Chapter 19: Silas Arrives

Dale drove off up the ridge road with his hand out the window in a wave, and I stood in the dust with my heart going and Elias beside me in the trees.

“He is going to the pack house,” I said. “He is going to tell Harlan the investigator is coming and he is going to tell him the dinner is Friday, and he is going to make it sound like he arranged the whole thing himself.”

“He did arrange the whole thing himself,” Elias said. “He wrote to Boise. He asked for the investigator and he asked for the claim, and the Council gave him both.”

“And Silas is the investigator.” I turned to face him. “Silas is already here. He has been here for eleven days. Dale does not know that the man who has been staying in the trailer outside town is the man the Council is sending.”

Elias was quiet for a moment.

“That is a useful thing,” he said.

“It is the only useful thing we have.” I started walking. “Come on. Clara Renn’s house is at the end of the mill road and I want to be there before Dale gets back.”

The miller’s house was at the bottom of the road where the road turned into a track and the track ran into the trees. It was a white house with a steep roof and a porch with a sagging step and a chimney that had not smoked in a while, and there was a garden out back that had gone to seed and a shed with the door hanging open.

I knocked. Nobody came. I knocked again, and the door opened a few inches and an old woman looked out at me through the gap.

She had white hair pulled back in a knot and a face like a dried apple and eyes that were still sharp. She looked at me for a long time. Then she looked at Elias standing behind me in the trees, and something in her face moved.

“You are the wolf from the mill,” she said to him.

“I am,” Elias said.

“You have been in my field.”

“I have.”

“You ate my tomatoes.”

“I did not eat your tomatoes.”

“Something ate my tomatoes,” Clara Renn said. “And it was not the birds.” She opened the door wider. “Come in. Both of you. I have been expecting someone for a while and I was beginning to think I would die first.”

The inside of the house was small and dark and full of paper. There were boxes along the walls and newspapers stacked in the corners and a table covered with letters and photographs and a map spread out under a stone paperweight. The stone paperweight was gray and smooth and had a line in it.

Clara Renn saw me looking at it.

“That is a piece of the boundary stone,” she said. “My mother dug it up in 1932 and gave it to me when I was a girl. It has been on that table ever since.”

“Mrs. Renn,” I said. “My name is Wren. I am the Gamma of the Palouse Ridge pack, and I am here about the stone that was taken out of the east field.”

Clara Renn sat down in a chair by the table and folded her hands in her lap.

“I know who you are,” she said. “You are Mary’s granddaughter. I knew your mother. I went to her funeral.” She looked at me. “Sit down. Both of you. I will tell you what I know, and then you will tell me what you are going to do about it, because I am seventy-nine years old and I have been carrying this alone for sixty years and I am tired.”

We sat down. Clara Renn took a breath.

“My mother was the miller’s daughter and her name was Mary, and when she was fifteen she brought water to the Luna of the old pack while she was held in this mill,” she said. “The founders had her in the cellar. They kept her there for six days. My mother was the only one who was allowed down, because she was a girl and nobody thought a girl was dangerous. And on the sixth day the Luna told my mother a thing, and my mother carried it for the rest of her life.”

“What thing?” I said.

“She told my mother that she was not going to die,” Clara Renn said. “She told my mother that the founders were going to take her out to the field and drown her in the mill pond and tell her mate that she had died of a fever, and she told my mother to watch, and to remember what she saw, and to tell the truth to the Alphas when the time came.” Clara Renn looked at the table. “And my mother watched, and she remembered, and she never told a soul, because she was fifteen and she was afraid and the founders were the most powerful wolves in the territory.”

“Did the Luna die?” I asked.

Clara Renn was quiet for a moment.

“My mother saw them take her out to the pond,” she said. “She saw them hold her under. She saw her go still. And then she saw them leave her in the water and go back to the house, and my mother went down to the pond in the dark and pulled her out, and she was not dead.”

I did not breathe.

“She was not dead,” Clara Renn said again. “She was breathing. My mother got her up and got her into the cellar and hid her there for three days and brought her water and bread, and on the third night a man came to the mill door with a wagon and took the Luna away. My mother never knew his name. She only knew that the Luna told her the moon would remember, and that one day a wolf of her blood would come back to this territory and the stone would wake up.”

“She lived,” I said. “The Luna lived.”

“She lived,” Clara Renn said. “And she had a daughter, and the daughter had a daughter, and somewhere down that line there is a family that does not know what it is.” She looked at me. “My mother looked for her all her life. She never found her. But she left me the stone and she left me the mark, and she told me that if a wolf ever came to this territory with the mark on him and a curse on his back, I was to help him.”

Elias sat forward. “The wolf at the new moon.”

“The cursed wolf,” Clara Renn said. “The one the founders’ curse puts on the land. My mother said there would be one in every generation until the Luna came home, and that the cursed wolf would be the one who carried the truth, and that the truth would be the only thing that could break it.”

I sat back in my chair. The room was very quiet.

“Mrs. Renn,” I said. “The stone that was taken out of the east field. The big one. Was it you?”

She looked at me with her sharp old eyes.

“It was,” she said. “I dug it up on Tuesday night. I have been watching that field for sixty years and I knew where it was, and I knew that the Beta was going to take it and hand it to the Council, and I was not going to let that happen.” She stood up and went to the back of the room and opened a cupboard door. “It is in here. Along with the others.”

She took out a wooden box and set it on the table and opened it. Inside were eleven stones, gray and smooth, each with a line in it, and each one of them was warm. In the middle of them was the flat stone with the mark on it, and the mark was the circle with the line through it and the other line crossing it, and it was not worn away at all.

“The Luna’s mark,” Clara Renn said. “My mother cut it into the stone with a chisel in 1932. She said the founders’ mark was a lie and the Luna’s mark was the truth and the Alphas should have both.”

Elias reached out and put his hand over the stones. The warmth came up through his fingers and into his arm, and I saw his shoulders drop, and I saw the tension go out of him for the first time in days.

“They are all here,” he said. “All of them.”

“Not all,” Clara Renn said. “The Council has four in Boise. But there are enough here to hold the curse until the new moon, and after the new moon we are going to have to do something else.” She looked at me. “The Luna is coming home, Wren. The mark on the stone says so and the moon says so and the curse says so. The only question is whether the Council and the Beta get to her first.”

I opened my mouth to answer, and then there was a knock at the front door, three sharp raps.

Clara Renn went still.

“Nobody knocks at my door,” she said. “Nobody has knocked at my door in six years.”

The knock came again, and then a voice through the wood, polite and clear.

“Mrs. Renn? My name is Silas. I am from the Council, and I would like to talk to you about the boundary stone.”

Clara Renn looked at me. Her old face was calm.

“Well,” she said. “It seems the Council has found me at last.”