Chapter 113: The Fireworks

The company stood in the field with their rifles down and the captain stood in front of them with his lantern in his hand and did not say anything for a long time.

“Walter,” he said at last. “You have been on my truck for three days.”

“I have been on your truck for three days,” Walter said. “I have been sitting on a barrel of lamp oil and listening to you talk about the rogue pack in the Palouse and I have been trying to find a way to get off the truck without being shot.”

The captain looked at him.

“And the register,” he said. “You have read it.”

“I have read it.” Walter came off the barrel and stood in the field. “I have been in the archive for twenty-two years and I have never been allowed in the vault and last month the chief clerk sent me in to file a paper and I looked. I looked at the first crate I could reach and I read the first claim in it and it was a Luna named Ada of the Clearwater pack and the claim was filed in 1902 and it was signed by a clerk who has been dead since 1931.” He put his hand in his coat and took out a paper. “I copied it. I have had it in my coat for a month and I have been waiting for a wolf who would listen.”

He held it out and the captain took it.

The captain read it under his lantern and his face did not change.

“This is a claim,” he said.

“It is a claim,” Walter said. “And there are four hundred and five more like it.”

The field was quiet.

And then the captain put the paper in his coat and turned around and looked at his men.

“Company,” he said. “We are not burning anything tonight.”

Nobody moved.

“We are going to put the barrel back on the truck,” the captain said. “And we are going to go back to the north road and we are going to wait there. And in the morning I am going to send a rider to Boise with a report that says the company of the north arrived in the Palouse territory and found a pack in lawful possession of its land and a Luna who is alive.” He looked at me. “And the report is going to say that the company of the north declines to carry out the order of the eleven Alphas.”

He turned and walked back to his truck.

And then a rifle went off from the trees.

The captain went down.

The whole field went down. The company was on the ground and the wolves at the wall were on the ground and the lantern went over in the stubble and went out and there was shouting and another shot and another.

“Wren,” Elias said. He pulled me down behind the wall. “Get down.”

“Who is shooting?”

“The trees. It is coming from the trees.”

I looked up over the wall.

There was a light in the trees on the north end of the field and it was not a lantern and it was not a fire. It was a light going up and it went up into the sky and it burst.

It was a firework. It was green and it was bright and it went up over the field and hung there and then it began to fall.

And then there was another.

And another.

“Fireworks,” June said. “Wren, they are fireworks.”

“They are signal flares,” Silas said. “The Council uses them to signal a company in the field.” He looked at me. “Alpha. That is the order to fire.”

The company was on the ground and the company was not firing. The company was lying in the stubble with their hands over their heads and the captain was on his knees in the field with his hand on his shoulder and there was blood on his coat.

And then the trees on the north end of the field lit up.

It was not fireworks and it was not a lantern. It was a line of torches and it came out of the trees and it came across the field and it was twenty wolves with torches and rifles and there was a wolf in front of them.

It was the archivist.

“Alpha,” he called. “I have an order from the eleven Alphas of the north. The circle is to be burned and the wolves of the Palouse territory are to be taken.” He put his hand up. “Fire.”

The torches came down.

And then the wall went up.

It was not a wall. It was two hundred wolves coming over the stone wall and out of the co-op road and out of the west field and they came into the field with their rifles and their axes and their fence posts and they went into the torches.

I stood up.

“Pack,” I said. “Do not kill them. Put them on the ground and keep them there.”

The field was full of wolves.

Elias was beside me.

“Wren,” he said. “The archivist has the barrel.”

I looked.

The archivist had come across the field and he had got to the second truck and he was on the back of it with the barrel in his hands and he was rolling it toward the trees.

“Elias,” I said.

We ran.

We got to the truck and the archivist saw us coming and he put his shoulder into the barrel and rolled it off the back and it went into the stubble and rolled and came up against the wall.

I got to the archivist and he turned and put his fist into my face and I went down and Elias took him by the coat and put him on the ground.

I got up.

The barrel was against the wall and the bung was open and the oil was coming out of it into the stubble.

“June,” I said. “Get everybody back from the wall.”

And then the archivist got his hand free and put it in his coat and came out with a match.

He struck it.

And then the field went white.

I do not know how it happened. There was a light and it was not the match and it was not the oil and it was not the fireworks. It came up out of the ground and it came out of the wall and it came out of the stubble and it went up into the sky in a column.

The whole of the field was lit and the whole of the field could see it and every wolf in it stopped and stood up and looked.

The light was coming from the circle.

The circle was in the trees and the trees were green and the light was coming out of them and it was the same light that had come up when I said my mother’s name.

And then the mark on my shoulder burned.

It burned the way it had burned when Elias bit me and it burned the way the silver had burned and it burned hotter and it did not stop.

I went down on my knees.

“Wren,” Elias said.

“Something is happening,” I said.

“Wren, your eyes are green.”

I looked up.

And then I changed.

It was not the way it had been in the circle. It was not the way it had been when I was fourteen. It was fast and it was clean and it did not hurt and I went from a woman on her knees to a wolf on four legs in the stubble and the whole field was white around me.

The pack turned and looked at me.

And then Elias changed.

And then June changed.

And then Ruth and Hannah and the Kessler wolves and the Riverside wolves and the Walla Walla wolves and the Palouse wolves and the whole of the field changed, and there were two hundred wolves in the east field in the light and the light was coming out of the ground.

And then the light went out.

The field was dark.

And in the dark there was a voice.

It was a woman’s voice and it was old and it was tired and it came out of the trees and it said, “The circle is open. Come home.”