Chapter 36: The Cursed Bloodline

The mark on my shoulder was not burning.

It was warm, the way a hand is warm when it has been holding a cup, and it had been warm like that since the moment he bit down. It had not burned once.

I lay in the dark on the mill floor with his coat over me and his face close to mine, and I watched him for a long moment.

“It is not burning,” I said.

He let out a breath. “No.”

“You did not lie. You were afraid I would think you had something to do with it and you did not tell me, and that is a coward’s reason, but it was not a lie.” I turned on my side to face him. “But there is a thing you are not saying. I can feel it. The bond is not burning and there is still a place in you that is holding something back.”

He looked at the lantern on the floor.

“It is not a lie,” he said. “It is a thing I do not understand, and I did not want to say it until I did.”

“Say it anyway.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“Your brother came to the mill in June,” he said. “He sat on the floor with me and he talked to me for an hour. And in the middle of the hour he stopped talking and he looked at me for a long time and then he said, you smell like the field. And I said, what field, and he said, the field behind the mill road, and I said I have never been in that field in my life.” Elias turned his head. “I had not, Wren. In June I had not yet been to the east field. The curse had not brought me here yet. I was living in the trees on the other side of the ridge and I came down to the mill because I was hungry and I found the door open, and your brother found me three days later.”

“Then what did he mean?”

“I do not know. I asked him and he said it was nothing, he had the wrong man.” Elias took a breath. “And then he said a thing that I have thought about every day since. He said, my sister walks that field every night and she does not know what is under it, and if she keeps walking it she is going to find something she cannot put back.”

I sat up.

“He knew about the stone,” I said.

“He knew about the stone. He knew about the field. He knew something was under it and he knew you were going to find it and he was afraid of what would happen when you did.” Elias sat up beside me. “And three days later he was dead in the field he told me he had never been in.”

I put my hand on my shoulder. It was warm and it was steady and there was no burn in it.

“Then he was not killed because of the coat,” I said. “He was killed because of the field. He found out what was under it and he was going to go to Harlan, and the man who killed him knew he was going to go to Harlan.”

“The man who killed him,” Elias said. “Not a wolf. A man.”

“A man with a knife and a lantern and a green scarf.” I got up and pulled my shirt on and buttoned it with cold fingers. “We need to go back to Maeve’s. We need to open the record. If Owen found out what was under the field, then it is in the record somewhere and we have not seen it yet.”

We went back down the ridge in the dark with the snow up to our ankles and the lantern swinging. Maeve’s kitchen was warm and full of people. Arthur Renn was at the table with the record open and Silas was beside him with the list of forgeries and June was at the stove with the kettle and Clara Renn was in the chair by the fire.

Maeve looked up when we came in and her eyes went straight to my shoulder.

“Show me,” she said.

I pulled my collar down. The mark was a small clean crescent on the curve of my shoulder, red at the edges and silver in the middle, and it was not bleeding and it did not hurt unless I pressed it.

Maeve came and looked at it for a long time.

“It is a good mark,” she said. “It is clean. It will heal in three days and it will not fade.” She looked at me. “How does it feel?”

“Warm.”

“That is how it should feel.” She put her hand on my cheek. “You are a marked wolf now, Wren. No Council in the territory can break it and no trial claim can hold against it. Dale can file a hundred claims and they will be void in front of the first Alpha who sees that mark.” She let me go and went back to the table. “But there is a thing I have to tell you, and I have been putting it off because I did not want to frighten you before the mark was made.”

She opened the tin box and took out the page from the founders’ record and put it on the table.

“The curse came from a stolen Luna,” she said. “I have told you that. What I did not tell you is how the curse was made. There is a page in the record that my mother copied in 1954 and it is not the page with the words on it. It is the page before. It is the page where the old Alpha speaks.”

She turned the page around.

It was a copy in Ruth’s neat hand and it said: On the night of the new moon in the year 1891, the Alpha of the old pack came to the circle with his mate’s ring and his mate’s name and he stood in the circle and he spoke to the moon. He said that the founders had taken his Luna and drowned her in the pond and that the land had been bought with her blood. He said that he would give the land to them and the moon would take the heart out of it. He said that the moon would send a wolf in every generation who would carry the Luna’s death in his body and the Luna’s name in his mouth, and that wolf would be the truth of the founders’ crime, and that the founders would never be able to hide it. And he said that when the Luna came home, the wolf would be free and the land would be free with him.

I put the page down.

“The wolf carries her death,” I said.

“The wolf carries her death,” Maeve said. “And Elias carries Owen’s death. The scars. The memories. The night Owen died is in his body because the curse takes the last death of the founders’ line and puts it on the cursed wolf.” She looked at me. “That is what the curse is, Wren. It is not a punishment. It is a witness. The old Alpha could not prove what the founders had done, so he made a thing that would carry the proof in its own skin until the Luna came home to hear it.”

I looked at Elias. He was standing by the door with his coat still on and his face very still.

“Then the curse is the truth,” he said. “The whole time. Every new moon. Every scar. Every night I woke up in a field with no memory. It was not the founders’ curse. It was the old Alpha’s witness.”

“It was both,” Maeve said. “The founders called it a curse because it was a curse to them. To the old pack it was a promise.”

Arthur Renn cleared his throat.

“There is a line in the record I have not been able to make fit,” he said. “It is at the bottom of the page, in the old Alpha’s own hand, and my grandfather copied it and then drew a line through it and wrote over it. But the ink under the line is still legible.” He turned the page around and put his finger on the bottom. “It says, the wolf carries the death but the Luna carries the cure.”

The kitchen was very quiet.

“The Luna carries the cure,” I said.

“You are the Luna,” Maeve said. “And the cure is not the stones and it is not the words and it is not the circle. The cure is a thing the Luna has to do, and the old Alpha did not say what it was.” She looked at me. “We have three weeks until the Council of Alphas meets and we have a mark on your shoulder and a claim that is void and a record that proves the founders were thieves. But we do not have the cure. And if we go to Boise without it, we can win the land and we can break the claim, and the curse will still be on Elias and the wolf will still run on the new moon for the rest of his life.”

I sat down at the table.

“Then we find the cure,” I said. “In three weeks.”

There was a knock at the door.

Everybody in the kitchen went still. June got up and went to the window and looked out and her face went white.

“It is Dale,” she said. “He is alone and he is not in the truck. He walked up the hill.” She turned around. “And Wren, he is not wearing a coat. He is standing in the snow in his shirtsleeves and he is holding a lantern and he has been crying.”