Jennilee herself was of no use in that department, but . . . Anna wasn’t long dead. Jenni’s mind cringed away at the thought, but it came back to her with a great insistence. Anna’s milk had let down earlier in the labor, Jennilee had seen it herself.
But she couldn’t, wouldn’t let a baby nurse from the cooling corpse of his mother. Instead, Jennilee took a clean cloth and manually compressed Anna’s breast, causing some of the rich birth milk to secrete into the cloth. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and the baby suckled the rag hungrily. Jennilee held him close and tried to consider her options. Without his mother to supply food, this greedy mouth wouldn’t survive long enough for Jennilee’s Papa to find them. If only she could get them to the company, there were other women who were nursing infants. They could feed him, and he would grow strong enough to survive.
Jennilee looked out toward the narrow opening in the cave. Unless she was very much mistaken, it looked as if the fury of the snowstorm had abated a bit. Perhaps she could find and follow the trail. It was a wide path; after all, it would be difficult to miss, even after fresh snowfall. And Papa and the other men were conscientious about reinforcing trail blazes on trees. If she bundled up well, and carried the baby next to her skin . . . and was very careful with her food and water . . . she thought she just might be able to do it.
What would Mama do, she asked herself, and looked at her meager supplies. One thing was certain, Mama would certainly not leave Anna’s good coat and boots here to warm a corpse. Jennilee grimaced at the necessity and effort of it, but she removed Anna’s outer garments and wrapped them around herself and the now mercifully sleeping babe. Anna’s boots were just slightly too big, but they were in better shape than her own, which had cracked weeks ago. When that was done, Jennilee did what she could to arrange Anna’s body in a position of dignity, and packed her supplies back up into the rucksack.
As she stepped out of the cave onto the trail, she began to sing her favorite verse of her favorite hymn.
Fear not, I am with thee
Oh be ye not dismayed
For I am thy God
And will still give thee aid . . .
All around, the snow filtered through the green-black needles of the conifers, and a hush settled over the world.
* * *
—
Jennilee might have had a chance, if she’d waited until morning. Not that she would have enjoyed spending the night with Anna’s corpse, but in the following day, she might have had the light she needed to see her way.
As it was, the falling snow blocked the moonlight and made it extremely hard to pick out the blaze marks carved into the trunks of the trees. Jennilee stumbled more than once, and abruptly realized that she was off the path and hopelessly lost. She stopped, heart racing, nose and lips numb with cold, and stepped toward a nearby pine. The pack with all of her supplies was heavy, and though she couldn’t very well put it down, she could lean it against the tree for a moment . . .
The snow shifted, slid, and the sudden sensation of falling gripped her belly as the lip of the cliff, hidden under the snow, collapsed under her weight. Jennilee wrapped her arms around the baby, cradling him to her chest as she started to tumble down the slope. Something struck her head and shoulder. She felt a sickening snap, and pain lanced up her right leg from her ankle. Her wind left her body all in a rush as she came to a stop flat on her back. For a moment, the edge of her vision went dark, and she was tempted to slide into the warm darkness of oblivion . . .
The baby squirmed against her chest. Somewhere far away, a wolf howled.
Jennilee clawed for her next breath, dragging it in by sheer force of will alone, and the darkness around her vision faded. Her head and shoulders stung with the force of hitting whatever she’d hit on the way down, but that was as nothing compared to the pain in her ankle. She forced herself up to a sitting position.
And for the second time, she had to focus on her breathing to force the blackness back. Her ankle was a ruin of rapidly spreading darkness, punctuated with one white spear of bone that poked out into the night.
As she looked at it, the real pain hit, and she had to roll back onto her side in order to avoid being sick all over the baby, still strapped to her chest. She emptied the contents of her stomach into the snow and wiped her mouth with one shaking hand while another wolf howl wound through the night.
“Heavenly Father,” she whispered, her voice shaking worse than her hand had been. She didn’t know it, but shock was starting to set in. “We are so thankful for all of the blessings that Thou hast bestowed upon us. If it be Thy will, Father, please help me and this baby now. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.”
The only answer was a third howl. This one closer. Jennilee felt a deep, animal fear skitter through her. She fumbled with the straps of the rucksack, trying to bring it around to her lap so that she could at least get her knife out. It wouldn’t be much, but maybe if she wounded one of them, its fellows would turn on it and leave her and the tiny boy alone.
Not that she could exactly run away.
Slowly, fingers stiff with cold, Jennilee eventually managed to pick loose the knotted leather thong that held her rucksack closed. Another howl sang out, followed by a few short barks. Close. So close. She fumbled frantically, hand seeking the hard reassurance of her knife hilt. Finally, her fingers closed around it, and she pulled the knife free of scabbard and rucksack all at once.
“We do not mean you harm, child.”
Fear thudded in Jennilee’s chest and the rush of blood in her ears was so loud, she almost missed the softly spoken words. Her right hand tightened around the knife’s hilt, and her left hand went to the squirming form of the baby on her chest. She tried to scoot back, to put her back against a large rock or tree, but every movement jarred through her ankle and threatened to rip her consciousness away.
A woman cloaked only in her long, dark hair stepped forward through the trees. Jennilee blinked, swallowed hard, and kept her shaking knife hand up. A hallucination. This had to be that. Or else . . .
“Are you an angel?” Jennilee blurted, her voice sounding high and tinny to her own ears. The woman laughed.
“Not quite,” the woman said as she took another step closer. She had just a trace of an accent that Jennilee couldn’t place.
“Because I prayed to my Heavenly Father for help, and I have faith that He will help me,” Jennilee said, though, in truth, she hadn’t really meant to do so. She just didn’t seem to be able to stop her cold-numbed lips from speaking.
The woman’s laugh mellowed into a quiet chuckle. “Perhaps your Father sent us, then.”
“I only see you.”
The woman gestured to the trees, and Jenni suddenly saw the glint of multiple pairs of eyes. The wolves, it seemed, had found her. She let out a little scream and jabbed her knife outward.
“Hush, child. I said we would not hurt you,” the woman said, easily catching Jenni’s wrist and taking the knife from her frozen fingers. “You said that you prayed for help. We have come. Let us help you. You are badly hurt, and . . .”
At that moment, Jennilee’s infant brother decided to let out a surprisingly lusty wail. The woman looked at Jennilee, wonder and disbelief in her expression. “A baby?” the woman asked.
“He’s hungry,” Jennilee said, slumping back. The loss of blood and shock was starting to get to her. “His mama died. I’m all he has left. He’s my brother.”
“How old?” the woman asked.
“Hours,” Jennilee slurred. Her eyelids felt so heavy. A sharp slap across her icy cheek barely recalled her to herself. She forced her eyes open to look at the intense expression of the woman before her.
“We can help you,” the woman said. “One of my daughters recently . . . gave birth. We can feed him, and help you. You’re badly hurt, you know. But you must trust us. You must stay with me, for I wi
ll not do anything without your consent. I cannot,” she added, and a note of anguish that Jennilee didn’t quite understand entered her tone. “Child, stay with me. May we help you? We will take you to our home. Feed the baby. Only say yes.”
The warm darkness swam around the edges of her vision again, beckoning. “Yes,” Jennilee said, the word falling from her lips like the snow all around them.
* * *
—
The first thing Jennilee noticed when she came to was the scent. It wasn’t unpleasant, exactly. Warm, musky, redolent of some animal, and overlaid with the welcome tang of woodsmoke. The scents teased at her, called to her, caused her to fight her overwhelming fatigue and force her eyelids open.
Another cave, she thought, finding an odd sort of humor in it. A small fire flickered nearby, crackling as various pieces of wood caught. The woman from the woods carefully fed it larger and larger pieces, until it grew large enough to sustain itself. The woman sat back on her heels, and looked over to meet Jennilee’s eyes.
“Good, you’re awake,” the woman said. “I was worried that you’d left us forever.”
“My brother?” Jennilee asked, feeling a rising panic when she didn’t immediately see him. The woman pointed, and Jennilee turned her head to see the most remarkable sight. Her brother lay naked on a rumpled bit of fabric that Jenni recognized as her own cloak. His tiny fists held fast to the fur of the large, dark she-wolf who lay curled around him as he nursed lustily from one of her teats. Three small, dark shapes crowded around the baby, searching for their own source of sustenance. They appeared to be helping to keep him warm, though the mama wolf was careful not to let her pups’ sharp claws or teeth scratch the human baby.
A primal lance of fear shot through Jennilee at the sight of the infant so close to such a large predator . . . but she held herself still. These wolves were not acting like she’d been taught wolves would act. They seemed accustomed to the strange woman’s presence, and that mama wolf looked directly at Jennilee as if to say, Relax, I am caring for him.
Jennilee turned back to the woman. “What is happening here?” she asked.
The woman smiled. She’d removed her cloak and hood, and Jennilee could see gray streaking through the dark mass of her hair. Her face looked younger than the gray would indicate, and her eyes were a clear brown.
“What is happening, my dear, is that I am trying to save you and your brother. He is the easy one. He needs only milk, and luckily she whelped just a week ago. You on the other hand.” She turned away from the fire to face Jennilee fully. “You are badly hurt. Your ankle is shattered, and I don’t have the skill to set it, with the bone coming out of the skin like that. You have lost a lot of blood, and you will likely not live for more than another night or so. Unless . . . I can save you. But you must agree to it. For it will change everything if you consent.”
“Consent to what?” Jennilee asked, wary. Her ankle pulsed pain at her, beckoning her back down into the welcoming darkness. She pushed it aside and clung to her consciousness. This was important.
“Consent to being bitten,” the woman said, her words soft but clear. “You must have realized that I am not like most women. The wolves tolerate me, embrace me because I am one of their own. I am of the loup garou. I can take their form. If I bite you in my wolf form, your body will heal itself as soon as it changes. But you, too, will be loup garou. You will forever live between worlds, and I am very much afraid that you will never be able to go home again.”
Jennilee’s head swam with pain and exhaustion and the strangeness of the woman’s words. “Why never?” she managed to say. “I will be with my family for all eternity.”
The woman smiled sadly. “Child, I honor your beliefs, but I am afraid that if you take my gift, you will not die. Not naturally. My father was a French trapper from Canada. I was born in 1732, and I have not aged a day since I was bitten.”
Jennilee felt the darkness crowding around the edges of her vision, and a roaring filled her ears. “Can you . . . take my brother to my family?”
The woman shook her head, her eyes intense. “I dare not approach them. It has been a long time since I gave up hope for humanity. They cast me out once. I will not allow them to do it again. Nor will I risk my family. But if you let me save you, I will help you take him to your family. We will bring you close enough that you may finish the trip yourself. But you must survive to do so.”
“But . . . I . . .”
“If you choose to die, I will raise him here, with my family. He will be as safe as I can make him.”
But he would never meet their remaining parents, nor their other brothers and sisters. He wouldn’t have the blessings of learning the Gospel at an early age. He would be lost, and their parents would never know . . .
Once again, a scripture verse jumped into Jennilee’s mind, as if someone had silently spoken the words in her head: Greater love hath no man than this, that he should lay down his life for his friends.
She couldn’t remember the reference, not that it mattered, but the words seemed to fill her battered, aching skull, and just for a moment, the darkness at the edge of her vision receded, and she knew what to do.
“Save me,” she whispered, feeling a pang even as she did so. She might not ever make it to eternity, but her brother would know his family, and would be raised with a knowledge of the Gospel. A fair enough trade, in her reckoning.
The dark-haired woman smiled. “As you wish.” The darkness returned to the edges of Jennilee’s vision, but she could just barely make out the way that the woman’s shape began to soften and change. Her dark hair spread, began to cover her body. Her face stretched into a muzzle. Her ears lengthened and moved forward and up on her skull as she hunched down and flowed into the form of a gray wolf.
Jennilee lay back and let the darkness take over. The last thing she felt was a sharp pain in her arm, just above her hand. She tried to open her eyes and see what had happened, but the darkness dragged her back down into sweet oblivion.
* * *
—
Fever followed. Heat seared through her being, leaving her feeling scalded and light. Bright flashes behind her eyelids resolved themselves into fantastic, overly vivid images. Once again, she saw the blood from Anna’s labor, and her brother’s birth. Only this time, it splashed scarlet across the snow, white on red, like the bone from her ankle against her ruined leg . . .
Pain stabbed through her, radiating outward from her center. Great, jagged needles of bone, starting in her abdomen and pushing outward in all directions . . .
More heat, and the inner surge that usually accompanied fear. Her heart raced, thudding loudly, too loudly in her ears. Her skin twitched all over her body.
Jennilee opened her mouth to scream, but all she could do was howl.
* * *
—
When Jennilee could finally open her eyes again, everything looked wrong. The colors were off, she realized. Muted, somehow. She shook her head, but even her neck moved differently. Everything moved differently.
Slowly, she got to her feet. Her balance felt different as well, but her body seemed to adjust to itself quickly. Jennilee turned her head, and saw the gray female watching her.
She approved, Jenni realized. She didn’t know how she knew that, but something in the other wolf’s posture seemed to tell her, very clearly, that she, Jennilee, was adapting well. Jennilee took an experimental step forward, then turned away from the brightness of the fire.
That flame that had been so welcome and calming before seemed only hot and destructive now. Plus, it stank, laying its thick scent over everything else in the cave. Jenni realized that she could make out the scent of each individual wolf, and they were so varied! She inhaled deeply, pulling the air in through her nose, and her brain registered the current and recent locations of each of the pack members. Their scents lay across the cave like memories,
crossing and recrossing.
And there, in the corner, was one whose scent was so very different. Jenni blinked, squinted, and saw the figure of her little brother curled up with his nursemaid. Her nose told her that he slept, for she could make out the milk on his breath. The black mother wolf looked at Jenni, amusement in the line of her ears.
He is a greedy, hungry one, but I have fed him full, she seemed to say. He will sleep well now; my pups and I will keep him warm. He is safe. So are you.
The words weren’t words, as such, but if Jenni had to translate the mother wolf’s expression and . . . communication (and it was clear that it was a deliberate communication, though Jenni couldn’t have said how), that was how she would have articulated it. Before. When she spoke.
The gray wolf nipped at her shoulder to get her attention, then flipped her tail in a gesture that clearly said, Come, and she padded out to the entrance of the den.
Jenni followed, slowly at first, but with more confidence as she worked out how to move on four feet and coordinate her tail. As she stepped outside, the night exploded into sensation.
First, of course, were the scents. It was as if she could feel them on her tongue. She could smell the comings and goings of the pack near the mouth of the den, but she could also smell the sharp crispness of the snow, and the softening that meant the snowfall would end soon. She could almost taste the underlying soil, and the blanket of pine needles that lived therein. The wood of the trees, the iron tang of the granite boulders, the warmth of the wind, her old blood . . . it made her head spin in dizzying circles as the scents swarmed her under.
Bodies brushed by her, fur crackling with static against her own fur. The warm, rich scent of the pack enveloped her as they swarmed, bumping playfully against her shoulders and flanks. Every touch, every nip a welcome, a jolt of joy at her existence, her choice to go on living.
Jenni took another step, feeling the snow crunch and compact beneath her splayed paw. The night even sounded different: she heard notes from the night animals that she’d never imagined existed.
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