enormous, furious wolves standing feet from the great and oblivious hunter.
Once Ti finishes feeling around the back, he sits in the driver’s seat. He checks around the glove compartment and the visor, and then feeling the passenger seat, he works his finger into the side seam. The rip of Velcro sets my teeth on edge, but a second later, he pulls out a very large, very mean-looking handgun.
“You got a concealed-weapon permit for the Beretta?” he calls to Anderson.
“Fuck you.”
“Didn’t think so.” Ti points the Beretta at Anderson. “Get in and get out.”
The road is long and very rough, and the Smoker’s stifled screeches echo in the quiet until miles later, the trio reaches the paved road.
Tara howls the all clear. The pups join the adults, and the silence becomes a fraction less quiet.
Tiberius sits on the tarp with the pile of guns and methodically opens each action. Before long, he has built a hillock of ejected cartridges and shells.
A pup dashes out from the woods, his nose close to the ground until he comes near the pile. He clambers into Ti’s lap to get a closer look at a gunstock, but a sharp bark from the blackness calls for him to return. He jumps from the summit of Ti’s knee and scuttles away from the guns and back into the protection of the dark wood.
Once he has disassembled all of them, Ti wraps them in the camouflage tarp and tosses them over his back. His eyes blaze into the shadows.
“These will be in John’s office.”
There is no reply, except for the gradual winking out of the luminous eyes as one by one, the Pack turns to go in a shiver of leaves.
Growling, I slap my muzzle against Ti’s leg and stalk toward Home Pond.
“Just don’t say it.”
I look pointedly at the moon. Like I’m going to say anything.
“I know. So I got it back. You don’t want guns because you don’t want to be dependent on something you can’t use during the Iron Moon. But I’m not you and I can use a gun and I’m at least good enough with one to protect the Pack from hunters. Isn’t that what you want?”
I growl. What I want is for you to stop fighting what you are and be wild with us. Yes, we’re vulnerable when we change. And maybe Ti could stand guard over our Iron Moon. But our first Alpha was adamant that when we were wild, we embrace that wildness. That we be self-reliant. Those who guard you in your weakness, she said, will always end up exploiting it.
Ti goes to John’s office. I go to the front lawn. The pups are bundled in a roiling pile in the middle, surrounded by a warm carpet of whatever adults aren’t out hunting.
Tomorrow, I will hunt, but for tonight, my gut is clenched, and I can’t imagine eating anything. Except always bear heart; I could definitely eat bear heart. I turn round and round, carving a little nest for myself in the snow. I’m starting to drift off when John appears. Even as a wolf, he looks thinner and older.
I jump back up to greet him, and he rubs his muzzle next to mine, and I am instantly comforted by his scent. Then from the woods, a huge, black wolf lopes toward us, and John…John lays his muzzle against Ti, marking him too. I tense slightly, watching Ti, worried that he won’t understand, but he stands stock-still, his eyes on mine, until John is done.
Then he curls next to my snow nest. I fluff my tail over my nose. When Ti does it, he sticks his tail in his eye. He blinks furiously.
Still kind of a crappy wolf.
Chapter 26
“John?” I poke my head into his office. “You wanted to see me?”
“Come in. I’m just packing up some things so I can work in the Meeting House with Evie and the pups. Can you unplug the adapter?”
He wraps the cord around his laptop.
“How is the Boathouse working out for you?”
“Fine. It’s getting a little cold for Ti, but he’s managing.”
John nods. “You know,” he says as he slides his computer into a messenger bag, “when you were little, Evie and I would stay up waiting for you after every Iron Moon. Those were exhausting days. But you always came back. Limping and wheezing, you always came. We called you the tiny Terminator.”
There’s a knock on the door, but before John can say anything, Tara comes in, a sledgehammer balanced easily on one shoulder.
“It’s right here,” John says and toes the camouflage bundle that Ti brought in that first night of the Iron Moon. Tara picks it up, wrapping the ends twice around her fist so the bundle won’t fall.
“Tara, you know to—”
“Smash ’em and trash ’em,” she says and lifts the sledgehammer. “I’m going to do it right now.”
“Thanks, and, Tara? Maybe we should close up the Boathouse.” She nods with a quick smile in my direction.
John watches his Beta’s retreating back. “There’s something I’ll never understand. One rifle’s not enough? Why do they need two each?”
I pause a moment.
“Humans,” I say. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t get Showtime without ’em.”
John chortles with his sad eyes. “Sometimes you really do remind me of my brother.”
Thing is, I was there and I can count. There were seven rifles and two handguns.
So tell me, Ti… Where are those other guns?
I’m pretty sure that John was trying to tell me that we were in. That we’d made Pack. Closing up the Boathouse can only mean we’re moving out. Hopefully getting a cabin with insulation and a little stove and no ice on the inside of the windows.
There’s not much time for me to tell Ti. Besides, if someone objects at the last minute, his disappointment would be that much worse.
At Iron Moon Table, Adrian, the juvenile who likes marking John’s boots and is fast enough to get away with it, yips a warning to the assembled Pack.
The scrape of benches and chairs, a final slurp of coffee, and the high, sharp yelp of a pup falling down the stairs are the only sounds as the Pack gets to its feet, huge and silent.
Ti pulls on my hand, his brow furrowed. “What…?”
I always forget how little he knows. “First Marking,” I whisper, but then Evie enters, and I hold up a finger to my lips.
Evie is so thin now, sucked dry by the past month, but her back is still tall and straight. Except when she nuzzles her cupped hands and a furry tail moves a little. The pup in John’s cupped palms sticks her nose over the rim of her father’s hands. She sniffs the air curiously and yawns, but her eyes won’t open for a few days yet.
They are followed last by Gran Drava, our eldest wolf. Her cupped hands tremble a little.
Nikki is nearest the front door. She hobbles to her feet and puts her hands under Evie’s before bending down to the tiny pup, sniffing carefully to find his scent and memorize it. She leans in and rubs a cheek against his tiny, furry body; it is the beginning of a lifetime of being marked by the Pack. She does the same with the pup in John’s hands.
She repeats it with Gran Drava, even though her hands are empty. It is a sign of mourning for the pup who didn’t make it and a recognition of the void left in the Pack.
Each member will mark and scent the pups. It’s a long process, and by the time they come to us, Evie’s face is drawn. A trickle of blood stains her ankle. When she stumbles against the corner of the bench, Ti starts toward her, but I pull him back. However much she may distrust him now, if he makes her feel weak, she will hate him more.
She lifts the pup up to the wolf next to us and murmurs his name for the zillionth time. Nils Johnsson. Torrance is a name we use for legal documents. I have no idea where it came from. But our real names, our Pack names, are derived from our highest-ranked parent.
I am Quicksilver Nilsdottir. Because I am the daughter of the former Alpha, John’s brother and this tiny pup’s namesake.
Ti reaches out for his turn with the pup, but Evie walks past without a second look, and his face freezes.
I tug at his arm. “Only Pack can mark him,” I whisper, my heart breaking as she passes me as well. Still, there is no law that can stop me from breathing in little Nils’s scent, committing it to memory.