Chapter 7: The Cull List

I did not go home. I went to the pack house.

It was after midnight and the windows were dark, and the porch boards made a noise under my boots that I had known since I was a girl. The pack house is not locked. Nobody locks anything in Palouse Ridge. But the Alpha's office is at the back, past the kitchen and up two steps, and Harlan keeps the door shut even when he is not in it, and everybody in the pack knows that shut means shut.

I had a key. I had had a key since I was twenty, when Harlan handed it to me and told me I was in charge of the records, and I had never once used it when he was not standing next to me. I used it now.

The office smelled like pipe smoke and old paper. I did not turn on the light. The moon was not up yet, but the window over the desk faces east and there was enough gray in the sky to see by, and I knew where everything was anyway. The records cabinet is by the wall, and the desk has three drawers, and the top right one is where Harlan keeps the things he does not want to file.

The top drawer was locked. That was new.

I crouched down and put my ear against it and listened, and then I went around the desk and found the letter opener in the cup where Harlan keeps his pens, and I slid the flat of it into the gap and worked it until the little lock gave with a click that sounded like a gunshot in the quiet.

Inside were three folders. One was the pack accounts. One was a letter from the Council with a Boise postmark. The third was thin and had no label at all, and inside it was a single sheet of paper, typed on the pack house machine, with the date at the top and the word CULL underlined twice.

At the top of the sheet there was a description.

Male. Six feet four, maybe more. Pale blond hair, long. Amber eyes. No coat, no boots, no identification. Scars on the left shoulder blade and the base of the neck. Cannot be approached. Shifts on the new moon. Silver effective.

I read it twice. Then I read the rest.

Under the description, in Dale's handwriting, someone had added four lines.

Sightings: north line, near the old mill road, every new moon since April. Field behind the mill. Co-op yard on 14 September. Also the Henderson place, 2 September. Also the north corral, 9 September.

And under that, in different ink, in a hand I did not know:

The mill is the priority. The boundary stone is in the east field by the stone wall. The Council wants the stone located before the cull is completed. Do not let the wardens near the east field until the stone is found.

I sat down in Harlan's chair. My hands were cold and the paper was shaking in them, and I put it flat on the desk and pressed my palms down on it.

The east field. The stone wall. Silas and his photograph. The Council wanted the stone. The Council had wanted the stone for a long time, and Dale had been ordered to keep the wardens away from the east field until it was found, and I was the warden who walked the north line, and the east field was on the north line, and I had been told for two months to stay out of it because of the harvest.

The word in the office was that the harvest was late and the east field had to be cut first. I had believed it. I had walked past the east field a hundred times in the last two months and never once crossed the stone wall.

I turned the paper over. There was one more line on the back, in the same unknown hand.

The Beta is not to know about the girl. She is not on the list.

The girl. I read it four times and it did not get any better.

I put the paper back in the folder and the folder back in the drawer and I did not lock it, because a broken lock is a worse thing to hide than an open one, and I went out of the office and down the back steps and through the kitchen. The kitchen at the pack house has a screen door that bangs, and I caught it before it hit and eased it shut with my hand flat on the wood.

There was a light on in the yard.

It was small, a lantern, and it was coming from the direction of the barn. I got down off the steps and put my back against the wall and listened, and I heard two voices, low, and one of them was Dale.

I went along the wall to the corner of the house and looked.

Dale was standing at the barn door with a lantern in his hand and the coil of silver wire on the ground at his feet. The hunters were there, Mrs. Bell with her braid and Mr. Hask with his beard, and the three of them were talking in the low, steady way of people who are going to be together for a long time.

I was too far to hear the words, and I did not have time to get closer, because Mrs. Bell turned her head and looked straight at the corner of the house where I was standing, and her eyes in the lantern light were flat and patient and not surprised at all.

I walked out into the yard.

"Wren," Dale said. He did not sound angry. He sounded tired, and a little amused, and that was worse. "You are making a habit of this."

"I came to see Harlan."

"Harlan is asleep. He went to bed at nine with a hot toddy, and he will not thank you for waking him." Dale set the lantern down on the ground. "What did you come to see him about?"

"The east field," I said.

The yard was quiet. Mrs. Bell's expression did not change. Mr. Hask took a step back and put his hands in his pockets.

"What about the east field?" Dale said.

"I want to know why it is cut first," I said. "I want to know why the harvest order came down in July before the wheat was half ready. I want to know why I have been told for two months to keep off the north end of it."

Dale looked at me for a while. Then he smiled, and it was the smile I had known since we were children, the one that said I was being difficult and he was going to be patient with me.

"The east field is cut first because the co-op needs the grain," he said. "And the north end of it is soft ground and you know it. The tractor nearly went over there last year. If you have a problem with the harvest order, take it up with Harlan in the morning when he is awake, and bring your questions with your manners."

I stood there in the yard and looked at him. The lantern made a circle of light around the four of us and the dark was very dark outside it, and I thought about the paper in the drawer and the line about the girl, and I did not say a word about it.

"Fine," I said.

"Good." Dale picked up the lantern. "Go home. Walk the line at first light with the hunters like you were told."

I went.

I did not go home. I went up the co-op road to the mill.

The old mill road is not much of a road anymore. It is two tracks with grass in the middle, and it runs along the north border past the stone wall and up to the mill, which has not had a wagon at its loading door since before I was born. The mill building is big and dark and has a tin roof that has gone to rust in patches, and the door hangs open because the latch has been broken for as long as I can remember.

I stood in the doorway. The inside of the mill smelled like dust and old grain and something else, something warm that had been living there for a while. The scent of him was so strong in that building that it made my eyes close.

"Elias," I said.

Nothing.

"I know you are in here. I can smell you from the road."

A board creaked in the loft. Then his head came over the edge of it, pale hair hanging down, and the rest of him followed, and he came down the ladder and stood in front of me in Owen's coat with his boots on and the scarf around his neck.

"You should not be here," he said.

"The hunters are out on the line tonight," I said. "They are not waiting for first light. Dale is with them, and he has silver wire, and he has a list."

His face did not change. "What kind of list?"

"A cull list." I took it out of my pocket. I had folded it small and put it in my jacket, and I had not stopped thinking about it since I took it out of the drawer. I unfolded it and held it out to him. "It has your description on it. Pale blond hair, amber eyes, scars on the left shoulder blade and the base of the neck. It says you shift on the new moon and it says silver is effective."

He took the paper. He read it in the dim light from the doorway, and I watched his eyes move down the page, and then stop, and then go back up and read it again.

"Where did you get this?" he said.

"Harlan's desk. It was locked."

"You broke into the Alpha's desk."

"I used a letter opener," I said. "I did not break anything except the lock, and the lock can be fixed."

He read the paper again. Then he turned it over, and his jaw went tight, and I knew he had found the line on the back.

"The girl," he said. "You."

"It is not about me. It is about the east field." I took the paper back and folded it and put it in my pocket. "There is a note on that list in a hand I do not know. It says the mill is the priority, and the boundary stone is in the east field by the stone wall, and the Council wants the stone located before the cull is completed. It says do not let the wardens near the east field until the stone is found."

Elias did not say anything.

"You know what the boundary stone is," I said. "You know what it is, and you knew it was in that field, and you have been sitting in that field for four months. So you are going to tell me what it is, and you are going to tell me why the Council wants it, and you are going to stop giving me half a truth every time I ask you a question."

He sat down on a crate. The coat hung open over his chest and I could see the hollow of his throat and the burn on the back of his neck, and his hands were loose on his knees and his eyes were very tired.

"The boundary stone is the heart of the old pack," he said. "The one that was here before your founders. It is what makes the territory a territory. It is what the founders took when they took the land, and it is what they buried when they built the mill, and it is what the curse is tied to. If the Council finds it, they can move it. And if they move it, the curse does not stay here. It goes where the stone goes." He looked up at me. "And the girl on that list is not you because of the stone, Wren. She is on it because the stone chose her."

The mill creaked above us. Down the road, a truck engine turned over and did not catch, and turned over again.

"Chose me," I said. "Chose me how?"

Elias reached into the pocket of the coat and took out something small and wrapped in a handkerchief, and he put it on the crate beside him and unfolded the cloth.

It was a piece of stone the size of a walnut, gray and smooth, with a line in it that went all the way through like a vein.

"The stone was in the east field," he said. "I found it in July, under the wall, where the ground was soft. And when I picked it up it was warm, and it has been warm ever since, and it has not been warm for anyone else." He looked at me. "I have been sitting in that field for four months because the stone would not let me leave, and every night I have been waiting for the woman it was waiting for. And then you found me in the dirt instead."

I looked at the stone on the crate. The vein in it was very thin, and in the gray light it seemed to move.

Then the truck down the road caught, and the engine came up loud, and the headlights swung across the mill door.