Chapter 121: The Hunt for the Cure

They put the eleven Alphas of the north in the pack house and they put their forty wolves in the barn and they put a guard on both doors and I went up to Maeve's cottage to see Elias.

He was in the bed in the back room with his side wrapped and his ribs strapped and his face gray against the pillow.

Maeve met me at the door.

“The arrow is out,” she said. “It went in between two ribs and it did not touch the lung. He is going to be sore for a week and he is not going to change for a month.”

“Can I see him?”

“He is asleep.”

“I will sit with him.”

I sat with him all morning and he did not wake and I did not sleep. The mark on my shoulder was warm and steady and the rope between us was slack and I sat in the chair with my hand on the blanket and watched the snow come down outside the window.

At noon June came in.

“Alpha,” she said. “The eleven Alphas of the north have sent a message. They want to meet with you before the full moon and they want to meet in the circle.”

“In the circle,” I said.

“In the circle. They say they want to see it and they want to see the stones and they want to see the ground.”

I sat back in the chair.

“And the blood debt?” I said.

“They say the blood debt is a separate matter and it will be heard at the full moon.” June put a paper on the table. “And Wren. There is a thing in the message. It says the Alphas of the north have brought a wolf with them. A woman. She is old and she is not a wolf of the north and she is not a Council wolf. She is from a pack in the east and she has been brought to this territory to speak about the circle.”

“What pack?”

“The message does not say. It says she is a keeper and that she has been a keeper for forty years and that she knows the circle better than any wolf alive.”

I stood up.

“Then we go to the circle,” I said.

We went at dusk with the whole of the Luna’s line and the eleven Alphas of the north and the keeper.

The keeper was a small woman with gray hair and a face that had been out in the weather for seventy years and she walked into the clearing and stopped and looked up at the trees.

“They are green,” she said.

“They have been green since the night the heart and the piece came together,” I said.

“That is not possible,” the keeper said. “The circle does not green the trees.”

“It did.”

The keeper walked into the circle and put her hand on the standing stone.

“This is not the heart,” she said.

“The heart is in the vault under the circle and this is a stump the founders cut off in 1891,” I said. “The heart is in the round room and the piece is with it and the whole of them are together.”

The keeper looked at me.

“Then the circle is not open,” she said. “The circle is awake. The circle is awake and it is not the same thing.”

I stood in the moss.

“What is the difference?” I said.

“The circle is awake because the stones are together and the Luna is standing in it. That is a thing that happens once in a hundred years and it does not last.” She put her hand on the stone. “The circle is open when the pack stands in it and the curse is given back and the land answers. That is a thing that has not happened since 1897.”

“Then we are going to open it,” I said.

The keeper looked at me.

“You are the Luna,” she said. “You and the wolf and the pack. And there is a thing about the circle that nobody has told you.” She looked around the clearing. “The circle was not built for the curse. It was built by the old pack to hold the land and the land is under it and the land has a keeper and the keeper has a place.”

“What place?”

The keeper walked to the north side of the circle.

“Here,” she said. “Under the stone.”

She put her hand on the flat stone that I had moved with Hannah on the night we found the round room and she pushed.

It did not move.

“It does not open for me,” she said. “It opens for the Luna.”

I went to the stone and put my hands on it and said the seven words and the stone slid back into the moss and the stair went down.

The keeper looked at the stair.

“That is the old way,” she said. “The old pack built a stair and a room and a stone and they put the whole of it under the ground so that the Council could not find it.” She looked at me. “And there is a thing in that room that the Council has been looking for since 1891.”

I went down the stair.

The round room was there and the two stones were in the middle of it and the light was coming out of them and the walls were rough and the floor was flat.

And there was a door in the wall behind the heart.

It was a stone door and it was old and it had a mark on it and the mark was the circle with two lines.

“Wren,” Elias said.

He was coming down the stair behind me with his hand on his side and his face white.

“You are supposed to be in bed,” I said.

“I know.”

“Maeve is going to kill you.”

“Maeve is going to have to stand in line,” he said. “What is that door?”

I put my hand on it.

“It is the Luna’s door,” I said.

I said the seven words and the door opened.

Behind it there was a room.

It was small and it was round and it was cut out of the rock and it had a bed of stone and a shelf and a lamp and it had a chest in the middle of it and the chest was open and the chest was full.

There were books in it. There were jars of things. There were papers and there were drawings and there were stones.

And there was a table with a map on it.

And there was a woman sitting at the table.

She was old and she was small and she had white hair and a shawl and she was not a wolf of the north and she was not a Council wolf and she was the keeper's mother and she had been in that room since 1897.

“Ilse,” Elias said.

The old woman looked up.

“You are the cursed wolf,” she said. “And you are the Luna.”

“We are,” I said.

She put her hand on the map.

“Then you have come for the cure,” she said. “And I have been keeping it for eighty-five years.”