Chapter 16: The Empty Boathouse

I took my hand off Cormac's mouth and put my lips to his ear and said, so quietly that it was barely a breath, "When I move, you move. Not before. Do you understand?"

He nodded against my hand. His whole body was shaking.

The torch beam swung along the wall above our heads and the man's voice said, "I am not going to chase a boy and a woman around a burned shed in the dark. Bring them out and we will talk to them here."

"They are not going to come out for talking," Mairéad said. "The woman is the difficult one. The boy will come out if I call him."

I felt Cormac go still beside me, and then I felt the pull in him, the thing Declan had told me about, the way the Alpha's voice went into a wolf and pulled the strings. He was a wolf and she was his Alpha and the whole of him wanted to stand up. I put my hand flat on his chest and pressed him back against the stones and I put my mouth to his ear again.

"Think about the harbor," I said. "Think about the boats. Think about a blank wall. Do not think about me and do not think about your father and do not think about the rope."

The torch swung again. A stone rolled somewhere at the far end of the shed.

"There is a back way out of this shed," the man said. "It is a gap in the wall on the seaward side. I saw it when I was here on Sunday."

"Then go round and take the gap and I will keep them in the light."

The torch beam moved away toward the landward end. Feet crunched on gravel. I counted three breaths and then I got up and pulled Cormac up with me and we went along the seaward wall with our backs to the stones, and the gap was there, a place where the wall had fallen away and the grass had grown over the fallen stones, and it was wide enough for a man to get through on his hands and knees.

I pushed Cormac through it first. He went down on the grass on the other side and I got down and went through after him, and my coat caught on a stone and I pulled it free and something tore, and then I was on the grass and the sea was in front of me and the tide was high and the water was coming up over the slip.

"Down to the water," I said. "Along the shore. Fast."

We went. The grass was wet and the stones were slick and the moon was so bright on the water that I could see every rock, and behind us in the shed a man's voice said, "They are out. They are on the shore."

Then there was a sound that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was a low growl, long and steady, and it came from the direction of the shore road, and then it came again from the other side.

"They are in the water," Mairéad said. "Leave them. The tide is coming in and the shore road is the only dry way back to the village and the pack is on it. Let them come to us."

I stopped in the shadow of a rock with my hand on Cormac's arm and listened. The tide was coming in. The shore road was the only dry way back and the pack was on it, and the pack was not the forty I had watched go up over the ridge. That had been the run. This was something else.

"Up," I said. "The rocks. High as you can go."

We went up the rocks. There was a ridge of them along the foot of the headland, black and wet and sharp, and we climbed it in the dark and lay down on the top of it, and from there I could see the shore road.

There were wolves on it. Six of them, spread along the road from the boathouse to the pier, standing still with their heads up and their noses working. I could see the shape of them against the moonlit water and I could smell them, and I could smell the woman with the silver hair who was walking down the slip toward the water with a torch in her hand.

The man in the town coat was standing at the edge of the slip with his hands in his pockets.

"Mairéad," he said. "This is a great deal of trouble for a woman who has not made a formal claim and a boy who has done nothing but follow orders."

"She has not made a formal claim," Mairéad said. "She has done something worse. She has the weight. She has the charter number. And she has been seen shifting on the high ground by the whole pack, and there is not a wolf on this road tonight who does not know what that means." She turned and looked up at the rocks where we were lying and her voice carried clear across the water. "Niamh. I know you can hear me. I am going to say this once and then I am going to go back to the hall and I am not going to say it again. The Council's enforcer is here with me tonight. His name is Korkut and he has come from Galway to see that this village is kept in order. If you come down now and give me the weight and swear before him that you make no claim, then you and the boy will be on the road to Galway by morning and there will be no more trouble. If you do not come down, then you are a rogue in my territory and the pack will hunt you, and the enforcer will witness that I was within my rights."

The six wolves on the shore road did not move. The sea came in over the slip and the water swirled around Mairéad's boots.

"You have until the tide turns," she said.

She walked back up the slip and along the road toward the village, and the man in the town coat walked beside her, and the six wolves followed them one by one and left the shore road empty.

I lay on the rocks with Cormac beside me and the moon on the water and my heart going hard.

"Niamh," Cormac whispered. "The tide turns at two. It is one now."

"I know what time the tide turns." I sat up and looked at the shore road. It was empty and grey in the moonlight and the village beyond it was dark. "We cannot go back along the road. We can go over the rocks to the far side of the headland and come into the village from the north, past the peat cuts."

"That is three miles over the rocks in the dark."

"Then we had better start." I got up and put my hand down to him. "Come on. On your feet."

He did not take my hand. He was still lying on the rock and his face in the moonlight was white and he was looking at the water.

"I cannot go back to the village," he said. "She will call me. She called me in the shed and I nearly went. If I go back and she calls the pack to listen, she will hear me and she will know where you are."

"She will hear me too. That is why we are not going to think about where we are."

"You do not understand." He sat up. "She has been calling me since I was fourteen. Every time there was a thing to be done she called me and I went and I did it. The boathouse. The boots. The body in the water. And every time I told myself it was the last time and every time she called me again and I went." He looked at me and there were tears on his face. "I cannot say no to her. I have never been able to say no to her. You should leave me here. If you leave me here she will find me and she will think you have gone and she will stop looking."

The sea came in over the rocks below us. The moon was going down toward the water.

"Cormac," I said. "Look at me."

He looked at me.

"You brought my sister bread for three days," I said. "You sat with her in the dark. You could not cut the rope. You came to your father with the boots and you came to me tonight with the rope and the stain. That is not a boy who cannot say no. That is a boy who has been saying no for a month and has not noticed it yet."

He wiped his face with his sleeve. He was quiet for a moment.

"When she came with the rope," he said, slowly, "she did not ask me. She said, the woman is to be taken out to the rocks tonight and you will help me, and I said, I will not, and she said it again in the pack voice and I could not stop my hands. But I did not put the rope round her neck. She did that. And when she told me to cut it I cut it too soon and she was still..." He stopped. He put his hand over his mouth.

"She was still what?"

"She was still breathing when she went into the water." He said it very quietly. "She was still breathing and I stood on the rocks and I watched and I did nothing."

The sea came in. The moon touched the water. And on the shore road below us, a light came on in the co-op hall.

Then Cormac got up. He got up off the rock and put his shoulders back and his face was wet and set and it was not a boy's face at all.

"Three miles over the rocks," he said. "You will need a guide and I have been over these rocks since I was six. Come on. I will take you round the point and up through the peat cuts and you will be at the church before the tide turns."

We went down off the rocks and along the shore. The sea was on our left and the headland was on our right and the moon was going down behind the water, and we walked in silence for half a mile and then Cormac stopped and put his hand out.

"There is a light on the high ground," he said.

I looked. Up on the ridge above the peat cuts there was a light moving, a small steady light like a lantern, and it was going along the top of the ridge toward the old charter house.

"Who would be up there at one in the morning?" I said.

Cormac was staring at it. "Nobody goes up there at night," he said. "Nobody except..." He stopped.

"Except who?"

He turned and looked at me and his eyes were wide and the fear came off him again, sharp and sour. "Except the woman who was in the cottage in March," he said. "The one with the black boots. I saw her up on the ridge three times before your sister died. I saw her the night before the claim. And I saw her go into the hall at two in the morning on the Thursday, and the Alpha was waiting for her at the door."

The light on the high ground stopped moving and hung there, steady, at the edge of the old charter house, and then it went out.