Chapter 114: What the Pack Remembers

The voice came out of the trees and the whole of the east field heard it and the whole of the east field turned and looked.

There was a woman standing at the north end of the field.

She was old and she was small and she had white hair and a shawl and she was leaning on a stick and she was not one of us. She was not Clara Renn and she was not Ada Kessler and she was not Ruth of the Riverside pack.

I was a wolf. I was on four legs in the stubble and I could not speak and I could not ask her who she was.

But I could smell her.

She smelled of pine and moss and old rain and she smelled of the ground under the trees and the moss in the circle and the stone in the vault. She smelled of the territory.

And then she said a name.

“Ilse,” she said.

The name went through the field like a wind through wheat.

And the pack remembered.

I felt it. I was a wolf and I was standing in the stubble and the mark on my shoulder was burning and every wolf in that field was joined to me through the ground and through the circle and through the light that had gone up out of it. And in that moment the whole of the pack remembered the same thing at the same time.

They remembered the night of the twenty-second of June.

They remembered it the way it had happened and not the way it had been told. They remembered the field behind the mill road and the lantern in the trees and the man with the green scarf who had gone out to meet a wolf and had put a knife in him and left him breathing. They remembered the second man who had come out of the trees and knelt down and finished it. They remembered the wolf who had come out of the grass and put his hands on the wound and held the wound shut and held the boy alive long enough for the second man to come.

They remembered Clara Renn in the trees behind the wall with her hands over her mouth and her mother’s diary in her coat and her whole body shaking and the thing she did not do.

And they remembered something else.

They remembered the old woman.

She had been in the trees on the north side of the field on the night of the twenty-second of June. She had been standing in the dark with her stick in her hand and her shawl around her shoulders and she had watched the whole of it. She had watched Dale put the knife in and she had watched Erik come out of the trees and she had watched Elias hold the wound shut and she had watched the boy die.

And she had done nothing.

She had stood in the trees and she had let it happen and then she had gone away.

The pack came out of the memory and stood in the field.

“Who are you?” Ruth said. She was a wolf and she was speaking through the mind link and the whole of the field heard her. “Who are you and why were you in the trees?”

The old woman came forward into the field.

“I am Ilse,” she said. “I am the Luna of the old pack and I have been dead since 1891.”

The field was silent.

“You are not dead,” Ruth said.

“I am not dead,” Ilse said. “I was drowned in the pond and I was pulled out of the water and I was put in a wagon and I was taken east and I have been alive for eighty-eight years and I have been waiting for the line to come home.” She looked at me. “And the line has come home.”

I was a wolf and I could not speak and I walked forward.

She put her hand on my head.

“You are the fourth daughter’s line,” she said. “And you are the founders’ line and you are the pack and the land and the whole of it.” She looked at the field. “And I am sorry. I am sorry for the night of the twenty-second of June and I am sorry for the trees and the diary and the sixty years of hiding. I was afraid. I have been afraid since 1891 and I did not come out of the trees.”

And then the pack remembered the rest of it.

They remembered the years. They remembered the calves and the fences and the wire and the new moon. They remembered the night in July when a wolf had come out of the trees and stood at the edge of a field and did not come closer. They remembered the light in the mill loft and the smell of a stranger in the barn and a truck on the mill road with the founders’ mark on the door.

They remembered the old woman in the trees on every new moon for sixty years. They remembered her watching.

“You knew,” Clara Renn said. She had come out of the trees and she was a wolf and her voice in the mind link was shaking. “You knew about my mother and the pond and the wagon and you knew about the curse and you knew about the founders and you knew about the boy. And you stood in the trees and you did not tell me.”

“I did not tell you,” Ilse said.

“You let me think my mother was the only one who knew.”

“I let you think your mother was the only one who knew because I was afraid,” Ilse said. “And because I did not know if you would believe me. And because if I had come out of the trees in 1932 and told the territory that the Luna was alive, the founders would have come for me and they would have come for you and they would have come for the whole of the line.”

Clara Renn stood in the stubble.

“And Owen?” she said. “What about Owen?”

Ilse was quiet.

“I was in the trees on the night of the twenty-second of June,” she said. “I saw the knife and I saw the second man and I saw the wolf hold the wound shut. And I did not come out of the trees.” She looked at me. “I am sorry. I have been sorry for four months and I have not known how to say it.”

I was a wolf and I could not speak.

And then the mark on my shoulder went cold.

It went cold the way a hand goes cold when it has been in the snow and it went down through my chest and into my legs and I went down in the stubble.

“Wren,” Elias said. He was a wolf and he was at my side and his nose was in my fur. “Wren.”

I could not answer.

And then I changed.

It was not the clean change. It was the hard one and it hurt and I came out of it on my hands and knees in the stubble with the coat over me and my hair in my face.

“Ilse,” I said. “The curse. What did you do to the curse?”

Ilse looked at me.

“I did not do anything to the curse,” she said. “You did. The whole of the pack did. When the field lit up and the two hundred wolves changed at once, the curse moved. It went out of the wolf and into the ground and into the whole of the pack and it is in all of you now.”

The field was silent.

“In all of us,” I said.

“In all of you,” Ilse said. “The curse is not one wolf’s anymore. It is the pack’s. And it will not break until the pack stands in the circle together at the full moon and gives it back.”

I sat in the stubble.

“Then it is not the Luna and the wolf,” I said.

“It is the Luna and the wolf and the pack,” Ilse said. “The whole of it. Every wolf in this territory. The full moon is in twenty days and every wolf in this territory has to stand in that circle.”

I looked at the field and the two hundred wolves and the whole of the line.

“Then we have twenty days,” I said.