by Holly Webb
“How far is it to the river?” Amelia asked, as Noah kneeled in the snow, fastening on the snowshoes he had brought for her. “I don’t know if I can walk in these things.”
Frost sniffed curiously at the strange contraptions strapped to Amelia’s boots, and she sighed and wriggled her feet. The snowshoes looked like a cross between a basket and a tennis racket, and they felt huge and heavy on the ends of her legs.
“The snow’s too new and soft to walk on without them,” Noah explained. “They spread your weight out. They’re odd to walk in at first, but you’ll get used to it. You have to take big steps, that’s all. If you come after me, the snow will be squashed down a bit, anyway, so that’ll make it easier.”
Amelia looked at him doubtfully and then at her feet. But she didn’t have a choice. The snow was so deep if she tried to walk in it without snowshoes, she would sink up to her knees. She put her hand on Noah’s sleeve. “How far is it?” she asked again.
Noah fiddled with the straps a little longer and then he sighed. “A few miles. It’s not really that far…”
Amelia nodded. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “We’ll get there. We’ll be in time.” She had her fingers crossed inside her mittens, hoping that it was true.
“We should stay quiet,” Noah murmured, taking her arm. “The Wrights will be on their way over to the river, too. We don’t want them hearing us.”
Before long, Amelia had no breath to talk anyway. The snowshoes felt like lumps of lead, and the muscles in her legs were aching. But she kept on going, plodding after Noah, determined that they would reach the river.
Frost had started off the walk bright-eyed and bouncy, but after an hour of ploughing through the snow his tail was drooping, and his ears were laid flat against his head. When the path started to slope, and the drifts got deeper, he let out a miserable whimper and stopped.
Amelia balanced herself carefully on her snowshoes, and made a slow, wobbly turn. “What’s up, Frost?” she whispered, gently stroking his ears. There were ice crystals on the fur round his muzzle, where his breath had frozen. He looked worn out.
“I don’t think he can go much further,” Noah said anxiously, crouching down to look at the little wolf. “He had a couple of days with no food at all before I found him, I reckon. It made him weak.”
Amelia bent down to put her arm round Frost’s thin shoulders, and he leaned against her gratefully. “I know how you feel,” she muttered. “My legs hurt, too.”
She looked up at Noah. “Do you think we could carry him?”
But Noah wasn’t listening. “Hush a minute,” he breathed. He was standing like a hunter, Amelia thought, half crouched, ready, his head slowly turning from side to side. She waited, her heart suddenly thudding against her ribs. What was it? Had the mother wolf been tracking them? Or maybe Noah’s father had come out looking for him? She didn’t dare move, she just crouched there, scanning the snowy whiteness. Even the darkness of the trees was half hidden now, with a fresh layer of snow over the branches.
“What is it?” she whispered at last, when she couldn’t bear it any longer.
“Can’t you hear?” Noah mouthed back, pointing. “Voices.”
Amelia pushed back her fur-lined cap a little, and tried to listen. He was right! She could just about hear them, filtering through the trees, a word here and there.
“…Broken?”
“Stupid…”
“Who is it?” she whispered.
“The Wrights.” Noah nodded fiercely. “I’m sure. I recognize that whining tone in Joshua’s voice. Besides, who else would be out here?” He looked around. “I can’t see them. But they sound angry, don’t you think? Maybe something’s wrong. Come on…”
He led the way through the trees, shuffling quietly over the snow, until they were close enough to hear Samson and Joshua arguing. They could just see Joshua sitting in the snow, with his father leaning over him. Amelia shivered, as she saw the dark gleam of Samson’s gun under his arm.
“It is broken!” the boy wailed, and Amelia heard Samson snort in disgust.
“No such thing. Your ankle’s just twisted. How could you be so clumsy, Joshua? Come on, up with you! We need to get after that wolf. It could take us a while to track it down, and I don’t want to be caught out here in the dark.”
Joshua whimpered. “I can’t!”
Amelia heard Samson sigh loudly, and then he grabbed a half-broken branch, and yanked it away from the tree. He cursed and dodged as several armfuls of soft snow slithered down, just missing him. “Nearly went down my neck,” he muttered, shaking his coat. “Here, have this to lean on.” He flung the branch at Joshua’s feet.
Noah backed away slowly, leading Amelia through the dense trees until there was room to turn round in their bulky snowshoes. “We have to keep going!” he told her, as soon as they reached the path. “I know Joshua, he’ll whinge and whine, but he’s probably just making a fuss. And Mr Wright wants that wolf. He said so this morning. He wants a wolfskin to trade – they won’t rest for long. We need to get there before they do.”
Amelia nodded, and rubbed her aching knees. She could keep going. But what about Frost? The little wolf still looked exhausted – the short rest they’d had wasn’t enough.
“I kept this back,” Noah murmured, pulling a piece of dried meat out of his coat pocket. “Yes, you can smell it, can’t you? A little bit now— Hey, not all at once, cheeky!” He chuckled quietly as Frost tried to snatch the whole piece. “It’s in my pocket, pup… Yes, you follow along.”
Amelia smiled as Noah set off again, this time with Frost’s nose practically in his coat pocket. Obviously the meat had been so good, Frost didn’t want to risk losing the rest of it. Noah was so natural with him, Amelia thought. He knew just how to tempt the pup along.
But it was me that helped keep him warm and safe last night, Amelia thought. Without me, he might never have woken up.
They trudged on, with Noah stopping to tear off tiny pieces of dried meat every so often, and Frost dragging himself wearily through the snow. But after another hour of hard walking, the wolf pup stopped, the snow halfway up his legs. He stood staring into the distance with his ears pricked.
“Come on, boy.” Noah patted his pocket where the last scrap of meat was waiting and glanced back anxiously to see if the Wrights were coming after them.
“No, I don’t think he’s tired,” Amelia said, seeing the eagerness in Frost’s twitching nose, the way the ruff of fur round his neck was rising. “He can smell something. Look at him, Noah! Are we close? Could it be his mother?”
Noah lifted his hand to shade his eyes. The clouds had cleared and bright sun was glinting on the snow. “Yes. See there, Amelia? Up ahead, the trees are thinning out. We’re close to the river. We’d be able to hear it, if it wasn’t frozen over. He must have picked up her scent.”
Amelia watched as Frost danced excitedly ahead. “We’re going to find her!” she said, then hurried after him, floundering in the snow.
Noah followed them, frowning worriedly. “Amelia, stay back,” he murmured. “We have to be careful. She’s not going to trust us.”
But Amelia was too excited to listen. She was plunging after Frost, caught up in the wolf pup’s joy. He was skittering here and there, sniffing and giving little whines of recognition. Then, just as Noah was reaching out to pull Amelia back, they broke through the trees to the riverbank.
Frost stopped dead, staring across the great stretch of snow-covered ice below them.
On the opposite bank, a wolf had heard them coming. She was standing guard, tall and watchful on her rock, twenty metres away across the ice.
Amelia swallowed hard. She had been so scared of Frost when she first saw him, but she loved him now. Somehow, she had assumed his mother would be just like him – only a little bigger.
But the silvery wolf poised on the stone outcrop was lean and powerful – and terrifying. As she dropped down, bounding from rock to rock, Amelia could see the
strength in every leap and spring. Even Frost seemed daunted by her for a moment, as she prowled out on to the ice. But then he squeaked, and half ran, half tumbled down between the boulders to meet his mother.
Amelia and Noah watched as the pair sniffed lovingly at each other, and then Frost bounced skittishly around his mother, darting up to nudge her with his nose and nibble at her tail.
All the while, though, the mother wolf kept one eye on Amelia and Noah, and at last she stalked forward, with Frost skidding in the snow and ice as he hurried to catch up.
The wolf stopped at the edge of the river, gazing at them. Now that she was closer, Amelia could see that one of her forelegs was injured, a trail of dark dried blood was matted in the fur. What if the wolf jumped at them? To her, they must just smell of people – the people who had wounded her. Should they run away?
But although the wolf stood stiffly, her shoulders tense and ready to spring, all she did was look. Her eyes were dark and wary. Amelia wished they could tell her what had happened – that truly, all they had wanted was to save Frost and bring him home.
The wolf took one more step forward, hesitating in the narrow path between the rocks, and Amelia stretched out her hand, ignoring Noah’s gasp of warning.
The girl and the wolf stared at each other, and then the silver wolf gently licked Amelia’s hand, just one quick affectionate dash of her tongue – as though Amelia were another pup. And then she was gone, darting back on to the ice.
Her ears were pricked up, and she seemed to be watching the trees as she hurried Frost before her.
“It’s the Wrights,” Noah said, turning to look where she looked. “She can hear them, I bet. Go! Go!” He pointed across the river, and the mother wolf seemed to understand him. She loped across the ice, pushing Frost with her nose when he stopped to glance back at Noah and Amelia.
“Goodbye!” Amelia called softly, as the two wolves vanished among the rocks on the far bank of the river. Amelia watched for a moment and then turned to Noah, her voice strangely flat as she said, “They’ve gone.”
“Mmm.” Noah swallowed, and they stared helplessly at each other. Then he looked anxiously along the riverbank again, where Frost’s mother had been staring.
“Amelia, we have to cover their tracks! Frost and his mother are together again, but that doesn’t mean anything if Samson and Joshua can just follow their paw prints. They’ll catch them both!” He sat down on a snow-covered boulder, and started hurriedly undoing the bindings on his snowshoes.
“What do we do?” Amelia looked down at the snow where the mother wolf had been standing – the prints were so clear. They would lead the hunters straight to Frost and his mother.
“We need to brush them away,” Noah told her, jumping up and swinging on a fat fir branch. “Help me break this off. We’ll use it like a yard brush, and sweep the snow. We’ll start on the river. Come away, you stupid branch. Ah!”
He shook the snow out of his face, but the branch had torn off at last. “I’ll get another, Amelia; you go across to the far bank and brush away their tracks. Work backwards, you see? The wind’s getting up, and the snow’s blowing out there in the open. If we’re lucky, Samson Wright will just think the brushed bits are blown snow. I’m going to go back in among the trees a bit, and get rid of the prints we made coming.”
Amelia nodded and fought with the binding to undo her own snowshoes. She edged down to the ice, and stepped on to it gingerly. How solid was it? It had taken the weight of the wolves, but she hated the thought of it creaking and cracking beneath her. But it didn’t shift at all – it was like walking on a cold marble floor, and she took a deep breath of relief. Then she scrambled out on to the ice, following the delicate lines of tracks in and out of the piles of snow.
The ice was slippery under the drifts, and although she fell a couple of times, she scrambled quickly to her feet. She brushed furiously at the snow, whisking away the paw prints, and her own footprints, just as Noah had told her. The wind helped, swirling up little eddies of snow here and there. It blew in her face, but she didn’t care. The snow disguised the trail of her fir branch. As she worked back over the ice, the sky darkened again, and a few new flakes began to fall. Amelia watched gratefully as they softly blurred the signs of her sweeping.
She was almost back to the bank when she saw Noah, half tiptoeing through the trees, dragging the branch behind him to clear his trail.
“They’re coming!” he hissed. “I saw them. Joshua’s still limping. It’s lucky for us he fell, Amelia. We’d never have been in time otherwise.”
“Shall we hide?” Amelia asked, picking up her snowshoes. She could hear the Wrights now, too. It sounded as though Samson was telling his son to hurry up.
“Yes. Look, duck in here.” Noah pushed her gently in between two large rocks, and Amelia gasped. It was a tiny cave, sheltered from the snow.
They huddled inside, listening to the stamping footsteps of the hunters, and Joshua’s complaints.
Amelia wrinkled her nose. “Shouldn’t they be quiet, if they’re hunting?”
Noah nodded. “But it’s a good sign. If they’d seen tracks, they’d be more watchful.”
“Pa, it’s starting to snow!”
Amelia huddled closer to Noah as a thin man tramped through the trees above them, followed by a whining boy, leaning on a branch.
“And we’ve not found any tracks – that wolf’s long gone! I’m frozen to the bone, and my ankle hurts. Let’s go home, Pa!”
Samson Wright stood staring out across the river, scowling. Amelia held her breath. Had they cleared Frost and his mother’s tracks well enough?
The hunter peered down at the snow-covered river, and Amelia pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. She wanted to scream at them to go away and leave the wolves alone. She could feel the words bubbling up inside her…
“No tracks…” Mr Wright murmured.
“We’ve lost her,” Joshua moaned. “If she was ever out this way in the first place. We’ve not seen a print for miles.”
“I just want to go down there and take a closer look,” his father murmured.
Amelia turned anguished eyes on Noah. If Mr Wright went down to the river, he’d see they’d swept the snow! She couldn’t let him get any closer. If they saw the tracks, they would never give up on Frost and his mother. Samson Wright still wanted that wolfskin.
Pressing her finger to her lips, Amelia looked meaningfully at Noah, and then stood up, picking her way between the tall rocks. She was smaller than Noah was, and there was less chance that she’d be seen. Even though she was terrified of Samson Wright and his gun, she had to send them away.
Joshua was still complaining and pulling at his father’s sleeve. “I can’t get down there, Pa! I can’t walk! It’s all rocks!”
“Stay here, then!” Samson Wright snapped.
Amelia crept silently between the rocks, keeping as much cover as she could between herself and the hunters. But she couldn’t take too long. She scrambled up the bank, and threaded her way between the trees, until she was just behind Mr Wright and Joshua. Then she picked up a handful of snow, and squashed it quickly into a ball. She aimed at the branches above their heads, heavy with soft, glittering snow, and hurled her snowball.
The snow shook a little, and then collapsed with a whumpf, right on to Samson Wright’s hat, and all down the back of his coat.
He gasped, and shook himself like a dog, and in all the confusion and shouting, Amelia slipped back down the bank to join Noah.
“Not again! I’ve had just about enough of this. Have it your way…” Samson Wright growled, digging snow out of the back of his collar and shivering. “We’ll go. I was sure the beast was out here at the river, but I’ve not seen hide nor hair of it. All right, all right! We’ll go on home.”
Amelia clutched Noah’s arm, and looked at him with shining eyes. The wolves were safe!
22nd October, 1873 – later on
Amelia’s fallen asleep, worn out by
the journey to the river, and the excitement. She’s got her head on my shoulder, and she looks so snug. But I suppose I’ll have to wake her soon, as it’s almost stopped snowing. Just a few more flakes, coming down all slow and lazy. It won’t be long before we can set off back home.
I had my heart in my mouth when she got up like that, and went sneaking off. I had my hand out to grab her, and pull her back. But thank heaven I let her be. She made them give up, Mr Wright and Joshua. I can still see him, stamping around trying to get that snow out of his coat. It’s making me chuckle, even now.
I can see across the river a little way – all the tracks are gone. It wasn’t a heavy snowfall, but it was enough.
The sun’s starting to glimmer on those great icicles, where the spray comes off the rapids. I’d love to draw that, but I’m too sleepy to try.
I wonder where Frost and his mother are. I reckon they went off up the far bank of the river, and up into the hills – there are deep caves there, just right for a wolf pack. Frost’s on his way home, too. I was glad he looked back at us before he went.
Maybe one day I’ll see him again.
A melia shivered and wriggled away from the damp tongue licking her cheek. “Don’t, Frost, it’s too cold to lick—”
But then she remembered. Frost had gone back to his mother. He was safe. Maybe they’d even met up with the rest of the pack by now.
So what was licking her face?
Amelia opened her eyes, and saw Freddie looking down at her, his great pink tongue sticking out. Amelia pressed herself back against the chair, her eyes widening, and her heart starting to race.
And then she saw that Freddie’s ears were pricked up hopefully, just the way Frost’s had been when he wanted her to play with him, or he was hoping that Noah had something delicious in the deep pockets of his coat.