Chapter 162: Ronan's Search

The horn was a Council horn and it was calling the Council boat back to the water, and Eamon went down the hill and got on it and it went out of the harbour before dark.

I stood on the slip and watched it go.

"He will be back," Padraig said.

"I know."

"He will be back with twenty wolves and a paper and a keeper's book and he will say the Alpha has been interfered with and the Luna has been in a territory she was ordered out of." Padraig looked at the boat. "And the Council will send a wolf to take you north."

"Then we go north before they do." I turned round. "Padraig. The reversal. How long does it take?"

"The rite itself is an hour. The mark is the thing that takes the time." He looked at me. "The founder has to sit with the wolf who is bound and hold his hand and say the words and make the mark and it cannot be rushed and it cannot be done in fear."

"Then we need somewhere quiet." I looked up at the hill. "The house of the north is in the north and the Council will be there and Eamon will be there. We cannot do it in the house of the north."

"Then where?"

I stood on the slip.

"There is a place," I said. "The bothy in the glen above the second ford."

Padraig looked at me.

"Healer," he said. "That bothy is four days north and it is on the road the Council will be watching."

"Then we go by water." I looked at him. "Oisin's boat is at the pier and Oisin knows every cove on this coast and the bothy is two miles up the glen from a cove that nobody has ever put on a map."

We went back up the hill.

Ronan was in the kitchen and he was on his feet and he had his coat on and his boots.

"Fiadh," he said. "What did you work out?"

"Not here." I looked round the kitchen. "Where is Maeve?"

"Gone north." Ronan looked at me. "She went north this morning with a boat and four wolves and she said she was going to the northern seat to hold the coast's place at the trial."

"The trial is in three days."

"The trial is in three days and Maeve has gone north to stand in it." Ronan looked at me. "Fiadh. What did you work out?"

I took his hand.

"The reversal mark is not a thing I give up," I said. "It is a thing I give. And I have been sitting with it all the way down the cliff and I know what it is."

"What?"

"It is the line," I said. "It is the founder's line. The thing I hold dearest in this world is not a book and it is not a claim and it is not a mark on my chest. It is the line and it is mine and it goes back three hundred years and it has been kept and hunted and hidden and I have spent four months proving it."

Ronan looked at me.

"Fiadh," he said.

"I have been carrying the line since the day I got off the bus," I said. "And I have been so frightened of what it meant and who would take it and what would be done to it that I have not once asked what I wanted to do with it." I looked at him. "And I know now. I want to give it away."

Ronan stood in the kitchen.

"To who?" he said.

"To the twelve," I said. "To the seven. To Mairi and the wolves who came out of the house of the north. To the nineteen who were taken and the thirty one who were bound and the wolves in the cellar of the Blackthorn house with burns. I am going to give the line to the line and I am going to stop carrying it on my own."

Ronan looked at me for a long moment.

"Fiadh," he said. "That is not giving up a claim. That is giving up everything."

"I know."

"You will not be the founder any more."

"I will be a healer with a case of tins and a mate and a coast." I put my hand on his face. "And I will be a wolf who can shift at will and who ran on the heather for the first time in her life and who came down the cliff and found her mate at a table with a plate in front of him."

Ronan put his forehead against mine.

"Right," he said. "Where do we do it?"

"The bothy in the glen," I said. "Two miles up from a cove that Oisin knows."

We went north that night.

Oisin had the boat at the pier before dark and we put out with the sail up and the wind behind us, and there were five of us in the boat. Ronan and I and Padraig and Oisin and a wolf of the fourteen whose name was Colm's brother and who had been on the wall the night the rogues came.

We were three days on the water.

The wind held on the first day and turned on the second and we put in at a cove under the cliffs on the third morning and waited for dark.

And on the third night we went up the glen.

It was the glen above the second ford where we had gone in the summer with the Council's hunters behind us, and the bothy was a low shape on the slope with a roof and a door and a hearth.

Ronan stopped at the door.

"Fiadh," he said. "This is where we came in the summer."

"I know."

"This is where I put my hands on your face and told you about Bríd and the false mark and the three days in the snow."

"I know." I put my hand on the door. "And it is where I told you about the empty room in my head and the suppression and the door that somebody locked when I was six."

Ronan looked at me.

"It is a good place to close a thing," he said.

I opened the door.

The bothy was cold and it was dark and there was a hearth and a stack of peat and a bed of planks along the wall.

And there was a wolf sitting on the planks with her copper curls tied back and her sleeves rolled and a paper in her hand.

Maeve.

"Luna," she said. "You took your time."

I stood in the doorway.

"Maeve," I said. "What are you doing here?"

Maeve stood up.

"I have been sitting in this bothy for two days," she said. "And I have a thing to tell you and I have been putting it off since the mill."

And down in the glen, a horn sounded.