The Wolf Road

by Beth Lewis

  Couple hours later when the thunderhead passed south and we figured we weren’t going to get blown away, I relit the fire to chase the cold out my bones and stoked it up to blazing. Penelope took the dry bandages and started wrapping me up, tender as a momma.

  I don’t remember when but I closed my eyes. Can’t a’ been for long ’cause I woke up before the sun. Something weren’t right and I felt it even in my dreams. I sat up, looked around, and my heart near stopped.

  Knife was gone. Penelope was gone. And I heard growling in the dark.

  Followed the sound a’ panic. Heavy breathing, whimpering, whispered prayers to a god who weren’t listening. Penelope stood at the bottom of a slope. Halfway up yellow eyes shone in the dark, caught by the firelight. She held my knife out at arm’s length, in both hands.

  “Penelope,” I said, quiet, and the growling got louder.

  She whipped her head around. “Elka get back, there’s something in the ferns.”

  “I see that,” I said, “it’s a wolf.”

  Snap of a twig behind them yellow eyes. Something told me it weren’t my wolf.

  I came up close behind her and said, “Give me my knife.”

  Panic makes people stupid and she weren’t no exception. I put my hand over hers and prized the staghorn handle away.

  “Back to the fire. Now,” I said. “Where there’s one wolf, there’s a whole damn pack and they’ll be riled up after that storm.”

  Penelope trembled. “I couldn’t sleep. I heard steps, I tried to wake you,” she started blabbering, “I thought I could scare it off.”

  “Back to the fire,” I said, and pulled her away. Kept my eyes on them yellow ones but they didn’t follow. They didn’t move. Growling stopped.

  Soon as we got safe behind that fire I slammed that stupid girl against the wall a’ the cave and put my knife right to her throat. Firelight made her eyes look like glassy pools.

  “Don’t touch my knife,” I said. “And don’t go chasin’ wolves in the dark.”

  She nodded, shaking, wincing at the rocks in her back.

  I held her eyes. Sent my meaning right into them. This weren’t no game. You die in the dark.

  I let her go and sat down to stoke up the fire.

  “Sorry,” she said, meek and mild, and sat down beside me.

  “Goddammit,” I said, didn’t even bother to hide my anger, “don’t you know nothin’?”

  She stared into the flames like a child what got her hand slapped.

  “There’s wolves out there,” I said, “and bears and wolverines and all kinds a’ snake. Goddammit, you could a’ been ripped up in less time than it takes to have a piss.”

  Wanted to shake her. I could a’ woken up and found her pulled open like a turkey on Christmas, all kinds of gore, strips a’ that pretty white dress hanging out that wolf’s mouth. I seen and smelt and tasted too much blood. Felt it all around me. All I could see. Felt the splash of the hog man’s blood on my chest. Felt the reverend’s hot on my back. Felt my own all over me and the lake demon’s all over my hands. I closed my eyes and looked at the face, that pair a’ legs. Face weren’t mine, legs weren’t no stranger no more. Distance from that poison water gave me a picture clear as glass and I knew it was truth. Kreagar was in that basement. Kreagar was by that lake. Kreagar was my demon and I was his angel and he was just waiting for me to fall.

  “Elka,” Penelope said, “what is it?”

  My chest went tight, cut off all my air. I tried to gulp down breath but it wouldn’t let me. Demon hands was round my throat. Kreagar hands, covered in blood. Gripping tighter. White spots covered my eyes, smell a’ iron in my nose. Fire and flames swam like oil in water. I was falling into a black ocean. Ocean a’ rotten blood.

  Penelope slapped me clean across the cheek.

  Shock of it sent my lungs opening up. Air got to me. Sense got to me.

  “Elka,” she said, and I used her voice like a rope, “deep breaths, come on.”

  I did what she said. In out. Climbed higher out the dark. The ocean disappeared and the fire came back. Penelope came back.

  “You had a panic attack,” she said, like it was nothing, while I was sucking in air like it was going to run out.

  “How you know so much?” I said.

  She opened up the water flask and handed it to me. “Father was a doctor.”

  Said that word “father” all flat, like she was talking about grain or brushing her hair. Nothing in it. Being a doctor it made sense that Daddy knew ’bout the poison in the lake but, being a doctor, it didn’t make a stitch a’ sense that he drank all that water.

  I looked at her out the side a’ my eye. She had more learning than I reckoned. Don’t know why but it made me nervous. People with book smarts and secrets had a way about them, a way a’ looking at you like you was a puzzle they need to figure out. Some would do anything to solve it, even if it meant backstabbing and cheating to win. Colby done that. His smarts and silver tongue put me in that crate. Penelope’s smarts had patched me up and got me out a’ Ellery. Put a speck a’ fear in me to wonder what else she could do. In the wild, I could face down a bear and I could put up a good fight ’gainst a lone wolf or mountain lion but in the world a’ people, I was the straggler in the herd.

  I was sick of it.

  “Penelope,” I said, “will you do somethin’ for me? Part a’ this whole ‘you save me, I save you’ thing we got goin’.”

  “What do you want?” she asked, wary and not trying to hide it.

  I felt hot in my cheeks and squirmy for needing to ask. Cursed myself for not paying more attention to my nana when I had her. I looked into the fire, couldn’t bear to look at Penelope and see the pity in her eyes or worse, the laughing. I took a deep breath and told myself there was no shame in it. And if she laughed at me, well, I’d leave her in the woods for the wolves.

  “Teach me letters.”

  “Promise me,” Penelope said, nervous, “that you won’t kill me if you get something wrong.”

  I frowned at her. “Only way I’d get somethin’ wrong is if you teach it wrong.”

  Sun was up and we’d left the cave ’bout half hour afore. Spotted wolf tracks close to the fire but didn’t say nothing in case she panicked again. Three sets, maybe four. A pack scouting party. Flutter a’ something dark and cold went through me.

  “I’ll make sure to teach it right,” she said, edge a’ fierce in her voice. I suppose learned people don’t like it when their smarts is questioned by someone like me. Same as I would get ornery if she told me how to best skin a rabbit. There is things some people know and some people don’t but we all got to learn sometime. We was both children to each other, no matter how many years we had between us. I was learning something she’d known since she was toddling and I’d show her trapping and gutting, tricks what was second nature to a wild-raised girl.

  “Halveston is ’tween them mountains,” I said, pointing through the trees to the valley. Snow still covered the mountains near to halfway down and I knew we was getting close to the top a’ the world. Down in the Mussa Valley, snow wouldn’t be even close to the ground this time a’ year.

  “Never seen mountains that big,” I said, “makes Ridgeway’s hills look like skeeter bites.”

  “You came from Ridgeway?” Penelope asked.

  “What of it?”

  “That’s…five, six hundred miles.” She looked at me, then at my boots. “On foot?”

  “Not all of it,” I said, and scuffed my boot ’gainst a tree root. “Was in a crate for a while.”

  Didn’t right know what that many miles meant. Couldn’t quite figure if it was not enough or too many. It’d taken me months to do it and I weren’t no slowpoke.

  Spring was chirping in the world and it hit me hard that I’d left my home, my Trapper, last summer—a few months shy of a whole year gone from that life. It’d been all them months since the reverend cut up my back and Kreagar whispered in my ear, Think on why I ain’t killin’ you
. A whole winter past and I didn’t feel no closer to figuring why. Made me tremble, the thought a’ what’d happen when I did.

  “You going to teach me to read or talk about my walking some more?” I said, red in the face and wanting to take my head off the past.

  “I can’t concentrate on the alphabet until I get something to eat,” she said, first hint a’ whining in her voice.

  Suppose I couldn’t expect other folks to go without food as long as I could. All these city folk used to eating every day, they think the sky is falling down on them they have to go hungry for more’n a few hours. Penelope didn’t have no fat on her, no reserves for her body to live off ’tween meals. If that was the price for beauty and the desire a’ men, well hell, you can keep it. Alive and ugly is better than pretty and dead.

  “All right,” I said, “pay attention. You teach me, I teach you, that’s how this is gonna work. I ain’t going to be fetching and feeding you like you’re a damn child what can’t do nothing for itself.”

  I took a handful a’ snares out the bag what I’d made her carry on account a’ my ribs, and showed her how to spot a rabbit track and set a snare. Watched her close as she set them, loop the size of a fist, three fingers high off the ground, twigs and brush arranged to funnel that game right into the trap.

  “Not bad,” I said when she set the last one. “I ain’t got no patience to teach you fire lightin’ or stand about chilly while you practice. We need wood.”

  Like a trained puppy she went foraging for kindling. I had a flame up in no time and she looked at me like I was one a’ them magicians with the traveling show, pulling doves out my sleeves.

  “You know so much,” she said, more talking to herself than me.

  “Making fire’s the easiest thing in this world if you got the smarts for it.”

  “We had an electric heater in our house,” she said, and I said that sounded dangerous.

  “It was,” she said. “We had a fireplace but couldn’t light it, mother’s weak chest, you see.” She sighed. “There’s something about an open fire.”

  I couldn’t argue there. Even in the middle a’ the day, sun shining down through spring-green leaves with nothing in the world to worry over, a fire was still a comfort. A little piece a’ home all the way out in the wild.

  “All these things you can do,” Penelope said, “the way you live, I’ve only read about in books. Father taught me medicine, mother taught me piano and iambic pentameter.”

  “What they used for?”

  She laughed and threw some twigs on the fire, flames ate ’em up like sugar treats. “Nothing. I can tell you why a fire burns, the chemical reaction. I can recite a poem about flames dancing in a lover’s eyes, but that won’t keep me warm out here, will it?”

  “Won’t cook no rabbit neither,” I said, and in truth, I felt a bit bad for her. She was deep in my world and she might as well a’ been a fly on a bison’s ass all the good she was doing.

  “Feel the same when I’m around people and their papers,” I said.

  Penelope looked me in the eye, smiled a little sadlike, then picked up a sturdy twig. In the dirt she drew three lines. / and and a — right through the middle.

  “A,” she said. Next to that she drew something what looked like Genesis Maud’s hefty cleavage on its side.

  “B.”

  Then a half-moon. Some memory of my nana and her chalkboard stirred deep down.

  “C.”

  And dozens more till she got to z.

  Then she went back to the beginning and made me repeat them all from memory. I didn’t get them all—hell, felt like there was hundreds a’ them stupid squiggles. How’s anyone meant to remember them all and then put ’em all together to make all them words? There’s got to be hundreds a’ words out there and I sure as shit didn’t have room in my head for all a’ them. Started feeling antsy. Started getting twitchy. What in the hell was the point?

  Sixth time through them dirt letters, I’d had enough. My face was red and hot and Penelope kept telling me I wasn’t paying no attention. Just concentrate, she kept saying in that whiny voice a’ hers. Come on now: l, m, n, o p, repeat it, repeat it, like I was a goddamn mockingbird. I pulled out my knife and stabbed it into the dirt right in the middle a’ that o.

  That shut her the hell up.

  Then I stood up and stalked off to check the traps. Sure, it weren’t polite behavior, but I sure as hell weren’t polite. I only promised I wouldn’t kill her, didn’t say I wouldn’t get angry with her. Didn’t say she wouldn’t get my boot to her jaw if she pissed me off enough, and I was getting close. Was best all ’round if I took myself away from her.

  Found the first trap empty and still set. Nothing was coming down this run. I pulled it out, stuck it in my pocket. Next one had a scrap a’ rabbit and a foot still stuck in the snare. Not much else. Some other critter, probably a wolverine, got my lunch afore I did. Cursed it but couldn’t blame it. I would a’ done the same.

  Through the trees I caught glimpse of Penelope, sitting on a stump left over from when this forest was logging land. Stumps all over the place but new trees sprung up to fill the gaps. Made this part a’ the forest greener’n usual. Also meant more shrubs and ground plants around, good for cloudberries, but not this time a’ year. Nana used to have me fetch buckets a’ the damn things for bake-apple pie. Weren’t worth the slog in my mind. Never had much time for sweet things, made my teeth ache for meat.

  Penelope stared off into the forest, scratching at the cut on her leg she got from the river. Said in my head, Don’t be scratching at that, sticking dirty nails into your skin. No good will come of it. She was sitting in a ray a’ sunlight, all in white, glowing angel-like. Didn’t think she looked beautiful. Didn’t think she looked human. She looked like dinner, wrapped up nice like Christmas, waiting in the spotlight. I moved through the trees, taking vantage behind her like I was stalking that buck me and Trapper bagged.

  Then I heard soft kicking in the undergrowth. Kicking what meant the end a’ life, not the beginning. On the stump, Penelope looked like Penelope again. Some part a’ my mind, right near the back, that part that sends you running from bears and tells you you’re hungry, was mixed up and sent confusion back to the front a’ me. I ain’t never been in the woods with someone weaker’n me. I always been the beta wolf. Now I was the alpha. Alphas take what they want but my mind weren’t right sure what it wanted.

  Kicking snapped me out of it.

  Found the rabbit in a snare, loop tight ’round its neck. Looked into them big black eyes and they looked right back.

  “Sorry fella,” I said, soft as his kicking.

  He calmed down. Knew what was coming.

  It’s a strange thing to take a life. Before the hog man I wouldn’t a’ thought twice ’bout taking this rabbit by the feet and stopping him squirming. Now I saw an animal what done nothing to deserve it. Hog man deserved it, I’ll tell you that for free, but this rabbit didn’t do me no harm. Wrong place, wrong time he was and nothing else. I was his hog man. I was taking things from him what he sure as hell didn’t want to give.

  My belly growled. Took out my knife. Everything was backward. I was the alpha, I had to provide, but I just…couldn’t.

  I always lived by rules a’ my own making. Rules what told me bad from good and kept me on the right side. Weren’t sure what the right side was no more. If I killed this rabbit, would I be any better than the hog? Better than Kreagar? Rabbit seemed to sense my questioning and kicked up a fuss. Snare tightened.

  Hog man didn’t have to attack me, I told myself, ugly lust and a thick, bull head made him. I ain’t got no bull head, I ain’t got no lust, I just got to eat and this rabbit was food. That’s what I said anyway but still my knife wouldn’t cut the thing’s head off. Didn’t feel myself no more. This was a goddamn rabbit. I killed hundreds. Stewed ’em, smoked ’em, canned ’em, fried ’em up with onions and taters. Who in the hell was I that I hadn’t gutted this thing yet? He was a good s
ize, would feed us two up right nice for the evening. My head was tangled up and I couldn’t free it.

  “You caught one,” Penelope said from behind me. Made me jump right out my coats. Hadn’t heard her. Too busy feeling sorry for myself, all this whining going on in my head. Poor rabbit, didn’t do nothing, tiny fuckin’ violin. What a goddamn idiot. If she’d been a bear…hell. Couldn’t afford to be whining. Couldn’t afford them hog-man memories, not out here.

  Took the rabbit by the feet, loosened the snare, and broke its neck.

  Felt a sick wave a’ grief hit me. For a goddamn scut-tail. I held up that limp body to Penelope.

  “Don’t suppose you know how to skin one a’ these?” I asked, because I knew I couldn’t do it myself.

  Penelope smiled and took the dead rabbit without blinking. Other hand asked for my knife.

  “Maybe you should collect some wood,” she said, soft enough that it didn’t sound like an order but firm enough that I knew she meant it.

  She went off by the fire while I dragged back a few thick branches what had fallen in the storm. I tended the flames and watched her working. Gentle and soft she went at that rabbit like it was a teddy bear she didn’t want to rip. Prized off the skin ’stead a’ pulling it. Nicked at the fur ’round the feet ’stead a’ chopping them off. I couldn’t watch.

  “Stop it, stop it,” I said, shaking my head. “It ain’t a baby you’re nursin’ on your tit, it’s dinner and we’re both starvin’.”

  “You asked me to skin it,” she said, “and I’ve skinned a rabbit before. I know what I’m doing.”

  I laughed. “You don’t know shit. Meat’ll rot afore you get that skin off.”

  “Show me,” she said, and handed me rabbit and knife.

  I took ’em both without even a twinge in my head. “You got to gut the thing first,” I said, and dipped the blade into its belly. Guts spilled out like stew slopping in a bowl. Still hot and steaming. I felt myself smiling.