The Wolf Road (22 page)

Just then I heard a cracking sound what weren’t thunder. The log split right where Penelope was hugging it and it was like a rubber band been released. The trunk shot down the river, struck a rock that sent it end over end in the air. It smashed to kindling and the river swept it all away.

Neither me nor Penelope needed to say anything. It was all right there, floating down the river.

Stripped down to our undies, skin all goosey and ice-pale, we jumped stars and ran back up to where I’d thrown my pack. I pulled everything out till I found the reverend’s tinderbox.

“Find some twigs, dry ones, not ones off a tree, and a few bigger branches,” I said, breathing smoke. Penelope didn’t argue.

Thunder crashed, felt like it set the whole world shaking. All I could think was quick, quick, fire, get a fire, get your back to the wall, hunker down. Now. Do it now!

I opened up that box with shaking hands to make sure the striker and wool were dry. Breathed out my thanks that they were.

I dragged everything over to the outcrop, which, now I was closer, I saw went pretty deep into the hillside. Grabbed all the bits of twigs around and cleared a flat space inside the mouth a’ the cave, out the way a’ the coming rain. In naught but my undies, shivering from head to toe, teeth chattering like nosy birds, I breathed all my warmth into my hands.

Sun was dropping and the sky was black with thunder. I had one shot.

I fluffed up the wax paper, set my twigs and bits a’ bracken close, and set the metal rod into the paper. Few deep breaths. Steady hands.

“Come on, Elka,” I said to myself.

I scraped the striker down the rod and sent sparks into the paper. Again and again until it caught. Flames burst up and careful as tending a fallen chick, I fed it twigs until it crackled into life. Shaking, Penelope came with kindling and thick branches what had mostly dried after the rain and I raised that fire up to roaring.

I took off my bandages to dry them along with my clothes, and tears pricked at my eyes. The cold water had taken down the swelling on my side, but it was still ugly. Purple and black bruise reaching from the middle a’ my belly halfway ’round my back. It covered so much a’ me that I wondered if I’d ever get my skin back the way it was.

I cursed Colby from head to toe.

Noticed Penelope staring at me. Look a down-deep horror on her face.

“What?” I said.

“Those scars…” she said, meaning the reverend’s work across my back. In truth I’d forgotten ’bout them. They weren’t deep, healed quick, and I didn’t see ’em day to day.

“Long story,” I said, smiling. “Worth the tellin’ though.”

She got comfy on a flat rock and asked me to tell it.

“They was the work of a man what got his due,” I said. “Crazy fucker if there ever was one.”

I told her how I came upon Matthews’s homestead and that fine chili. Told her ’bout the reverend and my thinking that I was in a safe haven with a man a’ God.

“So when I woke up buck naked in his basement, you can ’bout imagine my surprise,” I said.

Penelope laughed, first time I’d heard it, like a tinkling bell in the middle of a baying crowd.

“He cut me elbow to elbow, neck to butt,” I said, “then…someone came in and slit the bastard’s throat.”

“Who?”

Picture a’ them legs flashed in my head, smell a’ the woods in my nose, grit-tooth voice in my ears. Still couldn’t right say who it was.

“Don’t know,” I said, “but I went all the way to Genesis looking to shake his hand.”

“Genesis?” she said, turned pale.

“Aye, hick town south a’ that lake.”

She nodded. “That’s where I met James.”

I figured as much. “Man’s dead. Can’t hurt you no more.”

But I knew dead didn’t always mean gone. I still heard the hog man’s breathing, still saw his slobbering face when I closed my eyes.

The sky went black and rumbling and I felt it shake up my bones. Heard the wind thrashing the trees, heard the snapping branches and creaking trunks and I was damn glad of a rock roof over my head.

Penelope huddled closer to the fire, put her back ’gainst the wall and didn’t say nothing for a while, just wrung out her hair and tried to dry it without setting light to it. She tended to the cut on her leg, wiped up the blood, tied a strip a’ cloth around it.

“Is that why Magistrate Lyon is after you?” she said out a’ nowhere, and my heart kicked.

All the forest sounds, the river, the fire, the skittering critters and buzzing insects switched off. All I heard was my blood in my ears and the thunderhead laughing in the sky.

“James wasn’t the only person I met in Genesis,” she said.

“Don’t know no Lyon,” I said, gritted teeth. Hand found my knife.

“Don’t get dramatic,” she said. “We seem to be doing a dance, you and me. You save me, I save you, I save you, then you save me.” She nodded to the river.

“What about it?”

Penelope looked at me, saw the wild no doubt. “I saw the posters of you in Ellery. I could have turned you in right there and that giant woman would have locked you up.”

I didn’t say nothing. Didn’t right know what to say.

“You know what I did instead?” she said. “I cozied up to a
disgusting
man so I could steal his ticket. His name was Porter McLeish.”

I let go a’ the knife but kept it close. “I didn’t ask for it. Why would you do that?”

She sighed fierce and angry. “Because you saved my fucking life.”

Sounds a’ the forest came back to me. I looked at this woman, this stranger, with new eyes. Felt a stab a’ shame for thinking bad of her and lying to her not five minutes past.

“Lyon’s after the person what killed her son,” I said, quiet.

Penelope lifted her eyebrows.

“The man what raised me up from a babe did it,” I said. “Found out he was a killer from Lyon. She thinks I been helpin’ him or know where he is but I don’t. I don’t know nothin’.”

She stayed quiet a moment, taking it all in.

“What’s in Halveston?” she said.

“Real parents went up there, made their fortune out a’ gold and stones.”

Penelope nodded. Sadness come over her mixed in with a look I’d seen before. Same look I saw on Colby when I told him where I was going. Look a’ pity.

Thunderhead rocked the sky, wind bent the trees double and whipped out the fire like it weren’t more’n a candle. Penelope shuffled up close to me, white as snow and shivering in the dark. Weren’t no point in trying to get the fire going again, not till the wind died off so I tried best I could to keep her warm.

Wind was howling worse’n dying wolves, trees was groaning and the ground shook ’neath me. Was like Mother Nature herself woke up raging, storming through the world in hobnail boots, slamming doors and smashing plates. Lightning lit up the skies so we didn’t need no fire to see by and I weren’t fearing no bears or wolves out tonight, they’s as chicken a’ the thunderhead as I was.

When you’re alone in the woods the thunderhead’s like the end a’ the world come down right on your head. But when you’re with someone what’s got goodness in them, even a useless snip of a girl, it’s just a storm. An awful, life-destroying bad storm, but there ain’t no evil or malice in it. It’s just weather. Weren’t never just weather with Kreagar.

Strange feeling came over me when I was huddling ’gainst the wall with Penelope by my side. Feeling a helplessness, like I was giving up all my fierce to this woman I didn’t know and she would carry me the rest a’ the way. Scary thing was I wanted her to. Sat ’neath that outcrop in the dark, feeling her tense up with every strike a’ lightning, every boom a’ thunder, I wanted to let go a’ the hardness in me, the stones and grit what Kreagar and the forest had put in my bones and blood. I wanted to give it all up. Next I know I have tears on my cheeks, falling out my eyes like rain out the sky.

The cave kept us safe when hail ripped up the soil and we didn’t say no more to each other that night. Weren’t nothing I could think of to say. I didn’t sleep, ain’t no sleeping during a thunderhead, but I barely noticed.

Couple hours later when the thunderhead passed south and we figured we weren’t going to get blown away, I relit the fire to chase the cold out my bones and stoked it up to blazing. Penelope took the dry bandages and started wrapping me up, tender as a momma.

I don’t remember when but I closed my eyes. Can’t a’ been for long ’cause I woke up before the sun. Something weren’t right and I felt it even in my dreams. I sat up, looked around, and my heart near stopped.

Knife was gone. Penelope was gone. And I heard growling in the dark.

Followed the sound a’ panic. Heavy breathing, whimpering, whispered prayers to a god who weren’t listening. Penelope stood at the bottom of a slope. Halfway up yellow eyes shone in the dark, caught by the firelight. She held my knife out at arm’s length, in both hands.

“Penelope,” I said, quiet, and the growling got louder.

She whipped her head around. “Elka get back, there’s something in the ferns.”

“I see that,” I said, “it’s a wolf.”

Snap of a twig behind them yellow eyes. Something told me it weren’t my wolf.

I came up close behind her and said, “Give me my knife.”

Panic makes people stupid and she weren’t no exception. I put my hand over hers and prized the staghorn handle away.

“Back to the fire. Now,” I said. “Where there’s one wolf, there’s a whole damn pack and they’ll be riled up after that storm.”

Penelope trembled. “I couldn’t sleep. I heard steps, I tried to wake you,” she started blabbering, “I thought I could scare it off.”

“Back to the fire,” I said, and pulled her away. Kept my eyes on them yellow ones but they didn’t follow. They didn’t move. Growling stopped.

Soon as we got safe behind that fire I slammed that stupid girl against the wall a’ the cave and put my knife right to her throat. Firelight made her eyes look like glassy pools.

“Don’t touch my knife,” I said. “And don’t go chasin’ wolves in the dark.”

She nodded, shaking, wincing at the rocks in her back.

I held her eyes. Sent my meaning right into them. This weren’t no game. You die in the dark.

I let her go and sat down to stoke up the fire.

“Sorry,” she said, meek and mild, and sat down beside me.

“Goddammit,” I said, didn’t even bother to hide my anger, “don’t you know nothin’?”

She stared into the flames like a child what got her hand slapped.

“There’s wolves out there,” I said, “and bears and wolverines and all kinds a’ snake.
Goddammit
, you could a’ been ripped up in less time than it takes to have a piss.”

Wanted to shake her. I could a’ woken up and found her pulled open like a turkey on Christmas, all kinds of gore, strips a’ that pretty white dress hanging out that wolf’s mouth. I seen and smelt and tasted too much blood. Felt it all around me. All I could see. Felt the splash of the hog man’s blood on my chest. Felt the reverend’s hot on my back. Felt my own all over me and the lake demon’s all over my hands. I closed my eyes and looked at the face, that pair a’ legs. Face weren’t mine, legs weren’t no stranger no more. Distance from that poison water gave me a picture clear as glass and I knew it was truth. Kreagar was in that basement. Kreagar was by that lake. Kreagar was my demon and I was his angel and he was just waiting for me to fall.

“Elka,” Penelope said, “what is it?”

My chest went tight, cut off all my air. I tried to gulp down breath but it wouldn’t let me. Demon hands was round my throat. Kreagar hands, covered in blood. Gripping tighter. White spots covered my eyes, smell a’ iron in my nose. Fire and flames swam like oil in water. I was falling into a black ocean. Ocean a’ rotten blood.

Penelope slapped me clean across the cheek.

Shock of it sent my lungs opening up. Air got to me. Sense got to me.

“Elka,” she said, and I used her voice like a rope, “deep breaths, come on.”

I did what she said. In out. Climbed higher out the dark. The ocean disappeared and the fire came back. Penelope came back.

“You had a panic attack,” she said, like it was nothing, while I was sucking in air like it was going to run out.

“How you know so much?” I said.

She opened up the water flask and handed it to me. “Father was a doctor.”

Said that word “father” all flat, like she was talking about grain or brushing her hair. Nothing in it. Being a doctor it made sense that Daddy knew ’bout the poison in the lake but, being a doctor, it didn’t make a stitch a’ sense that he drank all that water.

I looked at her out the side a’ my eye. She had more learning than I reckoned. Don’t know why but it made me nervous. People with book smarts and secrets had a way about them, a way a’ looking at you like you was a puzzle they need to figure out. Some would do anything to solve it, even if it meant backstabbing and cheating to win. Colby done that. His smarts and silver tongue put me in that crate. Penelope’s smarts had patched me up and got me out a’ Ellery. Put a speck a’ fear in me to wonder what else she could do. In the wild, I could face down a bear and I could put up a good fight ’gainst a lone wolf or mountain lion but in the world a’ people, I was the straggler in the herd.