Chapter 161: The Healer's Cure

The boat came into the harbour and the keeper Eamon came off it with four Council guards and a paper and a lantern, and I went down to the slip to meet him.

"Luna," he said. "You are not supposed to be in this territory."

"I have been hearing that a great deal lately," I said. "Say what you have come to say."

Eamon held up the paper.

"The Council has ordered the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack to be examined by a Council physician. There has been word in the north that he has not been eating and has not been speaking and there is a keeper's book in this house that has been read to him for two days." He looked at me. "The Council is concerned that the Alpha has been the subject of a keeper's interference."

I stood on the slip.

"The keeper's interference was you," I said.

"The Council does not know that and the Council will not know it because there is no proof and there is a keeper's book with no name in it and an Alpha who stopped eating." Eamon's jaw worked. "I have come to examine him and I have come with four guards and a paper and if you refuse me the Council will send twenty."

I looked at him.

"Then examine him," I said. "And while you are examining him I am going to stand at the door of that room and I am going to watch you do it."

We went up the hill.

Eamon examined Ronan for an hour. He looked at his eyes and his tongue and his hands and he listened to his chest and he asked him a great many questions and Ronan answered them in a flat quiet voice.

At the end of it Eamon stood up.

"The Alpha is not ill," he said. "He is starved and he is exhausted and he has been sitting in a room for two days with a keeper reading to him. He will recover."

He went out.

And I stood in the room with Ronan and Padraig and I put my hand on my chest.

"Padraig," I said. "There is a thing I have to do and I have been putting it off since the cave."

"What is it?"

"I have shifted four times in my life and every time it has hurt and every time I have been frightened." I looked at him. "And I have a wolf in my chest that has been awake since the cave and I have not once let it out on purpose."

Padraig looked at me.

"Healer," he said. "You have been in a fire and a cellar and a siege and a Council chamber. You have not had a day to yourself since the spring."

"I know. And I am going to have one now." I picked up my coat. "I am going up the cliff and I am going to shift and I am going to run and I am going to come back."

Ronan stood up.

"Fiadh."

"Ronan. I am not going north and I am not going to a Council and I am not going to a cellar. I am going up the cliff above this harbour and I am going to run on the heather and I am going to come back before dark." I looked at him. "And when I come back I am going to be a wolf who can shift at will and a healer who knows what her own wolf is and a Luna who is not frightened of her own skin."

Ronan looked at me.

"Then I am coming with you," he said.

"You are not. You have been in a room for two days and you are starved and you are exhausted and you are going to sit in that kitchen and eat something." I put my hand on his face. "And I am going to come back and I am going to find you at that table with a plate in front of you and a cup of tea."

He looked at me.

"Right," he said. "But if you are not back by dark I am coming up that cliff."

I went up the cliff.

It was a grey afternoon and the wind was off the sea and the heather was wet and there was nobody on the headland.

I stood on the flat rock where I had sat in the summer and I took my coat off and I put it down on the stone.

And then I called the wolf.

It came.

It came without pain and without fear and it came the way a door opens when you put your hand on the handle and turn it. I went down onto four legs in the heather and the world went sharp and bright and I stood there with the wind in my fur.

I ran.

I have run before. I ran in the pine wood with the Council hunters behind me and I ran in the heather with Ronan beside me and I ran in a battle in a cellar. But I had never once run because I wanted to.

I ran along the headland with the sea on my right and the whole of the coast below me, and the heather went under my paws and the gulls went up off the rocks and the wind came into my chest. I ran until my legs ached and then I ran a little further and then I stopped at the top of the headland and stood there with my tongue out and my chest going.

And I looked down at the pack house.

It was small from up there. It was a grey house on a green hill with a harbour below it and a boat at the pier and a wolf on the wall and a light coming on in the kitchen window.

That is mine, I said to the wolf.

The wolf put its head up.

That is ours, it said.

I went back down the cliff at dusk with my coat over my arm and my hair wet with the mist and I came into the kitchen.

Ronan was at the table with a plate in front of him and a cup of tea and he had eaten half of it and he looked up when I came in.

"Fiadh," he said.

"I shifted," I said.

"I know. I felt it." He put his cup down. "You shifted and you ran along the headland and you stopped at the top and you stood there for a long time."

"You felt that?"

"I felt all of it." He looked at me. "It was the first time since the bothy that the bond has not been quiet."

I sat down at the table.

"Ronan," I said. "I know what the reversal mark is."

He put his cup down.

"What is it?" he said.

"It is not a thing I give up," I said. "It is a thing I give. And I have been working it out all the way down the cliff and I know what it is."

And down in the harbour, a horn sounded.