There is a pad and pen on his tray. He writes something and holds it up. You saved my life.
I swell with the knowledge that he was right. He was so right. He could have become his father but he chose to become his mother instead. We all have that choice, and most of us make it. There is cruelty to survive, to fight against, but there is gentleness more than anything, our roots deep and entangled. That is what we hold inside, what we take with us, the way we look after each other. I look at little one and I tell Duncan, “You saved mine, too.”
They said I might not speak again, he writes.
I smile. “There are languages without words, without voices. I’ll teach them to you.”
* * *
His hands as he takes her are so tender they tremble.
“Gently,” I say.
31
We are home now. There are tangled birds’ nests between us but there is little one to think of. I don’t know how we will find our places in each other’s orbits because there are not only two of us now, but four.
Duncan has written a statement declaring he was attacked by a wolf, as everyone thought. They don’t look further into the type of wounds he was given—a sharp blade instead of animal teeth, a slice not a tear. They don’t question, because he is the police chief and because this is the outcome that makes sense to them, a crime that has already been punished. I killed the monster, after all. Number Ten lies dead upon a lie. Upon my mistake. She will become legend and the wolves will suffer for it, because it was not them who came to this place and spilled blood. It was my sister and me.
And Duncan was the first to figure it out. After he met her and saw how similar we looked, and how unwell she was, it sparked a theory. Fergus called him a bloodhound and he is, he guessed it all, and still he has done his best to protect us, and that is not something I will soon forget.
Tonight, as Aggie bathes little one, Duncan and I sit before the fire and he runs his hands through my hair, and it is my dream awoken.
He writes on his pad. She needs to be in a facility. She could still be a danger to others.
I meet his dark eyes. “I can’t, Duncan.”
He puts his pen down but I know it will not be the end of this conversation. The policeman in him. The protector. He is just like her in that way.
* * *
I phone Mum, unsure how I could possibly put into words all that has happened, knowing I must.
She answers quickly. “There you are, sweet girl. I’ve been calling and calling. I have something to tell you both.”
This surprises me, so I hold off my own tumult.
“Jim and I are getting married.”
I laugh. “How’s that, Mum?”
“Well, I was trying to figure out the same thing myself, and I did have a thought. Remember how I told you about the timeline? About making a timeline to solve your case?” Mum asks.
“Yeah.”
“My thought’s got to do with that. Yeah, people do bad things to each other. And we remember those stories, we remember the pain, but we remember it because it stands out. It’s the blip in the timeline, the thing that doesn’t fit, and that’s because the rest of the timeline, which is our whole lives really, is made of kindness. That’s what’s normal, it’s so normal we don’t even notice it.”
I smile.
“Mum,” I say. “Can you come to Scotland?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
Aggie and I walk Gall around the paddock while Duncan cooks dinner with our daughter in a sling on his chest. We are both watching the sky to see the lights again, but they don’t return for us, not tonight. The stars and the moon are alone up there.
After a long while I speak into the quiet.
“I saw Dad,” I tell her softly. “When I was in the forest.”
Aggie searches my face. “How was he?”
I smile. “He was Dad.”
“It stills calls to you, doesn’t it? The forest?”
“Always.” But my eyes fall on warm Blue Cottage and what it holds. “It’s quieter now.”
“I think I get it, finally,” Aggie says with a smile. “How you belong there. How we both do.”
* * *
You wake early. There is heavy fog. Your horse is waiting for you, as she has always been. You lead her out toward the hills.
* * *
You have been healthy, looking after our little family—even Duncan, though there is something heavy and irrevocable between you. You took something precious from him and he knows you were sick, but still. Life is strange, we do our best. He is very good at forgiveness, he learned young. You have been happy, I know you have. There is purpose now, and we have let Gus go. So then why?
* * *
You walk up and along a ridge to watch the sun rise golden. Gall’s snorts are warm, her mouth tickling your palm. It is beautiful up here; it is vast. With the waking world at your feet you are free.
* * *
Maybe it’s guilt for the violence. Maybe it lives in you in a way you can’t ignore.
Maybe you think you’ll come between us, or simply want to make space for something new. Or because it doesn’t go away, it never goes away, that pain, even in the midst of this new life.
Maybe it’s because you can finally be sure I’ll be all right without you.
* * *
I don’t truly know why. But I wake one morning to find you gone.
You have left a note on the table.
It reads simply, Gone home. x
And you have taken Gall.
I leave little one with Duncan and I go out searching. I track what I can, but the trail disappears. I call your name with a voice broken by grief, but I have done this before and I know its end. You have gone the way Dad did, like the animals do. You have gone into the wild to die.
Or maybe, you have gone to live.
Epilogue
On a cold night last month, Ash, leader of the Abernethy Pack, lay down to sleep and didn’t wake. Her family lay around her, keeping her warm as she passed away. She was nine years old. The first to build a pack in this new world, the first to bear pups and protect them, alone, against all manner of threat. She guided them through this land and taught them to survive. She never mated again, not after the death of Number Nine. She had only one litter of pups but they have all proven to be strong and brave, and she had a gentler passing than most wolves are afforded.
The Abernethy Pack has a new leader now. She is as white as her mother was. She is smaller, and even stronger, if that is possible. I love her with every atom of me and perhaps, in some deeper world than we know, in some place more beautiful than we can see, she loves me in return. She saved us, once. And it cannot be said that there are no mysteries within a wolf.
Last winter I went out with my tranquilizer darts and I removed every radio collar we’d placed so the wolves could truly be free.
It is spring now, and the hills have changed color. The deer are on the move. Things are growing again. The wolves have come home. And by some miracle, or perhaps it’s simply the natural way, the people of this land are becoming accustomed to them. With no more incidents since the death of Number Ten, a kind of quiet has fallen over the Highlands, and I suspect, when I see locals using binoculars to patiently watch for sightings, that the wolves are working their way into the hearts of the Scottish people.
* * *
My daughter squirms in her sling over my back. She would prefer to be walking, but I want to reach the crest of the hill before I put her down to explore. The sky is gray with rain but then it mostly is, here in the north of the world. It makes the earth lush, helps it to grow.
We reach the survey grounds I first inspected years ago, this stretch of hillside I have walked time and again, hoping to see new growth. I pull her from the sling so she can run freely through the heather. She laughs, as in love with the wilderness as I have ever been. She was born here, is bound deeply. Even if we leave—there are other f
orests to save, other wolves to return home, the trembling giant has been calling—a part of her will always belong here.
Something catches my eye and I squat to look at it.
“Come and look,” I say, and she runs to see, tracing her fingers over the brave new shoots we have been waiting for. “Willow and alder,” I say. Then I show her how to press her ear to the ground. “Listen,” I whisper. “Can you hear them?”
Acknowledgments
I wrote this novel out of a sense of profound distress over the loss of our natural world. I wanted to imagine an effort to rewild a landscape, such as the ones brave conservationists are attempting throughout the world. To them I say a heartfelt thank-you, for the courage it takes to try to turn back the tide.
I’d like to specifically thank the extraordinary team at Yellowstone National Park. After seventy years without wolves, in 1995 they achieved the almost impossible feat of reintroducing these essential predators to an environment in crisis, and have breathed new life into the land. I took a great deal of inspiration from these women and men, but also from the wolves themselves, and their incredible stories.
Thank you endlessly to my agent, Sharon Pelletier. You are such a rock for me, always so generous, insightful, and supportive. I’m so very lucky to have you on my team.
An enormous thank-you to my wonderful, tireless editor, Caroline Bleeke. You are a wonder of a woman. You took something small and shy and tentative and saw a way to help it bloom, and I’m so grateful for your cleverness, kindness, and honesty. Your dedication is humbling, and you are so very good at your job.
Thank you to Amelia Possanza, publicist extraordinaire! You work miracles, AP, you really do! And to the whole team at Flatiron—Katherine Turro, Keith Hayes, Jordan Forney, Marta Fleming, Nancy Trypuc, Kerry Nordling, Cristina Gilbert, Megan Lynch, and Bob Miller—you are all an absolute dream to work with, and I can’t thank you enough for taking this second ride with me!
Thank you to the wonderful Nikki Christer, my Australian publisher; publicist Karen Reid, and the whole team at Penguin Random House Australia. You’ve all gone above and beyond for me, and I couldn’t feel luckier or more grateful that this novel found a home with you. Nikki, thank you for being such a tireless advocate for these books and the messages they’re trying to share, I’m truly so lucky to have you.
Thank you to Charlotte Humphery and the Chatto & Windus team for your amazing work in the UK. CH, you have an eagle eye and I’m so grateful for it!
Thank you to Teresa Pütz and her German team at S. Fischer, for providing my books and I such a fantastic German home.
A huge thank-you to Addison Duffy, my film and TV agent at UTA, for your tireless work in bringing my novels to life on the screen. It has been such an exciting ride, and a dream come true, so thank you!
To my friends. Sarah Houlahan, Charlie Cox, Rhia Parker, Caitlin Collins, Anita Jankovic, Raechel Whitty and all my wonderful book club ladies—I am so lucky to be surrounded by such generous, intelligent, hilarious, strong and kind people. Honestly each one of you blows me away. Thank you for being you.
I want to thank my father, Hughen, whose farm is a testament to cruelty-free and sustainable farming, his attitude one of sharing the land and feeding it. This is the way forward, and it makes me so proud to see, Dad. To you and Zoe, Nina, Hamish, and Minna. Thank you for your love and support; like my gratitude, it is endless. To my brother, Liam; my grandmother, Ouma; and my mum, Cathryn. I will never be able to thank you enough because I can’t put into words how grateful I am to you. I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for you. I don’t think I’d have the courage.
And to Morgan. You are my home. I love you.
Lastly, I must again acknowledge the wild creatures and places in this world, which inspired every word of this novel. The gentle they have shown us far outstrips anything we have ever shown them in return. Though Scotland has not yet passed an initiative to reintroduce wolves, it’s my hope that they—along with the rest of the world, and especially my homeland of Australia—will further embrace the essential work of rewilding, and maybe in doing so, we will begin to rewild ourselves.
Recommend
Once There Were Wolves
for your next book club!
Reading Group Guide available at
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Also by Charlotte McConaghy
Migrations
About the Author
Charlotte McConaghy is an author based in Sydney, Australia. Her U.S. debut novel, Migrations, was a national bestseller and is being translated into more than twenty languages. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Charlotte McConaghy
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ONCE THERE WERE WOLVES. Copyright © 2021 by Charlotte McConaghy. All rights reserved. For information, address Flatiron Books, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.flatironbooks.com
Cover design by Keith Hayes
Cover photograph © Plainpicture/Frank Baquet
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-24414-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-24413-0 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250244130
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: 2021
Once There Were Wolves Page 27