Chapter 143: The Mark I Kept

The guards came at eleven o'clock and took Eileen off the slip and Cormac went with her to the barracks and sat in the corridor while she said the whole of it to a wolf in a cap and a notebook.

He came back at two in the morning and the whole of the village was still up and the whole of it was in the shop.

"She said the whole of it," he said. "The fire and the children and the house on the hill and the garden. She said the name of the boy in the garden and the wolf in the cap wrote it down and he read it back to her and she said yes." He sat down on the floor with his back against the counter. "And there is a thing about a woman in a good coat who has said the whole of it in a barracks in Galway. She is going to be in a court in Dublin and she is going to be in it for the rest of her life and there is not a wolf in this village who is going to be able to say she did not say it."

The shop was quiet.

And then Declan came in with his coat over his arm and his face grey and he stood in the door and did not come in.

"Da," Cormac said.

"There is a thing I have to say," Declan said, "and I have been standing outside this door for ten minutes trying to find a way to say it that is not a speech. I am not the Beta of this pack any more. I gave the rank to the co-op in the hall this evening and there is not a wolf in the village who has not heard it." He put his coat down on the counter. "And there is a thing about a man who is not the Beta. He has to learn how to be a wolf who is not a rank. He has been a rank for twenty years and he does not know what he is without it."

The whole of the shop was quiet.

"There is a thing about you," Cormac said, "that I have been trying to say since the slip and that I am going to say now in front of the whole of this shop. You did not run. You stood at the top of that slip and you let me be the wolf who stood in front of her and there is not a wolf in this village who has ever done a thing like that for me." He put his hand out. "And there is a thing about a father who does that. He is not a man who is standing in a door. He is a man who is standing in the middle of a room."

Declan sat down on the floor beside his son.

The whole of the shop was quiet and the lamp was low and the whole of it was the sound of wolves breathing.

And then the mark under my jaw began to burn.

It was not the flare that had come on the night in the hotel in Galway. It was a slow heat and it was going down my throat and out along my shoulders and the pull in my chest was not pulling me out of the door. It was pulling me inward. It was pulling me down into the thing that was under my own skin.

I put my hand on my throat.

"Niamh," Declan said.

"There is a thing about the mark," I said. "It is not a thing that the moon does to a wolf. It is a thing that a wolf does to a wolf and it is a thing that a wolf keeps. And there is a thing about a wolf who has been in a village for a month and who has been told what she is by a woman in a good coat and by a court and by a co-op and by a whole lot of wolves on a shore." I put my hand on my chest. "She has not been told what she is by the wolf inside her."

The whole of the shop was quiet.

And then the wolf came up.

It was not a shift. It was the thing that had been sitting at the back of my head since the first night in the kitchen in the cottage on the shore road and it came up through me slowly and it did not take my body. It took my eyes and my ears and the whole of the world went from grey to a thing that had a hundred colours in it and I could smell the whole of the shop, the tea and the coal and the soap and the wet wool and the sea on the whole of the forty wolves in it, and I could hear the heart of every one of them.

And the wolf said a thing that was not words.

It said: I have been here since the first night. I was in the mirror and I was in the water at the pool and I was on the headland with the whole of the pack behind me. I have been waiting for the woman to stop running and to stop asking and to stop being a thing that came to a village to bury a sister. I am not a thing that came to a village. I am the wolf of this pack and I have been the wolf of this pack since the first night and there is not a woman in Dublin who is going to be able to take me back.

I put my hand on the counter.

"Declan," I said. "There is a thing I have to say and it is going to sound like a thing a woman says in a shop at two in the morning and it is not. I am not going back to Dublin. Not after the fourteenth and not after the court and not after the file. I am staying in that village and I am going to be in that chair and I am going to be the wolf who puts it back together. And there is a thing about the mark on my throat. It is not a thing that was done to me and it is not a thing that I am going to be able to give back." I turned round. "It is a thing I am keeping. Not because the bond says so. Because I have chosen it every day since the first night and I am going to choose it every day for the rest of my life."

Declan stood up.

"There is a thing about a woman who says that in a shop at two in the morning with the whole of a village in it," he said. "She is not a woman who is asking for a thing. She is a woman who is saying the whole of it out loud." He put his hand out. "And there is a thing about a man who is not the Beta and who has been a rank for twenty years. He is going to have to learn how to be a wolf who is beside a woman who is not a rank either."

I took his hand.

The whole of the shop was quiet.

And then the woman with black hair came in from the road with the eight of the Court behind her and a paper in her hand.

"There is a thing about the morning," she said, "that the whole of this shop is going to hear and then I am going to go up to the hall and put this paper on the table. The woman Mairéad has signed a challenge. Not tonight. This morning. It is in her own hand and it has a date on it and it says the woman Niamh is a claimant and that she is the Alpha and that the challenge is on the headland at dawn with the whole of the co-op on the shore." She put the paper on the counter. "And there is a thing about a challenge that is signed by a woman who has resigned the seat twice and who has been in a hall tonight and heard the whole of the co-op vote against her. It is not a challenge. It is a thing that a woman does when she has nothing left."

The whole of the shop was silent.

"At dawn," I said.

"At dawn." The woman with black hair put her hand on the paper. "And there is a thing about a challenge that is signed in the night and that is heard at dawn. It is a challenge that is going to be on a headland on the fourteenth of July and there is not a wolf in Galway who is going to be able to say it is not lawful. She has the right. She has been the Alpha and she has been in the chair and a wolf who has been in the chair has the right to challenge a claimant and to be answered on the headland."

I put my coat on.

"Then there is a thing I have to do," I said, "and I am going to do it and I am not going to do it alone. There is a pack in this shop and there is a co-op in this village and there is a headland at the end of the shore road. And there is a thing about a wolf who is going to stand on that headland at dawn. She is not going to be the woman from Dublin. She is going to be the Alpha of this pack and she is going to have the whole of it behind her."

I went out of the shop into the dark.

The whole of the pack came out after me and the whole of the shore road was full of wolves and lamps and the whole of the harbor was quiet.

And at the top of the road, where the track goes up to the headland, there was a woman standing with her silver hair down and her black coat on and her hands at her sides.