Chapter 75: What the Pack Saw

The hall argued for another hour and then Ahern closed it.

“The claim is made and the challenge is answered and the challenge stands,” he said. “The woman Mairéad has refused the vote and chosen the fight and the fight is on the headland at the full moon. And there is a thing about a champion that the charter does say and that the co-op is going to hear. A champion may be named by the Alpha and the champion fights in the Alpha's place and the fight is between the champion and the challenger and no other wolf. And if the champion is beaten, the Alpha is beaten.” He looked at Mairéad. “Do you name a champion?”

Mairéad looked at Declan for a long moment.

“No,” she said. “I fight my own fights.”

The hall emptied at ten and the whole village went out into the lane and stood in it, and I went down to the shore with my sister and Ronan and Padraig and Cormac and Declan, and we stood on the slip where the water came in over the stones.

“She refused the champion,” I said. “She could have named Declan and she did not.”

“She could not name me,” Declan said. “I am your mate and the whole co-op smelled it this morning. A champion who is the mate of the challenger is not a champion. It is a joke and the whole village would have laughed at her.” He was quiet a moment. “And there is a thing about the fight that the charter does say and that Ahern did not say in the hall. The challenger may name a champion too. And the champion fights in the challenger's place.”

“I am not going to name a champion.”

“Niamh.”

“I am not going to stand on a slip with a whole village watching and name a man to fight a woman who put my sister in a boathouse.” I turned round. “She put a rope round my sister's neck and she signed a paper and she put her in the water and she has been sitting in that chair for fourteen years on a lie. And there is a thing the whole village is going to see tonight. They are going to see a woman from Dublin who has been a wolf for a week stand on that headland and not run. And that is worth more than a fight won by a champion.”

My sister put her hand on my arm.

“There is a thing I have to say and you are not going to like it,” she said. “She will beat you. She has been a wolf for sixty years and she has killed three wolves on that headland and she does not fight fair. And if she beats you she will not stop at beating you. She will put you in the water the way she put me in the water and the co-op will stand on the shore and watch her do it and there will not be a thing anyone can do.”

“Then I had better not be beaten.”

“Niamh.”

“There is a thing I have not told you,” I said. “And it is the only thing I have. She is sixty nine years old and she has been sitting in a chair for fourteen years and she has not been in a fight since March. She has been a wolf for sixty years and she has been an Alpha for fourteen and an Alpha does not fight. She sits in a chair and she signs papers and she has other wolves do the things that need doing. Tom set the fire. The men from Sligo did the killing. She has not put her hands on a wolf since 1981.” I looked at my sister. “And I have been a guard in Dublin for fifteen years and I have been in a scuffle on a stairs and I have been knocked down and I have got up. And I have been a wolf for a week and I have shifted five times and I have run on that headland and I have fought her sister on that headland and I am still here.”

The water came in over the slip. My sister looked at me for a long moment.

“Then there is a thing you should do before tonight,” she said. “You should shift and run with the pack. Not on the headland. On the shore. In daylight. With the whole co-op watching and the whole co-op running behind you. Because a wolf who runs with the pack on the day of a fight is a wolf who is not alone on the headland at night.”

We ran at noon.

The whole co-op came down to the shore and the whole co-op shifted and we went along the sand from the slip to the point and back, and I was in the middle of forty wolves with my sister on my left and Declan on my right and Cormac behind me, and the sand went past under my paws and the sea was on my left and the wind was in my fur and the whole village was one thing for the first time since I came to that coast.

We came round the point and the tide was out and the rocks were wet and there was a pool in the rocks that was still and clear and shallow. And I stopped.

My sister stopped beside me. Declan stopped behind me.

There was a wolf in the pool.

She was golden. Her coat was the colour of my hair and it was long and thick and the sun was on it and it shone like a coin. Her eyes were sky blue and they were my eyes and she had a scattering of darker gold on her muzzle where a woman would have freckles. She was not as big as Declan and not as lean as Eileen and she stood on the rock with her head up and her tail straight and she was looking at me.

I had never seen her. I had been a wolf five times and I had felt her in my chest and in my bones and I had never once seen her.

“That is you,” my sister said. She had shifted back and she was standing on the rock with the wind in her hair. “That is what you are. That is what you have been all along and nobody in Dublin ever told you.”

I looked at the golden wolf in the pool and the golden wolf looked back at me and something in my chest that had been tight since the first night went loose.

“There is a thing about a golden wolf,” Declan said. He had shifted back too and he was standing beside my sister on the rock. “There has not been a golden wolf in this territory since Maeve. There has not been one in thirty six years. And the whole co-op is standing on the shore behind us and the whole co-op has just seen her.” He looked at me. “You do not need to win the fight tonight. You need to be seen. And you have been seen.”

We went back to the village at two and the whole of it was quiet and the whole of it was watching me.

And at four o'clock Padraig came down to the cottage with his coat on and a paper in his hand.

“I have been in the church,” he said. “Father Byrne has been through the parish chest since the fire and he has found a thing that was at the bottom of it that no one has looked at since 1961. It is a page out of the parish register for 1961 and it has the names of the wolves who were in the hall on the night of the fire and it has a note at the bottom in the priest's hand.” He put the paper on the table. “Read it.”

I read it.

“The wolves in the hall on the night of the fire were nine. The Alpha Maeve was in the house. The Beta Eileen was in the house. The healer Ronan the elder was in the hall. The cooper Arthur the elder was in the hall. Maire was in the hall. And there were four wolves of the co-op whose names are not written here because they were not of this village. They were wolves from outside the territory and they had been in the village for a week and they were the wolves who set the fire.”

The cottage was quiet.

“Four wolves from outside the territory were in this village for a week before the fire,” Padraig said. “And there is a thing Father Byrne told me that he has never told anyone. They were not wolves from Galway. They were wolves from the north. And they came down the coast in a boat and they went out in it again the night after the fire.”