Chapter 123: The Confession

The Corrigan boy stood at the top of the stair with a rifle in his hands and twenty wolves behind him and the whole of the round room was between him and us.

“You are not going to Boise,” he said again. “You are not going anywhere.”

I got to my feet.

“Corrigan,” I said. “Put the rifle down.”

“My name is not Corrigan,” he said. “My name is not the name of a wheat pack. The Alphas of the north are going to give me a name and a seat and a territory and it is not going to be a co-op and a fence line.”

I stood in front of Elias.

“Your mother is up there,” I said. “And your brother is up there. And the whole of the pack that fed you and raised you and put up with you for nineteen years is standing in that square.”

The boy’s face did not change.

“They are not my pack,” he said.

And then a voice came down the stair from the round room behind him.

“Yes, they are.”

The boy turned.

A wolf came up the stair behind him. She was small and she had gray hair and she was the keeper and she had come down from the round room with her hand on the wall.

“You are a Corrigan,” Ada of the north said. “And your mother is standing in the square and your brother is standing in the square and the whole of the pack that fed you is standing in the square. And you have come down a stair in the dark with a rifle and a silver chain to sell a wolf to the north.”

The boy did not move.

“The north is not going to give you a name,” Ada of the north said. “The north is going to give you a rank and a box and a silver chain and it is going to use you and then it is going to bury you in a field.” She came up the last of the stair. “I have been the keeper of this circle for eighty-five years and I have seen the north come for the Luna’s line three times and every time the north has promised a wolf a seat and a name and every time the north has buried him.”

The boy lowered the rifle.

And then the whole of the round room lit up.

It was the stone in my hand. It was spent and it was cold and it had no light in it, and the light was coming from somewhere else.

It was coming from the stair.

It was coming from the trees.

The whole of the circle was lit and the whole of the east field was lit and there were wolves coming down the stair from the round room and out of the trees and into the clearing.

It was the Luna’s line. It was Ruth and Hannah and June and Arthur Renn and Clara Renn and Dale and the whole of the pack and they had rifles and axes and the whole of it was in the clearing.

And then Ada of the north said, “The boy is mine.”

She walked up to the Corrigan boy and took the rifle out of his hands and put her hand on his face.

“You are going to stand in the square,” she said. “You are going to stand in the square with the whole of the pack and you are going to tell them what you did. And then you are going to stand in the circle at the full moon and you are going to give the land its drop and you are going to be the keeper’s keeper for the rest of your life.”

The boy looked at her.

“What?” he said.

“You are going to be the keeper’s keeper,” Ada of the north said. “The land wants blood and the keeper gives it a drop and the keeper’s keeper is the one who stands beside him and gives it the second drop. You wanted a name. This is the name. You are the keeper’s keeper and you are going to stand in this circle for the rest of your life and you are going to answer for what you did here tonight.”

The clearing was silent.

And then the boy sat down on the top of the stair and put his face in his hands.

I turned around.

Elias was on the floor of the round room with the silver burns on his arms and his side wrapped and his face gray.

“Wren,” he said.

I knelt down beside him.

“I am here,” I said.

“You used the stone on me,” he said.

“I did.”

“The cure is gone because of me.”

“The cure is gone because of a Corrigan boy with silver knuckles,” I said. “And the cure is not gone because there is another stone in Boise and we are going to go and get it.” I put my hand on his face. “And I am going to say a thing to you that I have been keeping in my chest since the loading dock and I am not going to keep it any longer.”

He looked up at me.

“Say it,” he said.

“I love you,” I said. “Not the bond and not the mark and not the curse. I love you, Elias. I have loved you since the night in the co-op when you told me my brother said my name and I have loved you through the mill and the fire and the field and the circle and the whole of it. And I am not going to stand in another room with a silver chain and a rifle and watch you go down again without saying it.”

He was quiet.

And then he put his hand on my face.

“I loved you before the curse,” he said.

I looked at him.

“What?”

“I loved you before the curse,” he said. “I loved you in 1968 in a churchyard in Walla Walla when I met a woman with a green scarf and your mother’s chin and she told me she had a daughter and she showed me a photograph.” He put his hand in his coat and took out a photograph. It was old and brown and it was a picture of a girl of fourteen with golden blonde hair in a high ponytail and blue-green eyes and a chin that was out. “I have carried this since 1968. I have carried your face in my coat for seventeen years and I did not know your name.”

I sat on the floor of the round room with the photograph in my hand.

“You had a photograph of me,” I said.

“I had a photograph of you.” He put his hand on my face. “I loved the girl in the photograph. And then I met the woman in the combine yard and she was not the girl in the photograph. She was harder and she was angrier and she was braver and she had a knife in her hand and she was not afraid of me.” He put his forehead against mine. “And I loved her more.”

I kissed him.

The whole of the round room was quiet and the whole of the clearing was quiet and the Luna’s line stood in the trees and did not say anything.

And then June came down the stair with a lantern in her hand.

“Wren,” she said. “The eleven Alphas of the north have come out of the pack house. They are standing in the square and they are asking for the Luna.”

I got up.

“Then the Luna is going to answer,” I said.