Chapter 120: The Wound That Healed

We went down the cliff path with the whole of the nine behind us and the wind coming over the top and the lamp on the slip showing the whole of it.

There were three men on the boat and one of them had the long case and one of them had a lamp and one of them had Cormac by the arm and a rope in his other hand.

Declan did not stop at the bottom of the path. He went along the slip at a walk with his hands at his sides and the whole of the three men looked at him and the one with the rope put his hand up.

"Stop there," he said. "There is a thing about this boy that the whole of you should know before any wolf on this slip does a thing. He is not a hostage and he is not a prisoner and there is not a mark on him. He has been sitting in the cottage on the top of that cliff for two hours with a cup of tea and a blanket and he has been told the whole of it and he has agreed to it."

Cormac lifted his head.

"He is lying," he said. "There was no cup of tea and there was no blanket and there is a mark on me and it is on my wrist and it is the mark of a rope." He held his wrist up and there was a red weal round it. "And there is a thing about the whole of it that I have to say before the whole of this slip hears another word. The men on this boat are not from Galway and they are not from Sligo and they are not hunters. They are three men from the west coast who have been paid by a woman in a black coat to take me out to the deep water and put me in it and there is a weight in the long case."

The whole slip was silent.

Declan did not stop walking.

"Declan," the man with the rope said. "There is a thing about this slip that the whole of you should know. There are three of us and there are fourteen of you and there is not a wolf on this coast who is going to say we did not have the right. The Alpha of Dún Aonghasa has called a hunt and the boy is a claimant and a claimant who has been taken and held is a claimant who can be put in the water." He put his hand up. "So the whole of you are going to stand where you are and let us get on that boat."

Declan hit him.

It was not a wolf's hit. It was a man's and it was the whole of twenty years of standing in doors and it caught the man with the rope under the jaw and put him down on the slip. The second man came at Declan with the lamp and the lamp broke on his shoulder and the third man went for the long case and got it open and there was a knife in it and he came at Declan with the knife.

I shifted.

It was the seventh time and it came up through me faster than any of them and the whole of the slip went from black to grey and I had the third man by the arm before he had the knife up. I took him down on the slip and the knife went out of his hand and skidded across the stones and into the water. The second man was on the ground with Declan's knee in his back and the first man was sitting up with his hand on his jaw and the whole of it was over in less than a minute.

And then Declan sat down on the slip.

He sat down slowly with his back against the wall and his hand on his side and there was a red line across his side and his coat was darkening.

"Da," Cormac said.

"It is not deep," Declan said. "It is a knife and it is not deep and there is a thing about a knife that a wolf should know. It is the silver in it that does the damage and this is a fisherman's knife and it is not silver and there is not a wolf on this coast who uses a silver blade."

I shifted back and knelt down beside him and got his coat open and the shirt under it was cut across the ribs and the cut was long and it was not deep and the blood was the red of a fisherman's knife and not the black of a silver one.

"We need to get him up to the cottage," I said. "There is a fire in it and a lamp and there is a first aid kit in the boat."

We got him up the cliff path with his arm over my shoulder and Cormac on the other side and the whole of the nine behind us. We put him in the chair by the fire and I got the kit and the cottage had a bowl and a jug and a clean towel and there was water in the butt outside the door.

I knelt down in front of him and put the towel over the cut and pressed.

"There is a thing about this," I said. "It is going to need stitches and I am not a healer and there is not a healer in this village and there is not going to be one for a year."

"There is a thing about a wolf," Declan said. "He heals. Not as fast as the stories and not as fast as a wolf who is young and not wounded. But he heals." He put his hand over mine on the towel. "And there is a thing about a wolf who heals. He heals faster when there is a wolf beside him who is bonded to him. The bond does a thing that no healer can do. It is in the book. The book of the healer of Dún Aonghasa."

The fire was going and the lamp was on the table and the whole of the nine were outside on the cliff with the three men tied to the rail of the boat.

I took my hand off the towel and the bleeding had almost stopped.

"There is a thing about the bond," I said, "that I have been getting wrong since the first night and that I am not going to get wrong again. It is not a rope and it is not a thing that was done to us. It is a thing that we do." I put my hand flat on his chest over the mark. "So I am going to do it now. Not because a healer told me to. Because I am not going to sit in this cottage and watch you bleed."

Declan put his hand over mine.

"Then there is a thing about the two of us," he said, "that I have been thinking about since the church in Galway and that I am going to say now because there is a fire and a lamp and a cut in my side and no wolf in the world who is going to hear it. I have been a man who stood in doors for twenty years and I have been a man who did what he was told and I have been a man who was broken in 1994 by a wolf with a false marking. And there is a thing about a broken man. He does not believe that a thing like this can happen to him. He believes that the woman with gold hair is a thing that is going to go away." He looked at me. "You are not going away."

"I am not going away."

"And there is a thing about the whole of it that I have to say and then I am going to be quiet and let you put a needle in my side." He put his hand on the back of my neck. "I love you. Not the bond. Not the mark. Not the moon. I love you and I have loved you since the first night in that kitchen and I have been too frightened to say the word out loud because a man who says it out loud is a man who can lose it."

I kissed him.

It was not the kiss on the pier and it was not the kiss in the church and it was not the kiss in the hotel in Galway. It was a kiss in a cold cottage on a cliff with a fire going and a cut in his side and the whole of the nine outside in the wind, and it was slow and it was careful and it was the whole of the last two months coming down to this.

When I came away he had his hand in my hair and his eyes were shut.

"There is a thing about the morning," he said, "and I am going to say it now because the morning is going to be a hard thing and there is not going to be time. We have to get back to Galway by the fourteenth with the third charter and the whole of it and a boy who is a claimant and a village that is going to have to be told the truth in a hall." He opened his eyes. "And there is a thing about the third charter that I have been thinking about since the safe. It has a clause in it that neither of the other two has. It says every wolf of the blood of the Alpha shall be known to the co-op by name and by the hand of the healer. And there is a name in that book that has been in it since 1979 and that no wolf in that village has read."

"Siobhan, daughter of Siobhan," I said. "The daughter. Mary."

"Mary." Declan sat up a little. "And there is a thing about the name in that book that I have been turning over since the safe. It is in the hand of your mother and it was written in 1979 and your mother was in that village in 1979 and she was the one who wrote the whole of it down. And there is a thing about a woman who writes a name in a book and puts the book in a safe and pays for the cottage for thirty six years. She was not keeping a record. She was keeping a claim."

The fire ticked. The wind came over the cliff and the whole of the cottage was cold and quiet.

"Then there is a thing we have to do in the morning," I said. "And it is not going to Galway. It is going to Dún Aonghasa. Because there is a thing about the fourteenth that I have been getting wrong since the court. The court can set aside a seat and it can declare an heir and it can put the whole of it in a file. But there is a thing about a village that has been lied to for thirty six years and that has been told that a child was taken out of it and that a woman went off a cliff and that a woman was put in a boathouse. It is not going to be put back together by nine wolves in a room in Galway." I stood up. "It is going to be put back together by a co-op in a hall with the whole of the file read out loud and the whole of the book and the whole of the name."

And then, from the cliff outside, Cormac's voice came through the door.

"There is a boat coming round the point," he said. "It is not one of ours and it is not the boat at the slip. It is a big boat and it has a light on her and she is coming into the cove."

I went to the door.

The cove was black and the storm had gone and the moon was behind the cloud and there was a boat coming round the point with her light going and she was big and she was not from this coast.