Chapter 107: The Mark and the Moon

Maire went down to the kitchen for a cup of tea and I stood on the landing with the letter in my hand and read it twice.

It was four lines and it was in a hand I had seen before, thin and elegant and sloping to the right, and it said, "If the woman from Dublin is in Galway on the fourteenth there is a thing in the hold in the basement of that building that she is going to want to see. It has been there since 1961 and it has not been looked at since 1961. Ask the Keeper for the key. E."

I brought it into the room and put it on the bed and Declan read it with the firelight on his face.

"It is a trap," he said.

"It is a trap and it is a thing we have to look at anyway," I said. "Because there is a thing about a woman in a room with a wolf on the door. She has nothing left but a pen and a paper and a thing in a basement that has been there since 1961." I sat down on the edge of the bed. "And there is a thing about 1961 that I have been trying to put together since the church. The night of the fire there were nine wolves in the hall and four of them were wolves from outside the territory who had been in the village for a week and who went out in a boat the night after. And Father Byrne found the page in the parish chest and it said the four wolves came from the north and they set the fire. But there is a thing about a fire that has never been said out loud. A fire leaves a thing behind. A burnt thing in a basement in Galway is a thing that has been carried a long way from a village on the west coast."

Declan looked at the letter.

"Then we go down to that basement in the morning," he said. "Not on the fourteenth. In the morning. Because a thing that has been in a basement since 1961 has been waiting for thirty six years and it can wait one night and I am not going to walk into a hold with a lock on the outside on the night of a full moon with forty wolves in that building and no way out."

The rain stopped at about two in the morning and the sky cleared.

I woke at three because the mark under my jaw was burning.

It was not a pain. It was a heat and it was spreading down my throat and up into my jaw and there was a pull in my chest that was going the other way, out toward the window and the roofs and the sky. I sat up in the bed with my hand on my throat and the whole room was too small and too warm and the smell of the rain on the roofs was so strong that I could taste it.

Declan woke beside me.

"The moon," he said.

"It is not the full moon. The full moon is the fourteenth."

"It is not the full moon and the mark does not care." He sat up and put his hand on my shoulder. "There is a thing about a mark that has just come up. It flares. It flares on the night of a full moon and it flares on the nights around it and it flares when a wolf is frightened or angry or happy and there is not a thing you can do about it." He turned my face to the light. "There is a thing about a golden wolf that I did not tell you and that Ronan told me on the shore the day you ran with the pack. A golden wolf has a mark that flares brighter than any other and it flares at the moon and it does not matter whether the moon is full or half or a thing behind a cloud. A golden wolf is a wolf that the moon can find."

I got up and went to the window and opened it.

The night air came in and it was cold and clean and the whole of Galway was grey and silver under a moon that was three quarters and going down behind the roofs. And the mark under my jaw was burning and the pull in my chest was pulling me out through the window and down the stairs and into the street and out of the city and west along the coast to a headland with a ring of stones on it and a sea below it.

I put my hands on the sill.

"I cannot shift," I said. "There is a city under that window and there are a hundred thousand people in it and I am not going to be a wolf in a street in Galway."

"You do not have to shift." Declan came and stood behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. "There is a thing about the pull that Ronan taught me when I was fourteen and that I have never once been able to do. You do not fight it. You let it come and you do not go with it. You stand still and you let it pull and you do not move your feet."

The mark burned. The pull came up through my chest and into my throat and it was the strongest thing I had ever felt and every part of me wanted to go out of that window.

"I cannot," I said.

"You can." He put his hand flat on my chest. "There is a thing about the bond that I have not told you and that I have been feeling since the chamber. The bond is not a rope. A rope pulls one way. The bond goes two ways. You have been feeling it pull you out of that window and I have been feeling it pull me after you and there is a thing about the two of us standing in the same room with the same pull that neither of us can do alone." He turned me round. "Look at me. Not at the window. Not at the moon. At me."

I looked at him. His grey eyes were steady and the firelight was on his face and the mark under his jaw was dark and it was flaring too.

"There is a thing about the mark," I said. "It is a thing that a wolf puts on another wolf. And there is a thing about the two of us that I have been getting wrong since the first night. I have been thinking of the bond as a thing that was done to us. Something that happened. A thing that the moon or the old place or the two of us being in the same kitchen put on us and that we have to live with." I put my hand on his chest. "It is not a thing that was done to us. It is a thing we did. Every hour since the first night. Every time I came into that office and every time you stood in a door and every time we told each other the truth when it would have been easier not to."

Declan put his forehead against mine.

"Then say it," he said. "Not the bond. Not the moon. Not the pack. Say the thing that a wolf says to another wolf in front of no one."

I put my hands on either side of his face.

"You are mine," I said. "And I am yours. And it is not the moon and it is not the mark and it is not the thing that was done to us in that kitchen. It is me. I am choosing it. I have been choosing it since the pier and I am going to choose it every day for the rest of my life and there is not a wolf in Galway or a Council or a woman with a pen who is going to say otherwise."

The mark under my jaw flared and then it settled.

It was like a hand going out of a flame. The burning went down to a warmth and the warmth went down to a thing that was steady and the pull in my chest turned round and went the other way, back into the room, back into the man in front of me, and the whole of it came to rest.

Declan put his mouth on the mark and I felt it against his lips.

"Then there is a thing about the morning," he said, "and I am going to say it now because the moon is going down and I am not going to be a man who does not say the thing he means. I am going to stand beside you on the fourteenth. Not as the Beta. Not as a wolf who has been told what to do since he was twenty three years old. As the man who has been asked and who has answered and who is going to stand in that chamber with his hand in yours and let the whole of it be read out loud."

The window was open and the cold air was coming in and the moon was going down behind the roofs of Galway.

And then, from the street below, there was a sound that was not the rain and not a gull. It was a car and it came along the side street slow with its engine going and it stopped below the window, and a door opened, and a voice I did not know said, "There is a light on the top floor. That is the room."

Declan was at the window with his hand on the sill and his face turned down.

There were two men on the street below and one of them had a long case and the other one had a lamp and they were standing at the green door of the hotel and looking up at the window.

"The hold," Declan said. "It has been in that building since 1961 and it has a lock on the outside and a wolf on the door and there is not a thing in it but a stone floor and a drain. And there is a woman in a room in that building with a pen and a paper and a wolf on the door." He turned round. "Niamh. She is not in a room with a wolf on the door. She is in a room with a telephone and a lock on the inside and a wolf who is on her side. And she has been writing letters since 1961 and she is still writing them."