Chapter 21: The Fence Line

I did not say anything at the dinner table.

I sat there with my pie and my glass of cider and my hands in my lap and I let Dale tell his lie to the whole pack and I watched the faces around the table while he did it. Mrs. Pike nodded. The Corrigan boys did not look up from their plates. Harlan looked at his plate too, and his jaw was tight, and he did not say a word.

June found my knee under the table and squeezed it. I put my hand over hers and held on.

Silas ate his pie and asked about the wheat and laughed at Mrs. Pike's story about her hen, and when the plates were cleared he shook hands all around and thanked Harlan for his hospitality and said he would be at the trailer if anyone needed him. He went out onto the porch and down the steps and into the dark, and Dale walked him out, and the two of them stood by the car for a minute with their heads close together.

I watched them from the window. Then I went and found June.

"We are leaving," I said.

"Now?"

"Now. Get your coat."

We went out the back way past the kitchen and around the side of the house, and June did not ask a single question until we were on the road with the pack house lights behind us.

"He lied," she said.

"He lied."

"Owen was at home at six o'clock. He was at the table with us. Mama made the stew and he had two bowls and he said he was going to the north fence after and he asked me if I wanted to come and I said no because I had homework." June's voice was shaking. "Wren, he was at the table with us."

"I know."

"Then why did nobody say anything? Harlan was sitting right there. Mrs. Pike was sitting right there. Everyone in that room knows Owen was not at the co-op at six o'clock, everyone in that pack knew our brother, and nobody said a word."

"Because Dale is the Beta," I said, "and because Harlan is afraid, and because people do not like to call a man a liar at his own table when the Council is watching."

June walked beside me in the dark and did not say anything for a while.

"Silas let him say it," she said.

"Silas let him say it."

"Why?"

"Because Silas wanted to hear it," I said. "He wanted to hear Dale say it in front of witnesses, and now he has, and now he has a thing he can use. That is how Silas works. He does not ask a question unless he already knows the answer."

We got home and I put the lamp on and June sat down at the kitchen table with her coat still on and her hands wrapped around a cup of tea she did not drink.

"I am going to walk the line," I said.

"Tonight?"

"Tonight. Dale is at the pack house with the Council man and the hunters have not been out since the dinner was set up." I put my jacket on. "And I want to see what is on the north fence before morning."

"Wren, it is dark."

"I have walked the line in the dark since I was fifteen."

June looked at me. Then she got up and got her coat and her boots.

"I am coming with you," she said.

"June."

"I am coming with you, and if you tell me no I will follow you anyway, and then we will both be on the fence line and neither of us will know where the other one is. So it is better if we go together."

I looked at her for a moment. She had her chin out and her boots on and she looked exactly like our mother.

"Stay behind me," I said. "And if I tell you to get down, you get down."

"Fine."

The north fence runs from the co-op road up along the tree line to the corner where the stone wall meets the east field. It is a wire fence, four strands, with wooden posts every ten feet, and it has been there since before I was born. I know every post. I know the one that leans. I know the one with the hornets in it in July. I know the corner post where Owen and I used to sit when we were children and watch the sun go down.

We walked it from the co-op road north, and the moon was not up and the wheat was black on both sides, and June stayed behind me the way I told her.

At the fourth post I stopped.

There was a line of silver wire strung between the fourth post and the fifth, low down, about a foot off the ground, running through the grass and tied off at both ends. It was thin wire, thinner than a fence wire, and it caught the starlight in a way that ordinary wire does not.

Silver. Silver wire, strung low, in the grass, where a wolf running at night would run into it.

"Wren," June said. "What is that?"

"Get down," I said.

We crouched. I put my hand out and touched the wire with my fingertip and it was cold and it made my skin crawl, and my wolf pulled back from it the way she pulls back from a snake.

"It is silver," I said. "Someone has strung silver wire along the fence."

"Who?"

"Someone who wants to catch a wolf."

I got up and walked along the fence and found more. There was silver wire between the fifth post and the sixth. There was silver wire in the gap by the corner where the fence is spliced. There was a coil of it half buried in the grass by the corner post, as if someone had been working in a hurry and had dropped what they had left.

I stood at the corner post with the coil in my hand.

"Wren," June said quietly. "There is a light."

I looked north. There was a light in the trees, small and moving, and it was coming along the tree line toward us.

"Down," I said, and we went down in the wheat, and I pulled June in close and put my hand over her mouth and my mouth against her ear. "Do not move. Do not breathe loud."

The light came along the tree line slow. It was a lantern, and it was carried low, and the person carrying it was walking along the fence and stopping at each post and bending down.

I could not see the face. The lantern was carried in the left hand and the person was wearing a coat with the collar up and a hat pulled down, and when they bent at the fifth post they took something out of their pocket and did something to the wire and stood up again.

The lantern turned. For a moment the light came across the face under the hat, and I saw the sandy hair and the green scarf.

June's hand closed on my wrist so hard it hurt.

Dale. Dale was on the north fence at midnight with a lantern and a coil of silver wire and his collar up, and he was stringing silver along the line that a cursed wolf ran on the new moon.

He worked his way down to the corner and stopped at the corner post, and he stood there for a moment with the lantern at his feet and looked out over the wheat. Then he took the coil of wire from the grass and put it in his coat and picked up the lantern and walked back into the trees.

We stayed down until the light was gone.

June was shaking.

"He is trying to catch him," she said. "He is stringing silver on the fence and he is trying to catch him before the new moon, and he is doing it at night so nobody sees."

I got up and brushed the dirt off my knees.

"Not before the new moon," I said. "On the new moon. He is not trying to catch him, June. He is trying to kill him. Silver wire strung low in the grass is what you use when you know a wolf is going to run that line at night, and he knows exactly which night. He has known since July."

"We have to tell someone."

"Who? Harlan? Harlan already knows Dale told a lie at dinner and he said nothing." I looked north at the dark trees. "We tell Silas. Silas is the only one in this territory with the standing to do anything about it, and he is going to want to see this wire with his own eyes."

I got down on my knees and took the coil of silver wire out of the grass where Dale had left it and put it in my jacket, and then I took the wire that was strung between the fourth post and the fifth and I pulled it up and coiled it and put it in my jacket too.

"Wren," June said. "What are you doing?"

"I am taking his wire," I said. "If Dale wants to catch a wolf, he is going to have to do it with his hands."

We walked back along the fence line to the co-op road, and I had a jacket full of silver wire and June had her hand in mine and the moon was coming up over the wheat, and when we got to the co-op yard there was a light in the office.

I stopped at the top of the ramp.

Elias was sitting on the loading dock with his back against the office wall and his knees up, and he had a rifle across his lap.

"That is not yours," I said.

"It is Harold's," he said. "It was in the office. I have been sitting here for two hours with it across my knees and I have not fired it at anything." He looked at me. "You were gone a long time."

"We found silver wire on the north fence," I said. "Strung low in the grass. Dale was out there tonight with a lantern putting it up."

Elias did not move.

"How much wire?" he said.

"Enough for the whole line from the co-op road to the corner. He was working his way along the posts when we saw him. He had a coil in the grass and he was tying it off at every post." I took the wire out of my jacket and dropped it on the loading dock. "I took it. All of it. It is here."

Elias looked at the coil of silver wire on the boards and then he looked at me.

"You took the wire off the fence," he said. "In the dark. With him out there."

"I did."

"Wren."

"I am not going to let him kill you with wire in the grass," I said. "If he wants to kill you, he is going to have to look at you when he does it."

He reached out and took my hand.

And then he said, "There is a thing you need to know before the new moon. About the curse. About what it costs."

"What does it cost?"

"Not me," Elias said. "You. The curse does not come off a wolf for free. It has to go somewhere."