Chapter 45: The Knife with the Silver Handle

Kessler did not know where the man lived. He knew where the man had a mailbox.

“It is on the north road, past the ridge turn,” he said. “It is a box on a post with no name on it and no house behind it. I have driven past it forty times since I came to this territory and I have never seen a house. But the payroll checks go there and the mail comes back signed, and the signature is always the same. E. R.”

“And you never asked who he was?”

“I am a clerk,” Kessler said. “The Council sends me a list of names and a list of amounts and I write the checks. I do not ask who the names belong to.” He looked at his folder on the hood of the truck. “I am asking now.”

We did not go to the north road that night. The snow was too deep and the truck would have been stuck in the ditch before we got to the ridge turn, and there was a thing I wanted to do first that I had been putting off.

Dale’s shed.

It was at the back of his house, and his house was at the end of the co-op road, and the co-op road was the one road in this county that got plowed before the sun was up because Harold plowed it himself. We went down there at first light with the snow up to our knees and the sky white and the whole county quiet.

Dale was not at the house. He was at Maeve’s, asleep on the kitchen floor with the bread knife on the shelf above the stove, and his house was dark and his truck was gone because June had driven it.

The shed door was not locked.

The inside of the shed smelled of gas and wood shavings and the oil Dale used on the combine. There was a bench along one wall and a tool box on it and a shelf above the bench with cans of paint and a coil of rope and a box of nails. There was a grindstone in the corner and a sack of feed and a pair of boots.

I went through the tool box first. Wrenches and screwdrivers and a hammer. Nothing.

The shelf. The cans of paint. The nails. Nothing.

The sack of feed. I put my hand in it and felt around and found the bottom and there was nothing in it but feed.

June was going through the boots.

“Wren,” she said. “There is a box under the bench.”

I got down on my knees. There was a wooden box under the bench with a hinged lid, and the lid had a hasp on it, and the hasp was not locked. I opened it.

There was a knife in it.

It was long and it had a silver handle and the blade was dark and thin and curved at the tip, and there was a little dried blood in the joint between the blade and the handle, brown and old. It was not Owen’s knife. Owen’s knife had a wooden handle and a short blade and a nick in the edge from the year he tried to open a can with it.

This was a different knife. It was a knife made for reaching into a wound.

I picked it up. My hands were shaking and I did not try to stop them.

“That is not Dale’s,” June said.

“No.”

“Dale’s knife was Owen’s knife. The one in the co-op drawer. You said it had a wooden handle.”

“I know what I said.”

“Then whose is this?”

I turned it over. There was a maker’s mark on the blade near the handle, a small round stamp, and it had been worn almost smooth by years of use. Under the stamp there were letters cut into the metal with a punch.

E. R.

June sat back on her heels.

“Erik Renn,” she said.

“Erik Renn.”

I put the knife down on the bench and looked at it. My hands were still shaking and my heart was going and my wolf was up and pressing at my skin and wanted out.

“Why is it in Dale’s shed?” June said.

“Because Dale has been keeping it,” I said. “Because Dale found it in the field after it was done and he did not know what to do with it and he put it in a box under a bench where he keeps his tools and he did not throw it away.” I looked around the shed. “Dale has been keeping everything. The coat. The scarf. The knife. He is a man who cannot throw a thing away and cannot look at it either.”

I put my hand out and picked the knife up again and this time I held it by the handle.

It was warm. It was not warm from the shed and it was not warm from my hand because I had only just picked it up. It was warm the way the stones were warm.

I turned and looked at Elias.

He was standing in the doorway of the shed with the snow on his shoulders and his eyes on the knife, and his face had gone the way it went in the mill when he read the wall.

“It is one of the founders’ things,” he said. “The same way the stones are. The same way the ring was.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I can feel it from here.” He came into the shed and stood beside me and put his hand out over the knife without touching it. “It is warm. It has been warm since 1891. It is a thing the old pack made to hold a piece of the curse, and the man who carried it carried a piece of the curse with it.” He looked at me. “That is the knife that finished your brother. And it is still warm.”

I wrapped it in my handkerchief and put it in my jacket.

“We are taking it to Harlan,” I said. “Now. Before anything else happens.”

We went up the ridge road with the snow coming down and the knife in my jacket and the mark on my shoulder warm, and we came into Maeve’s kitchen with the door banging and the snow blowing in, and Harlan was there. He was sitting at the table with Maeve and Silas and Arthur Renn and a cup of tea he had not touched, and he looked up when we came in.

“Wren,” he said. “I have been waiting for you.”

I put the knife on the table and unwrapped the handkerchief.

Nobody said anything. Harlan looked at the knife for a long time. Then he reached out and turned it over with one finger and looked at the letters on the blade.

“E. R.,” he said.

“Erik Renn,” I said. “One of the eleven founders. One of the men who held the Luna in the mill in 1891. He has been alive for eighty-eight years and he has been on the Council payroll since 1954 and he has been living at the end of the north road with a mailbox and no house.” I put my hand flat on the table. “And he was in the field on the night my brother died. Dale put a knife in Owen and left him alive. Erik Renn came out of the trees and finished it and then he walked away.”

Harlan looked at the knife and then at me.

“Where did you find this?” he said.

“In Dale’s shed. Under a bench. In a box.”

Harlan closed his eyes.

“So Dale knew,” he said.

“Dale did not know what it was. He found it in the field and he kept it because he cannot throw anything away.” I sat down. “Harlan. I am going to ask you for a thing and I am going to ask you in front of everyone in this room. I want you to call a pack meeting. Tonight. Not tomorrow, not after the Council hearing. Tonight. I want to put this knife on the table in front of the whole pack and I want to tell them what the Council has been doing in this territory for eighty-five years, and I want to tell them about the field and the stone and the record and the Luna. And then I want to ask them to stand with me when I go to Boise.”

Harlan was quiet for a long time.

“If you do that,” he said, “the Council will know by morning.”

“The Council already knows. Kessler has been writing his report since Tuesday and the hunters have gone to Boise and the man at the end of the north road has a rifle and a silver bullet and he knows we are looking for him.” I leaned forward. “Harlan. There is no more quiet. There is only the pack and what the pack decides.”

Harlan looked at the knife on the table.

“I will call the meeting,” he said. “Tonight. In the pack square.” He stood up. “And Wren. When you stand up in front of that pack, I am going to stand up with you.”

The door opened and the wind came in and June came in with snow in her hair and her face white.

“Wren,” she said. “There is a man in the yard. He is old and he has a green truck and he is standing in the snow by the porch and he says he wants to speak to the Alpha.” She looked at me. “And Wren, he says his name is Erik.”