I was backing up slowly when something hard and heavy hit me from behind.
The world went black.
Chapter 41
Bouncing.
I was bouncing. Wrapped tight in something scratchy and musty smelling that had last been used by mice—and not recently, either. I didn’t know if I could move.
Where was I?
Carefully, I opened one eye and took a quick peep. Legwalkers! All around me!
I was their prisoner.
Two of them were carrying me, having made a sling out of an old blanket. What were they going to do to me? I had to try to get away.
Desperately, I watched for my chance. But the Legwalkers on either side of me stayed close, hemming me in.
All of a sudden the tension seemed to whoosh right out of the Legwalkers. They all began to breathe easier and walked with more confidence. I noticed the trees begin to thin out. The sunshine was brighter.
We were getting close to the place of the Leg-walker dens.
Then one of the Legwalkers let out a shout and raised his arm. I heard answering shouts coming from nearby.
My insides trembled with fear.
“We bagged ourselves a wolf-boy!” shouted Mike. He laughed, but not like he thought it was funny. More like he was nervous.
I heard footsteps come running to meet us. At the edge of the woods the Legwalkers put me down. They all took a step back and looked at me. The whole town seemed to be crowding around, staring at me.
“Mike nearly shot the kid,” said the one called Roy.
“I did not. I always shoot what I aim at, unlike some I know. The wolf-boy just had the wind knocked out of him. Watch out, he bites.”
“Was he really living in the woods?” said a new voice, pushing through the crowd to stand beside me. It was Paul, the young Legwalker whose den I’d spied on.
“He was helping the wolves,” said one of the hunters in a grim voice. “Kept us from hitting any of them. Fixed it so they got clean away.”
“He must have been raised by them wolves,” said the one called Mike. “Knew all their calls and everything.”
“Cool!” said Paul, his eyes shining. “Hey, Dad, he doesn’t have any place to live now. Could he come home with us?”
“With us?” One of the hunters scratched his head. “We’ll have to call Social Services. But I suppose he can come with us until the authorities figure out what to do with him.”
“I’d be careful,” said Mike warningly. “That boy’s more beast than human.”
I turned my head a little to look at Paul.
“He moved,” cried a new voice, a young voice.
It was the Legwalker I’d frightened, the female from Paul’s room. Kim. She ran forward and dropped to her knees beside me.
I tensed with fear. Did she recognize me from the full-moon night? Did she know I was the monster who’d made her scream?
“This is so cool,” said Paul, his eyes shining. “A real live wolf-boy!”
Kim put her hand on my forehead. It felt warm and soft, like the first real touch of summer sun. “Can you speak?” she asked me, looking straight into my eyes.
“He sure can howl,” laughed one of the hunters. Another one tried to imitate me, sounding more like a sick pig than a wolf.
“Better not get so close, Kim,” said her father. “He might bite. I imagine he’s pretty frightened.”
“Stop!” cried Kim, looking distressed. “He understands you. You do understand, don’t you?”
I swallowed. My heart thumped. If I could make Legwalker sounds, then maybe they wouldn’t hurt me.
“Y-yes,” I said. It came out of my throat sounding like a wolf growl and a snake’s hiss all mixed up together. The hunters scowled. One of them fingered the trigger on his gun. Even Kim looked baffled and a little frightened.
They couldn’t understand me. My throat felt dry and my tongue was too thick. But I had to try again.
“Y-yes,” I said. “Yes.”
Chapter 42
Kim’s eyes widened.
Suddenly Paul jumped up. “Mom,” he shouted, running toward a pretty Legwalker with short brown hair who was threading her way through the crowd. “They found a wolf-boy. Can he stay with us, please?”
The female he called “Mom” had a round, friendly face. The way she looked at me reminded me strangely of Wolfmother. She stared at me for a while, then nodded and said, “We can take him home while we make some calls, see who’s responsible for him.”
“Not so fast, Mrs. Parker,” said the hunter called Mike. “This wild boy can wait in the town jail. He’s the one fixed it so all those killer wolves got away. Maybe they’ll be back for him—and we’ll be waiting.”
“N-no,” I cried, jumping up. Mike raised his rifle. One of the other hunters put a hand on Mike’s arm, pushing the rifle away, but he was frowning suspiciously at me.
I wanted to tell them they were blaming the wrong ones. “It’s the night creatures,” I wanted to say. “The wolves wouldn’t hurt anybody.” But I didn’t know the words. All I could do was shake my head wildly.
Another hunter spoke up. “It’s on account of him the beasts came to town in the first place. Living with a human boy, they lost all their natural fear of people. I agree with Mike.”
“No,” I said, struggling to get my awkward tongue around the sounds. “N-not wolves! N-not wolves!”
Another Legwalker stepped out of the crowd, holding the little Legwalker cub I’d saved from the night creatures. “Not wolves, eh? Tell that to my son, Benjy,” he said, staring at me stonily. “He was dragged right out of his crib last night.” He jutted his chin at me, looking like he wouldn’t mind dragging me off somewhere. “Right through an open window.”
Little Benjy looked at me with wide blue eyes. He clutched his bandaged arm to his side as if he was afraid I might sink my teeth into it.
“If our dogs hadn’t gone tearing after them, they’d have dragged Benjy right into the woods,” the Legwalker continued. “I got a pretty good look at them and they sure looked like wolves to me.”
All around him Legwalkers grumbled in agreement, nodding their heads and glaring at me.
My head was a jumble. I needed to warn them of the real danger—the night creatures—but without Legwalker sounds, I couldn’t do anything but shake my head and make a weird moaning sound.
“I think he’s trying to tell us it was some other creature that came after Benjy,” said Kim suddenly. “I told you I saw something really weird outside Paul’s window, right, Mom? Something horrible and monstrous. Definitely not a wolf.”
“Now, Kim,” said the Mother Legwalker in a warning voice. “I thought we agreed it was a raccoon you saw.”
“No way,” muttered Kim, so quietly that no one heard her but me.
“Yeah,” said Roy. He laughed and slapped his leg. “Maybe we got monsters in Fox Hollow. Big monster raccoons with glowing eyes. That what you’re trying to tell us, wolf-boy?”
Startled, I wheeled around to stare at him.
Roy grinned at me but there was nothing friendly about it. “Don’t look at me, kid. I’m not the one’s been seeing things. In fact, you’re the strangest thing I’ve seen in a long time.”
Kim’s mother clapped a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve heard enough of this,” she said. “I won’t have you badgering a young boy. He looks like he’s been through plenty already. He’s coming home with us and that’s the end of it. Come along, Paul, Kim.”
They helped me get to my feet and led me away. I could have run, but something inside me wanted to stay.
“I’d keep an eye out tonight if I were you, Mrs. Parker,” said Mike in a mean voice. “Those killers will be back. Might be they’ll come looking for their human mascot. You better hope he doesn’t help them get their big teeth into Paul or Kim.”
The one called Mom looked at me with concern and then shook her head, as if she didn’t want to believe anything so evil.
Paul and Kim led
me through the crowd. People stared at me curiously. Some backed away as if they thought I might bite them.
I missed my wolf family terribly and I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be easy becoming a Legwalker.
Kim touched my shoulder.
“Do you have a name?” she asked. “Can you tell me what it is?”
So I told her. And wished I hadn’t.
Chapter 43
“Grrrrruff!” said Paul up close to my ear. Then he fell back, doubled over his stomach, laughing. Kim was biting her lip, trying not to laugh, too.
“Stop it!” said Mrs. Parker sharply. “You know better than to be making fun of people, Paul.”
We were walking down a wide path with big blocky structures on both sides. New words swirled around in my head.
People. Boy. Girl. It seemed the Legwalkers had lots of names for themselves and they all meant something a little different. Like “Mom” and “Mrs. Parker,” two names for the same Mother Legwalker.
“This is our house,” said Paul, stopping in front of the den I’d prowled around last night.
“First thing, we’ve got to get you cleaned up,” said Mrs. Parker. She fitted a small metal thing into a tiny hole and a piece of the wall swayed open.
The inside was not dark because of the squares—windows—which let in light. But it was full of strange, frightening objects. I stayed close to the entrance, ready to make my escape.
“Come in and sit down, Gruff,” said Mrs. Parker, heading deeper into the den. “Paul, shut the door.”
Paul nudged me inside and swung the entranceway closed behind me. It shut with a quiet click that echoed as loud in my head as the nasty crack of shooting guns. I tensed.
I was alone in a strange den with strange creatures who looked like me but whose friends had just tried to kill my family.
All of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. Air stuck in my throat like a splinter of pigeon bone. The den was large but the walls seemed to move closer when I wasn’t looking. And now there was no way out!
“Are you all right, Gruff?” asked Kim, cocking her head and looking sharply at me. “Sit down, I’ll get you some juice.”
Sit down. That’s what Mrs. Parker had told me to do when we first came in. Maybe that’s what you were supposed to do when you entered a Legwalker den.
I folded my legs under me and sank to the floor, every muscle stiff with dread. Sitting like this I couldn’t run or leap. I was completely at their mercy.
My heart began to hammer as I noticed both Paul and Kim staring at me with peculiar expressions. Then they looked at each other and broke out laughing.
I jumped up, ready to bolt for the door even though I had no place to go. But Kim put her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, Gruff,” she said. “We didn’t mean to laugh at you. We were laughing at ourselves, really. Because we didn’t have sense enough to tell you about chairs.”
Although I couldn’t understand all the words, I heard the friendliness in her voice. She was sorry she had frightened me. Paul nodded and tried hard not to laugh anymore, though he couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from twitching.
“In a house,” said Kim, gesturing at the walls around her, “you sit in a chair. Like this.” She walked over to one of the den’s strange bulky objects, turned around, and sat in it just like I might sit on a rock.
There she got up and gestured at me to try it. It was like sitting on a cloud. I sank into the soft seat and the padded back seemed to sigh as I leaned into it.
“I’m glad to see you’ve made Gruff comfortable,” said Mrs. Parker, reappearing. I looked at her quickly, tensing up again. She smiled at me but there was a strain around her eyes, almost like pain. Her eyes fluttered over my torn deerskins and bare feet.
“Paul, I think you should take Gruff upstairs and run him a bath,” she said. “You’re both about the same size. He can wear some of your clothes. Meanwhile I’ll make some calls and we’ll figure out what to do with him.”
“Come on, Gruff,” said Paul, jumping up.
They had a clever arrangement for getting to the top of the house—stairs, Paul called it.
“This is my room,” he said, pausing before a closed door.
It felt strange to be standing here, already knowing what I would see. I felt guilty about that but proud, too. It was all mixed up.
“You’re going to love this,” he said, flashing me a grin.
He threw open the door and there were all his shiny things.
I hesitated, suddenly nervous again. Just last night I’d been thinking we might be friends, and then Kim had screamed and I’d known I was just a monster. Now, here I was, inside their den. It felt wrong somehow.
But Paul misunderstood my awkwardness. “I knew you’d be impressed,” he said. “Pretty great, isn’t it?”
I remembered a word he’d used when the hunters first brought me out of the swamp. “Coo-ul,” I said. It came out sounding a little like a wolf’s bark, but Paul was delighted. He clapped me on the back and whooped.
Then he led me around the room, showing me his stuff, rattling off names that meant nothing to me—Mars probe, space shuttle, Wright brothers’ plane, Sherman tank—after a while I stopped listening, though I loved looking. I wanted to touch, too, but they looked so delicate I thought my clumsy fingers might crush them.
Still, I wasn’t really impressed until Paul showed me a table covered with tiny pieces. “This is what I’m working on now,” he said, pointing to a colorful picture on a box. “It’s a space station.”
Only then did it dawn on me that he had actually built all these things. I looked around again, in awe.
“Maybe we can work on them together,” said Paul. “I can read you the instructions. Once you learn a little more English.”
Paul’s mother called from downstairs. “Paul, how are you coming along up there? I don’t hear any water running.”
“Okay, Mom!” yelled Paul. He shrugged his shoulders at me. “Bath time. Come on.”
We went down the hall to a small room filled with more strange objects, but different from the objects called furniture. Everything was shiny and hard.
“This is the bathtub.” Paul bent over and water suddenly began gushing out of the wall.
I jumped back in fear, but he didn’t seem alarmed.
“Here’s the soap,” he said, “and towels are in here. I’ll get you a pair of my jeans and a T-shirt.”
He left me there. Steam rose from the rushing water. Soon the big tub would overflow, like some of our swamp ponds did in the spring. But in the swamp the water just ran over the ground. Here there was no ground. I stared in dread, not knowing what to do to stop it. The water rose higher.
It began to lap at the edge of the tub. A dribble ran over. Then a stream.
“Yikes!” Paul dashed into the room and a second later there was quiet. He had stopped the water.
“I should have known,” he said to himself. He turned to me. “You have to get in it,” he said in a loud voice as if I was deaf. He no longer looked so friendly. He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “You have to take a bath. In case you don’t know it, you smell kind of swampy.” I realized he was trying to say I stunk.
Of course I smell swampy, I wanted to tell him. I’ve been up to my neck in swamp water all night. A swim in the nice clean sun-warmed pond was what I needed.
Paul sighed. “Take off those animal skins,” he said, acting out the words. He went behind me and shut the door while I stripped off my skins.
As soon as the door was closed the steam swarmed in on me, filling my nose and throat. I couldn’t breathe.
“Good,” said Paul. “Now get into the tub.”
I stood there, panic rising in me. This was no sun-warmed pond. These Legwalkers didn’t want to help me, they wanted to boil me! They wanted me dead!
“It’s not that bad,” said Paul. “I do it every day. Almost every day.”
When I still didn’t move, he frowned. I could see the menace in his f
ace now. He was out to get me!
Paul grabbed my arm and started dragging me to the steaming water. Desperately I glanced at the window. It was closed and it was too small for me to fit through, anyway.
I had no choice.
I’d have to push Paul into the hot water. It would just be a quick push. I just needed to stop him long enough to run to his room and escape through his window.
I waited until we were right beside the tub. He gave me a push. I reached up and grabbed him by the back of the neck.
I was strong and he wasn’t expecting it. I twisted my hip and threw him off balance.
“Whoa!” yelled Paul. But in a flash he had grabbed my long hair and yanked me after him.
Chapter 44
Aaah! I was scalded. Paul’s hand thrashed up out of the water and—WOMP!—he pushed my head under.
I struggled up and grabbed hold of him to push him away. He slipped and went under the surface, dragging me with him. I heaved myself up and took a breath.
But Paul was making strange sputtering noises. Was he drowning? I tried to lift him, but my feet went out from under me. The tub was slippery. I reached for him again, but he twisted away.
Then, with a great splash, he burst out of the water.
“Wow,” said Paul, still sputtering. “You’re strong.” He was laughing!
Then he lunged for me and we were both thrashing and splashing in the water and I was laughing, too. It was just like the times Sharpfang and I wrestled each other in the pond until we were both exhausted.
Finally Paul stood, shaking his head and sending drops of water flying everywhere. “Look at this mess,” he said in an awed tone. “Mom’s going to kill us.”
Mom? Kill? I felt a leap of panic. Would the Mom Legwalker think I had tried to drown her cub? Was that why she would kill me?
But Paul didn’t seem worried. He got some things he called towels and sopped up the puddles of water on the floor. “There,” he said. “That ought to do it.” His wet clothes stuck to him and I realized he was almost as thin as me.
“Well as long as I’m in here I might as well show you what to do,” said Paul, who didn’t sound worried anymore.
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