Chapter 106: The Bait in the Grain

I took the doll down off the rail and turned it over in my hand.

It was made of wheat stalks tied with string and it had a head and two arms and a body and it was about the length of my hand. It was not a child's toy. It was the kind of thing a farmer makes in the field when he is waiting for the wagon and has nothing to do with his hands. I had made a hundred of them when I was a girl, sitting on the tailgate of Harold's truck with Owen, and we had thrown them at each other across the yard until our mother came out and told us to stop wasting the wheat.

But this one had something inside it.

I felt it through the stalks when I squeezed it. It was hard and it was small and it was in the middle of the bundle where the body should have been. I pulled the string loose and the wheat came apart in my hands and the stalks fell on the porch boards and there was a thing in the middle of them.

It was a small piece of stone. It was gray and flat and it had a line in it and it was warm.

“Wren,” June said. “What is it?”

“It is a piece of the boundary stone.” I turned it over. “And there is a mark on it.”

The mark was the circle with the line through it and it was cut into the stone and it was not worn away. It was sharp and clean and it had been cut with a chisel.

“The founders’ mark,” Clara Renn said. She had come up the steps behind me with her box in her hands and her white hair down and she looked at the stone and her old face went still. “That is the mark the founders put on the pieces they collected. It is a founder’s piece.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because the old pieces have the Luna’s mark on them,” Clara Renn said. “The old pack cut the circle with two lines and the founders cut it with one. My mother had a piece with one line on it and she threw it in the river in 1934 because she said she would not have a founder’s thing in her house.” She put her hand out. “Let me see it.”

I gave it to her and she turned it over and put her thumb on the mark.

“It is a founder’s piece,” she said. “And it has been with the others. Look at the edge. It has been in a box with other stones for a long time. The edges are rubbed smooth.”

I put the stone in my pocket and looked at the note.

“The mill land is not yours and it is not his,” I read again. “It is the Council’s and the Council is coming for it.”

“Who left it?” June said.

“Somebody who was in this square in the last hour,” I said. “Somebody who knows the mill land is the thing the Council wants and somebody who knows Dale is going to build a pack on it.”

I went down the steps.

“Pack,” I said. “There is a wolf in this territory who left a note on this porch and a stone in a doll. I want to know who it was. If you saw anybody on this porch in the last hour, you come and tell me.”

The square was quiet. Fifty wolves looked at each other and then at the porch and then at the ground.

And then Harold came forward.

“Alpha,” he said. “I saw a wolf on the porch about an hour ago. He was in a gray coat and he had a hat pulled down and he was not one of ours.”

“Did you see his face?”

“No. He went around the side of the house and I thought he was going to the barn.” Harold put his hat in his hands and turned it around. “I did not think anything of it. There are fifty wolves in this square and half of them are not from this territory and I have been shaking hands with strangers all morning.”

“What color was the coat?”

“Gray. Council gray.” Harold looked at me. “I have seen that gray every day for six years and I know it when I see it.”

I looked at the porch and the steps and the side of the house.

And then Elias came up beside me.

“Wren,” he said. “The stone is warm.”

“I know.”

“It is warm the way the heart is warm. It is a founder’s piece and it has been with the other pieces.” He put his hand out. “Let me see it.”

I gave it to him.

He turned it over and put it to his nose and breathed and his face changed.

“What?” I said.

“It smells of the vault,” he said. “It smells of the tunnel and the stone and the lamp oil the Council uses in its offices.” He looked at me. “This piece came out of the vault in Boise. Somebody took it out of the vault and brought it here.”

I stood on the steps.

“The vault in Boise is under the Council building,” I said. “It has a Council lock and a Council key and there are two wolves in Boise who have the key.”

“The chief clerk had one,” Elias said. “And the other one is the archivist.”

I turned around.

“Arthur,” I said.

Arthur Renn came up the steps with his record under his arm and his spectacles on the end of his nose.

“Alpha,” he said.

“The vault in Boise. The one under the Council building. Who has the key?”

Arthur Renn was quiet.

“I have the key,” he said. “I have had it since 1949 and I have never used it. The chief clerk had the other one and he has been in that vault every week for forty years.” He looked at the stone in Elias’s hand. “But there is a thing about the vault in Boise that nobody has told you. It is not a Council vault. It is a founders’ vault and it was built by the first Silas in 1891 and it has a founders’ lock on it.”

I looked at him.

“A founders’ lock,” I said.

“A founders’ lock,” Arthur Renn said. “And a founders’ lock does not open with a key. It opens with a mark.” He looked at the stone. “The stone in that doll is a key. Somebody took a piece out of the vault in Boise and brought it here and left it on this porch with a note. And the note says the mill land is the Council’s and the Council is coming for it.”

I stood on the steps.

“Then it is not a warning,” I said. “It is a gift.”

“It is a gift,” Arthur Renn said. “Somebody in Boise wants us to have that stone. And they want us to know that the Council is coming.”

I put the stone in my pocket and felt it there against my hip, warm as a coal that had been in the stove all night.

“Then we are going to take it,” I said. “And we are going to find out who sent it.”

And then June said, “Wren. The mill.”

I turned.

The mill road was at the end of the co-op road and the mill was at the end of the mill road and the mill was not there.

There was smoke coming up off the mill road and there was a light at the end of it and it was not the light of a lamp.

It was fire.

“The mill is burning,” June said. “Wren, the mill is burning again.”

I ran.