Chapter 71: The Spark in My Scars

We stood on the rope walk in the rain and did not say anything for a while.

“She had been writing to Eileen for a year,” I said. “Before the claim. Before the boathouse. Before any of it. My sister was writing to a banished wolf in the north for a year and she did not tell me and she did not tell Ronan and she did not tell you.”

“She told me in February,” Declan said. “She came to the harbor office and she said, Declan, there is a woman in the north who can help us, and I said, who, and she said, a wolf who was banished in 1988 and who has a pack, and I said, that is a rogue, and she said, that is a claimant’s army.” He looked at the water. “And I said, do not bring a rogue into this territory, and she said, I am not bringing her in, I am going to her. And I said, then you are a fool, and she said, I am a fool with a broken mark and a village that is going to be sold on a boat in the summer.”

“And you did nothing.”

“I did nothing.”

The rain came down. I put my hand on the rail and looked at the harbor and the boats and the light in the hall on the hill.

“There is a thing I have not told you either,” I said. “In the north, when the salvage crew took her, she gave Eileen the record of the shifts. She gave a banished wolf a record of every first shift in this village for fifteen years. And she knew what Eileen was. She knew she was a claimant with a pack and she gave her the record anyway and she has been telling herself ever since that it was for the village.” I turned round. “And there is a thing about that which is worse than a betrayal. My sister went north because she was alone and because her bond was broken and because she could not tell a living soul in this village what she was going to do. And the only wolf in the world who would listen to her was a woman who had been waiting twenty years for a wolf of the line of Maeve to walk into her kitchen.” I looked at him. “And you let her go. You stood on that slip and you watched the boat go round the point and you did not go with her.”

“I did not go with her.”

“And that is the thing we are going to have to live with,” I said. “Both of us. You did not go with her and I did not write back to her for a year. She wrote to me and she told me she was in this village and she was frightened and she had a broken mark and I did not write back. I was in Dublin with a bottle and a bad case and I did not write back.” I put my hand over my mouth and took it away. “So do not stand there and tell me you are the only one in this village who let her down.”

Declan looked at me.

“You did not know,” he said.

“I knew she was frightened. She told me she was frightened. She wrote it in a letter and I read it in a pub in Dublin and I put it in my pocket and I did not answer it.” I looked at the water. “And then I came down here in June and I stood in her cottage and I told myself I was going to find out who killed her. And I have been doing it for a week and I have not once said out loud that she is alive and she is in Athlone and she has been in Athlone since April and she has been waiting for me to come and find her.”

The rain came down on the rope walk. Declan took a step toward me and put his hand on my arm and the spark came up through my coat and up my arm and I did not pull away.

“There is a thing about the spark,” he said. “I have been telling myself for a month that it is the bond and the bond is a thing that happens to a wolf and not a thing a wolf chooses. And I have been using that. I have been telling myself that the thing I feel when I put my hand on you is not mine and that I am not responsible for it.” He turned me round to face him. “That is a lie. The bond is the bond and it does what it does. But the spark is not the bond. The spark is a man standing in the rain on a rope walk at midnight with a woman who has just told him the truth and deciding that he is not going to lie to her again.” He put his hand flat on my chest. “So I am going to say it plainly. I am sorry. For April and for June and for every day since. I sat in that office and I let you grieve and I did it because I was frightened of losing you and it was the worst thing I have done in a life that has a great deal in it to be ashamed of.”

I put my hand over his hand on my chest.

“And what are you going to do about it?”

“I am going to stand beside your sister in that hall in the morning and I am going to hold the seat while the co-op votes and I am going to put my name to every paper that comes out of it and I am going to say what I did in April in front of the whole village and take whatever the co-op gives me.” He looked at me. “And then I am going to ask you to stay. Not because the bond says so. Because I am asking.”

The rain came down. The harbor lights were smears in the water and the whole village was in the lane behind us and there was a boat knocking against the wall.

“I am not going to say yes tonight,” I said. “I have a sister in that cottage on the hill and a vote in the morning and a woman in the room above the hall who put a rope round my sister’s neck and a man in the net store who set a fire. I am not going to stand on this rope walk and promise you a thing I cannot think about until it is over.”

“I am not asking for tonight.”

“Then ask me on Sunday,” I said. “If there is a Sunday. If the co-op votes and the seat is filled and there is a village left to stand in.”

Declan put his hand on the back of my neck and pulled me in and kissed me on the forehead, and the bond in my chest went warm and quiet and the wolf in me settled for the first time in a week.

“Sunday,” he said.

We went up the shore road together and the village was still in the lane and Nora had the shop open and there was tea and bread on the counter and a fire in the grate. My sister was sitting in the chair by the fire with a blanket round her and a cup in her hands and Ronan beside her, and she looked up when I came in and her face did the thing my mother’s face used to do, which was to go from worry to something that was not quite a smile.

“Sit down,” she said. “You look like a woman who has been on a rope walk in the rain.”

I sat down.

“There is a thing I have to say to you and I am going to say it now because there is no time to say it later,” she said. “I wrote to Eileen for a year before I made the claim. I went north in April and I gave her the record and I came back to Athlone and I have been sitting in that cottage for four months and I have not written to you. Not once.” She put her cup down. “I have been telling myself that it was not safe and that the Alpha could hear a letter and that Margaret was the only wolf I could trust. That is not the truth. The truth is that I was ashamed. I had given the record to a claimant and I had lost the seat and I had been put in a boathouse and I could not write to my sister and tell her that I had made a mess of it.”

The fire ticked.

“I did not write to you either,” I said. “You wrote to me in February and I read it in a pub in Dublin and I did not answer it.”

My sister looked at me.

“Then we are both fools,” she said.

“Then we are both fools,” I said.

And then Cormac came in from the lane with his coat open and his face white and a paper in his hand.

“It is from the Alpha,” he said. “She has sent it down with the wolf on the door. She says she is going to stand up in the hall in the morning and she says she is not going to resign. She says she has read the charter in the night and she says there is a thing in it about a false mate and a false bond and a seat that cannot be claimed by a wolf who is bonded to a wolf who has lied to the co-op.” He put the paper on the table. “She says Declan is a false mate. She says the bond between him and Niamh was made by her in the same way she made the one in December. And she says she is going to say it in front of the whole co-op in the morning.”