Chapter 74: What Elias Knew

We took him up the ridge to Maeve's cottage and put him in the bed in the back room and Maeve lit every lamp in the house and went to work.

She cut his shirt off. There was a burn on his chest and a burn on his hands and his shoulder was torn open again where the stitches had gone. She cleaned the burns and put a salve on them and wrapped his hands in cloth and gave him something out of a brown bottle that made him sleep.

"Will he be all right?" I said.

"He will be all right." Maeve wiped her hands on her apron. "He has been through a fire and a curse and four months in the trees and he is still breathing. He will be all right."

She went out to the kitchen and I sat down on the chair beside the bed.

He slept until noon and then he woke up and looked at the ceiling and then at me.

"Where are we?" he said.

"Maeve's. You are in the bed and I am in the chair and the curse is gone."

He lay there for a moment.

"The stones were cold," he said.

"The stones were cold."

He put his hand up and looked at the cloth wrapped around it.

"I went into the mill for the box," he said. "Erik had it and he was going to take it east and I could not let him. The stones were burning when I got there and I could not leave them. I put my hands on them and they went white and then I could not move and I could not hear anything except the voice."

"What did it sound like?"

"Like my mother," he said. "Like my mother when I was a boy and she called me in for supper." He turned his head. "And then I heard you. You were saying my name and you were far away and I could not get to you."

"You did get to me," I said. "You are here."

He was quiet for a while.

"Wren," he said. "There is a thing I have to tell you. I should have told you in the barn and I should have told you in the mill and I have been putting it off because I did not know how to say it and because I was afraid of what it would do to you."

I sat very still.

"Say it," I said.

He turned his head on the pillow and looked at me.

"On the night your brother died," he said, "I was not in the field when Dale put the knife in him. I was in the trees on the north side of the road and I was on four legs and I was not myself. And when I came out of the trees the first thing I saw was Dale kneeling beside your brother with his hand on his chest. And then Dale got up and ran, and I went to your brother, and I put my hands on the wound."

"You told me that," I said. "You told me that in the co-op the first night."

"I told you I tried to hold the wound shut." He took a breath. "That is not the whole of it. When I put my hands on the wound, the bleeding stopped. And it did not stop because I was pressing on it. It stopped because the curse stopped it."

I looked at him.

"What?"

"The curse took your brother's death," Elias said. "That is what the founders' page says. The wolf carries the Luna's death and the wolf carries the last death of the founders' line. But the curse does not take a death that has not happened yet. When I put my hands on your brother the curse was in me and it was reaching for him and it could not take him because he was still alive." He looked at the ceiling. "So it kept him alive. It held the wound shut and it kept him breathing and it kept him there for as long as it could."

"You are telling me the curse saved him," I said.

"The curse kept him alive long enough for Erik to come out of the trees." He turned his head. "And when Erik knelt down beside him and did what he did, the curse let go. It took the death and it put it in me. That is why the scars came in the morning. That is why I have his wounds. The curse took his death and it put it on my body because I was the one who was holding him when he died."

I sat in the chair and did not move.

"You held him," I said.

"I held him."

"And he was alive."

"He was alive. He opened his eyes and he looked at me and he said a name and then he said my sister and then he said the field." Elias put his hand over his face. "And then Erik came out of the trees and I could not stop him. I was on my back in the grass and he pushed me down and he knelt beside your brother and he put his hands on him and he did what he did and I could not stop him."

I got up out of the chair.

"Wren," Elias said.

I walked to the window and put my hands on the frame and looked out at the ridge and the snow.

"Wren," he said again.

"You held him," I said. "You held my brother and he was alive and he said my name and then he died and you have been carrying that for four months and you did not tell me."

"I did not know how to tell you." His voice was rough. "I did not know how to say to a woman that I was holding her brother when he died and that I could not save him. I did not know how to say that the curse kept him alive because it was in me and that if I had not been in that field he would have died the moment Dale's knife went in."

I turned around.

"He would have died in the field," I said.

"He would have died in the field."

"And he would never have said my name."

"He would never have said your name." Elias sat up in the bed and the cloth on his hands was white against the blanket. "He said your name to me. He said my sister and the field and he said the second wolf is behind the wall. He was trying to tell me something and he died before he could finish it and I have been carrying it for four months and I did not know what it meant until you brought the county file home tonight."

I walked back to the bed and sat down on the edge of it.

"The second wolf is behind the wall," I said.

"The second wolf is behind the wall." Elias looked at me. "Your brother was not talking about Erik. Erik was not a wolf. Erik was a man with a knife. He was talking about a wolf. There was a wolf in that field on the night he died and it was behind the wall and he saw it."

I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands in my lap.

"Clara Renn asked for the second examination," I said. "Clara Renn knew there were two wounds. Clara Renn has a room in the mill with ninety-four tally marks on the wall and the last one was cut this year." I looked at him. "Clara Renn is the second wolf."

Elias did not say anything.

"She is the second wolf," I said again. "She has been in that field for sixty years and she has been watching the east field and she has been watching the stone and she was in that field on the night my brother died." I stood up. "And she did not come forward. She did not report it. She went to the coroner and asked for a second examination and she never told anybody what she saw."

I went to the door.

"Where are you going?" Elias said.

"To Clara Renn's house."

"Wren, it is snowing and you have not slept and you have not eaten."

"I am going to Clara Renn's house," I said, "and I am going to ask her what she saw in that field, and this time I am going to get a straight answer."

I went out and down the ridge in the snow.