The Winter Wolf (8 page)

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!

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.

The same coat Amelia could see now, draped over the old armchair in the attic.

She was back.

“Hello…” she whispered to Freddie, and his massive tail wagged so hard it bumped against the side of the chair. He had his front paws up on the seat next to her, and his head on one side, as though he was asking something.

“How did you get up here, hey? I suppose I didn’t shut the door properly. Did you sniff me out? And what do you want? Oh! Are you not supposed to sit on chairs? Well, this is only an old scruffy one…” Amelia shifted herself sideways a bit, leaving a space for Freddie to leap up.

He snuggled delightedly into the gap, and sat there next to her, looking pleased with himself and panting. His tongue was huge, and it stuck out a little bit, giving him a foolish, friendly look. Amelia wondered why she had been so scared of him. His fur was browner than Frost’s, but he had the same dark eyes and pointed, velvety ears.

“I suppose you’re related to wolves,” Amelia told him sleepily. “But I bet you’ve never hunted anything in your life.
Except maybe squirrels in the park.”

Freddie whined hopefully at the mention of squirrels, and Amelia giggled. “No, I didn’t mean I’ve spotted one, sorry.”

The big dog sighed and flopped down half in her lap, just as Frost had that night in the hollow tree. Was that last night? Amelia frowned, trying to work it out. Last night – or hundreds and thousands of nights ago. She didn’t know. Maybe it didn’t matter.

Freddie sniffed curiously at her hands, and Amelia gently pulled the diary away. He’d probably chew it, if she let him.

“No, we’re going to read it,” she whispered, rubbing the soft fur round his ears. “I have to know the rest of the story.”

“Open this one, Amelia,” Mum said, handing her a small, square parcel, and smiling hopefully.

Amelia giggled as Freddie stuck his great nose over her arm to sniff at the parcel. He had several presents of his own, but he still insisted on checking out hers
and Tom’s, just in case they might taste good. He was sitting in between them, to make sure he didn’t miss anything. And occasionally he’d pick his way through the litter of wrapping paper to keep an eye on Bella and Lara and Anya.

“Is it chocolate?” Tom asked, eyeing the present. “Don’t open the box in front of Freddie if it is. He thinks chocolate is the best thing in the world, just because it’s really bad for dogs and he isn’t allowed it. He nicked a Mars bar out of my hand once, and it was gone in one gulp. Mum rang the vet’s and they said there wasn’t really that much chocolate in a Mars, so it was OK. But since then he’s got a taste for it…”

“I think it’s too heavy to be chocolate,” Amelia said, feeling the edges of the parcel. “It’s quite hard, too.”

“Open it!” Tom said. “Honestly, you’re so slow! I’d have ripped the paper off ages ago!”

Amelia grinned. Now that she wasn’t scared of Freddie, it seemed that she wasn’t scared of Tom’s sharp tongue any more, either. And his dark, floppy hair reminded her of Noah. He was even quite funny sometimes. He’d pulled her and Freddie all the way back up the lane on the sledge the day before. He said Freddie didn’t like having cold paws. Amelia had made Tom a cup of hot chocolate afterwards to say thank you.

Amelia peeled the paper off extra slowly, just to annoy him, and Tom slumped back on the sofa, and stared at the ceiling as if he couldn’t stand it.

“Oh!” Amelia gasped and nearly
dropped the parcel.

“What is it?” Tom sat up suddenly, not wanting to miss anything.

“It’s a picture…”

“I thought it was something really exciting!” Tom muttered.

“It is…” Amelia whispered. But she couldn’t tell him why.

“Do you like it?” Mum smiled at her.
“I thought she looked a little bit like you. I wasn’t sure if you’d want it, because of the wolf, but it’s so beautiful. When I saw the framed print on the gallery website, and I knew we were coming here, to Noah Allan’s house, it just seemed perfect… We could go and see the real painting some time, if you like, Amelia.”

“It does look like you, actually,” Tom agreed, glancing between Amelia and the painting in her hands. “If you were wearing funny clothes. That bonnet thing is hilarious!”

Amelia ran her finger over the dress in the picture. Grace’s brown print dress. And Frost, staring out at them, his ears pricked up as if he wanted Noah to come and play with them in the snow.

“Noah remembered us,” she whispered.